Preliminary English Advanced/Standard Introduction to Critical Studies Shakespeare as a Critical Study week 1, term 2

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1 EDD1-discovery edd1-discovery Preliminary English Advanced/Standard Introduction to Critical Studies first name last name edd1-discovery

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3 3 What is a Critical Study? Critical Study (or Close Study, as it is renamed in Standard English) is the most demanding topic in the HSC. Rather than just studying a theme a book relates to, or the time period a book might relate to, you are studying the book itself, and all its possible connections. Your set text for a Critical Study will be a classic work of literature. You will need to do wide reading around the text to understand why people think it is a classic: it will be your job to find and read as many essays and critic s reviews about your text as possible. You will also be expected to know the life story and context of the writer. You will also have to thoroughly read and re-read the text itself and consider what about the text makes it work: characters, plot, themes, text structure, language choices, genre, intertextual references, and any special or signature techniques employed by the composer. Finally, you will have to consider different readings or varied interpretations of your text, and decide on your own reading. It is very common for Shakespeare to be set for your Critical Study, but even if yours is a novel, Shakespeare plays are good case-studies to learn how to do a Critical Study. Each week you ll encounter a new play, and learn context and dramatic techniques, and do varied readings of scenes. Shakespeare is also widely quoted in Western literature, so being familiar with his body of work will help you understand a wide range of other HSC texts, too.

4 4 What s so great about Shakespeare? He invented almost 2000 words and hundreds of catchphrases. His prose innovations made realistic modern drama (and therefore film) possible. He created sympathetic black characters, Jewish characters and strong female characters at a racially-biased time when wench was a common way to address a woman. And he risked being burned or hanged every time he made snarky political commentary about the royals and despite this, was one of the few English men to go up the English class structure, eventually claiming noble status and retiring, having made a fortune. However, Shakespeare is probably the most hated, misunderstood, and poorly taught subject on the English syllabus. That s because you need to know a lot of context about Late Renaissance England to understand what s going on, and it s a crazy time full of kings and queens, executions, assassinations, superstitions and of course, actors! At first, studying Shakespeare can be like reading the script for a TV show, rather than seeing it performed if that script had been poorly translated into English from another language. Even if you can see the joke, after all that work, it hardly makes you laugh anymore. But the great thing about Shakespeare is that his plays are littered with double meanings and in-jokes, meaning, the more you dig, the more you find. A critical study is all about this sort of digging, and will allow you to experience the inner world of one of the rudest, dirtiest, most hilarious, philosophical, and brilliant minds that has ever existed.

5 5 Shakespeare s Context: The Renaissance ( ) The Renaissance or rebirth of culture the bridges between the Middle Ages and the Modern period, began in the late 1400s in Florence, Italy, at a time when Italy was made up of wealthy merchant city-states who were mostly republics, and had a lot of trade connections with the East which made them cosmopolitan. Many of its cities stood among the ruins of ancient Roman buildings; so the classical nature of the Renaissance was probably linked to its origin in the Roman Empire. Artists were well patronised by wealthy ruling families like the Medici, so great artists like Michelangelo, writers like Dante, and inventors like Leonardo da Vinci were well-appreciated. The early Italian Renaissance modelled itself on the great Romans (and later, Greeks) of the past, so writers like the great sonnet-writer, Petrarch, searched the libraries of Europe to recover obscure works by the great Latin authors and thinkers like Cicero, Livy, and Seneca. This also recovered ancient concepts like humanism and the uomo universale, an education and way of thinking that would create a universal man whose intellectual and physical excellence was capable of functioning honourably in virtually any situation. Humanist education was based on the programme of 'Studia Humanitatis', that being the study of five humanities: poetry, grammar, history, moral philosophy and rhetoric. It was thought that the classics provided moral instruction and an intensive understanding of human behaviour. Renaissance humanists believed in and celebrated "the genius of man... the unique and extraordinary ability of the human mind." In politics, the Renaissance further developed diplomacy, and in science an increased reliance on observation. Political philosophers such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas More revived the ideas of Greek and Roman thinkers, and applied them in critiques of contemporary government, inventing political science. The Renaissance, as a cultural movement, took a good 200 years to spread throughout most of Europe to England where Shakespeare lived. It arrived in the late 1500s to early 1600s. The Renaissance was a revival movement people wanted to relive the time of the great empires such as the Ancient Greeks and Romans, so the people of the Renaissance loved geniuses and great artists. It became very fashionable for rulers to patronise great artists, like Shakespeare, and art of all forms including plays and other examples of literature were very important.

6 6 Differences between Renaissance and Contemporary Drama An Aurally versus Visually reliant audience For us in the 21 st Century, visual symbols are everywhere: TV, magazines, advertising billboards, government signs, even on people s clothing. We are therefore better at interpreting visual symbols than print and are heavily reliant on this skill for survival even traffic lights show this. Imagine you couldn t read or write, and you were born in a time when very few visual symbols existed or were used in daily life. You would be very dependent on hearing from eavesdropping gossip at the local ale-house to public announcements made by the town crier about new edicts from the Queen that could have your head cut off if you didn t obey them. These people were totally dependent on hearing for information and they were therefore very good at it, as skilled aurally as we are visually today. Suspension of disbelief /Realism There was no such thing as special effects in Renaissance drama, and it was quite natural for the audience to be expected to imagine ideas instead of being shown them. With no real visual stimulus in their lives, they didn t expect stage effects or props or scenery. The play told them what to imagine, e.g.: fair Verona where we lay our scene and they simply imagined it. Actors wore costumes, they may also have used music from a little orchestra, prop such as a sword or cannon to liven things up, but playwrights and actors, although patronised by royalty, were not necessarily wealthy people. Renaissance actors tended to be more energetic and even acrobatic, exaggerating their movements to give the audience something to look at. Audiences didn t expect realism from a play either. When the evil character reveals his plot in a soliloquy not two feet away from the hero, the audience obligingly pretends the hero cannot hear. The fact that characters rant their thoughts out loud all the time falls under the same considerations from the audience, in a time when voiceovers were not possible. Retelling Stories Renaissance plots were rarely original. They were often dramatizations of history, or the retelling of an Ancient Greek or Roman playwright such as Ovid. Shakespeare often rehashed folklore and fairytales to get the plots of his stories. You might think of this as cheating, but that isn t how they thought of it it was more like re-making the Spiderman franchise for the third time. The plot wasnt important, so much as HOW you told it. Renaissance audiences would therefore have been as familiar with the plots of his plays as we are with Cinderella and Red Riding Hood. Because they already basically knew the story, what was really important to the audience were the doublemeanings, the jokes and political commentary and audiences had more time to pay attention to these aspects. Women weren t allowed to act In fact, the Renaissance was very much a man s movement women were not allowed to be great artists. Young teenage boys around the age of 14 played the roles of women, and were often bound around the groin to keep their voices higher and more feminine for longer.

7 7 Shakespeare s Globe Theatre The Globe was a three-story, open-air amphitheatre approximately 30 metres in diameter that could house up to 3,000 spectators. The Globe is depicted as round in historic sketches of the building, however, the uncovering of a small part of the Globe's foundation suggested that it was a polygon of 20 sides. At the base of the stage, there was an area called the pit, where people called the "groundlings" would stand to watch the performance. Groundlings would eat hazelnuts or oranges (much as we eat popcorn at the movies) and they had something to throw if they disliked the performance. Around the yard were three levels of stadium-style seats, which were more expensive. A rectangle of stage platform, called the apron stage, thrust out into the middle of the open-air yard. The stage measured approximately 13 metres in width and 8 metres in depth and was raised about 1.5 metres off the ground, which kept actors safely out of the reach of the heckling public. The apron stage had a trap-door in the floor for actors to vary their entrance to the stage. There was a roofed inner stage separated from the apron stage by a curtain. The back wall of this stage had two or three doors on the main level which entered into the "tiring house" (backstage area) where the actors dressed and awaited their entrances.

8 8 Over this stage, there was a roof called the heavens supported by large columns, with clouds and sky painted on it. Actors sometimes descended from the heavens using another trapdoor with a rope and harness, particularly ghosts, fairies and witches. Just below this section on the second level was the balcony. The balcony housed musicians and could also be used for scenes requiring an upper space, such as the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. Question: Name some examples from Shakespeare s plays which demonstrate the elements of Renaissance Drama discussed above, such as retold stories, suspension of disbelief, or even supernatural elements such as ghosts or fairies.

9 9 The Elizabethan and Jacobean Eras Queen Elizabeth I ( ) had unusual parentage: her father was King Henry VIII, inventor of the Church of England, and her mother was Anne Boleyn, executed by her husband for treason. This made the throne a bit difficult for Elizabeth to get her hands on, but she was very determined, having other contenders, including her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, executed. A Protestant, she outlawed Catholicism, declaring it treasonous. This made life difficult as there was about a split of Catholics and Protestants at the time in the country, and the national religion flip-flopped a lot between kings. She even led England in wars against the Spanish and Irish (Catholic nations.) Elizabeth was generally considered a good ruler, though she became more tyrannical in later life as her heir was in doubt. The arts blossomed under her rule, and Elizabeth had Shakespeare s drama company, The Lord Chamberlain s Men, perform at her castles frequently, even though Shakespeare s family were old Catholics and she had Shakespeare s cousin put to death. Elizabeth never took a husband, and died in 1603 without an heir. She left the throne to her Scottish nephew, James I, who was already king of Scotland. This action united England and Scotland as one country. James was chosen because he was a Protestant, even though his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, had been a Catholic the same one who had been executed at Queen Elizabeth s request. James was an unpopular king. Not only was he a Scot taking the English Crown, but he was another Protestant, and the Catholic peasantry tried to have him and the whole Parliament blown up. Shakespeare s own father was supposedly involved in the Gunpowder Plot. The failure of this assassination attempt might have set the political scene of disappointment that is evident in King Lear and Macbeth. Shakespeare s company was awarded a royal patent by James I, and changed its name to the King's Men, but the two religions of England continued to grate against each other, culminating in the English Civil War, which broke out during the reign of James son Charles I.

10 10 Shakespeare s Biography At Shakespeare s birth, his father was a glover and his mother a farmland-owner. This made them well off for the peasantry and Shakespeare had some lessons in English at the local grammar school: the study of Latin authors like Ovid, Virgil, and Horace would have been the focus of his literary training. He had an impressive familiarity with the stories by Latin authors. Shakespeare was removed from school around age thirteen because of his father's financial and social difficulties, relating to his father s staunch Catholicism in Protestant times. Shakespeare's daily activities after he left school and before he re-emerged as a professional actor in the late 1580s are impossible to trace. Some historians assume Shakespeare travelled overseas in this period, but it is more likely that Shakespeare was forced to go underground: his cousin was pursued and executed by Elizabeth I for being a Catholic, and Shakespeare may well have been in similar danger. There are stories of known Catholics hiding in walls or attics in sympathetic houses. Shakespeare is thought to have been taken in by some of the old noble Catholic families as a tutor for their children. In this period known as the lost years Shakespeare married an orphan named Anne Hathaway who was twenty-six and already several months pregnant with his child. The Shakespeares' first child was Susanna, followed by twins who were named after two very close friends of William the baker Hamnet Sadler and his wife, Judith. It is assumed Shakespeare went away to London to pursue his career, sending money back to his family but seeing them rarely. Hamnet Shakespeare died of an unknown cause at the age of eleven. This death very much affected Shakespeare and many of his sonnets and his play Hamlet dwell on this loss. Shakespeare reappears concretely in history as an established actor in London by the end of He was well enough known to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene:

11 11...there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country Greene is accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match university-educated writers, such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe and Greene himself. Shakespeare's plays were performed only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, which soon became the leading drama company in London. In 1599, a partnership of company members built their own theatre on the Thames River, which they called the Globe. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new king, James I, and changed its name to the King's Men. They continued to perform at the Globe Theatre, and at a second smaller theatre they bought called the Black Friar s Theatre. Records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that the company made him a wealthy man. In 1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, and by the end of his life he had been granted noble status and his own coat of arms. At around the age of forty, Shakespeare withdrew from the theatre life, at a time when men rarely retired. He went back home with his family, after writing his final play, The Tempest which is assumed to be autobiographical. His family being Catholic, Shakespeare had to come to terms with his daughter Susanna marrying a Protestant doctor, John Hall. He eventually became good friends with his son in law, and this revelation about the Catholic-Protestant fight may have prompted his withdrawal from society. He took up Catholicism openly in the last few years of his life and was buried in the Holy Trinity Church. The stone slab covering his grave is inscribed with a curse: Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, To digg the dvst encloased heare. Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones, And cvrst be he yt moves my bones. In his will, Shakespeare left the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna. The terms instructed that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body". The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare s direct line. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one third of his estate automatically. He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed. Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been their matrimonial bed and therefore a romantic gesture. Sometime before 1623, a monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil. In 1623, the engraving was published in conjunction with the First Folio.

12 12 Recommended Viewing: 1. Documentary: In search of Shakespeare by Michael Wood. ABC production (2004) This document is the most comprehensive and best interpreted source of Shakespeare s life, times, politics and plays I have ever seen. They go to all the real places he lived, and it s lively and fun. 2. Film: Shakespeare in Love by Tom Stoppard. Not to be taken seriously, but it s a great re-enactment of what life on the stage would have been like for Shakespeare s Men. Very mainstream film, lots of comedy and celebrities. Below is a table of his plays: the ones set for HSC courses on the Standard and Advanced syllabuses are underlined: The Comedies The Histories The Tragedies All's Well That Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Love's Labour's Lost Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado About Nothing Pericles, Prince of Tyre The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Twelfth Night (What You Will) The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Two Noble Kinsmen The Winter's Tale King John Richard II Henry IV, part 1 Henry IV, part 2 Henry V Henry VI, part 1 Henry VI, part 2 Henry VI, part 3 Richard III Henry VIII Romeo and Juliet Coriolanus Titus Andronicus Timon of Athens Julius Caesar Macbeth Hamlet Troilus and Cressida King Lear Othello Antony and Cleopatra Cymbeline

13 13 Shakespeare as a writer: Shakespeare wrote 36 plays and 154 sonnets and throughout his life, and two long lyric poems. His major text-type was the play and his four greatest works are his four great tragedies: King Lear, Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth. In his early years he wrote mostly histories, as this was the most popular topic for plays as they usually involved kings and bloody battles. Some of these are quite tame for Shakespeare s stuff and it s likely that at least part of his motivation of writing these royal, masculine men was to flatter Queen Elizabeth I, as the King Henries were her grandfathers and great grandfathers. The tragedies came next, and it s almost as though he develops some of the thoughts and motifs in one play through another, the villain Iago and the villain Edmund have echoes, the development of Hamlet s tragedy is seen in King Lear. King Lear is one of the most widely quoted texts in English literature after the bible, and is widely thought to be his magnum opus. Shakespeare also wrote comedies and tragicomedies to entertain the royalty over summer, and while some of them are excellent e.g. Much Ado About Nothing some of them are really quite disappointing. Nice enough little plays but not much of the ring of greatness that one expects from Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet is not really a comedy or a tragedy it falls into the new category of romance which Shakespeare practically created, since all plays at the time were either comedies or tragedies, as in Ancient Greek theatre. Its well worth noting that comedy doesn t mean it s funny; it means that instead of everybody dying at the end of the play, they all get married instead. Shakespeare made up a lot of words and is thought to have contributed thousands of words to the English language. They were mostly onomatopoeic. In his own day Shakespeare considered of a great artist, but he wasn t hailed as the god of literature as he is today. His plays were published in the First Folio in 1623 after his death, and throughout the Revolution and Restoration, writers took the liberty of re-writing them to improve them. The Romantics and the Victorians were the first to really proclaim his greatness and we have followed suit ever since.

14 14 Ideas in Shakespeare s Plays While all composers are affected by their context and their target audience, the smarter a person is, the less likely they are to be influenced by current trends, and the more likely they are to be able to analyse their context s influence on them and keep it separate from their writing. Of course, the subjects that writers write about are affected by their own experience. His tragedies began to focus on existentialist crisis and suicide after the death of his own son, but most very clever people focus on these topics naturally anyway. So while Shakespeare lived in a very flawed, sexist, racist, religious society, Shakespeare was not any of these things. An intelligent person can tell this from the points he makes in his writing. He is always writing on three levels plenty of sex and fart humour for the groundlings, some variety of political intrigue for the nobility, and some very well-hidden, timeless comments on human society that possibly would have gotten him into trouble if the nobility had truly understood what he was saying. Shakespeare s beliefs listed below apply to everything he wrote EVEN IF the dialogue seems to suggest the exact opposite. SHAKESPEARE DOES NOT BELIEVE IN FATE Any character who seems to believe in the gods or fortune is being foolish, and anything BLAMED on fortune, etc, is really the fault of humanity or someone s bad decision, or sometimes even the constraints of society. For example, the pair of star-crossed lovers take their life in Romeo and Juliet, not because Fortune willed it, but because their dumb families wouldn t stop arguing.

15 15 SHAKESPEARE DOES NOT BELIEVE IN ULTIMATE GOOD AND EVIL Hamlet says Nothing is either good nor bad but thinking makes it so. Shakespeare appreciated that both good and evil acts are part of human nature. So Shakespeare s evil characters like Iago and Edmund are not just jerks, they have been wronged by society and set out to change things, they are protagonists in the true sense: Wherefore should I stand in the plague of custom and permit the curiosity of nations to deprive me, for that I am twelve or fourteen moonshines lag of a brother?...why Bastard? Well then, Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land. I grow, I prosper, now gods, stand up for bastards! MADMEN AND FOOLS ARE THE WISEST OF ALL If there is a Fool in a king s court, watch everything he says, ESPECIALLY the nonsensical stuff. The nonsense is a metaphor for the true meaning of what is going on. The Fool is actually very clever and witty. He has the freedom to speak his mind, even to a king, which the other characters often lack FOOL: Thou had st little wit in thy bald crown when thou gavest thy golden crown away. KING LEAR: Dost thou call me fool, boy? FOOL: All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with. Both Mad people and Fools may appear to speak nonsense. Think of Ophelia and Hamlet, King Lear in his madness and try to get a feeling for what the nonsense actually means. It is ALWAYS the most important point. Often in the comedies, the dumbest characters will accidentally stumble upon the truth of a situation, not because they ARE bright, but because all the other characters underestimate them. Think of the ridiculous Dogbury from Much Ado finding out about Don Pedro s schemes, and Bottom the player stumbling upon the fairies in Midsummer Night s Dream. EVERYTHING HAS A DOUBLE MEANING: Let them use us well, else let them know, the ills we do, their ills instruct us to it. Emilia from Othello is talking about husbands and their wives. Use us well both means to have sex with us and to treat us well. but there is a much more important meaning. The way husbands treat wives is metaphorical for all minorities who are treated badly by Venetian society in this story including Othello, the black man, and Iago, a lower-class, but very intelligent man. SHAKESPEARE IS NOT RACIST, SEXIST, CLASSIST OR RELIGIOUS: This is quite unusual for his time, and is never openly stated, so a lot of people even today- miss this entirely. Although his family was Catholic, his attitudes were not the typical Catholic attitudes of the day and he reveals himself as more agnostic than anything else. Shakespeare doesn t say directly what he thinks. He hides his meanings in fools and mad people so that only the clever will find them. Whether this was a protection from the bigotry of the higher classes, or simply because he was arrogant and delighted in being tricky, we will never know.

16 16 IRONY SHAKESPEARE LOVES IT: Irony is the best-used and most-loved of Shakespeare s techniques. A character may use intended irony, such as Iago in Othello: Roderigo: I will incontinently drown myself. Iago: If thou dost, I shall never love thee after. Iago is only pretending to be friends with Roderigo, so he will never love him after because he did not love him to begin with. Roderigo thinks they are good buddies, so the irony is lost on him. Irony may also be used by a character who is unaware of his irony. For example, Benedick from Much Ado says: I do much wonder that one man, having seen how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviours to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, will become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love. And such a man is Claudio. In the very same scene, Benedick becomes the argument of his own folly by falling in love with Beatrice. This is called dramatic irony and foreshadowing. There is a third way in which irony is used, where the audience is unsure if the character is aware that they are being ironic. In Othello, Iago poisons Othello against his lovely wife, Desdemona, saying that she cheated on him with Cassio. Othello and Iago make a pact to kill both Cassio and Desdemona. At the end of this scene, Iago says, quite unnecessarily: I am your own forever. Is this unknowing irony, since Iago s trick on Othello brings about his death? Is it knowing irony since Iago may suspect that his life and future pivots on this evil deed? Is it some secret homosexual love he feels for Othello? Or, is it some recognition on Iago s part that he and Othello are similar people, both looked down upon, and driven to evil acts through jealousy? A lot of powerful questions to be summed up by five words.

17 17 Some Recurring Symbolism. EYES AND SEEING SYBOLISE THE CHARACTER S WISDOM: The Duke of Gloucester is stupidly tricked into turning against his loyal, loving son, Edgar. There are many references to eyes and seeing better, and later, when Gloucester is tortured, his eyes are plucked out. NOTHING ALWAYS MEANS SOMETHING: King Lear: What can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters? Cordelia: Nothing, my lord. King Lear: Nothing will come of nothing; speak again, else you may mar your fortunes. The irony here is that Cordelia loves her father the most, so her nothing is worth more than her sister s somethings. A PLAY WITHIN A PLAY IS A PARODY OF SOCIETY OR REALITY: The offensive Taming of the Shrew where Katerina is subdued by a man is not a stand-alone play, but a play within a play. A tinker called Sly gets drunk and passes out in front of a pub. A nobleman, for a laugh, dresses Sly in fine clothes, puts him up in his house, and dresses a male servant to look like his wife. They pretend he has been mentally ill, and that he is actually a lord. This is a comment in itself on the arrogance of lords, who make commoners their playthings, a theme echoed through the play. It is also a comment on men Sly knows it is a farce, but thinks that the servant girl his supposed wife, will sleep with him if he stays. The play, The Taming of the Shrew, is put on for Sly by the lord so the values reflect the lord (and society) not the values of The Bard.

18 18 Question Choose any Shakespeare play you have ever studied and explain how an understanding of Shakespeare s context makes the play easier to understand, or more meaningful for modern audiences:

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