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Реферат: William Shakeseare
Реферат: William Shakeseare
Shakespeare the man
LIFE
Although the amount of factual knowledge available about Shakespeare is
surprisingly large for one of his station in life, many find it a little
disappointing, for it is mostly gleaned from documents of an official
character. Dates of baptisms, marriages, deaths, and burials; wills,
conveyances, legal processes, and payments by the court--these are the dusty
details. There are, however, a fair number of contemporary allusions to him
as a writer, and these add a reasonable amount of flesh and blood to the
biographical skeleton.
Early life in Stratford
The parish register of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon,
Warwickshire, shows that he was baptized there on April 26, 1564; his
birthday is traditionally celebrated on April 23. His father, John
Shakespeare, was a burgess of the borough, who in 1565 was chosen an alderman
and in 1568 bailiff (the position corresponding to mayor, before the grant of
a further charter to Stratford in 1664). He was engaged in various kinds of
trade and appears to have suffered some fluctuations in prosperity. His wife,
Mary Arden, of Wilmcote, Warwickshire, came from an ancient family and was
the heiress to some land. (Given the somewhat rigid social distinctions of
the 16th century, this marriage must have been a step up the social scale for
John Shakespeare.)
Stratford enjoyed a grammar school of good quality, and the education there
was free, the schoolmaster's salary being paid by the borough. No lists of
the pupils who were at the school in the 16th century have survived, but it
would be absurd to suppose the bailiff of the town did not send his son
there. The boy's education would consist mostly of Latin studies--learning to
read, write, and speak the language fairly well and studying some of the
classical historians, moralists, and poets. Shakespeare did not go on to the
university, and indeed it is unlikely that the tedious round of logic,
rhetoric, and other studies then followed there would have interested him.
Instead, at the age of 18 he married. Where and exactly when are not known,
but the episcopal registry at Worcester preserves a bond dated November 28,
1582, and executed by two yeomen of Stratford, named Sandells and Richardson,
as a security to the bishop for the issue of a license for the marriage of
William Shakespeare and "Anne Hathaway of Stratford," upon the consent of her
friends and upon once asking of the banns. (Anne died in 1623, seven years
after Shakespeare. There is good evidence to associate her with a family of
Hathaways who inhabited a beautiful farmhouse, now much visited, two miles
from Stratford.) The next date of interest is found in the records of the
Stratford church, where a daughter, named Susanna, born to William
Shakespeare, was baptized on May 26, 1583. On February 2, 1585, twins were
baptized, Hamnet and Judith. (The boy Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died 11
years later.)
How Shakespeare spent the next eight years or so, until his name begins to
appear in London theatre records, is not known. There are stories--given
currency long after his death--of stealing deer and getting into trouble with
a local magnate, Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford; of earning
his living as a schoolmaster in the country; of going to London and gaining
entry to the world of theatre by minding the horses of theatregoers; it has
also been conjectured that Shakespeare spent some time as a member of a great
household and that he was a soldier, perhaps in the Low Countries. In lieu of
external evidence, such extrapolations about Shakespeare's life have often
been made from the internal "evidence" of his writings. But this method is
unsatisfactory: one cannot conclude, for example, from his allusions to the
law that Shakespeare was a lawyer; for he was clearly a writer, who without
difficulty could get whatever knowledge he needed for the composition of his
plays.
Career in the theatre
The first reference to Shakespeare in the literary world of London comes in
1592, when a fellow dramatist, Robert Greene, declared in a pamphlet written
on his deathbed:
There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers
heart wrapt in a Players hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a
blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum,
is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.
It is difficult to be certain what these words mean; but it is clear that they
are insulting and that Shakespeare is the object of the sarcasms. When the book
in which they appear (Greenes groats-worth of witte, bought with a million
of repentance, 1592) was published after Greene's death, a mutual
acquaintance wrote a preface offering an apology to Shakespeare and testifying
to his worth. This preface also indicates that Shakespeare was by then making
important friends. For, although the puritanical city of London was generally
hostile to the theatre, many of the nobility were good patrons of the drama and
friends of actors. Shakespeare seems to have attracted the attention of the
young Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd earl of Southampton; and to this
nobleman were dedicated his first published poems, Venus and Adonis and
The Rape of Lucrece.
