TOPIC 44: SHAKESPEARE AND HIS TIMES.

1. Introduction
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) has exerted greater influence on English literature
and European drama than any other single writer. He was an outstanding “jack of all
trades”: a playwright, a player and shareholder in the company which owned his plays
and a poet. His first-hand experience of the stage and its audience enabled him to
construct his scenes in the most effective way, to rely on his actor’s knowledge of
intonation and rhythm when writing a speech and even to adapt the roles of his plays to
the specific talents of each member of his group.
Apart from his extraordinary theatrical skill, Shakespeare had remarkable qualities as:
- His astonishing psychological comprehension of the human passions which
accounts much for his university
- His unrivalled poetic imagination and sense of structure
- His flexibility which enable him to combine successfully all the gifts which
were scattered or isolated in the work of other writers, or make use of the
most diverse material
- His variety, the fact that he showed equal aptitude for the tragic and the
comic, the sentimental and the burlesque, lyrical fantasy and character-study
From about 1580 onwards, European literature explored increasingly the modes of
individual expression and characterization associated with modern processes of thought.
Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Shakespeare’s Hamlet exemplify the dramatic depiction
of individual experience in Elizabethan literature.

2. Historical Background
2.1 The Elizabethan Golden Age
There was a sudden quickening of literary genius at the end of the Tudor century
(Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Donne...). Literature and other fields of the arts and the
sciences were searching wider spaces.
The discoverers like Davis and Frobisher nosed their ships along the Arctic shores,
pushing into the ice-packs, looking in vain for the northwest passage to the China Seas.
The alchemist scraped their limbecks and dishes, distilling and purifying, searching for
the residual element which would free the human body from death. Painters tried to
sketch back into the depth of the canvas along lines of perspective barely understood in
this country.
For Daniel the poet, the art of the Elizabethan poetry is to prise open meanings hidden
in the future, venting new worlds out of old poems and ancient cultures.
This is one of the greatest Renaissance ideals, and an access to this future was so vital to
Elizabethan writers that without it their work could turn dark, or precious, or puffy.
In their other arts, the Elizabethans excelled in entrelacement, making a motif return on
itself, interweaving under and above, crossing backwards and forwards until the starting
point of the design was no longer to be seen.
During the Tudor century, the rate of change in the English language was slowing down,
as medieval constructions and word order settled into the modern grammatical
sequences. When the Elizabethans looked back to Chaucer, they naturally predicted the
same fate for their own language. There were large amounts of new vocabulary, from
Italy and France. The real change was no longer in the syntax but in the number of
choices, and nuances, available in each grammatical position.

2.2 Historical Overview

While Shakespeare was a boy, many things were taking place in England. Mary, Queen
in Scots had murdered her husband, and had to hide in England. Her son James VI
substituted her in the throne. The Counter-Reformation was being launched by the Pope.
The protestant subjects of Philip II of Spain, in Netherlands had initiated a revolt against
him. France was also having religious confrontations. The Queen Elizabeth had been
excommunicated, and there had been Catholic risings and plots against her. She had
managed to keep England out of an open war with Spain, but Drake was raiding the
West Indies and Spanish Main.

2.3 The Theatre in Shakespeare’s times

It still represented the influence religion had in every aspect of life. Medieval miracle
plays were still performed. The theatres were a circular arena surrounded by wooden
tiers or steps. Around, there were four tents that represented the scenes of the play.
Hell was on the north, and Heaven was on the east, with a stage and stairs leading to the
throne of God. The stage was saved for exalted action in which God appeared.
At the beginning of the Elizabeth’s reign the religious drama was a bit out of fashion.
The boys were representing Latin plays and troupes of actors were going around the
country performing interludes, entertainment that was closer to the circus than to the
theatre.
There were not many places where they could represent their act. The situation of the
theatre when Shakespeare was a boy was in bad shape. In the late 1580s, the majority
were university men: John Lyly, Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, George Peele, Thomas
Lodge.

