William Shakespeare: Historical Interpretation #3

William Shakespeare: Historical Interpretation #3

 

Shakespeare certainly wrote his plays more than four hundred years ago. So how much should we reckon the past?

I have received a comment from under “A Frame of William Shakespeare's Life: Timeline”:

“Nothing. "Probably". "Would have". "Could have". Ridiculous myths, speculation and wishful thinking pawned off as biography. Nonsense. If you have evidence this man was a writer, please post it. We've been waiting for 400 years.”

As well as literature, I'm interested in history. I'd rather read and research about history. In fact, this comment touches on a good point to understand. Surely, history is a science. However, we need proof and documents to make history. Otherwise, we can't convince anyone of anything. In this context, most people believe that history is fiction. For instance, a historicist critic is someone who seeks to place a text in its context, revealing the embeddedness of, for example, Shakespeare's Macbeth in the witch-hunting mania of King James I's early reign. A historicist critic tries to understand a text by examining the time and place it was written, showing how, for example, Shakespeare's Macbeth reflects the widespread fear of witches during the early rule of King James I. (I will mention "New Historicism" that pertains to this issue). They might also conduct primary research in a historical archive, uncovering documents that shed new light on aspects of the text that readers removed by several centuries from its original publication could not previously see.

'The Enchanted Island Before the Cell of Prospero - Prospero, Miranda, Caliban and Ariel (Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2)', engraved after Henry Fuseli by Peter Simon

We know very little about the time between the birth of Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare, the twins, and the moment when Shakespeare is first mentioned in the theatre scene in London. This intervening period, often referred to as the lost years of Shakespeare, remains largely mysterious. However, it is certain that he somehow made his way from Stratford-upon-Avon to London. Whether he joined a traveling theatre company in need of an extra actor or fled due to trouble with a local landowner for poaching deer, remains unknown. Despite numerous stories circulating since the 18th century about why Shakespeare left Stratford, no concrete records exist from Shakespeare's lifetime or shortly after to clarify the circumstances surrounding his move to London with three young children and no clear career prospects. Nonetheless, Shakespeare did make this daring move and began establishing himself in the London world from the early 1590s onwards.

As a young boy, Shakespeare would have witnessed actors in Stratford-upon-Avon, as touring acting companies frequently visited the town. These companies would seek permission from the town's bailiff, the administrative leader, before performing. In 1569, when Shakespeare was five, this would have been his father. It's likely that permission was granted, and the first performance, known as the mayor's play, would have taken place. The mayor and his family were expected to attend, and even a curious 5-year-old Shakespeare might have witnessed his first play not far from where he grew up. Touring companies continued to visit Stratford, and in Shakespeare's early 20s, the renowned Queen's Men came to town. While we don't know what they performed, we do know that shortly before their visit, two of their actors were involved in a serious brawl, resulting in one fatality. This incident might have created an opportunity for Shakespeare to enter the professional theatre world, as the troupe may have been in need of additional talent. Thus, despite his humble origins as the son of a glover in Stratford, Shakespeare likely demonstrated enough promise to be recruited into the world of professional theatre.

Shakespeare's house, New Place, the Chapel and Grammar School, Stratford-on-Avon. From Samuel Ireland "Picturesque Views on the Upper or Warwickshire Avon"

Stephen Greenblatt describes the area we are currently in, on the south bank of the Thames in London, as a vibrant entertainment zone. People from different parts of the city would visit, knowing they had various activities to choose from. They could hire a boatman to ferry them across the river and then attend theaters like The Globe or The Swan. Alternatively, they could engage in other pastimes such as archery practice, visiting brothels, or patronizing taverns. Additionally, they could watch bull baiting and bear baiting exhibitions, where savage dogs attacked these animals, providing excitement for spectators. However, during the English Civil War, Puritan soldiers killed most of the bears, leading to the decline of this practice.

The area's history as the center of monasteries in the Middle Ages meant it had different legal arrangements from the rest of the city, allowing activities that the city authorities disapproved of but couldn't prevent. The city fathers had various concerns about the theatres, including traffic congestion, people skipping work, the potential for prostitution, and the spread of diseases like bubonic plague. Due to outbreaks of plague, the theatres would periodically be shut down until the death rates decreased. This caused economic difficulties for theatre companies, like Shakespeare's, who had to find ways to pass the time until the theatres reopened.

Stephen Greenblatt 

The Globe, where we're currently positioned, stands as the most renowned among England's grand amphitheatres during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. It emerged from a groundbreaking initiative in 1576 by James Burbage, a builder and entrepreneur originating from the carpentry trade. Burbage ventured to invest his resources in a groundbreaking endeavour: a purpose-built, freestanding theatre—an unprecedented concept not seen since late antiquity. This endeavour involved substantial risk capital, banking on the idea of attracting large audiences willing to pay upfront for entertainment, rather than relying on post-performance donations as customary in inn yards. The model operated on a system of admission fees, with patrons paying a penny for entry or more for premium seating, ensuring performers received their due applause after the show.

