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WWIILLLLIIAAMM SSHHAAKKEESSPPEEAARREE

((AApprriill 2233,, 11556644 –– AApprriill 2233,, 11661166)) 11.. WWIILLLLIIAAMM SSHHAAKKEESSPPEEAARREE:: LLIIFFEE AANNDD CCUULLTTUURRAALL CCOONNTTEEXXTTSS The life of William Shakespeare has been, in time, subject to various biographies,

each trying to shed light on the many ambiguities and lack of information regarding his life and his whereabouts. Much of the knowledge on Shakespeare comes from general inferences on cultural and social aspects. For instance, a general appreciation of schooling and the school systems in his time (the organization of the grammar schools, such as the one William Shakespeare attended in Stratford) provides useful information on the level of education a man of his social background could have received, especially since many of his rival writers were University educated (the “University wits”). The controversy regarding his religion is another mystery, many biographers and critics trying to see beyond the apparent lack of interest in religion in Shakespeare’s plays or in his father’s absence from Church and guess a covert Catholicism in their attitude. Nothing is, actually, certain, and much of his life is still subject to speculation and debate. Moreover, there are no constant records on his life. His marriage and the baptism of his three children appear in the written documents of the time. There are also documents that mention his father, John Shakespeare, his mother, the wife and the children out of which inferences about Shakespeare’s life were made. Likewise, some known facts in his life are considered to lie at the basis of various of his works, such as the death of his own son, Hamnet, in 1596, which is considered to have influenced the writing of Hamlet. However, there are periods in which Shakespeare’s traces are lost. After the baptism of his children, there is such a period, in which, biographers speculate that he joined companies of players. This period is known to Shakespeare’s biographers as “the lost years.” Other conjectures were made. For example, a player by the name of William Shakeshaft appears in the will of a Catholic Lancashire landowner, but there is no certainty that this is Shakespeare.

His name appears in 1592, in a pamphlet written by Robert Greene, who calls him “the only Shake-scene in a country.” We do not know what Shakespeare actually did to offend Greene, but he seems to have upset the group of educated, university wits, by “arrogating to himself airs to which he is not entitled by birth or by education” and he “emerged from the group of players to try his hand as a playwright.” (R. Shaughnessy) Greene’s misquotation from a line of Henry VI, Part 3, suggests that Shakespeare’s early plays had already begun to circulate and were played by companies, and consequently, it is widely believed that Shakespeare started writing for theater companies in the 1590s and he had been a player prior to this.

From this moment until the final years of his return to Stratford (from 1610 till the end of his life), his life will be closely connected to the London companies of players and theatres.

After 1594, William Shakespeare appears as a partner in the theater company known as “Chamberlain’s Men,” whose success seems to have relied on the work of one

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playwright, actor and sharer, William Shakespeare. Prior to this, Shakespeare may have been involved with “Lord Strange’s Men” and his plays (some of which are believed to be written in collaboration), were staged at Henslowe’s Rose. His plays were performed at the Globe, the Curtain, the Blackfriars as well as at the Court. He appears to have gained enough from his writings, since he bought the largest house in Stratford, in 1597

Many of Shakespeare’s early plays are mentioned by Francis Meres in his compendium of commentaries and quotations entitled Palladis Tamia (1598), a valuable source, nowadays, for dating his plays. Meres probably saw the plays on stage, or read them in manuscripts.

22.. SSHHAAKKEESSPPEEAARREE’’SS WWOORRKKSS:: CCHHRROONNOOLLOOGGYY AANNDD PPUUBBLLIICCAATTIIOONN

22..11.. PPLLAAYYEEDD OORR PPRRIINNTTEEDD MMAATTEERRIIAALLSS IINN EELLIIZZAABBEETTHHAANN TTHHEEAATTRREE.. Concepts like copyright, the author’s ownership over the work or other such

modern ways of relating to the printed text did not exist in Shakespeare’s time. The plays were produced for the stage, and out of the 3,000 plays known by their titles from various sources, only 500 survived in manuscripts. In general, the playwright’s manuscript, with additions and deletions, marginal comments and revisions, was passed to a professional scribe who copied it into separate parts for the players. A copy of the play was submitted to the Master of the Revels, heading the Revels Office and responsible for the “festivities” or, later, for the censorship of the stage productions. For example, the deposition scene (IV, 1) in Shakespeare’s Richard II was censored and therefore not included in the first two quartos, whereas a satire written by Nashe and Johnson (The Isle of Dogs) was suppressed and the authors imprisoned. After the Master of the Revels’ approval, the play was entered in the Stationers’ Registry (a record of all works projected for publication).