3. William Shakespeare
3.1 Biography
William Shakespeare was the third and eldest son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden,
who had eight children. His father was a glover and wool-dealer in Stratford-upon-
Avon, and his mother was the daughter of a prosperous farmer. His father would be
successful but then later his fortune would decline.
William probably attended the local grammar school where classes were taught in Latin.
A scene in The Merry Wives of Windsor in which a schoolmaster teaches Latin to a boy
named William is probably based on his own experience with the officially approved
textbook, William Lilys Short Introduction of Grammar. Shakespeare’s plays are
influenced by Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Moreover, he had some
knowledge of French and Italian.
He probably left school when he was fifteen. Later, in 1582, he married Anne
Hathaway of Shottery. She was eight years older than him and she was pregnant. They
had a daughter and twins, all of them girls.
Although his professional career would develop in London, Shakespeare’s family
always remained in Stratford. He arrived in London at an exciting historical moment.
There had been a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth, rescue Mary and with the help of
Spain put her on the throne. Elizabeth agreed to have her cousin Mary executed in
February. Moreover, Philip II of Spain was building an Armada to fight against England
and London was preparing to meet it. Furthermore, the world of the theatre was
booming as a group of university men (Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe...) were
writing real plays, not mere entertainment.
He must have been attracted to the world of theatre where he could develop his desire to
write. At this time, the actors travelled a lot, had the opportunity to meet the poets who
wrote the plays, and mixed with nobles and gallants. Meanwhile, the Armada had been
destroyed and the Spanish empire began its decline. As a consequence, literature began
to flourish.
3.2 Works
Shakespeare wrote at least 38 plays and over 150 short and long poems, many of which
are considered to be the finest ever written in English. His works have been translated
into every major living language, and some others besides, and nearly 400 years after
his death, they continue to be performed around the world.

3.2.1 Early Works:

The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists,
especially Thomas Kydand Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama,
and by the plays of Seneca. The Comedy of Errors was also based on classical models,
but no source for The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though it is related to a
separate play of the same name and may have derived from a folk story. Like The Two
Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve of rape, the Shrew's story
of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern
critics and directors.
The Taming of the Shrew
The main plot is the same as the story of Ariodante and Ginevra in Ariosto; but the
secondary circumstances and development are very different. The discovery of the plot
against Hero has been already partly made, though not by the persons interested; and the
poet has contrived, by means of the blundering simplicity of a couple of constables and
watchmen, to convert the arrest and examination of the guilty individuals into scenes
full of the most delightful amusement. There is also a second piece of theatrical effect
not inferior to the first, where Claudio, now convinced of his error, and in obedience to
the penance laid on his fault, thinking to give his hand to a relation of his injured bride,
whom he supposes dead, discovers on her unmasking, Hero herself. The extraordinary
success of this play in Shakespeare's own time, and long afterward, is, however, to be
ascribed more particularly to the parts of Benedick and Beatrice, two fun-loving cynics,
who incessantly attack each other with all the resources of raillery. Avowed rebels to
love, they are both entangled in its net by a merry plot of their friends to make them
believe that each is the object of the secret passion of the other. Objection has been
made to the same artifice being twice used in entrapping them; the drollery, however,
lies in the very symmetry of deception. Their friends attribute the whole effect to their
own device; but the exclusive direction of their raillery against each other is in itself a
proof of a growing inclination. Their wit and vivacity does not even abandon them in
the avowal of love; and their behavior only assumes a serious appearance for the
purpose of defending the slandered Hero. This is exceedingly well imagined; the lovers
of jesting must fix a point beyond which they are not to indulge their humor, if they
would not be mistaken for buffoons by trade.

Titus Andronicus (1592)

It has been denied to Shakespeare, but this denial really passes the bounds of all rational
literary criticism. The reason is that the play was acted and published in 1594 and was
included with Shakespeare’s by Meres in 1598, and included in the folio by
Shakespeare’s intimates and dramatic associates in 1623. It is possible that Meres was
mistaken and that the piece acted and printed in 1594 wasn’t Shakespeare’s. Titus is the
one play of Shakespeare which is assuredly of the Marlow school and the one play, too,
which is almost wholly what is called “repulsive” because of the stiff “singly moulded”
blank verse line hardly ever, should expect as one very probable result of the novitiate
in such a case as Shakespeare’s.

