Unit 3 Young William Shakespeare

Unit Overview

In this unit you will : 

• Read a story about Shakespeare’s life

• Learn how to guess meanings of words from context

• Have a test in fast reading

• Know more about Shakespeare as a playwright

　

Shakespeare's Life None of Shakespeare's friends or contemporaries wrote a biography of the man. This is not   strange as it sounds, although he was well known enough,for in Elizabethan England biographies were reserved for distinguishing the memories of officials of the church and the state. The consequence for us is that the life and personality of the greatest writer in English literature remains cloudy and ill-defined, marked only by the most perfunctory facts. Shakespear

e'sfather was a well-to-do merchant and town official in the town of Stratford-on-von.John Shakespeare's third child and oldest son was christened William on April 26,1564, and from that fact it is assumed that he was born on the twenty-third of thatmonth since three days from birth to christening was the custom. Little enough isknown of his childhood. He was probably educated at the free grammar school inStratford, and perhaps saw an occasional simple play performed by a companyof traveling actors. Although such schooling as Stratford provided would havegiven the young Shakespeare sufficient background in the classics of Greek andLatin to enter Oxford or Cambridge, he did not attend either of the universities.

At the age of eighteen, William Shakespeare married Ann Hathaway, a woman eight years older than he. It is possible that the marriage was a forced one, as their first child, Skusanna, was born six months later. However, it was accepted at the time that engaged couples could enjoy all the privileges of married life, and perhaps Shakespeare had intended to marry Ann anyway. It seems that domestic life did not go smoothly. Two or three years after the marriage, and following the birth of the twins Hammet and Judith, the young Shakespeare appears to have left Stratford and gone to London to seek his fortune. The year was 1585 or 1586.

The twenty-two year old man must have lived gaily in London, frequenting the taverns he was later to present vividly in his plays. The theater of London was growing, and Shakespeare apparently apprenticed himself to the thriving art, becoming a stage-hand and actor, and trying out his hand at composing plays. By 1594 he had written The Comedy of Errors, had collaborated with another writer on some plays about Henry VI, and had become known as n actor in the company called the Lord Chamberlain's Players.

He had tried his hand at poetry, publishing two long poems entitled Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, and writing the famous sonnets which were not to be published until some years to come. Both the long poems and one of the sonnets were dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, and it is possible that Southampton's patronage contributed to Shakespeare bought a coat of arms for his father. In the following year, the playwright, then thirty-three years of age, was able to buy New Place, one of the finest houses in Stratford-on-Avon, for his family. By 1599, Shakespeare was able to buy a share in the newly built Globe Theater. At this time, Julius Caesar was first appearing on the stage.

In 1603, Elizabeth the Queen died, and James I of Scotland acceded to the throne of England. Shakespeare's company became known as the King's Men, and apparently gave private performances for the court. Surely the success of this acting company was largely due to the plays Shakespeare contributed to its repertory, as well as to the virtuosity of Richard Burbage, the actor who must have performed Shakespeare's leading tragic roles. But while Shakespeare's worldly fortune continued

to improve, his personal life seems to have darkened. In 1601 his father died, and with the appearance of Hamlet in that year, Shakespeare showed an involvement with chaos and tragedy that lasted until 1607. During this time he wrote the great tragedies. Financial success allowed him to end his career as an actor, and gradually Shakespeare, now over forty, began his retirement with his family in Stratford, where he settled finally in 1611. It was in 1611 that The Tempest, which is generally thought to be the last play Shakespeare wrote by himself, appeared. This is certainly an appropriate conclusion to the career of this playwright, for The Tempest resolves the tendencies of both tragedy and comedy in a peaceful, magical acceptance of life.  In 1616, he died.

 

Shakespeare lived a full life. He was past fifty at his death, both his daughters were married, and he had written thirty-seven plays, some of which had been published. The merchant's son who had left his home for London under unclear and perhaps unhappy circumstances had returned as one of Stratford's most prosperous citizens. He was buried at the same church at which he had been christened , and within a few years a monument bearing his likeness was raised in his memory. In his will Shakespeare left the major part of his property to his wife, but he did not neglect the fellow actors with whom he had shared so much. His wife lived to see the publication of Shakespeare's complete works in 1623. The edition is known as the First Folio, and was collected by John Hemminges and Henry Condell,  two of the actors of the King's Men whom Shakespeare had remembered in his will.

Shakespeare's Time Shakespeare lived at a crucial and provocative time. Such famous

writers as Francis Bacon, Chritstopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and John Donne were all born within a dozen years of Shakespeare's birth, and were publishing during his lifetime. The drama was just being recognized as a legitimate art form, and the first public theater was erected when Shakespeare was twelve. Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland & Ireland, the source for many of Shakespeare's plots, was published only shortly after that. During Shakespeare's lifetime many events of historical importance occurred. France gave sanction to Protestantism; England made peace with Spain; the colony of Jamestown in Virginia was formed; Puritanism, with its moralistic disapproval of the theater, grew in strength; and the Kind James Bible appeared. Much was happening in the world of the arts as well. Queen Elizabeth pleasured herself with masques—great costumed festivals held at the country homes of nobles—at which guests were entertained with costume balls, and with much gaiety in the form of singing, impromptu sketches, and spectaculars. The growingly recognized art of the theater provided fertile ground for the efforts and innovations of a young playwright, and the dramatic art was taken up by many and developed at an explosive rate. All this was made secure by King James's sanction of the art.

Sonnet 十四行诗 十四行诗起源于 13 世纪的意大利， 16 世纪

上半叶由英国诗人萨利和魏阿特引入英国，风靡一时。莎士比亚的十四行诗早在 1609 年发表前就以手抄本的形式流传民间，其主题思想以歌颂爱情与友谊为主。但这种爱情、友谊又极不同于他同时代大多数人的爱情、友谊观，而总是伴随着一种感官上的激情，与同代人约翰 . 多恩的爱情诗十分接近。在韵脚上，莎士比亚创作了自己的诗韵，即有名的莎士比亚十四行诗韵： abab,cdcd,efef,gg 。

Sonnet 18 ( Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day)   　Shall I compare thee to a summer's dayThou are more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer‘s lease （租约） hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven ( 天的眼睛，此处喻指太阳 )——s

hinesAnd often is his gold complexion dimm’d;( 他金光闪闪的面庞被乌云遮

蔽 )And every fair( 美好的事物 ) from fair( 美本身 ) sometimes declines,By chance or nature‘s changing course ( 大自然的演变过程 )untrimm

ed( 卸去美的装束 );But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow‘st( 拥有 );Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade(=shadow),When in eternal lines to time thou grow‘st ( 你长到时间身上 ):So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this ( 指这首诗 ), and this gives life ( 永生 ) to thee.

Discussing the following topics.

1. Can you find anything in Shakespeare's early life in Stratford that might have contributed to his future success as a playwright?

Yes. Shakespeare went to Mr. Jerkin's school in Church Street every day except on Sundays. There he read and learned all those Latin writers. After he left school, he still read a lot and even started to write poems himself. In addition, he liked watching plays performed by those different companies that came to Stratford on the summer months and he loved to talk to the actors and listened to their stories of London.

2. His wife was not presented very favorably in the story. How did Shakespeare deal with his family problems?

When he said he was going to London, Shakespeare met strong opposition from his wife. However, Shakespeare insisted on leaving home and going after his dream. But he told his wife that he would come home to see them when he could.  

3. Shakespeare was a man eager to learn and determined to succeed. Find examples to illustrate that from the text.

When he was still at school, Shakespeare had the ambition to become a writer, a poet. After he left school, he persisted in reading and writing while making shoes and gloves. In London, he was busy day and night learning, acting, writing his own plays, reading books, meeting other writers, making friends, etc. He slept very little. All these examples show that Shakespeare was a man eager to learn and to succeed.

1. Henry Condell and Augustine argued about the merits of Hamlet. Which of th

e two will you stand by? Give your reasons.

I agree with Augustine's opinion. The play is different from many other plays Shakespeare wrote in that the dramatic conflict of the play lies in the heart of a character. So, to understand the play, we need to follow Hamlet's internal activities - hesitation, bitterness, melancholy, etc.

2. Name three other plays by Shakespeare that are not mentioned above. Can you tell the story of one of them to your partner?

Other plays by Shakespeare, for example are The Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream and King Lear. A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most popular plays with readers and audiences. It is a romantic comedy about the complex nature of love and marriage. Shakespeare uses several sets of couples to dramatize love's tribulations and triumphs.