Notes on Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616
Stratford-on-Avon, England
Married Anne Hathaway at the age of 18
He left Anne and 3 children to pursue an acting career in London, England.
Charter member of acting guild: Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later became the King’s Men).
English Monarchs during Shakespeare’s lifetime: Queen Elizabeth I and King James I
Shakespeare wrote 37 plays
Tragedies or Revenge Tragedy: events lead to a disastrous or fatal conclusion. Includes hero’s quest for vengeance, insanity, scenes of carnage, ghost of a murdered kinsman, etc.
Comedies: “…written about persons of minor importance whom their faults are rendered ridiculous.”
Histories: written about the lives of English kings
Three elements of a tragedy:
1. tragic hero
2. possesses a tragic flaw
3. has a reversal and a recognition (but it is too late! L)
Blank Verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare chose to write most of his plays in blank verse. This poetic form is ideal because it closely resembles human speech.
An iamb is a metrical foot of poetry that has one unstressed and one stressed syllable. Pentameter means the line of poetry has five feet.
It sounds like da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM
Prose is writing in paragraph form. Some of Shakespeare’s character will speak in prose; they are usually servants. Shakespeare has his most noble characters speak in PURE POETRY! J
The Globe Theater! The theater was three stories high and shaped in an “O.”
In 1592, an outbreak of the plague resulted in the closing of theaters in London. Shakespeare used this time to write and publish some poetry.
Renaissance drama relied on WORDS, WORDS, and WORDS! Very few props were used. The stage did not have a curtain, and the directors and actors worked without “sets” or scenery. They DESCRIBED the scenery with their dialogue.
Real Life vs. Stage Life: Shakespeare was not trying to write a “realistic” drama. He and the Renaissance audience were fully aware that the actors were performing on stage. He uses many stock characters (you might think of them as stereotypes – the wicked villain, the kind old man, the innocent young girl, the adventurous youth…). The characters are not “real” people, just simply “characters.”
Symbolic Importance: Shakespeare focuses on UNIVERSAL concepts in his plays. The universal is expressed in the particular.
Here is an example. Say the universal concept Shakespeare wants to explore in his drama is EVIL. He will have a character who embodies PURE evil.
These are some of the common universal concepts in Shakespeare’s plays: truth, beauty, justice, holiness, evil….
So – the particular (the wild storm King Lear is caught in) relates to the universal (the troubled thoughts in his mind).