The Sonnets
His best non-dramatic poems are found in the “Sonnets” published in 1609. The sonnets
express an ideal love for a beautiful man since it would have been more of a surprise for
the reader to find that the poet’s mistress is neither fair, young, noble, chaste nor
admirable. His love for the “woman colured ill” is sexual and obsessive. Friendship and
love exchange parts, combine, divorce, sublimate or materialise themselves and each
other in such a fashion to be caught and fixed in any form. Yet, the Sonnets are
considered to be great poetry in the sense of great fiction, expressions of feeling and
great facts.

3.2.2 The Plays:

William Shakespeare’s plays have the reputation of being among the greatest in the
English language and in Western literature. Traditionally, the plays are divided into the
genres of tragedy, history, and comedy; they have been translated into every
major living language, in addition to being continually performed all around the world.
 A) The Early Comedies:
Shakespeare’s comedies do not fit into any slot. They are generally identifiable as the
comedies of Shakespeare in that they are full of fun, irony and dazzling wordplay. They
also abound in disguises and mistaken identities with very convoluted plots that are
difficult to follow, with very contrived endings.Any attempt at describing these plays as
a group can’t go beyond that superficial outline. The highly contrived endings are the
clue to what these plays, all very different, are about.
Love’s Labour Lost
In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Shakespeare cannot make up his mind what metre to select:
blank verse, couplets, stanzas, fourteeners more or less doggerel, but he tries them all by
turns and does them all with a delightful improvisation. He has a real plot although he
overloads it in every direction with incident and character. There is almost everything in
the piece but measure and polish.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

It can be seen as a comic counterpoise to the romantic tragedy telling us the tribulations
of the love-struck quartet of young Athenians temporarily at the mercy of the woodland
fairies led by Oberon and Puck provide the main-spring of the play’s action. Woven into
this seemingly light and courtly rhetorical fabric is a searching exploration of the
relationship between the unconscious world of dreams and the deluded controlling
power of season.
The realist anchoring of the play’s fiction through the robust comedy of the well-
intentioned tradesman and their burlesque of “Pyramus and Thisbe” provides not only
laughter but wonderment at the poet’s skill and tact.
It is often now judged to be one of the Shakespeare’s finest and most atmospheric
achievements.
Much Ado About Nothing
Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing is a famous comedy that gives audiences
big belly laughs and a lot to think about. Much Ado About Nothing tells the story
of Claudio, an officer under the command of Don Pedro, vying for the love of Hero -
daughter of Leonato. Aiding Claudio in his proposal after the war between Don John,
Don Pedro causes confusion about who the real suitor is. The story comprises of
Claudio's battle to gain and keep Hero's affections, amidst interference from the
defeated Don John, and the unity of Beatrice, Hero's cousin, to the officer Benedick.
The play uses comical miscommunication, a swing at social norms, and a strong gesture
at the psychological state of humans to entertain readers.

B) Historic Plays:
The Shakespeare’s ‘history’ plays contain comedy, tragedy and everything in between.
All Shakespeare’s plays are dramas written for the entertainment of the public and
Shakespeare’s intention in writing them was just that – to entertain. The plays that we
normally mean when we refer to the ‘history’ plays are the ten plays that cover English
history from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. The history plays are enormously
appealing. Not only do they give insight into the political processes of Medieval and
Renaissance politics but they also offer a glimpse of life from the top to the very bottom
of society – the royal court, the nobility, tavern life, brothels, beggars, everything.
although Shakespeare was writing ‘history’, using historical figures and events, what he
was really doing was writing about the politics, entertainments and social situations of
his own time. A major feature of Shakespeare’s appeal to his own generation was
recognition, something Shakespeare exploited relentlessly.

Henry V
Throughout this play we see the seamy side of the tapestry of history alternate with the
public side. The sacred ideals of England and of kinship are set up at the start of the
play and are described by means of a display of gorgeous rhetoric and national
exultation.