However, The Globe wasn't the sole venue for Shakespearean or contemporary playwrights' performances. Officially, acting as a profession was forbidden, categorized as vagrancy, and punishable by whipping. To circumvent this restriction, actors claimed to be servants of nobility or royalty, thus legitimizing their performances as entertainment for their employers. While court appearances provided prestige, theatres like The Globe and others generated the bulk of their revenue from ticket sales. Performances also took place at venues like the Inns of Court, and legal institutions in 16th-century London, with known productions of Shakespeare's works such as Comedy of Errors at Gray's Inn in 1594 and Twelfth Night at The Middle Temple in 1602. Additionally, plays were staged at universities like Oxford and Cambridge. The necessity for mobility was ingrained in theatre practice; companies had to adapt to closures due to plague outbreaks and relocate for various reasons, reflecting the transient nature of theatrical performances during Shakespeare's era and continuing into modern times.

A Frame of William Shakespeare's Life: Style of his works and Sonnets #2

 William Shakespeare 

 

In the late 16th century, William Shakespeare began his career as a playwright by writing such as tragedies, comedies, and historical plays. He was inspired by Holinshed's Chronicles, his plays based on Holinshed. These chronicles are vital for a theatre of this time.  

  

Most of the plays by Shakespeare are historical characters written by Shakespeare which represent real persons. There are many examples such as Henry IV, Henry V, and King Lear, but at the same time, he published romantic comedies such as As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare is famous for tragedies. Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Othello can be good examples. These works had themes, such as honour, revenge, death, betrayal etc. His comedies are quite different, they are related to romanticism, happiness and love. However, we can say that his comedies as "problem plays" or "dark comedies." 

 

Shakespeare developed a poetic style which was a remarkably fluid, dreamlike sense of plot and a poetic style. Now it is commonly known as "romances." These plays depict interest in moral and emotional life. Thanks to his contributions, English developed noticeably, so his works and endeavours are vital in terms of the history of the English language. He was a master of vocab and he derived many new words. Even today, he has quite an importance and contribution to modern English. 

Shakespeare himself apparently had no interest in preserving for posterity the sum of his writings, let alone in clarifying the chronology of his works or in specifying which plays he wrote alone and which with collaborators. He wrote plays for performance by his company, and his scripts existed in his own handwritten manuscripts or in scribal copies, in playhouse prompt books, and probably in pirated texts based on shorthand reports of performance or on reconstructions from memory by an actor or spectator. None of these manuscript versions has survived. Eighteen of his plays were published during his lifetime in the small-format, inexpensive books called quartos; to these were added eighteen other plays, never before printed, in the large, expensive folio volume of Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, Tragedies (1623) 

  

Sonnets 

In Elizabethan England aristocratic patronage, with the money, protection, and prestige it alone could provide, was probably a professional writer's most important asset. This patronage, or at least Shakespeare's quest for it, is most visible in his dedication in 1593 and 1594 of his narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, to the wealthy young nobleman Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton. What return the poet got for his exquisite offerings is unknown. We do know that among wits and gallants the narrative poems won Shakespeare a fine reputation as an immensely stylish and accomplished poet. This reputation was enhanced as well by manuscript circulation of his sonnets, which were mentioned admiringly in print more than ten years before they were published in 1609 (apparently without his personal supervision and perhaps without his consent). 

 

Shakespeare's sonnets are quite unlike the other sonnet sequences of his day, notably in his almost unprecedented choice of a beautiful young man (rather than a lady) as the principal object of praise, love, and idealizing devotion and in his portrait of a dark, sensuous, and sexually promiscuous mistress (rather than the usual chaste and aloof blond beauty). Nor are the moods confined to what the Renaissance thought were those of the despairing Petrarchan lover: they include delight, pride, melancholy, shame, disgust, and fear. Shakespeare's sequence suggests a story, although the details are vague, and there is even doubt whether the sonnets as published are in an order established by the poet himself. Though there are many variations, Shakespeare's most frequent rhyme scheme in the sonnets is abab cdcd efef gg. This so-called Shakespearean pattern often (though not always) calls attention to three distinct quatrains (each of which may develop a separate metaphor), followed by a closing couplet that may either confirm or pull sharply against what has gone before. They are also remarkably dense, written with a daunting energy, concentration, and compression. Often the main idea of the poem may be grasped quickly, but the precise movement of thought and feeling, the links among the shifting images, the syntax, tone, and rhetorical structure prove immensely challenging. These are poems that famously reward rereading. 

