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English playwright and
poet, recognized in much of the world as the greatest of all dramatists.
Shakespeare's plays communicate a profound knowledge of the wellsprings
of human behavior, revealed through portrayals of a wide variety of characters.
His use of poetic and dramatic means to create a unified aesthetic effect
out of a multiplicity of vocal expressions and actions is recognized as
a singular achievement, and his use of poetry within his plays to express
the deepest levels of human motivation in individual, social, and universal
situations is considered one of the greatest accomplishments in literary
history.
Life
A complete, authoritative
account of Shakespeare's life is lacking, and thus much supposition surrounds
relatively few facts. It is commonly accepted that he was born in 1564,
and it is known that he was baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire.
The third of eight children, he was probably educated at the local grammar
school. As the eldest son, Shakespeare ordinarily would have been apprenticed
to his father's shop so that he could learn and eventually take over the
business, but according to one account he was apprenticed to a butcher
because of declines in his father's financial situation. According to another
account, he became a schoolmaster. In 1582 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway,
the daughter of a farmer. He is supposed to have left Stratford after he
was caught poaching in the deer park of Sir Thomas Lucy, a local justice
of the peace. Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway had a daughter in 1583 and
twins-a boy and a girl-in 1585. The boy did not survive.
Shakespeare apparently
arrived in London about 1588 and by 1592 had attained success as an actor
and a playwright. Shortly thereafter he secured the patronage of Henry
Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. The publication of Shakespeare's
two fashionably erotic narrative poems Venus and Adonis (1593) and The
Rape of Lucrece (1594) and of his Sonnets (published 1609, but circulated
previously in manuscript form) established his reputation as a gifted and
popular poet of the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century). The Sonnets
describe the devotion of a character, often identified as the poet himself,
to a young man whose beauty and virtue he praises and to a mysterious and
faithless dark lady with whom the poet is infatuated. The ensuing triangular
situation, resulting from the attraction of the poet's friend to the dark
lady, is treated with passionate intensity and psychological insight. Shakespeare's
modern reputation, however, is based primarily on the 38 plays that he
apparently wrote, modified, or collaborated on. Although generally popular
in his time, these plays were frequently little esteemed by his educated
contemporaries, who considered English plays of their own day to be only
vulgar entertainment.
Shakespeare's professional
life in London was marked by a number of financially advantageous arrangements
that permitted him to share in the profits of his acting company, the Chamberlain's
Men, later called the King's Men, and its two theaters, the Globe Theater
and the Blackfriars. His plays were given special presentation at the courts
of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I more frequently than those of any
other contemporary dramatist. It is known that he risked losing royal favor
only once, in 1599, when his company performed "the play of the deposing
and killing of King Richard II" at the request of a group of conspirators
against Elizabeth. In the subsequent inquiry, Shakespeare's company was
absolved of complicity in the conspiracy.
After about 1608, Shakespeare's
dramatic production lessened and it seems that he spent more time in Stratford,
where he had established his family in an imposing house called New Place
and had become a leading local citizen. He died in 1616, and was buried
in the Stratford church.
Works
Although the precise
date of many of Shakespeare's plays is in doubt, his dramatic career is
generally divided into four periods: (1) the period up to 1594, (2) the
years from 1594 to 1600, (3) the years from 1600 to 1608, and (4) the period
after 1608. Because of the difficulty of dating Shakespeare's plays and
the lack of conclusive facts about his writings, these dates are approximate
and can be used only as a convenient framework in which to discuss his
development. In all periods, the plots of his plays were frequently drawn
from chronicles, histories, or earlier fiction, as were the plays of other
contemporary dramatists.
First Period
Shakespeare's first
period was one of experimentation. His early plays, unlike his more mature
work, are characterized to a degree by formal and rather obvious construction
and by stylized verse.
Chronicle history plays
were a popular genre of the time, and four plays dramatizing the English
civil strife of the 15th century are possibly Shakespeare's earliest dramatic
works (see England: The Lancastrian and Yorkist Kings). These plays, Henry
VI, Parts I, II, and III (1590?-1592?) and Richard III (1593?), deal with
evil resulting from weak leadership and from national disunity fostered
for selfish ends. The four-play cycle closes with the death of Richard
III and the ascent to the throne of Henry VII, the founder of the Tudor
dynasty, to which Elizabeth belonged. In style and structure, these plays
are related partly to medieval drama and partly to the works of earlier
Elizabethan dramatists, especially Christopher Marlowe. Either indirectly
(through such dramatists) or directly, the influence of the classical Roman
dramatist Seneca is also reflected in the organization of these four plays,
especially in the bloodiness of many of their scenes and in their highly
colored, bombastic language. The influence of Seneca, exerted by way of
the earlier English dramatist Thomas Kyd, is particularly obvious in Titus
Andronicus (1594?), a tragedy of righteous revenge for heinous and bloody
acts, which are staged in sensational detail.