One striking piece of evidence that Shakespeare began to prosper early and
tried to retrieve the family fortunes and establish its gentility is the fact
that a coat of arms was granted to John Shakespeare in 1596. Rough drafts of
this grant have been preserved in the College of Arms, London, though the
final document, which must have been handed to the Shakespeares, has not
survived. It can scarcely be doubted that it was William who took the
initiative and paid the fees. The coat of arms appears on Shakespeare's
monument (constructed before 1623) in the Stratford church. Equally
interesting as evidence of Shakespeare's worldly success was his purchase in
1597 of New Place, a large house in Stratford, which as a boy he must have
passed every day in walking to school.
It is not clear how his career in the theatre began; but from about 1594
onward he was an important member of the company of players known as the Lord
Chamberlain’s Men (called the King's Men after the accession of James I in
1603). They had the best actor, Richard Burbage; they had the best theatre,
the Globe; they had the best dramatist, Shakespeare. It is no wonder that the
company prospered. Shakespeare became a full-time professional man of his own
theatre, sharing in a cooperative enterprise and intimately concerned with
the financial success of the plays he wrote.
Unfortunately, written records give little indication of the way in which
Shakespeare's professional life molded his marvellous artistry. All that can
be deduced is that for 20 years Shakespeare devoted himself assiduously to
his art, writing more than a million words of poetic drama of the highest
quality.
Private life
Shakespeare had little contact with officialdom, apart from walking--dressed
in the royal livery as a member of the King's Men--at the coronation of King
James I in 1604. He continued to look after his financial interests. He
bought properties in London and in Stratford. In 1605 he purchased a share
(about one-fifth) of the Stratford tithes--a fact that explains why he was
eventually buried in the chancel of its parish church. For some time he
lodged with a French Huguenot family called Mountjoy, who lived near St.
Olave's Church, Cripplegate, London. The records of a lawsuit in May 1612,
due to a Mountjoy family quarrel, show Shakespeare as giving evidence in a
genial way (though unable to remember certain important facts that would have
decided the case) and as interesting himself generally in the family's
affairs.
No letters written by Shakespeare have survived, but a private letter to him
happened to get caught up with some official transactions of the town of
Stratford and so has been preserved in the borough archives. It was written
by one Richard Quiney and addressed by him from the Bell Inn in Carter Lane,
London, whither he had gone from Stratford upon business. On one side of the
paper is inscribed: "To my loving good friend and countryman, Mr. Wm.
Shakespeare, deliver these." Apparently Quiney thought his fellow
Stratfordian a person to whom he could apply for the loan of 30--a large sum
in Elizabethan money. Nothing further is known about the transaction, but,
because so few opportunities of seeing into Shakespeare's private life
present themselves, this begging letter becomes a touching document. It is of
some interest, moreover, that 18 years later Quiney's son Thomas became the
husband of Judith, Shakespeare's second daughter.
Shakespeare's will (made on March 25, 1616) is a long and detailed document.
It entailed his quite ample property on the male heirs of his elder daughter,
Susanna. (Both his daughters were then married, one to the aforementioned
Thomas Quiney and the other to John Hall, a respected physician of
Stratford.) As an afterthought, he bequeathed his "second-best bed" to his
wife; but no one can be certain what this notorious legacy means. The
testator's signatures to the will are apparently in a shaky hand. Perhaps
Shakespeare was already ill. He died on April 23, 1616. No name was inscribed
on his gravestone in the chancel of the parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Instead these lines, possibly his own, appeared:
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
EARLY POSTHUMOUS DOCUMENTATION
Shakespeare's family or friends, however, were not content with a simple
gravestone, and, within a few years, a monument was erected on the chancel
wall. It seems to have existed by 1623. Its epitaph, written in Latin and
inscribed immediately below the bust, attributes to Shakespeare the worldly
wisdom of Nestor, the genius of Socrates, and the poetic art of Virgil. This
apparently was how his contemporaries in Stratford-upon-Avon wished their
fellow citizen to be remembered.
CHRONOLOGY OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS
Despite much scholarly argument, it is often impossible to date a given play
precisely. But there is a general consensus, especially for plays written
1585-1601, 1605-07, and 1609 onward. The following list of first performances
is based on external and internal evidence, on general stylistic and thematic
considerations, and on the observation that an output of no more than two
plays a year seems to have been established in those periods when dating is
rather clearer than others.
