Shakespeare International man of mystery
Apr 01, 2015
Shakespeare
International man of mystery
William Shakespeare
• April 23, 1564-1616• Greatest writer of English?• Bard of Avon• Stratford-upon-Avon• 37 or 38 plays• 154 sonnets, plus
Shakespeare in love?
• Married Anne Hathaway
Early life
• He was 18, she was 26• Six months later first child born• Three children, two of which were twins• Lived with his father, successful glove maker• Next eight years “lost years”• ????????
Making plays in London
• Early 1590’s writing plays in London• Successful as playwright, actor, and
shareholder of acting company• Lord Chamberlain’s Men• The King’s Men• The Globe Theatre
• Blackfriar’s Theater
Elizabethan Age
• Favorite of Queen Elizabeth I
• Shakespeare has strong heroines, perhaps inspired by Elizabeth
• First feminist? Portrayed the virtues of strong women who achieve their goals
Jacobean Age
• King James I cultivated and strong patron of the arts
• Elevated Shakespeare’s company even higher, making the participants gentlemen
Success
• Most popular acting company in London• Spent much of time in London away from
family• Later bought second most expensive house in
Stratford
Shakespeare’s house
Statue to Shakespeare
Monument to playwrights
I’m not dead yet.
• Died age 52 of fever? Typhus?• "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a
merry meeting and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted." ~ Vicar of Holy Trinity Church
Oh, maybe I am.
• Buried in Holy Trinity Church
Will’s last will
• Left his wife his “second-best bed”• Hmm…• Gave daughters, friends and relatives
everything else, which wasn’t all that much• If he was so successful and famous, where did
all his money go?• Did not arrange to have his plays printed or
mention them in his will
Signatures
Willm Shakp
William Shaksper
Wm Shakspe
William Shakspere
Willm Shakspere
By me William Shakspeare
Jonson’s praise
• This figure that thou here seest put,It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,Wherein the graver had a strifeWith Nature, to outdo the life:Oh, could he but have drawn his witAs well in brass, as he has hitHis face, the print would then surpassAll that was ever writ in brass;But since he cannot, reader, lookNot on his picture, but his book.– Ben Jonson, Lines on a Picture of Shakespeare.
Humanism
• Morality plays religious themes• Shakespeare explores human, not divine dilemmas• Shakespeare’s religious tolerance: “wonderful
philosophical impartiality” ~Coleridge• Humanism: human experience as a way of knowing
self, nature, or God• Value to each individual human life• Villains have sympathy
Humanism
• No simplistic moral or theological narratives• Explores emotions and moral choices faced by
secular men in extreme circumstances• Renaissance: arts, sciences, Greek and Roman
culture• Rapidly expanding knowledge and
extraordinary artistic production• Artistic and moral movement
Shakespeare’s PlaysComedies• All's Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, Cymbeline, The Comedy of Errors, Love's
Labour's Lost, Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Pericles, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Troilus and Cressida, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale
Tragedies• Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth,
Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, Titus AndronicusHistories• 1,2, and 3 Henry VI, 1 and 2 Henry IV, King John, Henry V, Henry VIII, Richard II,
Richard III
Theatre in London
• London 200,000 people 1590’s: high mortality, crime, unsanitary conditions, crowding
• Young men from countryside, like Shakespeare• Pickpockets, prostitutes, commoners, gentlemen,
foreign fashions, theater red-light district• Most important cultural form English Renaissance• Sophisticated audience, novelty, variety, complexity
Theatres
• Playwrights in demand• Birth of modern theater• Daytime performances: open-air, rain or shine,
rowdy• Social classes mix freely• Poor: yard front of stage, penny• Richer: seats, higher up cost more• 1609 indoor, winter, intimate, more expensive
Theatres
• Theater more respectable• Plague decimates 1/3 to 2/3 of city’s population• Playhouses breeding grounds, often closed• Afraid of political unrest, so licensed• Companies 15 plays/month• Several thousand during Shakespeare’s time• Bare stage; new play every day, so big sets
expensive, impractical
Theatre
• Costumes main expense, language and imagination
• Cannon burned down Globe in 1613, no one killed but one man’s breeches caught fire, bottle of ale doused
• Trapdoors, deus ex machina, sword fights, jigs and dances
• Men and boys played all roles; women forbidden because “immoral”
Language
• Shared culture: Bible and mythology• Flexible language, no rules or standards• Shakespeare 25,000 different words• Average adult 7,000-10,000 words, 800 then• Shakespeare invented maybe 1,700 words
Language
• Social class, personality, mood and situation• Prose or verse class or situation• Heightened emotional state or formal poetic, otherwise
prose• Romeo and Juliet meet and exchange a perfect sonnet• Figurative language: metaphor, simile, personification,
puns, rhythm, meter, symbolism, layers of meaning• Syntax: emphasis on which part of speech to accentuate,
whatever comes last
Poetry
• Shakespeare wrote poetry from 1592-94 when plague shut down theatres in London
• Wanted to make name for himself• Poetry considered more sophisticated and
gentlemanly than theatre• Narrative poetry and sonnets
Sonnets
• Sonetto, little song• Italian, Dante, Petrarch• Earl of Surrey adapted rhyme scheme to
English, known as Shakespearean sonnet• Time, Beauty, and Verse• Very popular 1590’s• Collection known as a sequence or cycle
Sonnets
• Sonnets 1-126 to a young man• 127-152 to a dark lady• 153-154 to Cupid• About procreation and immortality in verse• Beauty also immortalized, preserved in poetry• “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”~Keats• “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”~Keats
Unrequited love
• Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde, and the idea of courtly love
• Evolution of feeling and thought toward the beloved: enchanted, worshipful, confounded, disenchanted, and combative
• Dark lady: eyes and hair of black• Adulterous affair ending in frustration and
deception
Sonnets
• “For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright/Who are as black as hell, as dark as night”
• Young man having and affair with dark lady?• Love triangle, and then competition, rival poet• Sonnet’s formal structure challenged to create
within constraints• Sound, meaning, and image combine
Sonnets
• Fourteen lines=three quatrains+one couplet• Quatrain=four lines• Couplet=two lines• Iambic pentameter=five feet• Turn=change of direction
• How to read a sonnet: follow the train of thought, look for shifts of tone or direction
• Thought, followed by example, then comparison
• Layers of meaning, metaphor, words connected to each other
• Couplet reveals even deeper meaning
Origins and Sources
• Did not create stories, aside from Love’s Labor’s Lost and The Tempest
• Holinshed: Chronicles of England Scotland and Ireland, 1587: plot elements, character names, and descriptions, but reshaped to suit dramatic purposes
• Edward Hall: The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York, 1548
Origins and Sources
• Boccaccio: Decameron, 1353; people fleeing plague in Florence, bawdy and full of innuendo
• Romances (long narrative in poetry or prose)• Seneca: tragedies of deception and revenge• Plutarch: Lives of the Noble Grecians and
Romans
Origins and Sources
• Ovid: Metamorphoses, poetry, mythological• Plautus: comedic drama from Greek plays;
low-class characters that outwit upper-class
Impact of Shakespeare’s Plays
• Emotional impact• Use of language to reveal or convey character• Extremes of human experience• Complexity of character, motivation, real and
three dimensional• Dialogue reveals a character through his or her
words, directly and indirectly• Much dialogue poetry; no people did not speak
this way
Impact
• Racy stories appealing to common person as well as educated; evolving London, cultures and classes mixing
• Ben Jonson: “not of an age, but for all time”• Coat of arms “Not without merit”• Didn’t protect his plays for posterity• Half of plays printed by time of his death, rest
by friends: First Folio
Was Shakespeare really Shakespeare?
• Authorship controversy• Documents show he lived and wrote the plays• Playbills named him• Plays published after performance with his
name• Shareholder in company who performed them• Other famous people wrote about him
Conspiracy
• Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation is often the correct one
• Commoner, country boy, son of illiterate tradesman and mother, never went to university; must have been aristocrat
• But English Renaissance and others of that time had similar backgrounds: Marlowe, Jonson, Donne, Spenser
Bacon
• Sir Francis Bacon: Renaissance man, royal court, prolific writer, philosophy, politics, scientific method
• How would he have had time?• Twain a proponent
de Vere
• Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford: education, courtly knowledge of Elizabeth I, writer, poet, comedy, military, life parallels many plots of plays; died 1604, and Shakespeare did plays in 1609 and 1613
• Freud a proponent
Marlowe
• Christopher Marlowe: anti-Stratfordians, literary professional, son of tradesman, university degree, born same year as Shakespeare, but already famous when S. came to London in 1590’s
Marlowe
• 1593 charged with heresy as atheist and “murdered” by men in British intelligence and took up Shakespeare’s name as a cover
• Marlowe was a spy, so it’s suspicious• Marlovians’ literary analysis say “fingerprint”
the same• But stark differences in style and content,
though Shakespeare certainly influenced by him
Yet more conspiracy
• Sir WalterRaleigh: explorer, poet, philosopher, statesman, courtier lived until 1618, so chronology fits, never wrote a play, but did poetry
• Queen Elizabeth I herself?
Separated at birth?You be the judge.
Who was Shakespeare?
• So, was Shakespeare really Shakespeare?• Does it matter?• Shakespeare in a minute• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMkuUAD
WW2A• Original pronunciation• http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s
Catholic?
• Queen Elizabeth outlawed: fined, tortured and killed if conspiring
• Parents Catholic, may have been hired as a tutor in a Catholic household
• Hoghton’s will: instruments and costumes, mentions a William Shakeshafte
• Catholics treated respectfully in his plays• No solid evidence
Gay?
• Historians: no such concept at that time• May not have spent much time with Anne, but
did have three children• Theatre traditional venue for gays• Shakespeare wrote love poetry to men• But also to women• Inconclusive
English Renaissance
• 1485-1625• Rebirth of civilization• Started earlier in Italy (1350-1550)• Rejected “dark ages” of Medieval Europe• Revived learning of ancient Greece and Rome• Age of Exploration• Religious and political turmoil
Dates
• 1485 Henry VII first Tudor king• 1500 Everyman first performed (morality play)• 1534 Henry VIII Act of Supremacy, Church of
England formed• 1547 Edward VI becomes king• 1553 Mary I “Bloody Mary” becomes queen• 1558 Elizabeth I “Virgin Queen” becomes
queen
Dates
• 1563 20,000 Londoners die in plague• 1564 Shakespeare born• 1580 Francis Drake circumnavigates globe• 1588 English navy defeats Spanish Armada• 1594 Romeo and Juliet written• 1599 Globe Theatre opens• 1600 East India Company founded
Dates
• 1603 James I becomes king• 1606 Guy Fawkes executed for Gunpowder
Plot• 1611 King James Bible published• 1625 James I dies
Exploration
• Thirst for knowledge• Exploration by sea• Navigation advanced by compass and
astronomical knowledge• 1492 Columbus sailed the…• 1497 John Cabot reached Newfoundland
Religion
• Renaissance spirit and nationalism, questioning Church
• Corrupt officials, questionable teachings, hierarchy
• Erasmus and Thomas More raised questions of morality and religion, focus of Renaissance
• 1517 Martin Luther, German monk, whose protest led to split with Catholics and Protestant Reformation
Tudors
• 1485 Wars of the Roses over• Monarchs consolidated power over nobles
and assured stability• Henry VII rebuilt treasury, established law and
order, increased prestige of monarchy• Henry VIII Catholic, Defender of the Faith,
against Martin Luther• Catherine of Aragon no son
Tudors
• Henry VIII wants annulment, not granted• Marries Anne Boleyn• Pope excommunicates• Henry dissolves Catholic Church’s holdings in
England and creates Church of England• Thomas More, author of Utopia and a friend
executed for not renouncing Catholicism
Tudors
• Henry VIII marries six times• Mary and Elizabeth half sisters• Jane Seymour had son Edward• Edward becomes king at age nine, dies at 15• English replaces Latin in church• Book of Common Prayer required for public
worship• Protestantism more or less established
Queen Mary
• Mary I Catholic and restored Catholicism to Church of England and Pope’s authority
• Ordered 300 Protestants executed, “Bloody Mary” causing anti-Catholic sentiment
• Ruled five years and died• Half sister Elizabeth rules
Elizabeth I
• Elizabethan Age• One of longest-reigning English monarchs• Ushered in era of English supremacy and
prosperity• Renaissance education: Greek and Latin classics
and patron of the arts and writers• Reestablished supremacy over Church• Ended religious turmoil by compromises that
both sides could live with
Elizabeth I
• Mary Stuart Catholic cousin next in line for throne
• Imprisoned by Elizabeth for 18 years, still instigated plots
• Parliament insists on Mary’s execution, 1587
Stuarts
• 1603 James VI of Scotland named successor and becomes James I of England
• Son of Mary Stuart, Stuart dynasty, Protestant• Jacobean Era 1603-1625• Patron of the arts• Expanded world power of England• Established Jamestown, Virginia 1607• Power struggle with Parliament “Divine Right”• Persecuted Puritans, founded Plymouth Colony 1620 due
to religious intolerance
Literature
• Narratives, poetry, dramas, and comedies• Subtle and satirical criticisms of church and
monarchy• Lyric poetry over Medieval narrative poetry• Sonnet: Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare• Fourteen lines, iambic pentameter, abab,
cdcd, efef, gg rhyme scheme• Pastoral poetry: Marlowe and Raleigh
Elizabethan Drama and Lit
• Christopher Marlowe popular 1580s• Tamburlaine and The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus,
dies at 30• Of course, Shakespeare• King James Bible 1620 “most monumental prose
achievement of the entire English Renaissance”• Fifty-four laborers seven years to translate into English• Shakespeare was one of them• Most widely-quoted and influential work in English• Shakespeare close behind