Christopher Marlowe: Elizabethan Drama

Christopher Marlowe 

 

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) was an influential English playwright, poet, and translator who had a great impact on Elizabethan drama. The son of a Canterbury shoemaker, Christopher Marlowe, was born two months before William Shakespeare. Marlowe attended Cambridge University and was renowned for his aptitude in languages such as Latin, Greek and French. In 1580, he was granted a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, which was typically given to those who were studying to become ministers. He was granted the scholarship for a maximum of six years, though he never took holy orders. Instead, he began to write plays. He wrote various plays, including "Tamburlaine the Great," "Doctor Faustus," and "The Jew of Malta." His plays were known for their bold and unconventional themes, such as the pursuit of power, the struggle for identity, and the conflict between desire and morality. In addition to his plays, Marlowe was also known for his poetry, including "Hero and Leander," a tragic love story, and his translations of Ovid's "Amores" and "The Art of Love." Marlowe was a contemporary and rival of William Shakespeare, and his work is considered to have had a significant influence on the development of Elizabethan dram. He is also known for his poetry, which includes the famous poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.". In Marlowe's play, there are few if any glimpses of a transcendent design. His hero is the vehicle for the expression of boundless energy and ambition. The English theatre audience had never heard such a resonant, vastly energetic blank verse. The great period of Elizabethan drama was launched by what Ben Jonson called "Marlowe's mighty line."  

Marlowe was twenty-three when he got his first theatrical success. Marlowe had only six years to live. They were not peaceful years. In 1589 he was involved in a brawl with one William Bradley, in which the poet Thomas Watson intervened and killed Bradley. Both poets were imprisoned, but Watson got off on a plea of self-defence, and Marlowe was released. In 1591, Marlowe was living in London with playwright Thomas Kyd. Later, Kyd accused Marlowe of atheism and treason under torture when he gave information to the Privy Council. On May 30, 1593, an individual named Bichard Baines submitted a note to the Council, claiming that Marlowe had made statements showing atheism, sedition, and homosexuality. Four days later, at an inn in the London suburb of Deptford, Marlowe was killed by a dagger thrust, purportedly in an argument over the bill. Despite his short career, Marlowe's work continues to be studied and performed today, and he is regarded as one of the greatest dramatists of the English Renaissance. 

REFERENCES 

Abrams, M.H., Greenblatt, Stephen, David, Alfred and Lewalski, Barbara K. (1987). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. The Major Athuors (6 ed.). London: Norton & Company Ltd. 

 

History of Britain and Ireland: The Definitive Visual Guide 

Restoration Theatre; An introduction

 

Restoration Theatre 

 

The Restoration Period points out to a period in English history between 1660 and 1688. After the collapse of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, with the return of Charles to the English throne, this period began. During this age; arts, literature, and culture flourished and underwent restoration in England. In addition to cultural changes, the Restoration Period witnessed significant political and social changes such as theatre, and many folk rituals were banned by Puritans in 1642. The monarchy was restored, and the power of the aristocracy increased. Generally, the Restoration Period was a significant period in English history in terms of cultural, artistic, and intellectual pursuits, as well as important political and social developments.  

 

The literature of the Restoration period dealt with themes of love, sexual matters, and politics. During the time between Charles's Restoration and the start of sentimental comedy in the 1700s, comedy reigned, but there was plenty of heroic tragedy. One of the most famous writers of this period is John Dryden, who is known for his poetry and plays. He is considered the leading literary figure of the Restoration era. Other known writers include Aphra Behn, Samuel Pepys, John Wilmot and Earl of Rochester. Restoration literature provided the cultural and social alterations that happened during this time in English history. 

 

Restoration Comedy is known as artificial or comedy of manners. Restoration comedies often focused on the social codes of the middle and upper classes; sexual matters and aristocratic characters, including their affairs, marriages of convenience, and other romantic entanglements. 

Reconstruction based on a drawing of Drury Lane by Christopher Wren, the theatre's architect (1674) 

 

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.