The plays were not the property of their creators, but of the theater companies, and could, at any time, be subjected to alterations, amendments and revisions, as part of the daily repertoire of the company or in case they were required for Court performances. Public taste, ceremonial occasion, popularity and success could have become occasions for alterations of the play. Moreover, these plays were intended for performance not for a reading public and if such a play could make its way in print, it would have been subjected to more alterations and revisions by the editors and the printers.

22..22.. TTHHEE PPUUBBLLIICCAATTIIOONN OOFF SSHHAAKKEESSPPEEAARREE’’SS PPLLAAYYSS While talking about the publication of Shakespeare’s plays, the terms quarto and

folio appear. These terms refer to the format of the published book: quarto meaning that each leaf is folded twice, making 4 leaves (8 pages), whereas folio refers to a large-format book, made of 14’’ by 20’’ leaves, folded once, to make 2 leaves (4 pages).

Shakespeare’s printed versions have raised numerous debates among scholars and biographers. The majority of the quarto and folio versions seem to be too long to be performance versions. Among them, some of the quartos seem to be closer to performance, but they are often regarded as less reliable since they are considered to have been fraudulently obtained, pirated, transcribed from memory, abbreviated, etc.

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These quarto versions are the first printed materials of Shakespeare’s plays, but they are sometimes called the “bad quartos” due to the reasons mentioned above. Anyway, during Shakespeare’s life, nineteen plays circulated in print, in little quarto books, some pirated materials, others containing improved variants. In 1623, two fellow actors published a folio edition of 36 plays entitled Comedies, Tragedies and Histories. Without the 1623 Folio, much of Shakespeare’s works would have been lost, and the remainder rather unreliable.

Another problem acknowledged today is the fact that Shakespeare collaborated

with other writers in the writing of some of his plays, which led to the enlargement of the Shakespearean canon by including the plays that are not solely Shakespearean.

22..33.. SSHHAAKKEESSPPEEAARREE’’SS WWOORRKKSS:: GGEENNRREESS,, PPEERRIIOODDSS AANNDD CCHHRROONNOOLLOOGGYY William Shakespeare’s body of works consists of poetry and plays.

22..33..11..PPOOEEMMSS:: Out of the body of poems, the ones published and acknowledged as his during his

lifetime were two longer Ovidian romances: Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece and the Sonnets.

Actually, the first published work by Shakespeare was Venus and Adonis, entered in the Stationers’ Register in April 1593 and in circulation by summer. It was followed by the 1594 quarto of Lucrece, these two texts being, for a long time, the most popular of Shakespeare’s works, fact demonstrated by the series of reprints of the poems.

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Some critics consider that the creation and publication of the poems might have been caused by the financial dependence of the writer on a patron. Thus, both Venus and Adonis and Lucrece are dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton, a fashionable, charismatic and well-connected courtier.

The Sonnets were published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe as Shake-Speares Sonnets. Never Before Imprinted. However, it is very likely that these sonnets might have circulated in manuscript form, as it was the fashion to courtly sonneteering. The dedication to the sonnets is more mysterious, and conjectures have been made regarding the dedicatee for the book of sonnets.

A third narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609

22..33..22.. OORRDDEERR OOFF CCOOMMPPOOSSIITTIIOONN OOFF TTHHEE PPLLAAYYSS AANNDD PPOOEEMMSS Compiled from the Oxford Shakespeare, ed. S. Wells and G. Taylor (1988). The dates of the early plays are conjectural. 1590-1 1590-1 1591 1592 1592 1592 1592-3 1592-3 1593-4 1594 1594-5 1595 1595 1595 1596 1596-7 1596-7 1597-8 1597-8 1598 1598-9

Two Gentlemen of Verona (Cei doi tineri din Verona) The Taming of the Shrew (Imblanzirea scorpiei) 2 Henry VI 3 Henry VI 1 Henry VI Titus Andronicus Richard III Venus and Adonis The Rape of Lucrece (Necinstirea Lucretiei) The Comedy of Errors Love's Labour's Lost (Zadarnicele chinuri ale dragostei) Richard II Romeo and Juliet A Midsummer Night's Dream (Visul unei nopti de vara) King John The Merchant of Venice (Negutatorul din Venetia) 1 Henry IV The Merry Wives of Windsor (Nevestele vesele din Windsor) 2 Henry IV Much Ado About Nothing (Mult zgomot pentru nimic) Henry V

1599 1599- 1600 1600-1 1601 1602 1603 1603-4 1604-5 1605 1605-6 1606 1606 1607 1608 1609 1610 1611 1613 1613-14

Julius Caesar As You Like It (Cum va place) Hamlet Twelfth Night (A douasprezecea noapte) Troilus and Cressida Measure for Measure (Masura pentru masura) Othello All’s Well That Ends Well (Totu-i bine cand se termina cu bine) Timon of Athens (Timon din Atena) King Lear Macbeth Antony and Cleopatra Pericles Coriolanus The Winter’s Tale (Poveste de iarna) Cymbeline The Tempest (Furtuna) Henry VIII Two Noble Kinsmen (Doi veri de stirpe-aleasa)

The paternity of Shakespeare’s plays is a matter of modern debate, the fact that many of them were written in collaboration being, nowadays, a widely accepted reality. The 1623 folio contains plays previously (during Shakespeare’s life) published and new plays. The editors of the folio chose not to include the narrative poems and the sonnets,

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as well as two plays written in collaboration (Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen), as well as two plays that are now lost (Love’s Labours Won and Cardenio). There are also other plays with controversial paternity, partially attributed to Shakespeare, like Sir Thomas More, or Edward III but usually not included in the collections of plays.

There are various classifications of Shakespeare’s plays, according to the period in which they were written, or according to the genre in which they can be included, but all those classifications may raise problems at a certain point.

33.. PPEERRIIOODDIIZZAATTIIOONN I. 1589 – 1600: the period of Sonnets, Poems, most of the Historical Plays, Comedies. II. 1600–1608: the period of the “Great” Tragedies, and of the Dark Comedies/Problem

Plays III. 1608 – 1613: the period of the Romances

44.. GGEENNRREESS The first folio classifies the plays into comedies, tragedies and histories, but this

classification is no longer accepted nowadays by critics. Modern criticism uses terms that did not appear in the folio classification, such as “tragicomedy”, “problem play” or “romance.” Even the various critics do not agree on the use of terms. For comedies, for instance, various terms are used, such as “romantic” comedies, “festive” comedies, “dark” comedies. There are also plays that are hard to include in any genre, some call them “problem plays”, others use the term of “mixed-genre” plays.

Broadly speaking, the plays can be included in the four genres accepted by the 1997 Riverside edition (Comedies, Tragedies, Histories and Romances)

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In very broad lines, the convention of the comedy includes happy-endings, cross-

dressing or mistaken identity, thwarted love, marital and romantic misunderstandings. The sources of Shakespeare’s comedies are varied as well the occasions for which they were composed. Plays such as The Taming of the Shrew and The Two Gentlemen of Verona are based on the Italian romantic comedies, whereas The Comedy of Errors has a clear Roman source (a play by Plautus). A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, or Much Ado about Nothing are called festive comedies and they have various sources and plots and subplots, making them more complicated than the early comedies.

The problem of clearly including the comedies in the different subgenres comes from the fact that Shakespeare exploited several comic traditions, such as the Roman

All's Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors , Love's Labours Lost, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Taming of the Shrew , Twelfth Night, Two Gentlemen of Verona.

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tradition, the Italianate stories and the English festivity tradition. The Roman tradition draws on the Greek comedy (Aristophanes, Menander) and the largest corpus of Roman comedies comes from the Latin writers Plautus and Terence and the conventions they used are to be found in Shakespeare’s own comedies. Another famous source of inspiration for the English writers, visible since the Middle Ages, with Chaucer, for instance, is the interest in the Italianate stories. Shakespeare’s Italianate stories (set in Italy and whose plot is indebted to Italian novelle) do not comprise only comedies, but also tragedies, romances or problem plays. The most famous Italianate stories include five comedies and two tragedies: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, All's Well That Ends Well, Romeo and Juliet and Othello. But, we cannot overlook other plays such as the Roman stories of Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus and Coriolanus, or The Winter’s Tale beginning and ending in Sicily, Twelfth Night and Measure for Measure based on Italian stories, as well as many others coming from the Italian theatre or containing characters typical of Italian literature, all these suggesting the great influence of Italian literature on English works. The third source of influence for Shakespeare’s comedies comes from the English festivity tradition, drawing on the fixed and movable feasts established by the Church as well as the popular beliefs and folklore traditions established over the centuries. The year was divided into two halves: the winter and the sacred half, and the summer with its agrarian feasts and local celebrations. Shakespeare gives a great importance to popular festivity and holidays in plays such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream or in As You Like It.

44..22.. HHIISSTTOORRIIEESS.. The histories or historical plays include those plays that are founded on the

English history and are connected to the reign or figure of a king, to be distinguished from the Roman tragedies, exploiting episodes from the history of Rome. The date of the composition of the plays does not follow the chronology of the kings’ reign. The historical plays can be divided into two tetralogies (a tetralogy is a set of four works). The first tetralogy includes the trilogy Henry VI and the play Richard III and is connected to the events of the War of the Roses. The second tetralogy, including Richard II¸ the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V are connected to the fall of the Angevins and the Hundred Years’ War. Beside these plays, the histories also include the early play King John and the late play Henry VIII.

Even in this group of plays there are definition problems. The general characteristics of the histories, centered on the figure of a king, involve conspiracy, fighting, plotting, a large number of characters and a decisive on-stage battle. However, the plays Richard II and Richard III¸ though adhering to these general characteristics are closer to the conventions of the tragedy and their quarto titles are: The Tragedy of King Richard II and The Tragedy of King Richard III.

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The convention of the tragedy, implies a single heroic male character (the tragic

hero), a tragic flaw – either a dreadful dilemma or a wrong decision, conspiracy, fight and bloodshed, sometimes madness and many deaths at the end. Similarly, the stormy atmosphere, with its unnatural manifestations (strange animal behavior, eclipses, earthquakes, supernatural phenomena) reinforce the confusion, the instability and disintegration of the world, stemming from the belief that the human and the natural are in a close and harmonious connection.

The tragedy becomes an exploration of evil and suffering centered on the character of an exceptional individual. Aristotle’s writings are considered basic for the understanding of the tragedy, though, it is often argued that Shakespeare was more indebted to the Senecan tradition of bloodshed and tyranny than to the Greek tragedy.

However, it is very difficult to draw an exact pattern of the Shakespearean tragedy, since the playwright does not adhere to a unique tragic model, developing complex plots, sometimes, as in the case of King Lear, subplots that parallel the main plot. The death of the hero at the end of the play is not, as expected, a unifying principle, since Julius Caesar dies in the middle of the play, and is not the main character at all, whereas the death of Macbeth does not produce the sense of loss we normally expect from the fall of a great man. Timon of Athens, though reflecting the disintegration of the hero, stops before his death. There are comic parts in this supposedly serious, severe and dark plays, as it is the case in Hamlet, or in Romeo and Juliet.

Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth are usually deemed “the great tragedies”, being among the most studied and most read works in world literature; they are considered, in a simplifying scheme, the peak of Shakespeare’s creation.

Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra can be included in a different category: the Roman plays. This name comes from the fact that their plot is connected to the history of Ancient Rome, though Titus Andronicus is not based, like the other three, on real history, but on a fictional plot. Othello, Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra can be included in a group named tragedies of love, though Romeo and Juliet fits the group of tragedies with greater difficulty, since the theme of love, during Shakespeare’s time, pertained to romance and not to tragedy, the latter being most often connected to the fall of the great political men. Actually, Romeo and Juliet, belonging to the first period of creation, has more in common with A Midsummer Night’s Dream than with the great tragedies, being considered A Midsummer gone wrong. Moreover, it defies the fatalistic view of tragedy, replacing the will of Fate with the hazardous, the accidental, bad luck and misfortune.

Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens.

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44..44.. RROOMMAANNCCEESS

These four plays were written towards the end of his career and are considered the

most experimental theatrical ventures. Initially, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale were included in the group of comedies, Cymbeline was considered to be a tragedy and Pericles was not part of the first folio edition at all. The fact that they all end in happy reunions and promised marriages would include them, at least formally, in the genre of the comedy, but the ending is not sufficient in clearly classifying them in the group of comedies.

The convention of the Shakespearean romance usually includes natural disasters, remarkable adventures, unlikely coincidences, conflict between generations or within families, unforeseen conclusions in which forgiveness and reconciliation are achieved against all odds. Usually, it is the role of the children, by falling in love, to amend the errors of their parents and bring harmony to the world.

The name of this genre comes from the medieval romance, with its stories of love and chivalry, of fantasy and adventure. Shakespeare used these conventions as a pretext to reflect upon the way art and the imagination operate in the understanding of the world. It provides the context to show not only how the world is, but how the world could be (Sean McEvoy).

44..55.. PPRROOBBLLEEMM PPLLAAYYSS,, PPRROOBBLLEEMM CCOOMMEEDDIIEESS,, MMIIXXEEDD--GGEENNRREE PPLLAAYYSS There are critics who use further genre classifications, since some of the plays are

difficult to classify. In a 1931 book, William W. Lawrence used the term problem comedy, to include the plays All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida and Cymbeline. Out of these, All’s Well has traditionally been included in the group of comedies, whereas Cymbeline is nowadays considered a romance. His definitions insist on the seriousness of the plots that contradict the definitions of comedy, while the happy-endings thwart them from the group of tragedies.

He argues that comedies such as All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Troilus and Cressida are sometimes called problem comedies, because of the fact that, though they adhere to the rules of the comedy, the treatment of the theme is more serious and realistic:

“They are concerned, not with the pleasant and fantastic aspects of life, but with painful experiences and with the darker complexities of human nature. Instead of gay pictures of cheerful scenes, to be accepted with a smile and a jest, we are frequently offered unpleasant and sometimes even repulsive episodes, and characters whose conduct gives rise to sustained questioning of action and motive.” (W. Lawrence)

Cymbeline, Pericles, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale

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This term of problem play, he further argues, is useful to apply to the productions that cannot be considered tragedies, but that are too serious and analytic to be included in the conception of comedy.

Other classifications of the “problem plays” put in one group All’s Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida and Hamlet.

All these dramas introduce us into highly artificial societies, whose civilization is ripe unto rottenness. Amidst such media abnormal conditions of brain and emotion are generated, and intricate cases of conscience demand a solution by unprecedented methods. Thus throughout these plays we move along dim untrodden paths, and at the close our feeling is neither of simple joy nor pain; we are excited, fascinated, perplexed, for the issues raised preclude a completely satisfactory outcome, even when, as in All's Well and Measure for Measure, the complications are outwardly adjusted in the fifth act. In Troilus and Cressida and Hamlet no such partial settlement of difficulties takes place, and we are left to interpret their enigmas as best we may. Dramas so singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies. We may therefore borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of to-day and class them together as Shakspeare's problem-plays. (F.S.Boas, Shakespeare and His Predecessors, 1896)

Sean McEvoy, while finding for the other plays mentioned above a place in either comedies, tragedies or romances, keeps Troilus and Cressida and Measure for Measure apart, including them in a separate category he calls mixed-genre (or genre-defying) plays, considering that, in these plays, Shakespeare fits elements from different genres. Another term used for these plays is that of “tragicomedy”, describing the mixture of tragic and comic elements. However, it is believed that these plays reveal more of the negative aspects, of the worries and conflict of Shakespeare’s world than the other plays. They appear to cast doubt and undermine the ideals and beliefs of the traditional English society (Sean McEvoy).