1589-92 Henry VI, Part I; Henry VI, Part III; Henry VI, Part III
1592-93 Richard III, The Comedy of Errors
1593-94 Titus Andronicus, The Taming of the Shrew
1594-95 The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Romeo and Juliet
1595-96 Richard II, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
1596-97 King John, The Merchant of Venice
1597-98 Henry IV, Part I; Henry IV, Part II
1598-99 Much Ado About Nothing
c. 1599 Henry V
1599-1600 Julius Caesar, As You Like It,
1600-01 Hamlet, The Merry Wives of Windsor
1601-02 Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida
1602-03 All’s Well That Ends Well
1604-05 Measure For Measure, Othello
1605-06 King Lear, Macbeth
1606-07 Antony and Cleopatra
1607-08 Coriolanus, Timon of Athens
1608-09 Pericles
1609-10 Cymbeline
1610-11 The Winter’s Tale
c. 1611 The Tempest
1612-13 Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen
Shakespeare's two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of
Lucrece, can be dated with certainty to the years when the Plague stopped
dramatic performances in London, in 1592 and 1593-94, respectively, just before
their publication. But the sonnets offer many and various problems; they cannot
have been written all at one time, and most scholars set them within the period
1593-1600. "The Phoenix and the Turtle" can be dated 1600-01.
PUBLICATION
During Shakespeare's early career, dramatists invariably sold their plays to an
actor's company, who then took charge of them, prepared working promptbooks,
and did their best to prevent another company or a publisher from getting
copies; in this way they could exploit the plays themselves for as long as they
drew an audience. But some plays did get published, usually in small books
called quartos. Occasionally plays were "pirated," the text being dictated by
one or two disaffected actors from the company that had performed it or else
made up from shorthand notes taken surreptitiously during performance and
subsequently corrected during other performances; parts 2 and 3 of the
Henry VI (1594 and 1595) and Hamlet (1603) quartos are examples of
pirated, or "bad," texts. Sometimes an author's "foul papers" (his first
complete draft) or his "fair" copy--or a transcript of either of these--got
into a publisher's hands, and "good quartos" were printed from them, such as
those of Titus Andronicus (1594), Love's Labour's Lost (1598),
and Richard II (1597). After the publication of "bad" quartos of
Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet (1597), the Chamberlain's Men probably
arranged for the release of the "foul papers" so that second--"good"--quartos
could supersede the garbled versions already on the market. This company had
powerful friends at court, and in 1600 a special order was entered in the
Stationers' Register to "stay" the publication of As You Like It, Much Ado
About Nothing, and Henry V, possibly in order to assure that good
texts were available. Subsequently Henry V (1600) was pirated, and
Much Ado About Nothing was printed from "foul papers"; As You Like It
did not appear in print until it was included in Mr. William Shakespeares
Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, published in folio (the reference is
to the size of page) by a syndicate in 1623 (later editions appearing in 1632
and 1663).
The only precedent for such a collected edition of public theatre plays in a
handsome folio volume was Ben Jonson's collected plays of 1616. Shakespeare's
folio included 36 plays, 22 of them appearing for the first time in a good
text. (For the Third Folio reissue of 1664, Pericles was added from a
quarto text of 1609, together with six apocryphal plays.) The First Folio texts
were prepared by John Heminge and Henry Condell (two of Shakespeare's fellow
sharers in the Chamberlain's, now the King's, Men), who made every effort to
present the volume worthily. Only about 230 copies of the First Folio are known
to have survived.
The following list gives details of plays first published individually and
indicates the authority for each substantive edition. Q stands for Quarto:
Q2, Q3, Q4, etc., stand for reprints of an original quarto. F stands for the
First Folio edition of 1623.
Henry VI, Part 2 Q 1594: a reported text. F from revised fair copies,
edited with reference to Q.
Titus Andronicus Q 1594: from foul papers. F from a copy of Q, with
additions from a manuscript that had been used as a promptbook.
Henry VI, Part 3 Q 1595: a reported text. F as for Henry VI, Part 2.
Richard III Q 1597: a reconstructed text prepared for use as a
promptbook. F from reprints of Q, edited with reference to foul papers and
containing some 200 additional lines.
Love's Labour's Lost Q is lost. Q2 1598: from foul papers, and badly
printed. F from Q2.
Romeo and Juliet Q 1597: a reported text. Q2 from foul papers, with some
reference to Q. F from a reprint of Q2.
Richard II Q 1597: from foul papers and missing the abdication scene. Q4
1608, with reported version of missing scene. F from reprints of Q, but the
abdication scene from an authoritative manuscript, probably the promptbook (of
which traces appear elsewhere in F).
