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1 Chapter 1 : The Devil and the Vice in the English dramatic literature before Shakespeare, - CORE Get this from a library! The Devil and the Vice in the English dramatic literature before Shakespeare,. [L W Cushman]. Some time before, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil. Textual evidence also supports the view that several of the plays were revised by other writers after their original composition. The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI, written in the early s during a vogue for historical drama. By William Blake, c. His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his mature work. Henry Fuseli, â According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play-offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty". Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Shakespeare in performance It is not clear for which companies Shakespeare wrote his early plays. The title page of the edition of Titus Andronicus reveals that the play had been acted by three different troupes. In Cymbeline, for example, Jupiter descends "in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: The ghosts fall on their knees. Copper engraving of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout. It contained 36 texts, including 18 printed for the first time. In the case of King Lear, however, while most modern editions do conflate them, the folio version is so different from the quarto that the Oxford Shakespeare prints them both, arguing that they cannot be conflated without confusion. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects. Scholars are not certain when each of the sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership. It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial "I" who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart". Thou art more lovely and more temperate It is not known whether this was written by Shakespeare himself or by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, whose initials appear at the foot of the dedication page; nor is it known who Mr. He wrote them in a stylised language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the drama. The grand speeches in Titus Andronicus, in the view of some critics, often hold up the action, for example; and the verse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Page 1

2 Chapter 2 : Medieval drama :: Life and Times :: Internet Shakespeare Editions The Devil and the Vice in the English dramatic literature before Shakespeare, [L. W Cushman] on blog.quintoapp.com *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Each thing Iago says is cause for worry. He claims a reputation for honesty and plain speaking, yet he invents elaborate lies in order to exploit and manipulate other people. He treats others as fools and has no time for tender emotion, yet he is a married man and presumably once loved his wife. He cares for no one, yet he devotes his whole life to revenge rather than walk away in disdain. Iago has a reputation for honesty, for reliability and direct speaking. Othello and others in the play constantly refer to him as "honest Iago. In Iago, Shakespeare shows us a character who acts against his reputation. Possibly Iago was always a villain and confidence trickster who set up a false reputation for honesty, but how can one set up a reputation for honesty except by being consistently honest over a long period of time? Alternatively he might be a man who used to be honest in the past, but has decided to abandon this virtue. Shakespeare has built the character of Iago from an idea already existing in the theatrical culture of his time: In Exodus, God gives his laws to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and Moses asks God his name. Iago is the opposite of God, that is, he is the Devil. Iago in this play, has the qualities of the Devil in medieval and Renaissance morality plays: Iago does all this not for any good reason, but for love of evil. Iago is surrounded with bitter irony: He likes to have others unwittingly working to serve his purposes. But for all this, as his plot against Othello starts moving and gathering momentum, he loses control of it and must take real risks to prevent it from crashing. Iago is a man with an obsession for control and power over others who has let this obsession take over his whole life. Necessity forces his hand, and, in order to destroy Othello, he must also destroy Roderigo, Emilia, Desdemona, and ultimately himself. He is quite or nearly indifferent to his own fate as to that of others; he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful advantage, and is himself the dupe and victim of ruling passion â an insatiable craving after action of the most difficult and dangerous kind. Be genial, sometimes jovial, always gentlemanly. Quick in motion as in thought; lithe and sinuous as a snake. Page 2

3 Chapter 3 : Morality play dramatic genre blog.quintoapp.com The Devil and the Vice in the English dramatic literature before Shakespeare, Punch-Vice character in Shakespeare" p. "Bibliography: p. English drama. It is generally presumed to have been written in the same year. The earliest printed text appeared in the First Folio, published in Confusions and imperfections in that text suggest that errors may have been made in transcription, and further, that the play may have undergone revision at some time prior to its first printing. The basic plot which Shakespeare employed in Measure for Measure was not new to that play. Its ultimate source was a historical incident supposed to have occurred near Milan in A young wife prostituted herself to save her condemned husband. The magistrate who had forced the woman to yield to him proceeded to execute her husband. He was eventually made to marry the widow and was then put to death himself for his crime against her. This incident was probably the basis of a story by Giraldi Cinthio, published in as the eighty-fifth novel in his Hecatommithi. He may also have known of the original true incident and of other similar, supposed historic situations on record. However, Shakespeare departed from his sources in several areas. In considering Measure for Measure, it is important to be aware of the source versions and the changes Shakespeare made in adapting the plot for