Richard III
Richard III is an example of adaptation and of the working up of existing materials.
Richard III bears very much less resemblance to its predecessor, The True Tragedie of
Richard III, and some have regarded it as almost an independent following of
Marlowe’s Edward II. It certainly resembles that play in bursts of poetry of a somewhat
rhetorical kind, in the absence of purely comic episodes or scenes and in the
concentration of character interest on the hero. It is, at any rate, full of life, with nothing
in it either of the peculiar dream quality of Marlowe or of the woodenness of certain
other early playwrights.
 Julius Caesar
Among the qualities of this play, we can mention its moral and political realism:
showing a distrust of power similar to that found in the previous tetralogy Shakespeare
pursued his interest in questions of politics and ethics in a Roman and republican
context.
Other element which has been discussed is the notion of Brutus as an embryo Hamlet.
The idealist impulse of Brutus soliloquy when he attempts to justify to himself his share
in the killing of this friend Caesar anticipates the anxiety of Hamlet. Some critics have
found how much of Macbeth can be found in Brutus. It can be said that Brutu’s moral
integrity is the one which causes him to conspire against Caesar.
Moral realism is really quite pronounced in the way the conspiracy is viewed.
Antony and Cleopatra
It has nearly as infinite a variety as its incomparable heroine herself: its warmth and
colour are of the liveliest kind, its character drawing is of the Shakespearean best, the
beauties of its versification and diction are almost unparalleled in number, diversity and
intensity, and, above all, the powers of the two great poetic motives, love and death, are
utilised in it to the utmost possible extent. Even this long list of merits does not exhaust
its claims. From the technical side, it is the very type and triumph of the chronicle play,
of the kind which dramatises whole years of history, solid portions of the life of man,
and keeps them dramatically one by the interwoven threads of character interest, by
individual passages of supreme poetry ad by scenes or sketches of attaching quality.

C) The Tragedies:
Aristotle outlines tragedy as follows: The protagonist is someone of high estate; a prince
or a king. He is like us – perhaps a bit different in his level of nobility so that we can
admire. The protagonist has a ‘tragic flaw’ in his character which makes him contribute
to his own destruction. This can take the form of an obsession. The flaw is often part of
his greatness but it also causes his downfall. The flaw causes the protagonist to make
mistakes and misjudgments. That in turn begins to alienate him from his supporters so
that he becomes isolated. He begins to fall from his high level. He struggles to regain
his position but fails and he comes crashing down. He eventually recognizes his
mistakes, but too late. An important aspect is the suffering he undergoes, which the
audience observes and identifies with. We experience ‘pity’ and ‘terror’ as we watch
what seems to us an avoidable suffering. At the end the air is cleared by the restoration
of the order that existed before the events of the story and we experience what Aristotle
calls ‘catharses – a feeling of relief and closure.
All of Shakespeare’s plays have elements of both tragedy and comedy, sometimes very
finely balanced, creating effects that Aristotle could never have dreamt of.
Hamlet
It is Shakespeare’s longest play and the most often quoted work of English literature. Its
instant fame has not diminished in 400 years, even if its hero has recently been
scrutinized more critically. After all, Hamlet caused five people to die.
Hamlet controls our sympathies as it through his eyes that we see the action, which is
notably varied and spectacular.
Hamlet’s Oedipal fears and filial dilemmas have struck a particular chord in post-
Freudian audiences. If Hamlet thrives on its famous soul-searching soliloquies it is also
the case that their measured intellectual tone at times belies the pressing intensity of the
character’s emotions, which is why too often Hamlet has been read as a play about a
young man who could not make up his mind. Actually, Hamlet is the first tragic hero on
the European stage since the Hellenic tragedies.
The sheer scale of destruction in Hamlet, as well as its use of the inset playlet, reflects
its indebtedness to earlier revenge dramas. There is even a sense in which Hamlet is the
only revenge tragedy of its period. It is the only play in which a real conflict arises
directly out of the imposition of the task of revenge upon its hero.
For many critics, we can say that Hamlet is a tragedy of adolescence and political
intrigue.
King Lear
King Lear survives in two substantially different source texts: the “pied Bull” quarto of
1608 and the folio edition (1623). The former contains some 300 lines which are
missing from the folio, and the folio has 100 lines not in the earlier text. Most modern
editions of the play conflate the two sources to make them yield a composite text which
contains all the missing lines.
The main plot of King Lear proceeds from the division of the kingdom of England and
Lear’s ill-judged rejection of his daughter Cordelia who refuses to conform to her
father’s demand for a public expression of her love for him. The subplot traces the rise
and fall of Edmund, the bastard and ruthless son of the Earl of Gloucester who, at
Edmund’s instigation, wrongfully persecutes his loyal and legitimate heir Edgar. The
double plot of the play widens its imaginative treatment of parents and alienated
children and portrays a society fallen from the bias of nature, in which the old, though
guilty, are more sinned against than sinning. The play offers an almost unmitigated, dark
and apocalyptic vision of a universe in which good characters, particularly, Cordelia,
perish as well as bad ones like Goneril, Regan and Edmund. For this reason, and
because Shakespeare’s play contravenes poetic justice, Samuel Johnson preferred it in
its mutilated, rewritten version by Nahum Tate which ended happily as a tragicomedy
with the marriage of Edgar and Cordelia. Modern audiences have responded with
empathy to the play’s bleak vision.
Macbeth
The tragedy is the conversion of a good man into a wholly evil one. Macbeth begins as
the heroic warrior who defends Scotland against a triple enemy: the king of Norway has
invaded Scotland in alliance with the open rebel Macdonwald and the secret rebel
Cawdor. Then, he is confronted by a triple enemy assailing his soul: the witches; his
own evil desires; and his wife. He becomes a hardened man though a restless and
desperate one; he preceeds to the murder of Banquo, whose children the witches have
precicted will succeed him on the throne, and then degenerates into massacre and
tyranny. The play exemplifies one of the beliefs of Shakespeare’s time: that the soul of
man is the pattern of the state, and that where evil breaks into the soul of a king it will
extend over the state he rules.
Romeo And Juliet
It remains a great favourite among the plays for its tender and generous portrayal of
star-crossed young love. It is Shakespeare’s first attempt at writing a romantic tragedy. It
has a number of clear points of contact with Sonnets as they have similar style at certain
points.
As de lovers declare their dedication in terms which combine lyrical intensity with
conscious literary artifice – the kind of writing in many Romeo’s speeches in the famous
balcony scene because their youthful love neglects all realities except those which its
own affirmation involvers, it will end in death; but because – it is also a true emotion
because its intensity answers, when all has been said, to an intuition of value, life and
intensity. Also, many of the intentions of the characters are out of control. Capulet and
his wife are determined to force Juliet into what they regard as an appropriate marriage.
Against this background Romeo and Juliet achieve the brief consummation of their
love, but death will be the ominous end.
Othello
This work is the second of the so-called major tragedies coming after Hamlet. Othello is
not a play about “kingship”, but rather about human passion. It is called “tragicomedy”
because it takes material that we usually associate with comedy, and explores its tragic
possibilities. Shakespeare sought to examine here the tragic implications of a series of
themes to which he had already devoted some attention in earlier comedies: human
passion, the “evil” intentions, comic situations, etc.
As Drakakis (1980: 16) says, “the play offers us an insight into the ways in which
Shakespeare refined and developed his own dramatic art. His choosing of the figure of a
Moor for this hero was a stroke of brilliance. Othello’s blackness singles him out form
the other characters in the play, but it would be quite wrong to infer from this that
Shakespeare was concerned to depict some sort of crude “racial” conflict. To the
Elizabethans the figure of the Moor represented, not an ethnic but a moral type.”

4. Conclusion
William Shakespeare, although he is a famous and an important key in the English
literature, we still do not know much of his life as there is nothing clear, just
suppositions. However, he is very important not only in literature, but maybe in theatre
as there are many assumptions that he acted plays in important places and these were
the ones that make him start writing and mixing themes and ways of literature.
Moreover, his stories are well-known nowadays.
Furthermore, this topic is very important for students as they can see how imagination
can make fabulous works which preserve in time. Also, it is important that they see and
read this works in order to realize the evolution of English along the centuries.

5. Bibliography
This content is taken from outstanding historical books that deal with the history of
Britain as The Norton Anthology English Literature, which is a compilation of literature
authors with their most popular works, or English Literature: Its History and Its
Significance for the Life of the English Speaking, which presents the whole history of
English literature form Anglo-Saxon times to the Victorian Era. Furthermore, A History
of English Literature provides a general manual of English Literature about its
development and the most important authors of this country.