Henry IV, Part 1 Q 1598: from foul papers. F from Q5, with some literary
editing.
A Midsummer Night's Dream Q 1600: from the author's fair copy. F from Q2,
with some reference to a promptbook.
The Merchant of Venice Q 1600: from foul papers. F from Q, with some
reference to a promptbook.
Henry IV, Part 2 Q 1600: from foul papers. F from Q, with reference to a
promptbook.
Much Ado About Nothing Q 1600: from the author's fair papers. F from Q,
with reference to a promptbook.
Henry V Q 1600: a reported text. F from foul papers (possibly of a second
version of the play).
The Merry Wives of Windsor Q 1602: a reported (and abbreviated) text. F
from a transcript, by Ralph Crane (scrivener of the King's Men), of a revised
promptbook.
Hamlet Q 1603: a reported text, with reference to an earlier play. Q2
from foul papers, with reference to Q. F from Q2, with reference to a
promptbook, with theatrical and authorial additions.
King Lear Q 1608: from an inadequate transcript of foul papers, with use
made of a reported version. F from Q, collated with a promptbook of a shortened
version.
Troilus and Cressida Q 1609: from a fair copy, possibly the author's. F
from Q, with reference to foul papers, adding 45 lines and the Prologue.
Pericles Q 1609: a poor text, badly printed with both auditory and
graphic errors.
Othello Q 1622: from a transcript of foul papers. F from Q, with
corrections from another authorial version of the play.
The plays published for the first time in the First Folio of 1623 are:
All's Well That Ends Well From the author's fair papers, or a transcript
of them.
Antony and Cleopatra From an authorial fair copy.
Henry VI, Part 1
As You Like It From a promptbook, or a transcript of it.
The Comedy of Errors From foul papers.
Coriolanus From an authorial fair copy, edited for the printer.
Cymbeline From an authorial copy, or a transcript of such, imperfectly
prepared as a promptbook.
Henry VIII From a transcript of a fair copy, made by the author, prepared
for reading.
Julius Caesar From a transcript of a promptbook.
King John From an authorial fair copy.
Macbeth From a promptbook of a version prepared for court performance.
Measure for Measure From a transcript, by Ralph Crane, of very imperfect
foul papers.
The Taming of the Shrew From foul papers.
The Tempest From an edited transcript, by Ralph Crane, of the author's papers.
Timon of Athens From foul papers, probably unfinished.
Twelfth Night From a promptbook, or a transcript of it.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona From a transcript, by Ralph Crane, of a
promptbook, probably of a shortened version.
The Winter's Tale From a transcript, by Ralph Crane, probably from the
author's fair copy.
The texts of Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece
(1594) are remarkably free from errors. Shakespeare presumably furnished a fair
copy of each for the printer. He also seems to have read the proofs. The
sonnets were published in 1609, but there is no evidence that Shakespeare
oversaw their publication.
POETIC AND DRAMATIC POWERS
The early poems
Shakespeare dedicated the poem Venus and Adonis to his patron, Henry
Wriothesley, 3rd earl of Southampton, whom he further promised to
honour with "some graver labour"--perhaps The Rape of Lucrece, which
appeared a year later and was also dedicated to Southampton. As these two poems
were something on which Shakespeare was intending to base his reputation with
the public and to establish himself with his patron, they were displays of his
virtuosity--diploma pieces. They were certainly the most popular of his
writings with the reading public and impressed them with his poetic genius.
Seven editions of Venus and Adonis had appeared by 1602 and 16 by 1640;
Lucrece, a more serious poem, went through eight editions by 1640; and there
are numerous allusions to them in the literature of the time. But after that,
until the 19th century, they were little regarded. Even then the critics did
not know what to make of them: on the one hand, Venus and Adonis is
licentiously erotic (though its sensuality is often rather comic); while
Lucrece may seem to be tragic enough, the treatment of the poem is yet
somewhat cold and distant. In both cases the poet seems to be displaying
dexterity rather than being "sincere." But Shakespeare's detachment from his
subjects has come to be admired in more recent assessments.
Above all, the poems give evidence for the growth of Shakespeare's imagination.
Venus and Adonis is full of vivid imagery of the countryside; birds, beasts,
the hunt, the sky, and the weather, the overflowing Avon--these give freshness
to the poem and contrast strangely with the sensuous love scenes. Lucrece
is more rhetorical and elaborate than Venus and Adonis and also aims
higher. Its disquisitions (upon night, time, opportunity, and lust, for
example) anticipate brilliant speeches on general themes in the plays--on mercy
in The Merchant of Venice, suicide in Hamlet, and "degree" in
Troilus and Cressida.
There are a few other poems attributed to Shakespeare. When the Sonnets
were printed in 1609, a 329-line poem, "A Lovers complaint," was added at the
end of the volume, plainly ascribed by the publisher to Shakespeare. There has
been a good deal of discussion about the authorship of this poem. Only the
evidence of style, however, could call into question the publisher's
ascription, and this is conflicting. Parts of the poem and some lines are
brilliant, but other parts seem poor in a way that is not like Shakespeare's
careless writing. Its narrative structure is remarkable, however, and the poem
deserves more attention than it usually receives. It is now generally thought
to be from Shakespeare's pen, possibly an early poem revised by him at a more
mature stage of his poetical style. Whether the poem in its extant form is
later or earlier than Venus and Adonis and Lucrece cannot be
decided. No one could doubt the authenticity of "The Phoenix and the Turtle," a
67-line poem that appeared with other "poetical essays" (by John Marston,
George Chapman, and Ben Jonson) appended to Robert Chester's poem Loves
Martyr in 1601. The poem is attractive and memorable, but very obscure,
partly because of its style and partly because it contains allusions to real
persons and situations whose identity can now only be guessed at.
The sonnets
In 1609 appeared SHAKESPEARES SONNETS. Never before Imprinted. At this
date Shakespeare was already a successful author, a country gentleman, and an
affluent member of the most important theatrical enterprise in London. How long
before 1609 the sonnets were written is unknown. The phrase "never before
imprinted" may imply that they had existed for some time but were now at last
printed. Two of them (nos. 138 and 144) had in fact already appeared (in a
slightly different form) in an anthology, The Passionate Pilgrime
(1599). Shakespeare had certainly written some sonnets by 1598, for in that year
Francis Meres, in a "survey" of literature, made reference to "his sugared
sonnets among his private friends," but whether these "sugared sonnets" were
those eventually published in 1609 cannot be ascertained--Shakespeare may have
written other sets of sonnets, now lost. Nevertheless, the sonnets included in
The Passionate Pilgrime are among his most striking and mature, so it is
likely that most of the 154 sonnets that appeared in the 1609 printing belong
to Shakespeare's early 30s rather than to his 40s--to the time when he was
writing Richard II and Romeo and Juliet rather than when he was
writing King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra. But, of course,
some of them may belong to any year of Shakespeare's life as a poet before
1609.
The early plays
Although the record of Shakespeare's early theatrical success is obscure,
clearly the newcomer soon made himself felt. His brilliant two-part play on the
Wars of the Roses, The Whole Contention between the two Famous Houses,
Lancaster and Yorke, was among his earliest achievements. He showed, in The
Comedy of Errors, how hilariously comic situations could be shot through
with wonder and sentiment. In Titus Andronicus he scored a popular success with
tragedy in the high Roman fashion. The Two Gentlemen of Verona was a new kind
of romantic comedy. The world has never ceased to enjoy The Taming of the Shrew
. Love’s Labour’s Lost is an experiment in witty and satirical observation
of society. Romeo and Juliet combines and interconnects a tragic situation with
comedy and gaiety. All this represents the probable achievement of
Shakespeare's first half-dozen years as a writer for the London stage, perhaps
by the time he had reached 30. It shows astonishing versatility and
originality.
The histories
For his plays on subjects from English history, Shakespeare primarily drew upon
Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, which appeared in 1587, and on Edward
Hall's earlier account of The union of the two noble and illustre famelies
of Lancastre and York (1548). From these and numerous secondary sources he
inherited traditional themes: the divine right of royal succession, the need
for unity and order in the realm, the evil of dissension and treason, the
cruelty and hardship of war, the power of money to corrupt, the strength of
family ties, the need for human understanding and careful calculation, and the
power of God's providence, which protected his followers, punished evil, and
led England toward the stability of Tudor rule.
The Roman plays
After the last group of English history plays, Shakespeare chose to write about
Julius Caesar, who held particular fascination for the Elizabethans. Then, for
six or seven years Shakespeare did not return to a Roman theme, but, after
completing Macbeth and King Lear, he again used Thomas North's
translation of Plutarch as a source for two more Roman plays, Antony and
Cleopatra and Coriolanus, both tragedies that seem as much concerned to
depict the broad context of history as to present tragic heroes.
