Chapter 5. Shakespeare and Renaissance

The Renaissance drama in England is always associated with the name of William Shakespeare - an excellent poet and dramatist. Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 in the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon. He was the son of a tradesman who could afford to send the boy to Stratford Grammar School, where Latin and Greek were almost the only subjects. Life itself, contact with people and his acquaintance with the rich English folklore gave him more than the scholastic methods used at school. In those days Stratford-upon-Avon was often visited by travelling groups of actors. It is quite possible that Shakespeare saw some plays performed by such actors and was impressed by them. Shakespeare lived in Stratford-upon-Avon until he was twenty one. By that time he was married and had three children. At twenty one he left Stratford for London where he joined a theatrical company and worked both as an actor and as aplaywright. In the late 1590s a new theatre called The Globe was built on the bank of the Thames. Shakespeare became one of its owners. It was in The Globe that Shakespeare's plays were staged at that time. In 1613 Shakespeare left London and returned to his native town. Three years later, on April 23, 1616, he died and was buried there.

Shakespeare's poetic fame began with two long poems - Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece - and with the first of the sonnets which he continued writing alongside his plays. Shakespeare is the author of two poems, a hundred and fifty four sonnets, and thirty seven plays. His creative work can be roughly divided into three periods. The first period that lasted from 1590 to 1600 was marked by the optimism so characteristic of all humanist literature. It is best reflected in his nine brilliant comedies: The Comedy of Errors (1592), The Taming of the Shrew (1593), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594), Love's Labour's Lost (1594), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595), Much Ado About Nothing (1598), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1599), As You Like It (1599), Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will (1600). The comedies describe the adventures of young men and women, their firendship, love, and their search for happiness. The scene is usually laid in some southern country, but one cannot help feeling that the comedies show the England of Shakespeare's time. The comedies are usually based on some misunderstanding that creates comic situations. They are full of mirth and fun. But the laughter is neither ironic nor satiric: he does not mock at people and their vices. Shakespeare never moralises in his comedies: he laughs with people but not at them. His comedies are filled with humanist love for people and the belief in the nobleness and kindness of human nature.

The historical chronicles form another group of plays written by Shakespeare in the first period. They are: King Henry VI (1590 - 1591), The Tragedy of King Richard II (1592), The Life and Death of King John (1596), King Henry IV (1597), The Life of King Henry (1598). Historical chronicles are plays written on subjects from national history. Shakespeare's chronicles cover a period of more than three hundred years of British history (from the rule of King John in the twelfth century up to the sixteenth century). The main subjects of the chronicles are not the lives and fates of kings but history itself and the development of the country. Like all humanists of his time, Shakespeare believed a centralised monarchy to be an ideal form of the state power. He thought it would put an end to the struggle of feudals and would create conditions for the progress of the country.

The drama The Merchant of Venice and the two early tragedies Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar, also written in the 1590s, show a change in the playwright's understanding of life, whose approach to reality becomes more pessimistic. The main works written by Shakespeare during the second period (1601 - 1608) are his four great tragedies: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1601), Othello, The Moor of Venice (1604), King Lear (1605), Macbeth (1605). The tragedies reflect the deep, unsolvable conflicts and contadictions of life, the falsehood, injustice, and tyranny existing in society. They show people who perish in the struggle against Evil. The tragedies, like the chronicles, are also based on real events but there is a considerable difference between the two genres. The playwright raised great problems of Good and Evil in both. But in the chronicles they are mostly linked with political themes - the questions of the state and public life of the period described. In the tragedies which are centred round the life of one man Shakespeare touched on the moral problems of universal significance - honesty, cruelty, kindness, love, vanity, and some others.

The plays of the third period (1609 - 1612) differ from everything written by Shakespeare before. The playwright still touches upon important social and moral problems. But now he suggests utopian solutions to them. He introduces romantic and fantastic elements, which have a decisive role in his plays. Due to these peculiarities the works of this period - Cymbeline (1609), The Winter's Tale (1610), and The Tempest (1612) are called romantic dramas.

There have always been a lot of critical works on Shakespeare's art, and some of them show another approach to the periodisation of Shakespeare's creative activity. We shall call only upon one of them. It singles out four, instead of three as seen before, periods in Shakespeare's writing. The theory points out the early period, the balanced period, the overflowing period, and the final period.

Shakespeare learned his craft in the best of schools, the theatre itself. when he began to write, Edward Alleyn was the leading star actor, and his favourite parts, Marlowe's Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta and Kyd's Hieronimo, set a standard. At first Shakespeare copied his masters, but he soon learned to develop his own techniques, and to the end of his career he was constantly experimenting. The changes in his style are indeed noticeable that his plays can be approximately dated by style alone. Shakespeare's poetic style can conveniently be divided into four periods: early, balanced, overflowing, and final.