A Frame of William Shakespeare's Life: Timeline #1

A Frame of William Shakespeare's Life: Timeline  

 

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” 

(from As You Like It, spoken by Jaques) 

 

William Shakespeare is regarded as Britain’s, and perhaps the world’s, most important writer. While some may disagree with this, it is certain that this highly influential poet and playwright had a gift for language. Shakespeare’s work was much loved by a wide range of people in his time, and it has continued to influence all kinds of audiences since his death. We can call him as universal playwriters. 

 

A start in Stratford-Upon-Av 

He was born into a provincial middle class family in the town of Stratford-Upon-Avon in Warwickshire. His father was a glove-maker, who served as Stratford’s mayor, but also descended into serious debt. Shakespeare was the third of eight children. Three siblings died young and only one outlived him. Shakespeare probably received a good classical education at the town’s grammar school—his work is full of classical references. This early experience could have sparked off his later interest in theater. He married Anne Hathaway and left his family behind around 1590 and moved to London, where he became an actor and playwright. He was an immediate success: Shakespeare soon became the most popular playwright of the day as well as a part-owner of the Globe Theater. He had three children, one of whom died in childhood—some say that passages in Twelfth Night reflect this tragedy. 

 

 

The King’s Man 

Shakespeare appeared in London in the 1590s as a well-established actor-dramatist.  By the early 1600s, Shakespeare and his plays were leading the King’s Men (named after their patron King James I) to triumph as England’s greatest theater company. Shakespeare was now mixing with everyone from royalty to the era’s leading dramatists. From the 1590s, Shakespeare produced many plays, as well as his beautiful sonnets. Born into the culturally rich Elizabethan age, with influences including the ancient classics and traditional English folk and mystery plays, Shakespeare made the most of his sources. His settings ranged from the ancient world of Anthony and Cleopatra to the contemporary Danish court of tragic Hamlet.  

 

His plays include: histories such as Henry V and Richard III; comedies such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It, and more complex comedies such as All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure; the great tragic plays, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear; the Greek and Roman works, including Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra; and the mature tragi-comedies at the close of his career, such as The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest. 

 

Shakespeare explored the spirit of his times and the human condition in a newly approachable way, using language to conjure varied moods and control complex plots full of mistaken identities and misunderstandings. He is admired for his probing psychological studies (unusual at the time) of complex characters. His work often contains a central character with a fatal flaw that causes their downfall, an idea common to ancient classical philosophy and writing. Othello’s jealousy is just one example of this. 

 

Mysterious to the end 

Many mysteries have connected themselves to Shakespeare’s life. His early years may have seen him fleeing to London to escape a deer-poaching charge. He may have been a secret lover of the “Dark Lady” of his sonnets, whose identity has also been hotly debated. Many have even indicated that he did not indeed pen his plays and this has become a contentious issue. Others believe that he collaborated with the likes of Ben Jonson, Sir Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, and Sir Walter Raleigh. 

 

 

“He was not of an age, but for all time!” 

 

■ April 26, 1564 Shakespeare is baptized at Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, as the first son of Mary Arden and John Shakespeare, glover and burgess.  

■ 1570s Shakespeare most likely attends Stratford’s grammar school, the King’s New School, where he would have taken part in the classical rhetorical declamation (the art of using speech to persuade an audience), which was part of a good education in his day. He probably watches traveling theater shows with his father. John Shakespeare gets involved in dubious trade dealings and serious debt, and drops down the social scale.  

■ 1582 An 18-year-old Shakespeare gets married—very probably to Anne Hathaway.  

■ 1583–85 Shakespeare and his wife have a daughter, Susanna (1583) and twins, Hamnet and Judith (1585).  

■ 1590 It is thought he starts writing plays.  

■ c.1591–1595 Shakespeare writes the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III.  

■ 1592 A pamphlet provides evidence that Shakespeare is established as an actor-dramatist in London.  

■ June 1592–94 London’s theaters close due to plague, causing a temporary break to Shakespeare’s career.  

■ 1595 Shakespeare has a share in the theater company known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (founded in 1594). The company performs plays by leading dramatists of the time, including Ben Jonson, and gives most of Shakespeare’s plays their first outing.  

■ 1596 John Shakespeare is granted a coat of arms, probably testifying to his son’s success by this time.  

■ 1597 Shakespeare buys an impressive house in Stratford called New Place.  

■ 1599 Cuthbert Burbage builds the Globe Theatre at Bankside, Southwark; most of Shakespeare’s plays from this point onward premiere here.  

■ 1603 Elizabeth I dies and James I ascends to the throne. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men become known as the King’s Men, under the direct patronage of the King.

■ 1609–11 Writes his more mature plays: The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest.  

■ 1613 The Globe burns down. Shakespeare buys a property in Blackfriars, home of the Blackfriars Theatre, where the King’s Men perform during winters as the Globe is roofless.  

■ 1614 A rebuilt Globe reopens for business.  

■ April 23, 1616 Dies at Stratford-upon-Avon, possibly as a result of a heavy drinking session, and is buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford.