WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)

Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, son of John Shakespeare, a glover, and Mary Arden. His father held a position as alderman in the Town Hall. William attended grammar school in Stratford. He married Anne Hathaway at 18 (she was 26), and they had a daughter, Susanna, born 7 months after the wedding. They had twins in 1585, Hamnet and Judith. Shakespeare is lost track of from 1585 to 1592. He joins Lord Stranges Men in 1592. In 1594 he joined the Chamberlains Men (the Kings Men from 1603). In 1597 he buys a house in Stratford, New Place, to which he will retire progressively from 1610. In 1599 he becomes a shareholder in The Globe theatre, with Burbage and other 5 owners. He died the 23rd of April 1616, the same day as Cervantes, and the same day William himself was born (St Georges Day).

Chandos Portrait

Engraving from the First Folio edition of The Complete Works

First Folio (1623), edited by John Heminge(s) and Henry Condell, two actors in the Lord Chamberlains Men. 18 of the 36 plays had not been printed before. F2 (1632), a reprint of the First Folio. F3 (1663), a second impression (1664) included Pericles and 6 apocrypha: The London Prodigal, Thomas Lord Cromwell, Sir John Old Castle, A Yorkshire Tragedy, The Puritan, Locrine. F4 (1684). Quarto Editions (22.8 x 17.7 cm): printed copies of individual Shakespeares plays, normally during performance life of the play. 19 were published before the First Folio. Bad Quartos: normally memorial reconstructions by actors who had acted the play. They have omissions; paraphrases rather than the original words; misplaced scenes. The parts of the actors involved in the reconstruction would be perfect.

To be, or not to be, I theres the point, To Die, to Sleepe, is that all? I all: No, to sleepe, t odreame, I mary there it goes, For in that dreame of death, when wee awake, And borne before an everlasting Judge, From whence no Passenger ever returnd, The undiscovered country, at whose sight The happy smile, and the accursed damned. (Bad Quarto)

To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep, No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream ay, there's the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life.

POETRY

Venus and Adonis (1593)

Dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. A reworking of Ovids Metamorphoses. Narrative erotic poem, where Venus, in love with Adonis, chases him, while he rejects her; ending up with his death. Comic undertones. Tragic narrative poem, based also on Ovid. Depicts the Roman story of Lucretias rape by Tarquin and her subsequent suicide. Appears at the end of the published copy of the Sonnets. Authorship is disputed, since the style changes significantly.

The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

A Lovers Complaint

SONNETS
First published in 1609 as a whole sequence of 154. In 1598, they are mentioned by Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia: sugared sonnets among his private friends. Dedicated to W. H. (probably Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, or William Herbert, earl of Pembroke).

Emilia Lanier Mistress of Lord Hudson Patron of the Lord Chamberlains Men

Luce Morgan a.k.a. Lucy Negro, owner of a brothel. NO portraits available!!! ?????

Sequence division

Sonnets 1-126: the young, fair man Sonnets 1-17: urging the young man to marry so that his beauty remains. Sonnet 18: tempus fugit and the immortality of art. Sonnets 78-86: the rival poet. Sonnets 127-154: the dark lady.

18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments, love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come, Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom: If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun, Coral is far more red, than her lips red, If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun: If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head: I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks, And in some perfumes is there more delight, Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know, That music hath a far more pleasing sound: I grant I never saw a goddess go, My mistress when she walks treads on the ground. And yet by heaven I think my love as rare, As any she belied with false compare.

144
Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still, The better angel is a man right fair: The worser spirit a woman coloured ill. To win me soon to hell my female evil, Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil: Wooing his purity with her foul pride. And whether that my angel be turned fiend, Suspect I may, yet not directly tell, But being both from me both to each friend, I guess one angel in another's hell. Yet this shall I ne'er know but live in doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

Identities

William Herbert Earl of Pembroke

Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton

Mary Fitton Maid to Elizabeth Had a son with Herbert

SHAKESPEARES DRAMATIC EVOLUTION

APPRENTICESHIP AND EXPERIMENT: Plays written before 1594 EXPANSIVENESS: Plays from 1595-1598, Richard II to Henry V MATURITY: From Julius Caesar to Coriolanus (1598-1608) LAST PLAYS: 1609-1612. From Cymbeline to The Tempest. IN COLLABORATION: Henry VIII (1612-13), Two Noble Kinsmen (1613-14), written with John Fetcher.

EARLY STAGE

Language shows the influence of school rhetoric. He uses metaphors from everyday life. Shakespeare experiments with form to establish his own style. Strong influence from classical sources: Plautus (comedy) and Seneca (tragedy). He wrote farces: The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Revenge Tragedy (Roman play): Titus Andronicus. Historical Plays: Henry VI parts I-III, Richard III.

First transitional plays (1594-95)

Romeo and Juliet

Mixture of comedy and tragedy. Fate in the tragedy is not properly worked out. Tragedy of love with two star-crossd lovers. Comedy anticipating the sunny comedies of the following period. Influenced by commedia dellarte.

Loves Labours Lost

Shakespeares youth period

Chamberlains Men period, before opening of the Globe Theatre. Characters in the plays become more complex and individual. Verse is more natural and it is combined with prose. The action revolved around a character or a set of ideas. Shakespeare stops experimenting with structure as in the previous stage. He refines the development of the plot, with a main plot being commented upon, complemented, parodied by secondary plots (expanding circles). Images of youth dominate the plays, leading to fairly optimistic and positive attitudes towards life.

Romantic comedies or sunny comedies: A Midsummer Nights Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like it, Twelfth Night.

Called sunny because of the images of light and the positive attitude towards youth. Exploration of human potential and development

Historical Plays: Richard II, King John, Henry IV, parts I-II, Henry V.

Transitional play II

Hamlet (1600-01). Reworking of revenge tragedy into a different form and scope. A young hero facing existential doubts. Structure is not yet fully developed, revolving around Hamlets 5 monologues (one in each act). Persisting Senecan elements acquire a different, more complex nature: ghost of Hamlets father; Hamlets madness; the concept of revenge. Portrayal of the tension between a Renaissance mind imprisoned in a Medieval context.

MATURITY

Shakespeares middle age. Time at the Globe. Complexity of poetic language and organization. Great technical command of stagecraft and plot structure. Individual experience is portrayed through metaphor. Characters have grown up and look at life from the perspective of adulthood. Views about life are more complex and not as optimistic as before. Exploration of the themes of responsibility and power.

Great Tragedies: Othello, Macbeth, King Lear. Problem comedies: Alls Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure.

Dark comedies that stand of the brink of tragedy. Their happy endings are too bitter to call them comedies. Themes of power and ambition.

Roman Plays: Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus. Merry Wives of Windsor.

Written at Queen Elizabeths request, because she wanted to see Falstaff in love after enjoying this character from Henry IV.

Greek plays: Troilus and Cressida (tragedy of love), Timon of Athens.

Last Plays (The Romances)

Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winters Tale, The Tempest. Change in technique and tone. Combination of tragedy and comedy into tragi-comedy. Use of romance: tales are improbable, and experience extraordinary; magic or miraculous event take place; fantastic element (storms, shipwrecks, wild beasts). No attempt at verosimilitude in the plot.

Characters are not portrayed as individuals. Time is expanded so as to include the tragic and comic phases of experience, pointing towards its cyclical nature. The bitter attitude of characters towards life from the previous period is changed into ACCEPTANCE of the world as it is. Greater vision of lifes meaning: REBIRTH, REGENERATION, RECOGNITION AND RECONCILIATION. There is always good behind all evil.