The "great," or "middle," comedies
The comedies written between 1596 and 1602 have much in common and are as well
considered together as individually. With the exception of The Merry Wives of
Windsor, all are set in some "imaginary" country. Whether called
Illyria, Messina, Venice and Belmont, Athens, or the Forest of Arden, the sun
shines as the dramatist wills. A lioness, snakes, magic caskets, fairy spells,
identical twins, disguise of sex, the sudden conversion of a tyrannous duke or
the defeat offstage of a treacherous brother can all change the course of the
plot and bring the characters to a conclusion in which almost all are happy and
just deserts are found. Lovers are young and witty and almost always rich. The
action concerns wooing; and its conclusion is marriage, beyond which the
audience is scarcely concerned. Whether Shakespeare's source was an Italian
novel (The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing), an English pastoral
tale (As You Like It), an Italian comedy (the Malvolio story in Twelfth Night),
or something of his own invention (probably A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
and parts of each), always in his hands story and sentiments are instinct with
idealism and capable of magic transformations.
In some ways these are intellectual plays. Each comedy has a multiple plot
and moves from one set of characters to another, between whom Shakespeare
invites his audience to seek connections and explanations. Despite very
different classes of people (or immortals) in different strands of the
narrative, the plays are unified by Shakespeare's idealistic vision and by an
implicit judgment of human relationships, and all their characters are
brought together--with certain significant exceptions--at, or near, the end.
The great tragedies
It is a usual and reasonable opinion that Shakespeare's greatness is nowhere
more visible than in the series of tragedies--Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and
Macbeth. Julius Caesar, which was written before these, and Antony and
Cleopatra and Coriolanus, which were written after, have many links with
the four. But, because of their rather strict relationship with the historical
materials, they are best dealt with in a group by themselves. Timon of Athens
, probably written after the above-named seven plays, shows signs of having
been unfinished or abandoned by Shakespeare. It has its own splendours but has
rarely been considered equal in achievement to the other tragedies of
Shakespeare's maturity.
The "dark" comedies
Before the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 the country was ill at ease: the
House of Commons became more outspoken about monopolies and royal prerogative,
and uncertainty about the succession to the throne made the future of the realm
unsettled. In 1603 the Plague again struck London, closing the theatres. In
1601 Shakespeare's patron, the Earl of Southampton, was arrested on charges of
treason; he was subsequently released, but such scares did not betoken
confidence in the new reign. About Shakespeare's private reaction to these
events there can be only speculation, but three of the five plays usually
assigned to these years—Troilus and Cressida,, All’s Well That Ends Well,
Measure for Measure, --have become known as "dark" comedies for their
distempered vision of the world. Only during the 20th century have these plays
been frequently performed in anything like Shakespeare's texts, an indication
that their questioning, satiric, intense, and shifting comedy could not please
earlier audiences.
The late plays
Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest and Henry VIII,
written between 1608 and 1612, are commonly known as Shakespeare's "late plays,"
or his "last plays," and sometimes, with reference to their tragicomic form,
they are called his "romances." Works written by an author in his 40s hardly
deserve to be classified as "late" in any critical sense, yet these plays are
often discussed as if they had been written by a venerable old author,
tottering on the edge of a well-earned grave. On the contrary, Shakespeare must
have believed that plenty of writing years lay before him, and indeed the
theatrical effectiveness and experimental nature of Cymbeline, The Winter's
Tale, and The Tempest in particular make them very unlike the
fatigued work of a writer about to break his staff and drown his book.
The contribution of textual criticism
The early editors of Shakespeare saw their task chiefly as one of correction
and regularization of the faulty printing and imperfect texts of the original
editions or their reprints. Many changes in the text of the quartos and
folios that are now accepted derive from Nicholas Rowe (1709) and Alexander
Pope (1723-25), but these editors also introduced many thousands of small
changes that have since been rejected. Later in the 18th century, editors
compiled collations of alternative and rejected readings. Samuel Johnson
(1765), Edward Capell (1767-68), and Edmund Malone (1790) were notable
pioneers. Their work reached its most comprehensive form in the Cambridge
edition in nine volumes by W.G. Clark, J. Glover, and W.A. Wright, published
in 1863-66. A famous one-volume Globe edition of 1864 was based on this
Cambridge text.
Romeo and Juliet
play by William Shakespeare, performed about 1594-95 and first published in a
"bad" quarto in 1597. The characters of Romeo and Juliet have been depicted
in literature, music, dance, and theatre. The appeal of the young hero and
heroine--whose families, the Montagues and Capulets, respectively, are
implacable enemies--is such that they have become, in the popular
imagination, the representative type of star-crossed lovers.
Shakespeare's principal source for the plot was The Tragicall Historye of
Romeus and Juliet (1562), a long narrative poem by the English poet Arthur
Broke (d. 1563). Broke had based his poem on a French translation of a tale by
the Italian Matteo Bandello (1485-1561).
Shakespeare set the scene in Verona, Italy, during July. Juliet and Romeo
meet and fall instantly in love at a masked ball of the Capulets and profess
their love when Romeo later visits her at her private balcony in her family's
home. Because the two noble families are enemies, the couple is married
secretly by Friar Laurence. When Tybald, a Capulet, kills Romeo's friend
Mercutio in a quarrel, Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished to Mantua. Juliet's
father insists on her marrying Count Paris, and Juliet goes to consult the
friar. He gives her a potion that will make her appear to be dead and
proposes that she take it and that Romeo rescue her; she complies. Unaware of
the friar's scheme, Romeo returns to Verona on hearing of Juliet's apparent
death. He encounters Paris, kills him, and finds Juliet in the burial vault.
There he gives her a last kiss and kills himself with poison. Juliet awakens,
sees the dead Romeo, and kills herself. The families learn what has happened
and end their feud.
The most complex of Shakespeare's early plays, Romeo and Juliet is far
more than "a play of young love" or "the world's typical love-tragedy." Weaving
together a large number of related impressions and judgments, it is as much
about hate as love. It tells of a family and its home as well as a feud and a
tragic marriage. The public life of Verona and the private lives of the
Veronese make up the setting for the love of Juliet and Romeo and provide the
background against which their love can be assessed. It is not the deaths of
the lovers that conclude the play but the public revelation of what has
happened, with the admonitions of the Prince and the reconciliation of the two
families.
Shakespeare enriched an already old story by surrounding the guileless mutual
passion of Romeo and Juliet with the mature bawdry of the other characters--
the Capulet servants Sampson and Gregory open the play with their fantasies
of exploits with the Montague women; the tongues of the Nurse and Mercutio
are seldom free from sexual matters--but the innocence of the lovers is
unimpaired.
Romeo and Juliet made a strong impression on contemporary audiences. It
was also one of Shakespeare's first plays to be pirated; a very bad text
appeared in 1597. Detestable though it is, this version does derive from a
performance of the play, and a good deal of what was seen on stage was
recorded. Two years later another version of the play appeared, issued by a
different, more respectable publisher, and this is essentially the play known
today, for the printer was working from a manuscript fairly close to
Shakespeare's own. Yet in neither edition did Shakespeare's name appear on the
title page, and it was only with the publication of Love's Labour's Lost
in 1598 that publishers had come to feel that the name of Shakespeare as a
dramatist, as well as the public esteem of the company of actors to which he
belonged, could make an impression on potential purchasers of playbooks.
Bibliographies.
WALTER EBISCH and LEVIN L. SCHÜCKING, A Shakespeare Bibliography
(1931, reprinted 1968), and a supplement for the years 1930-35 (1937, reissued
1968), are comprehensive. They are updated by GORDON ROSS SMITH, A
Classified Shakespeare Bibliography, 1936-1958 (1963). JAMES G. McMANAWAY,
A Selective Bibliography of Shakespeare: Editions, Textual Studies, Commentary
(1975), covers more than 4,500 items published between 1930 and 1970, mainly in
English. LARRY S. CHAMPION, The Essential Shakespeare: An Annotated
Bibliography of Major Modern Studies, 2nd ed. (1993), includes works in
English published from 1900 through 1984. STANLEY WELLS (ed.), Shakespeare,
new ed. (1990), provides bibliographies on topics ranging from the poet to the
text to the performances. Shakespeare Quarterly publishes an annual
classified bibliography. Shakespeare Survey (quarterly) publishes
annual accounts of "Contributions to Shakespearian Study," as well as
retrospective articles on work done on particular aspects. A selection of
important scholarly essays published during the previous year is collected in
Shakespearean Criticism (annual).
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