Shakespeare's comedies
of the first period represent a wide range. The Comedy of Errors (1592?),
a farce in imitation of classical Roman comedy, depends for its appeal
on mistaken identities in two sets of twins involved in romance and war.
Farce is not as strongly emphasized in The Taming of the Shrew (1593?),
a comedy of character. The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594?) concerns romantic
love. Love's Labour's Lost (1594?) satirizes the loves of its main male
characters as well as the fashionable devotion to studious pursuits by
which these noblemen had first sought to avoid romantic and worldly ensnarement.
The dialogue in which many of the characters voice their pretensions ridicules
the artificially ornate, courtly style typified by the works of English
novelist and dramatist John Lyly, the court conventions of the time, and
perhaps the scientific discussions of Sir Walter Raleigh and his colleagues.
Second Period
Shakespeare's second
period includes his most important plays concerned with English history,
his so-called joyous comedies, and two of his major tragedies. In this
period, his style and approach became highly individualized. The second-period
historical plays include Richard II (1595?), Henry IV, Parts I and
II (1597?), and Henry V (1598?). They encompass the years immediately before
those portrayed in the Henry VI plays. Richard II is a study of a weak,
sensitive, self-dramatizing but sympathetic monarch who loses his kingdom
to his forceful successor, Henry IV. In the two parts of Henry IV, Henry
recognizes his own guilt. His fears for his own son, later Henry V, prove
unfounded, as the young prince displays a responsible attitude toward the
duties of kingship. In an alternation of masterful comic and serious scenes,
the fat knight Falstaff and the rebel Hotspur reveal contrasting excesses
between which the prince finds his proper position. The mingling of the
tragic and the comic to suggest a broad range of humanity subsequently
became one of Shakespeare's favorite devices.
Outstanding among the
comedies of the second period is A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595?), which
interweaves several plots involving two pairs of noble lovers, a group
of bumbling and unconsciously comic townspeople, and members of the fairy
realm, notably Puck, King Oberon, and Queen Titania. Subtle evocation of
atmosphere, of the sort that characterizes this play, is also found in
the tragicomedy The Merchant of Venice (1596?). In this play, the Renaissance
motifs of masculine friendship and romantic love are portrayed in opposition
to the bitter inhumanity of a usurer named Shylock, whose own misfortunes
are presented so as to arouse understanding and sympathy. The character
of the quick-witted, warm, and responsive young woman, exemplified in this
play by Portia, reappears in the joyous comedies of the second period.
The witty comedy Much
Ado About Nothing (1599?) is marred, in the opinion of some critics, by
an insensitive treatment of its female characters. However, Shakespeare's
most mature comedies, As You Like It (1599?) and Twelfth Night (1600?),
are characterized by lyricism, ambiguity, and beautiful, charming, and
strong-minded heroines like Beatrice. In As You Like It, the contrast between
the manners of the Elizabethan court and those current in the English countryside
is drawn in a rich and varied vein. Shakespeare constructed a complex orchestration
between different characters and between appearance and reality and used
this pattern to comment on a variety of human foibles. In that respect,
As You Like It is similar to Twelfth Night, in which the comical side of
love is illustrated by the misadventures of two pairs of romantic lovers
and of a number of realistically conceived and clowning characters in the
subplot. Another comedy of the second period is The Merry Wives of Windsor
(1599?), a farce about middle-class life in which Falstaff reappears as
the comic victim.
Two major tragedies,
differing considerably in nature, mark the beginning and the end of the
second period. Romeo and Juliet (1595?), famous for its poetic treatment
of the ecstasy of youthful love, dramatizes the fate of two lovers victimized
by the feuds and misunderstandings of their elders and by their own hasty
temperaments. Julius Caesar (1599?), on the other hand, is a serious tragedy
of political rivalries, but is less intense in style than the tragic dramas
that followed it.
Third Period
Shakespeare's third
period includes his greatest tragedies and his so-called dark or bitter
comedies. The tragedies of this period are considered the most profound
of his works. In them he used his poetic idiom as an extremely supple dramatic
instrument, capable of recording human thought and the many dimensions
of given dramatic situations. Hamlet (1601?), perhaps his most famous play,
exceeds by far most other tragedies of revenge in picturing the mingled
sordidness and glory of the human condition. Hamlet feels that he is living
in a world of horror. Confirmed in this feeling by the murder of his father
and the sensuality of his mother, he exhibits tendencies toward both crippling
indecision and precipitous action. Interpretation of his motivation and
ambivalence continues to be a subject of considerable controversy.
Othello (1604?) portrays
the growth of unjustified jealousy in the protagonist, Othello, a Moor
serving as a general in the Venetian army. The innocent object of his jealousy
is his wife, Desdemona. In this tragedy, Othello's evil lieutenant Iago
draws him into mistaken jealousy in order to ruin him. King Lear (1605?),
conceived on a more epic scale, deals with the consequences of the irresponsibility
and misjudgment of Lear, a ruler of early Britain, and of his councilor,
the Duke of Gloucester. The tragic outcome is a result of their giving
power to their evil children, rather than to their good children. Lear's
daughter Cordelia displays a redeeming love that makes the tragic conclusion
a vindication of goodness. This conclusion is reinforced by the portrayal
of evil as self-defeating, as exemplified by the fates of Cordelia's sisters
and of Gloucester's opportunistic son. Antony and Cleopatra (1606?) is
concerned with a different type of love, namely the middle-aged passion
of Roman general Mark Antony for Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Their love is
glorified by some of Shakespeare's most sensuous poetry. In Macbeth (1606?),
Shakespeare depicts the tragedy of a man who, led on by others and because
of a defect in his own nature, succumbs to ambition. In securing the Scottish
throne, Macbeth dulls his humanity to the point where he becomes capable
of any amoral act.
Unlike these tragedies,
three other plays of this period suggest a bitterness stemming from the
protagonists' apparent lack of greatness or tragic stature. In Troilus
and Cressida (1602?), the most intellectually contrived of Shakespeare's
plays, the gulf between the ideal and the real, both individual and political,
is skillfully evoked. In Coriolanus (1608?), another tragedy set in antiquity,
the legendary Roman hero Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus is portrayed as unable
to bring himself either to woo the Roman masses or to crush them by force.
Timon of Athens (1608?) is a similarly bitter play about a character reduced
to misanthropy by the ingratitude of his sycophants. Because of the uneven
quality of the writing, this tragedy is considered a collaboration, quite
possibly with English dramatist Thomas Middleton.
The two comedies of
this period are also dark in mood and are sometimes called problem plays
because they do not fit into clear categories or present easy resolution.
All's Well That Ends Well (1602?) and Measure for Measure (1604?) both
question accepted patterns of morality without offering solutions.
Fourth Period
The fourth period of
Shakespeare's work includes his principal romantic tragicomedies. Toward
the end of his career, Shakespeare created several plays that, through
the intervention of magic, art, compassion, or grace, often suggest redemptive
hope for the human condition. These plays are written with a grave quality
differing considerably from Shakespeare's earlier comedies, but they end
happily with reunions or final reconciliations. The tragicomedies depend
for part of their appeal upon the lure of a distant time or place, and
all seem more obviously symbolic than most of Shakespeare's earlier works.
To many critics, the tragicomedies signify a final ripeness in Shakespeare's
own outlook, but other authorities believe that the change reflects only
a change in fashion in the drama of the period.
The romantic tragicomedy
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1608?) concerns the painful loss of the title
character's wife and the persecution of his daughter. After many exotic
adventures, Pericles is reunited with his loved ones.In Cymbeline (1610?)
and The Winter's Tale (1610?), characters suffer great loss and pain but
are reunited. Perhaps the most successful product of this particular vein
of creativity, however, is what may be Shakespeare's last complete play,
The Tempest (1611?), in which the resolution suggests the beneficial effects
of the union of wisdom and power. In this play a duke, deprived of his
dukedom and banished to an island, confounds his usurping brother by employing
magical powers and furthering a love match between his daughter and the
usurper's son. Shakespeare's poetic power reached great heights in this
beautiful, lyrical play.
Two final plays, sometimes
ascribed to Shakespeare, presumably are the products of collaboration.
A historical drama, Henry VIII (1613?) was probably written with English
dramatist John Fletcher (see Beaumont and Fletcher), as was The Two Noble
Kinsmen (1613?; published 1634), a story of the love of two friends for
one woman.
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