his own purposes. Juriste promises to pardon him if she will submit her body to him. She does, but Juriste has her brother executed anyway and cruelly sends her the body. She appeals to the emperor, who forces Juriste to marry her and then condemns him to death. Epitia begs for his life, and he is pardoned. Having formerly refused to plead for her husband, she now begs for and is granted his pardon. She sacrifices her virginity to the demands of Promos, who breaks his promise of pardon for Andrugio, sending her his head. Cassandra takes her case to the king, who forces Promos to marry her and then condemns him to death. It is now learned that the jailer has spared Andrugio, substituting the head of another. Isabella begs Angelo for his life, and he promises to spare her brother if she will yield to his desires. Convinced that he has lain with Isabella, he nevertheless orders the execution of her brother and asks that the head be sent to him as evidence. The duke persuades the Provost to save Claudio, substituting the head of another. In the final scene, Angelo is made to marry Mariana and is condemned to death. Isabella begs for his life and her prayer is granted by the duke. She then learns that her brother still lives. The Shakespearean version of the story is different from the sources in several significant ways. It is a milder handling. For example, Angelo views the supposed head of Claudio himself, while his counterparts in Cinthio and Whetstone send the evidence of execution to the sister. Escalus is invented by Shakespeare to offer a dramatic contrast to Angelo. First, the duke plays a major role in Measure for Measure, while his counterparts in the sources are merely introduced at the last minute to provide a solution to the conflict at hand. Second, Isabella refuses to sacrifice her virginity to Angelo. Her action presents a marked contrast to the background of moral corruption against which it occurs. As a result, the whole business of the substitute bed partner and the character of Mariana are introduced. Page 3

4 Chapter 4 : William Shakespeare blog.quintoapp.com Get this from a library! The Devil and the Vice in the English dramatic literature before Shakespeare. [L W Cushman]. Outshining all these is Christopher Marlowe, who alone realized the tragic potential inherent in the popular style, with its bombast and extravagance. Nothing is known of his first schooling, but on Jan. A year later he went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Obtaining his bachelor of arts degree in, he continued in residence at Cambridgeâ which may imply that he was intending to take Anglican orders. Last years and literary career. After Marlowe was in London, writing for the theatres, occasionally getting into trouble with the authorities because of his violent and disreputable behaviour, and probably also engaging himself from time to time in government service. Perhaps before leaving Cambridge he had already written Tamburlaine the Great in two parts, both performed by the end of ; published About this time he also wrote the play Dido, Queen of Carthage published in as the joint work of Marlowe and Thomas Nashe. With the production of Tamburlaine he received recognition and acclaim, and playwriting became his major concern in the few years that lay ahead. No other of his plays or poems or translations was published during his life. His unfinished but splendid poem Hero and Leanderâ which is almost certainly the finest nondramatic Elizabethan poem apart from those produced by Edmund Spenserâ appeared in There is argument among scholars concerning the order in which the plays subsequent to Tamburlaine were written. His last play may have been The Jew of Malta, in which he signally broke new ground. This gave him some difficulty, as he had almost exhausted his historical sources in part I; consequently the sequel has, at first glance, an appearance of padding. Yet the effort demanded in writing the continuation made the young playwright look more coldly and searchingly at the hero he had chosen, and thus part II makes explicit certain notions that were below the surface and insufficiently recognized by the dramatist in part I. The play is based on the life and achievements of Timur Timurlenk, the bloody 14th-century conqueror of Central Asia and India. Tamburlaine is a man avid for power and luxury and the possession of beauty: But Zenocrate dies, and their three sons provide a manifestly imperfect means for ensuring the preservation of his wide dominions; he kills Calyphas, one of these sons, when he refuses to follow his father into battle. Always, too, there are more battles to fight: But, especially in part II, there are other strains: In this early play Marlowe already shows the ability to view a tragic hero from more than one angle, achieving a simultaneous vision of grandeur and impotence. Faustus; but it has survived only in a corrupt form, and its date of composition has been much-disputed. It was first published in, and another version appeared in Faustus takes over the dramatic framework of the morality plays in its presentation of a story of temptation, fall, and damnation and its free use of morality figures such as the good angel and the bad angel and the seven deadly sins, along with the devils Lucifer and Mephistopheles. In Faustus Marlowe tells the story of the doctor-turned-necromancer Faustus, who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power. One drop would save my soul, half a drop: Yet will I call on him: O, spare me, Lucifer! Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, And hide me from the heavy wrath of God! The text is problematic in the low comic scenes spuriously introduced by later hack writers, but its more sober and consistent moments are certainly the uncorrupted work of Marlowe. But this figure is more closely incorporated within his society than either Tamburlaine, the supreme conqueror, or Faustus, the lonely adventurer against God. In the end Barabas is overcome, not by a divine stroke but by the concerted action of his human enemies. But The Jew can be closely associated with The Massacre at Paris, a dramatic presentation of incidents from contemporary French history, including the Massacre of St. As The Massacre introduces in the duke of Guise a figure unscrupulously avid for power, so in the younger Mortimer of Edward II Marlowe shows a man developing an appetite for power and increasingly corrupted as power comes to him. In each instance the dramatist shares in the excitement of the pursuit of glory, but all three plays present such figures within a social framework: And certainly Edward II is a major work, not merely one of the first Elizabethan plays on an English historical theme. This work was incomplete at his death and was extended by Page 4

5 George Chapman: Page 5

6 Chapter 5 : Christopher Marlowe English writer blog.quintoapp.com Account for it as we will, the fact remains that during the Elizabethan period the English Drama made a great stride from comparative infancy to a maturity which has certainly never been surpassed in the history of our dramatic literature, and with which the name of Shakespeare must be inseparably connected. William Shakespeare The English playwright, poet, and actor William Shakespeare is generally acknowledged to be the greatest of English writers and one of the most extraordinary creators in human history. Born 6 years after Queen Elizabeth I had ascended the throne, contemporary with the high period of the English Renaissance, Shakespeare had the good luck to find in the theater of London a medium just coming into its own and an audience, drawn from a wide range of social classes, eager to reward talents of the sort he possessed. His entire life was committed to the public theater, and he seems to have written nondramatic poetry only when enforced closings of the theater made writing plays impractical. Shakespeare was born on or just before April 23,, in the small but then important Warwickshire town of Stratford. His mother, born Mary Arden, was the daughter of a landowner from a neighboring village. By, however, John Shakespeare had begun to encounter the financial difficulties which were to plague him until his death in Like other Elizabethan schoolboys, Shakespeare studied Latin grammar during the early years, then progressed to the study of logic, rhetoric, composition, oration, versification, and the monuments of Roman literature. A plausible tradition holds that William had to discontinue his education when about 13 in order to help his father. At 18 he married Ann Hathaway, a Stratford girl. They had three children Susanna, ; Hamnet, ; and his twin, Judith, and who was to survive him by 7 years. Shakespeare remained actively involved in Stratford affairs throughout his life, even when living in London, and retired there at the end of his career. The earliest surviving notice of his career in London is a jealous attack on the "upstart crow" by Robert Greene, a playwright, professional man of letters, and profligate whose career was at an end in though he was only 6 years older than Shakespeare. If the first of the comedies is most notable for its plotting and the second for its romantic elements, the third is distinguished by its dazzling language and its gallery of comic types. Already Shakespeare had learned to fuse conventional characters with convincing representations of the human life he knew. Nothing so ambitious had ever been attempted in England in a form hitherto marked by slapdash formlessness. When the theaters were closed because of plague during much of, Shakespeare looked to nondramatic poetry for his support and wrote two narrative masterpieces, the seriocomic Venus and Adonis and the tragic Rape of Lucrece, for a wealthy patron, the Earl of Southampton. Both poems carry the sophisticated techniques of Elizabethan narrative verse to their highest point, drawing on the resources of Renaissance mythological and symbolic traditions. Writing at the end of a brief, frenzied vogue for sequences of sonnets, Shakespeare found in the conventional line lyric with its fixed rhyme scheme a vehicle for inexhaustible technical innovationsâ for Shakespeare even more than for other poets, the restrictive nature of the sonnet generates a paradoxical freedom of invention that is the life of the formâ and for the expression of emotions and ideas ranging from the frivolous to the tragic. Though often suggestive of autobiographical revelation, the sonnets cannot be proved to be any the less fictions than the plays. The identity of their dedicatee, "Mr. But the chief value of these poems is intrinsic: The company performed regularly in unroofed but elaborate theaters. Required by law to be set outside the city limits, these theaters were the pride of London, among the first places shown to visiting foreigners, and seated up to 3, people. The actors played on a huge platform stage equipped with additional playing levels and surrounded on three sides by the audience; the absence of scenery made possible a flow of scenes comparable to that of the movies, and music, costumes, and ingenious stage machinery created successful illusions under the afternoon sun. For this company Shakespeare produced a steady outpouring of plays. Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet Different from one another as they are, these three plays share some notable features: More impressively than the first tetralogy, the second turns history into art. Spanning the poles of comedy and tragedy, alive with a Page 6

7 magnificent variety of unforgettable characters, linked to one another as one great play while each is a complete and independent success in its own rightâ the four plays pose disturbing and unanswerable questions about politics, making one ponder the frequent difference between the man capable of ruling and the man worthy of doing so, the meaning of legitimacy in office, the value of order and stability as against the value of revolutionary change, and the relation of private to public life. The plays are exuberant works of art, but they are not optimistic about man as a political animal, and their unblinkered recognition of the dynamics of history has made them increasingly popular and relevant in our own tormented era. Troilus and Cressida, hardest of the plays to classify generically, is a brilliant, sardonic, and disillusioned piece on the Trojan War, unusually philosophical in its language and reminiscent in some ways of Hamlet. During his last decade in the theater Shakespeare was to write fewer but perhaps even finer plays. Almost all the greatest tragedies belong to this period. Though they share the qualities of the earlier tragedies, taken as a group they manifest new tendencies. The heroes are dominated by passions that make their moral status increasingly ambiguous, their freedom increasingly circumscribed; similarly the society, even the cosmos, against which they strive suggests less than ever that all can ever be right in the world. The late tragedies are each in its own way dramas of alienation, and their focus, like that of the histories, continues to be felt as intensely relevant to the concerns of modern men. Othello is concerned, like other plays of the period, with sexual impurity, with the difference that that impurity is the fantasy of the protagonist about his faithful wife. Iago, the villain who drives Othello to doubt and murder, is the culmination of two distinct traditions, the "Machiavellian" conniver who uses deceit in order to subvert the order of the polity, and the Vice, a schizophrenically tragicomic devil figure from the morality plays going out of fashion as Shakespeare grew up. Transformed from its fairy-tale-like origins, the play involves its characters and audience alike in metaphysical questions that are felt rather than thought. Macbeth, similarly based on English chronicle material, concentrates on the problems of evil and freedom, convincingly mingles the supernatural with a representation of history, and makes a paradoxically sympathetic hero of a murderer who sins against family and stateâ a man in some respects worse than the villain of Hamlet. Both of these tragedies present ancient history with a vividness that makes it seem contemporary, though the sensuousness of Antony and Cleopatra, the richness of its detail, the ebullience of its language, and the seductive character of its heroine have made it far more popular than the harsh and austere Coriolanus. One more tragedy, Timon of Athens, similarly based on Plutarch, was written during this period, though its date is obscure. Despite its abundant brilliance, few find it a fully satisfactory play, and some critics have speculated that what we have may be an incomplete draft. The handful of tragedies that Shakespeare wrote between and comprises an astonishing series of worlds different from one another, created of language that exceeds anything Shakespeare had done before, some of the most complex and vivid characters in all the plays, and a variety of new structural techniques. A final group of plays takes a turn in a new direction. While such work in the hands of others, however, tended to reflect the socially and intellectually narrow interests of an elite audience, Shakespeare turned the fashionable mode into a new kind of personal art form. Though less searing than the great tragedies, these plays have a unique power to move and are in the realm of the highest art. Pericles and Cymbeline seem somewhat tentative and experimental, though both are superb plays. Like a rewriting of Othello in its first acts, it turns miraculously into pastoral comedy in its last. The Tempest is the most popular and perhaps the finest of the group. Prospero, shipwrecked on an island and dominating it with magic which he renounces at the end, may well be intended as an image of Shakespeare himself; in any event, the play is like a retrospective glance over the plays of the 2 previous decades. After the composition of The Tempest, which many regard as an explicit farewell to art, Shakespeare retired to Stratford, returning to London to compose Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen in ; neither of these plays seems to have fired his imagination. In, at the age of 52, he was dead. His reputation grew quickly, and his work has continued to seem to each generation like its own most precious discovery. His value to his own age is suggested by the fact that two fellow actors performed the virtually unprecedented act in of gathering his plays together and publishing them in the Folio edition. Without their efforts, since Shakespeare was apparently not interested in Page 7

8 publication, many of the plays would not have survived. Further Reading Alfred Harbage, ed. For editions of individual plays the New Arden Shakespeare, in progress, is the best series. The authoritative source for biographical information is Sir Edmund K. A Study of Facts and Problems 2 vols. Reliable briefer accounts are Marchette G. A Biographical Handbook The body of Shakespeare criticism is so large that selection must be arbitrary. Twentieth-century criticism can be sampled in Leonard F. Modern Essays in Criticism ; rev. Other noteworthy studies include G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire: Traversi, An Approach to Shakespeare ; rev. Clare Byrne 4 vols. Studies of the theaters are in C. Walter Hodges, The Globe Restored: A Study of the Elizabethan Theatre, and A. The best account of early Renaissance drama is in Frank P. Campbell and Edward G. Page 8

9 Chapter 6 : William Shakespeare - The Greatest Literature of All Time The Devil and the Vice in the English dramatic literature before Shakespeare, it was amazing avg rating â 1 rating â 2 editions Want to Read saving. Many of the dates of play performances, when they were written, adapted or revised and printed are imprecise. This biography attempts only to give an overview of his life, while leaving the more learned perspectives to the countless scholars and historians who have devoted their lives to the study and demystification of the man and his works. He lived with his fairly well-to-do parents on Henley Street, the first of the four sons born to John Shakespeare c and Mary Arden c, who also had four daughters. John Shakespeare was a local businessman and also involved in municipal affairs as Alderman and Bailiff, but a decline in his fortunes in his later years surely had an effect on William. In his younger years Shakespeare attended the Christian Holy Trinity church, the now famous elegant limestone cross shaped cathedral on the banks of the Avon river, studying the Book of Common Prayer and the English Bible. In he became lay rector when he paid Pounds towards its upkeep, hence why he is buried in the chancel. There is also the time when Queen Elizabeth herself visited nearby Kenilworth Castle and Shakespeare, said to have been duly impressed by the procession, recreated it in some of his later plays. When he finished school he might have apprenticed for a time with his father, but there is also mention of his being a school teacher. Baptisms of three children were recorded; Susanna, who went on to marry noted physician John Hall, and twins Judith who married Richard Quiney, and Hamnet his only son and heir who died at the age of eleven. He was writing poems and plays, and his involvement with theatre troupes and acting is disparagingly condemned in a pamphlet that was distributed in London, attributed to Robert Green the playwright titled "Groats Worth of Witte" haughtily attacking Shakespeare as an "upstart crow"; "Yes trust them not: O that I might entreate your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses: While it was a time for many upstart theatres, the popular public entertainment of the day, they were often shut down and forbidden to open for stretches of time. Shakespeare probably spent these dark days travelling between London, Stratford, and the provinces, which gave him time to pen many more plays and sonnets. Among the first of his known printed works is the comedic and erotically charged Ovidian narrative poem Venus and Adonis It was wildly popular, dedicated with great esteem to his patron Henry Wriothesly, third earl of Southampton, the young man that some say Shakespeare may have had more than platonic affection for. The troupe included his friend and actor Richard Burbage. A few of his plays were printed in his lifetime, though they appeared more voluminously after his death, sometimes plagiarised and often changed at the whim of the printer. First Folio would be the first collection of his dramatic works, a massive undertaking to compile thirty-six plays from the quarto texts, playbooks, transcriptions, and the memories of actors. The approximately nine hundred page manuscript took about two years to complete and was printed in as Mr. It also featured on the frontispiece the famous engraved portrait of Shakespeare said to be by Martin Droeshout c Most likely Anne and the children lived in Stratford while Shakespeare spent his time travelling between Stratford and London, dealing with business affairs and writing and acting. In his daughter Judith married Quiney who subsequently admitted to fornication with Margaret Wheeler, and Shakespeare took steps to bequeath a sum to Judith in her own name. William Shakespeare died on 23 April, according to his monument, and lies buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford upon Avon. While there is little known of her life, Anne Hathaway outlived her husband by seven years, dying in and is buried beside him. It is not clear as to how or why Shakespeare died, but in the reverend John Ward, vicar of Stratford recorded that "Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Johnson had a merie meeting, and itt seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted. Others were written or revised right before being printed. The order, dates, and authorship of the Sonnets have been much debated with no conclusive findings. Many have claimed autobiographical details from them, including sonnet number in reference to Anne. The dedication to "Mr. Regardless, there have been some unfortunate projections and interpretations of modern Page 9

10 concepts onto centuries old works that, while a grasp of contextual historical information can certainly lend to their depth and meaning, can also be enjoyed as valuable poetical works that have transcended time and been surpassed by no other. Ever the dramatist Shakespeare created a profound intrigue to scholars and novices alike as to the identities of these people. Some are reworkings of previous stories, many based on English or Roman history. The dates given here are when they are said to have been first performed, followed by approximate printing dates in brackets, listed in chronological order of performance. Titus Andronicus first performed in printed in, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet,. Page 10

11 Chapter 7 : William Shakespeare - Wikipedia Medieval Drama. Boston: Houghton Miffkin, The Devil and the Vice in the English Dramatic Literature before Shakespeare. Halle: M. Niemeyer, Not much scintillating wit. William Shakespeare, if that was his real name, was an obscure writer of Elizabethan entertainments about whom little is known The poet and playwright generally considered the greatest ever is also one of the least known of all literary figures. His works were indeed created for the popular entertainment of his day with little thought to their immortality. Shakespeare did not take any steps to preserve his writings past their immediate use. Fortunately his friends did. With all the academic study of Shakespeare and the trappings of fine culture that have been wrapped around productions of his dramas over the centuries, we often forget what a rollicking, bawdy, violent and entertaining spectacle his plays presented to their original audiencesâ and still can to modern audiences, in the right hands. Not that his writing is not also profound and deeply moving. Like Chaucer before him and later great English writers like Henry Fielding and Charles Dickens, Shakespeare was able to engage the mind, the heart and more primitive parts of the human psyche all at once. Contrary to those who claim such an ignorant country bumpkin could not write the plays attrributed to him, he likely had a good education for his time, attending a local grammar school giving him a grounding in the Latin classics and in British literature and history, from which many of his dramatic plots are taken. At eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna born and the twins Hamnet and Judith born He may have worked as a schoolmaster until moving to London in the late s on his own under unknown circumstances, possibly to flee poaching charges, according to one legendâ or possibly running off with a travelling theatrical troupe to escape the confines of smalltown, domestic life. Nothing is known about how he became involved in the theatre and became a writer, but he apparently was becoming known as an actor and playwright by, judging by a comment from a rival then about an "upstart crow". From the early s until, Shakespeare wrote at least 36 playsâ more if you count collaborations and plays that may have been lostâ plus at least two long poems and one collection of poetry. The plays are traditionally divided into three categories: These groupings are rough approximations however. Several of the so-called comedies are dark enough to be considered tragicomedies. The "tragedies" taking place in the ancient world are thematically similar to "histories", but the latter term is reserved for British subject matter. And some of the "histories" are quite comical. His earliest plays to be produced in London to some acclaim are thought to be the last two or all three parts of Henry VI around â It is not certain whether he wrote all or just parts of these inferior histories. These first efforts may have been followed by the first part of Henry VI, written as a prequel to the other two parts, and several more early plays, including the Roman tragedy Titus Andronicus, the still-controvesial comedy The Taming of the Shrew, and the durable history Richard III. His first published works, however, were the long poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece His famous Sonnets were also likely begun in the early s, though they were not collected and published together until In, his son Hamnet died at age eleven. It is unknown how closely Shakespeare had been in contact with his family or how deeply he was affected by the death of his only son, though the heaviness of his plays to come may not be coincidental. In they took over the indoor Blackfriars Theatre, for which Shakespeare wrote his last romantic comedies, probably with some collaboration from other playwrights: The final play written entirely by Shakespeare before retirement at the ripe old age of 47 is The Tempest in He does seem to have continued to spend some time in London drama circles though, helping to write Henry VIII and possibly two other plays in He died in And has little to do with the more important issue of what those works by himâ or by someone using that nameâ told us. A dedicatory poem by playwright Ben Jonson in that book declares Shakespeare "not of an age, but for all time". This comment has set the standard for all discussion of Shakespeare ever since. We are continually told Shakespeare is "universal". He appeals to emotions and thoughts that are part of eternal human nature. He points out universal truths. His words transcend race and Page 11

12 culture, as shown by their translation into every language on earth and by their worldwide popularity for four centuries. But, Shakespeare fan as I am, I must disagree. That is to say, for as long as our culture can remember. Each period thinks its insights and ideals are universal to all periods. They have held significance for us through the ups and downs of capitalism over hundreds of years. However, we read his words and we take his meanings differently now from how his original audiences did in the first flush of the new era. And eventually, as social systems evolve and the people within them change, his words will come to mean less to us. His works may remain classics in the same way that the epic poetry of Homer and the plays of Sophocles are still considered classics fo some interest. But they will not always strike us to the heart as they do now. Shakespeare wrote at a time when the feudal, aristocratic world was being replaced by a new one based on commercial expansionism and individualism. Although he often wrote about kings and queens, these were not the God-appointed, mystically guided monarchs of ethereal thoughts and lofty morals found in medieval literature. Rather they were flesh-and-blood individuals with very human greeds and ambitions. The best of them are portrayed as ruling on behalf of the nation the unified nation state being a recent development, replacing the fiefdoms of the Middle Ages and the city states of the ancients, rather than by divine pleasure or inherited right as previously. For example, the old notion of honourâ associated with chivalry and blood relations in the Middle Agesâ has to be given a new meaning. Is there a place for compassion and forgiveness in a voracious profit-before-all-else system represented by Shylock? Do individuals have the right to choose their own happiness over traditions, as Romeo and Juliet attempt? Does a wife belong to a husband? Is wealth a guarantor of happiness? Should financial relations control familial relations, or vice versa? Do we choose our own destinies or are they fixed in the stars? I could go on, listing the issues raised by Shakespeare that would have seemed ludicrous in older times. An 11th-century lord or peasant would not have found these to be questions even worth considering, any more than we are interested today in pondering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. He was dealing with conflicts that arose in a mind shaped, as the minds of most people of his time, by the stories and glories of the past, as well as excited by the forward-looking society that was forming around new economic relations and new ideas. In the exhilarating tumult, he was trying to sort out how people should act. He was seeking the constants that go beyond the immediate, changing fashions. Not always successfully, though always engagingly. But it is inevitable he and his audience would focus on the moral quandaries of the time, given life by the changing social conditions. I imagine most artists of the time did to some degree. Shakespeare is great because he just wrote better than anyone else on these mattersâ delving more deeply, exploring more nuance, writing more eloquently and movingly than any other playwright then or since. To put it in a single sentence, Shakespeare was writing "Arise, the new human. But there resides in memory enough of youth to excite. It is especially comforting now to think that those words and ideas from our adolescence, which once were challenging, are relevant stillâ appear still as universals for all time. At a time when we are casting about for new "universals" for all time. Page 12

13 Chapter 8 : Othello (Vol. 79) - Essay - blog.quintoapp.com This first English tragedy was the first English play to use blank verse which had been introduced into English poetry only a few years before. Shakespeare's Predecessors The quarter century or so which followed the production of Gorbuduc was a period of vast experimentation in the English drama. As in all Shakespeare plays, there is conflict and resolution; there is also romance. Shakespeare includes certain themes: I interpret the play as a metaphor on colonisation. This was history influencing art. Nevertheless, Shakespeare is indicating alternatives to traditional power models. A number of relevant quotes have been included in this article. The waters like whole rivers did flood in the air. What shall I say? Only upon the Thursday night, Sir George Summers Sir George Summers called divers about him and showed them the same, who observed it with much wonder and carefulness. The superstitious seamen make many constructions of this sea fire, which nevertheless is usual in storms. New lands, though terrifying, suggested opportunities. Anything that is new and excitring will present opportunities as well as potential for fear. Clothing, a leitmotif of the play, stresses difference. Unlike Miranda and Prospero, Caliban does not wear European clothing, and is unimpressed by the finery, magically produced to trick Stephano and Trinculo. Caliban wears a simple gabardine cloak. Shakespeare shows that natives, either through conquest or religious conversion, felt compelled to submit: Small wonder also, then, that Shakespeare has Caliban consider murdering the usurping Prospero, who has enslaved him. Merman caught, Baltic Sea. Public domain - copyright expired. Hans Holbein the Younger Thus Shakespeare encourages his audience to question their preconceptions about how language refklects nobility or civility. Caliban is earthy and beastly. Ferdinand, like Miranda, is educated and refined. Shakespeare is likely to have known of its contents and probably used it as a source. Las Casas considered that it contained "almost as many lies as pages" and described Gonzalo, himself, as "one of the greatest tyrants, thieves, and destroyers of the Indies". How lush and lusty the grass looks! Relationships between the settlers and the natives are considered. Both Ariel and Caliban have love-hate relationships with their master. When Ariel, resenting enslavement, but loving Prospero, asks: Enslaved Caliban hates Prospero, but claims: Prospero justifies his change in attitude: Caliban is accused of attempted rape. Columbus recorded that he kidnapped natives for rape. Ania Loomba claims that rape by colonisers was commonplace. No proof of assault is provided. White women, who loved non-europeans, sometimes claimed rape. Is Shakespeare presenting another issue here? A union between Miranda and Caliban wiuld have been considered impossible. But a union with Ferdinand would definitely have been preferable. The comparison represents civilisation versus barbarity. Mediterranean Sea, or Caribbean Sea? Shakespeare juxtaposes the uneducated Trinculo with Caliban, whom Trinculo considers subservient, while acknowledging his own drunken lowliness: Source Repentance and Forgiveness The theme of repentance and forgiveness is shown when Prospero frees his slaves. Prospero forgives Caliban, returning the island to him: Caliban - Freed Slave? Available resources are utilised to dramatic effect. Direction, understanding and imagination were adapted accordingly. How actors behaved and spoke, and how scenes followed on, provided dramatic effect. For example, in the second act, the audience becomes angry at the immoral way Antonio treats Prospero and Miranda. Anagrams and Near-Anagrams Shakespeare uses anagrams. Early modern English enables Shakespeare to make important points. Thus Shakespeare urges his audience to consider their status and relationship. Actors speak in three styles. Minor characters speak in prose. Drama, being a spoken and visual medium, with a live audience, Shakespeare could direct players to stress certain words, high-lighting underlying meanings. Ostensibly a Mediterranean adventure, it is an allegory of American colonisation. Page 13

14 Chapter 9 : The Drama Before Shakespeare - A Sketch Vice is a stock character of the medieval morality blog.quintoapp.com the main character of these plays was representative of every human being (and usually named Mankind, Everyman, or some other generalizing of humanity at large), the other characters were representatives of (and usually named after) personified virtues or vices who sought to win control of man's soul. This is a work of uncertain date, celebrating the Battle of Maldon of, at which the Anglo-Saxons failed to prevent a Viking invasion. Beowulf is the most famous work in Old English, and has achieved national epic status in England, despite being set in Scandinavia. The only surviving manuscript is the Nowell Codex, the precise date of which is debated, but most estimates place it close to the year Beowulf is the conventional title, [11] and its composition is dated between the 8th [12] [13] and the early 11th century. The poem is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English and is, with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry. It is also one of the earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language. Middle English literature After the Norman conquest of England in, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. As the invaders integrated, their language and literature mingled with that of the natives, and the Norman dialects of the ruling classes became Anglo-Norman. From then until the 12th century, Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual transition into Middle English. Political power was no longer in English hands, so that the West Saxon literary language had no more influence than any other dialect and Middle English literature was written in the many dialects that corresponded to the region, history, culture, and background of individual writers. They appeared between about and Another literary genre, that of Romances, appears in English from the 13th century, with King Horn and Havelock the Dane, based on Anglo-Norman originals such as the Romance of Horn ca. It is one of the better-known Arthurian stories of an established type known as the "beheading game". Developing from Welsh, Irish and English tradition, Sir Gawain highlights the importance of honour and chivalry. Preserved in the same manuscript with Sir Gawayne were three other poems, now generally accepted as the work of the same author, including an intricate elegiac poem, Pearl. Chaucer is best known today for The Canterbury Tales. This is a collection of stories written in Middle English mostly in verse although some are in prose, that are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from Southwark to the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. Chaucer is a significant figure in the development of the legitimacy of the vernacular, Middle English, at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still French and Latin. At this time, literature in England was being written in various languages, including Latin, Norman-French, and English: A contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Chaucer, Gower is remembered primarily for three major works: It was popular and influential in the later revival of interest in the Arthurian legends. Medieval theatre In the Middle Ages, drama in the vernacular languages of Europe may have emerged from enactments of the liturgy. Mystery plays were presented in the porches of cathedrals or by strolling players on feast days. Miracle and mystery plays, along with morality plays or "interludes", later evolved into more elaborate forms of drama, such as was seen on the Elizabethan stages. These were folk tales re-telling old stories, and the actors travelled from town to town performing these for their audiences in return for money and hospitality. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. They developed from the 10th to the 16th century, reaching the height of their popularity in the 15th century before being rendered obsolete by the rise of professional theatre. There are four complete or nearly complete extant English biblical collections of plays from the late medieval period. The most complete is the York cycle of 48 pageants. They were performed in the city of York, from the middle of the 14th century until The plays were most popular in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. Page 14

15 The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th to the 17th century. It is associated with the pan-european Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century. Like most of northern Europe, England saw little of these developments until more than a century later. Renaissance style and ideas were slow in penetrating England, and the Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance. Poems intended to be set to music as songs, such as those by Thomas Campion â, became popular as printed literature was disseminated more widely in households. Gorboduc is notable especially as the first verse drama in English to employ blank verse, and for the way it developed elements, from the earlier morality plays and Senecan tragedy, in the direction which would be followed by later playwrights. Jacobean period â [ edit ] In the early 17th century Shakespeare wrote the so-called " problem plays ", as well as a number of his best known tragedies, including Macbeth and King Lear. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. A collection of by sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, were first published in a quarto. Besides Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, the major poets of the early 17th century included the Metaphysical poets: This, one of the most massive translation projects in the history of English up to this time, was started in and completed in This represents the culmination of a tradition of Bible translation into English that began with the work of William Tyndale, and it became the standard Bible of the Church of England. The Cavalier poets were another important group of 17th-century poets, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War â King Charles reigned from and was executed They "were not a formal group, but all were influenced by" Ben Jonson. Most of the Cavalier poets were courtiers, with notable exceptions. For example, Robert Herrick was not a courtier, but his style marks him as a Cavalier poet. Cavalier works make use of allegory and classical allusions, and are influenced by Latin authors Horace, Cicero and Ovid. However, his major epic works, including Paradise Lost were published in the Restoration period. Restoration Age â [ edit ] This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. During the Interregnum, the royalist forces attached to the court of Charles I went into exile with the twenty-year-old Charles II. John Milton, religious epic poem Paradise Lost published in John Milton, one of the greatest English poets, wrote at this time of religious flux and political upheaval. Milton is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost In general, publication of satire was done anonymously, as there were great dangers in being associated with a satire. John Dryden â was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. He established the heroic couplet as a standard form of English poetry. Prose[ edit ] Prose in the Restoration period is dominated by Christian religious writing, but the Restoration also saw the beginnings of two genres that would dominate later periods, fiction and journalism. Religious writing often strayed into political and economic writing, just as political and economic writing implied or directly addressed religion. The Restoration was also the time when John Locke wrote many of his philosophical works. His two Treatises on Government, which later inspired the thinkers in the American Revolution. The Restoration moderated most of the more strident sectarian writing, but radicalism persisted after the Restoration. Puritan authors such as John Milton were forced to retire from public life or adapt, and those authors who had preached against monarchy and who had participated directly in the regicide of Charles I were partially suppressed. Consequently, violent writings were forced underground, and many of those who had served in the Interregnum attenuated their positions in the Restoration. John Bunyan stands out beyond other religious authors of the period. A single, large sheet of paper might have a written, usually partisan, account of an event. It is impossible to satisfactorily date the beginning of the novel in English. However, long fiction and fictional biographies began to distinguish themselves from other forms in England during the Restoration period. An existing tradition of Romance fiction in France and Spain was popular in England. One of the most significant figures in the rise of the novel Page 15