To the early period belong three parts of Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II, Titus Andronicus, Love's Labour's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Plays of this period have certain commen characteristics. The plots are, on the whole, well worked out; but except in Romeo and Juliet the characterisation is usually superficial, the psychology is seldom subtle, and the dialogue is inclined to be stiff, artificial, and overlong. There is an abundance of such rhetorical devices as repetition of phrases, questions, exclamations, alliteration, and excess of punning and word play. There is an excess of poetic imagery, often self-conscious, elaborate, and clever rather than illuminating. Rhyme is very common, verse lines are monotonously regular, stresses even, and verse and sentence usually end together. On all possible occasions characters are given long poetic speeches which may be admirable in themselves but are not always suitable in their context, and often retard the movement of the plot. At this stage of his career Shakespeare did not always have much to say, but he said it at great length, and all the time he was experimenting with the uses of words. Nevertheless the artificiality of Shakespeare's verse often has charm, and at times even considerable power.

The early period passed gradually to the balanced period. At all times Shakespeare wrote magnificent passages of poetry, but in the early plays the set piece is noticeably finer than its surroundings; in the later plays the whole effect is more even, and the dialogue is less concerned with fine sayings than with what is immediately appropriate to the scene. The main difference between the early period and the balanced period is that Shakespeare's experience deepened, his power of expression grew. Speeches are now written as a whole, in one sweep; run-on lines become more common, and though the formal pattern of the verse remains, the stresses no longer tick like an ill-balanced grandfather clock.

The early and the balanced periods merge in The Merchant of Venice, which is perhaps the first play where Shakespeare is completely master of his craft. There are few long speeches of poetry for its own sake. In Henry IV, which was probably his next play, Shakespeare achieved complete balance. The few poetic speeches are short and appropriate, and there is a new sense of humour and of power. The characterisation also is elaborate and successful in Henry IV, and well illustrates Shakespeare's methods of creating character. There are three principle methods by which character can be shown: by what is said of a man by his friends, and not less important by his enemies; by what he says of himself, and how he says it; and by his own actions. Description of a character is the most obvious method. Shakespeare's characterisation was subtle - he seldom wrote long or elaborate descriptions. Instead he built up a character stroke by stroke, revealing each trait as it was needed.

The Balanced period lasted from Henry IV to Othello, roughly from 1597 to 1603, and includes Henry V, Much Ado about Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, and All's Well That Ends Well. During this period Shakespeare's own experience of life was deepening and his power of expression expanding. By the end he could write speeches which were not only full of the subtlest characterisation but, by their choice of vocabulary and rhythm, could express the whole nature of the speaker.

The growth of dramatic power can be seen also in Shakespeare's increasing knowledge of human character and a certain change in his interest and point of view. In his early plays, he tended rather to see the whole story objectively. Some characters naturally were more important, but each was treated alike. From about 1599, for the next six or seven years - that is, from As You Like It and Julius Caesar to King Lear and Macbeth - Shakespeare often selected one or two characters in the play for special treatment, so that we see not only what happens to them, but also the working and development of their minds. Brutus, Hamlet, Iago, Edmund, and Macbeth are given soliloquies in which they lay bare not only their intentions but their very souls. Soliloquy - is a literary form where a character left to himself reveals his own mind in a direct speech to the audience, but is not a new device. In the soliloqies of Shakespeare's more mature plays, as when Brutus ponders whether to join the conspiracy, or Iago broods over the best way to hurt Othello, or Macbeth recoils in horror from the murder of Duncan, we see a mind seething. The interest is not so much in what may ultimately happen as in the working and development of the personality of the speaker. It is as if Shakespeare for a while was more interested in men's motives than in their actions.

When he came to write King Lear, Shakespeare was again experimenting with language. By this time his thoughts and feelings were coming too thick and powerful for balanced expression. He entered into an Overflowing period. The metrical line and the formal scheme of five stresses to the line were often neglected. The thought became too intense for clear, logical expression; the idea in Shakespeare's mind did not always travel along the usual conductor of grammatical sentences, but leapt across in some mighty image which only laborious paraphrase can reduce to everyday speech. King Lear and Macbeth are full of these passages, often packed with a complex imagery which suggests half a dozen different glints and meanings. The language is very concentrated and overflowing with meaning.

At the end of his career, Shakespeare reached a Final period, shown particularly in his last play, The Tempest, where he achieved perfect mastery and balance between thought, phrase and meaning. It is seen in such a speech as Prospero's farewell to his art:

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and

groves,

And ye that on the sands printless foot

Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him

When he comes back; you demipuppets that

By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,

Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime