Shakespeare's plays (1623) The First Follo. The couected ediiion of Shakespeare's plays carne out in 1623, after the poet's death. It was edited by.heminges and Condell, [vvo actors of The King's Men, Shakespeare's own company Thi^first editipn is traditi.onaliy called First Folto - folto means a large-sized volume. It contaixis ali the 38 plays wkich are attributed co Shakespeare, with che exception of Fericles. The title on the frontispiece reads: Mi. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, Published According to the true Originai Coptes. The tide indicates that Shakespeare's plays are given noe in chronological order, bue according to genre: <] Shakespeare's plays as lisled in the First Folio {Ì62Ì), divided mio comedies, hislory plays and tragedies. comedies, historical plays and tragedies. The order in which they are given in thts anthology is chronological instead, to show Shakespeare's development as a playwright. We do not knowof every play when it was luntten and/or performed. More often we have to guess the date of a play taking into account external and internai evidence - that is, evidence found either in contenìporary documents or in the text of the plays. One of the most authoritative attempts at dating Shakespeare's plays was made by E.K. Chambers. The division into phases in the table beloiv is largely based on Chambers', hut with a few differences. (For an account of the various phases > pp. 146-151.) 1590-1591 Henry VI [Pari Two and Three) 1591-1592 Henry VI (Part One) 1592-1593 1593-1594 Ricliard III The Comedy of Errors The Taming of the Shrew Titus Andronicus 1594-1595 The Two Gentlemen of Verona Romeo and Juliet Love's Labour's Lost 1595-1595 Richard II A Midsummer Night's Dream 1596-1597.1.597-1598 King John Henry IV (Part One and Two) The Merchant of Venice 1598-1599 Henry V Much Ado About Nothing As You Lil<e It 1599-1600 The Merry Wives of Windsor Twelfth Night 3uHus Caesar 1600-1601 Hamlet 1601-1602 Troilus and Cressida 1602-1603 All's Welt That Ends Well 1604-1605 1605-1606 1606-1607 1607-1608 Measure for Measure Othello King Lear; Macbeth Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus; Timon of Athens 1608-1609 Pericles 1610-1611 1611-1612 1612-1613 Henry VIII The Winter's Tale; Cymbeline The Tempest Two Noble Kingsmen
The dramatfc WOrks. Shakespeare's career as a dramatist was a long and a happy one. He wrote some 38 plays (the attribution of some is uncertain), and he might have also written others in collaboration with other dramatists - a practice which was common at che cime. Shakespeare wrote and experimented in ali the kinds of drama then popular: tragedy, history play and comedy (also in its variant form called 'romance'). He practised ali these kinds of drama throughouc his career: for instance, he began with history plays {Henry VI and Richard Ili) and finished with a history play [Henry VITI); and he wrote comedies ali through his years as a playwright. In considering Shakespeare's career as a whole we may divide it into four significant phases: the years of apprenticeship; the history plays and the love comedies; the great tragedies and the dark comedies; o the romances. The definitions given above should be taken only as useful indicators and not be taken too literauy: by 'apprenticeship', for instance, it is meant not inferior works {Romeo ani]uliel or A Midsummer Nighi's Dream belong to this first phase, and they are among Shakespeare's best plays) but simply the time when young Shakespeare experimented with the dramadc genres then available. The years pf apprenticeship. By the mid- 1590s, Shakespeare had ajready established h'imself as one of the leading playwrights of the day In this first phase, of apprendceship, he experimented with ali the major dramatic genres: history plays or chronicle plays, that is, plays that have as their subject events of Enghsh history: his first attempi seems to have been the second and third parts of Henry W, soon followed by the first part; with Richard ITI he gives a more compact and successfui historical play; «the Plautine comedy, after the model of the Latin playwright Plautus: a typical example is The Comedy of Errors, based on misunderstandings, mistaken identides, people lost and then found etc; 0 the tragedy of horror, after the model of Seneca's Latin tragedies: Titus Andronicus is filled with murders and physical violence (hands truncated, tongues bitten off and so on); the character play, such as The Taming of the Shrew, where characters are fixed types behaving according to pre-determined ideas of human nature (the so-called 'comedy of humours'): as, for instance, the 'shrew', that is, the temperamental but loving wife, and the good-hearted but rough husband; the refined love comedy, characterized by a brilliant, highly refined use of the love conventions of the day Plays like The Two Gentlemen of Verona or Love's Lahour's Lost are centred upon parties of brilliant young men and charming young girls. They show Shakespeare's familiarity with the habits of young noblemen. Shakespeare's first two masterpieces must be placed against this background: the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet and the comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is half mythological half fairy tale. The history plays and the love comedies. In the second phase of his career (approximately 1596-1600) Shakespeare became < This painting hy the Romantic artist Hemy Fuseli (1741-1825) well catches the magic atmospbere of A Midsummer Night's Dream.- bere Titania falls in love ivith Bottoni (despite his ass's head).
the leading playwright of his day. He mainly wrote in two of the genres he had been experimenting with; the histoi-y play and the love comedy. In Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V he pieces together a fairly recent and cruciai period of English history, from the last part of the 14th century to the Wars of the Roses. Shakespeare's history plays are huge frescoes of the struggle for power, love and property against a detailed historical background: they represent the history of a nation and not of a single great character, king or prince. In Henry IV, however, Shakespeare creates one of his immortai figures: Falstaff, the corpulent, boastful, energetic character better known from The Merry Wives of Windsor, a comedy which also belongs to this second period. Shakespeare's production during these years is also remembered for the comedies: The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like II, Twelfth Night. They are different from the comedies of the early years: Shakespeare plays with language in a less obvious manner, the characters are more complex, and the love conventions are exploited with the objective of exploring the psychology of love, includrng its delusions. Tragocdy of Othello, The Moore of Venice, tas it hath htent diuerfc times.tded,it tèe flkobt, and ac the élaclc-fn<a^ by - fé MMHtf Stmmt ' IFritmb Wilian Shtkc^arc. 'file preaic tragedies and the dark comediìes. At the turn of the century Shakespeare began a series of great plays, mosdy tragedies, which indicate his growing disiuusion: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens. These tragedies are ali studies of complex characters faced by extremely difficult choices. They must often decide between love and affection, or reason and pride: for example Brutus, in Julius Caesar, who is torn between his love for Caesar and his love of liberty, since he hates ali tyrants; Othello, who loves Desdemona but believes lago's story of her betrayal [ì> Unit 3, p. 48); King Lear, who loves his youngest daughter Cordelia best of ali and yet banishes her through pride; Mark Antony, who loves Cleopatra but cannot forget his sense of duty towards Rome. Ali of these tragedies deal with characters who occupy the highest positions in society: kings, queens, princes, or great commanders like Othello or Coriolanus. Shakespeare writes about the contradictions and the frailties of human nature at the highest possible level. The comedies written during the same period, Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, also reflect the deep change that had come over Shakespeare in his middle years. Love has changed from the sweet, careless emotion of the early comedies into a complex, often disillusioned, experience. These plays are in balance between comedy and tragedy, showing the ambiguities iìiherent in such feelings as love and friendship; only their happy endings technically make them comedies. For this reason they are often referred to as dark comedies. %Ì\o. A Frontispiece lo ihe 1630 ediiion o/otiiello. The romances. Shakespeare's last phase is characterized by a return to the romantic drama in a completely new mood (it also includes the last of his historical plays, Henr}' Vili). The 'romantic' comedies - Pericles, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest - show us a Shakespeare finally reconciled with huinan nature. in The Winter's Tale, for instaijee, Leorites, king of Sicily, is guilty of the same mistakes as
Othello and Lear: he is jealous of his innocenc wife and banishes his own new-born daughter Irlis faults, however, do not carry the play co a cragic conclusion, and order and harmony are evencually restored both in the royal family and in che kingdom. The love and understanding of che younger generations are responsibie for chis significane change: che concrasc becween che old and che young and their coming together, is best seen in The Tempest. ITere Prospero's magic art does noc bring revenge upon his enemies, buc unites che opposing factions in the marnage of the young lovers, Miranda and Ferdinand. Theme: woroen and love. An obsessive desire for love and power is at the cenere of Shakespeare's Cragedies. In this dramatic play (also in the sense of 'game') Shakespeare's heroines play an active role. Juliet is a 14-yearold girl who in her absoluce love for Romeo finds the strengch to oppose her parents and relatives, a whole society chac denies her righe to love. Few scenes in Shakespeare are as brucai as chac in which Juliet's father, on hearing that she refuses to marry Count Paris - her family's choice as a husband - insulcs her savagely, while her mocher refuses co answer her requests for help. Nevercheless, she has the courage to risk everything for her love, which eventually causes her death. Theme: womeii and povir'er. In the eternai struggle for power that goes on in world history and everyday society, Shakespeare's heroines do not display stereotyped female behaviour and poses. In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is not a complement to her husband but rather the driving force of the play: the three witches' prediction and Macbeth's ambition seem to be no more than Instruments of her immense desire for power. Shakespeare stresses this aspect of her personality, often making her wish she was a man; Macbeth observes hòw much more of a man she is compared with himself. Through Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare explores this side of human personality more successfully than he ever did with male characters, except possibly Richard III. Thaine; fathers and daughtersc The concrasc becween father and daughter was a favourice one for Shakespeare. It allowed the playwright a number of possibilides in the porcrayal of boch human characcer and social situations. Shakespeare's daughcers are not weak submissive creatures, despice social conditions in which women were legally subjecc Co their fathers or husbands. In the comedies, young girls in disagreement with their fathers often run away like Shylock's daughter Jessica in The Merchant of Venice. It is in the tragedies, however, that the dramatic possibilities of the father/daughcer contrasc are fully rea.uzed. Juliet is a daughter who has Co suffer her father's verbal violence and an imposed marriage. To escape from it she eventually has to die. In Ktng Lear, instead, the daughter openly defies her father's authority, refusing to acknowledge her love for him at his command. The tragic conflict is heightened by the fact that Cordeha sincerely loves her father: in modem terms we would say that she does not refuse him as a person, but his role as an oppressive and choleric father Theme: rhetoric asid power. In their search for power and love Shakespeare's tragic heroes make large use of rhetoric, both in their actions and speeches. Rhetoric is the key^to love, riches, power, happiness, goodness. Al] of Shakespeare's plays contain at least one long rhetorical speech, usually spoken by the most important male character(s). These speeches (usually called 'soliloquies' or 'monologues') are never merely decorative, but are centrai to the meaning of the play and are often connected to its main theme. Rlietoric is equally effecdve in love and pohtics. The usurper king, Richard III, uses rhetoric to deceive ali the world in order to get the crown of England, while the good vahant king. Henry V, uses it to encourage his soldiers in batde. Young Romeo woos Juhet with rhetoric, as she observes; Othello, the Moor, wins Desdemona's love not only because he is an invincible warrior but also because of his fluent and evocative words. Mark Antony turns the Romans against Caesar's
g murderers simply because he is a better orator than Brutus, the leader of the plot. Rhetoric also contains a great potential for evil; it is through the power of words that lago convinces Othello that Desdemona is unfaithful to him, and brings about her death; it is through her violent and striking images that Lady Macbeth pushes Macbeth to murder. Rhetoric also helps Shakespeare to pornt out a characters psychology, his/her weak points and obsessions. In some monologues, rhetorical devices such as repetition, understatement, metaphor are extremely revealing: in Hamlet's most famous soliloquy, for example, the.insistence on concepts such as 'sleep' and 'suicide' clearly betrays LIamlet's fear of acdon. Theme: the world as a stage. Apart from thè brilliancy of his plots and characters, in his comedies and tragedies Shakespeare offers a profound reflection on a theme which is both modem and universa!; life is a play and the world is its stage. The metaphor of the world as a stage was common in.renaissance culture, but in Shakespeare's great works it becomes an essential part of the plot and the characters' psychology. In The Merchant of Venice, for example. Antonio views the world's fouies with a philosopher's eye, and describes the world as "a stage where every man must play a part". Shakespeare's use of this image reaches its highest point in Macbeth's speech after his wife's death. Fiere the metaphor becomes the instruraent of Macbeth's utter pessimism: man is only "a poor player" who is given no more than an hour upon the stage "and then is heard no more". Life, concludes Macbeth, signifies nothing. For Shakespeare's contemporaries, the metaphor of the wodd as a stage was reinforced by the name of Shakespeare's theatre, the Globe, and by the sign posted outside it: it showed Hercules carrying the world on his shoulders, with a caption below saying "the actor carries the whole world". Shakespeare's universality. Shakespeare's greatness consists in his universality: like Dante for the Middle Ages, he brought the Renaissance into contact with the classical times, on the one band, ano the modem world, on the other. In the so-called Roman plays [Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra) he invesrigates the classical past with a contemporary sensibility. In his history plays he pieces together the last two centuries of English his- 0 A scene from King Lear [50