Exercises

Questions:

1.What was the new ideology of the Renaissance?

2.Why was the feudal system an obstacle hindering the development of trade?

3.Name the outstanding humanist of the Renaissance.

5. What translation into English influenced the literature of the period?

Compositions:

1. Describe a character typical of the Renaissance period. (Raleigh, Wyatt, Surrey, Spenser or any other person you have read about.)

2. Tell the story of Sir Thomas More. Give an account of "Utopia".

Tasks:

1. Speak about the role of foreign scholars in England during the first period of the Renaissance.

2. a) Speak about the form of English verse that you know. What were the contributions to English poetry made in the first period of the Renaissance?

b) Explain what a sonnet is. Show the difference between the Italian and the English sonnet.

d) What was new in the Spenserian stanza? Arrange the rhymes in Spenser's stanza given in this book according to his rhyming schem: ababbcbcc.

3. Give an account of the London theatres of the time.

4. Who was Christopher Marlowe and what was his literary work?

5. Name any other of the University Wits you remember.

6. Speak about the greatness of Ben Jonson and his influence on the development of English literature.

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

"The applause! delight! The wonder of our stage!

…………………………………………………..

Thou art a monument without a tomb,

And art alive still while the book doth live,

And we have wits to read and praise to give.

………………………………………………….

He was not of an age, but for all time!"

Ben Jonson

The English Renaissance gave birth to an amazing galaxy of great writers, but William Shakespeare outshines them all. He had a greater influence on the development of the whole of world literature than any other author. Characters created by him remain perfect depictions of the principal human passions and psychological traits.

But Shakespeare was not just a painter of abstract passions independent of space and time, as many bourgeois scholars try to show him. His unsurpassed portrayals of human nature come as a result of his profound insight into the most important social and philosophical problems of the period. With due apologies to the great Ben Jonson, we may say that Shakespeare was "for all time" because he was very much "of an age", of his own age!

The age knew many brilliant men; Shakespeare was a marvelous poet, but not the only one; a great dramatist, but not the only one; he was a learned man, but many of his contemporaries surpassed him in learning.

What, then, makes him the greatest of the great?

In the first place, a harmonious combination of all these qualities; in the second place, their being united in a truly colossal intellect, capable of penetrating into the very core of things. A great poet, an unsurpassed dramatist, an unrivalled psychologist, he was also a philosopher of the first magnitude.

It is utterly impossible to characterize every aspect of his genius in a brief chapter. We shall try to point out only the most outstanding.

The Life of Shakespeare

Many periods in Shakespeare's life remain obscure to us. Subject-matter for his biography began to be collected only about a hundred years after his death, and many of the facts gathered are very doubtful. There is nothing surprising in that, because in the time of Shakespeare the work of a public theatre playwright was considered the least respectable of all literary arts and no one paid much attention to dramatists' lives. However, the life of Shakespeare is better known to us than the life of any other dramatist of his time, with the exception of Ben Jonson; of some of his other colleagues we have practically no data at all. Our short survey of Shakespeare's life is founded only on authentic (trustworthy) sources.

William Shakespeare was born in 1564, in the town of Stratford-on-Avon. He was christened in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford on April 26. As it was customary to christen children on the third day after birth, we may suppose that he was born on April 23. His father, John Shakespeare, was a prominent citizen who became an alderman. In 1570 a serious rebellion broke out in the north of England: the powerful feudal families of Percy and Neville rose in revolt against Queen Elizabeth. Shakespeare would have seen government troops marching north, and, since his father was an alderman whose duty it was to organize militia, the boy was in the very centre of events. For months, the talk of his elders must have been of rebels, armies, bloodshed and the threat to stability. No doubt these events produced a great impression on the future poet.

In his childhood Shakespeare probably attended the Stratford Grammar School, where he could have acquired a considerable knowledge of Latin. Later he satirized the school education of his time in his comedies "Love's Labour's Lost" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor".

The first record we have of his life after his christening is that of his marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582. A daughter was born to them in 1583 and twins, a boy and a girl, in 1585. By that time John Shakespeare had been ruined and was quite poor.

After the birth of the twins we know absolutely nothing about Shakespeare's life for the next seven years. Scholars have put forth various theories concerning that period, some are very interesting and clever, but none of them can be either proved or disproved. We know for certain that in 1592 Robert Greene published a pamphlet in which he made some insulting remarks about Shakespeare, from which we may conclude that by that year Shakespeare had arrived in London and had not only become a dramatist whose work attracted general attention, but was growing to be a serious competitor to the University Wits.

In 1593 a very serious epidemic of the plague broke out, and theatrical performances were temporarily stopped. During that time Shakespeare must have written his narrative poem, "Venus and Adonis", published in the same year and dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. In certain memoirs it is stated that for the poem Southampton made Shakespeare a present of & 1,000, but by the standard of the time the sum was so colossal that we suspect the author of the memoirs of adding an extra nought. However, we may say for certain that Shakespeare was acquainted with Southampton and his friends, a circle of exquisite young aristocrats, among whose number was the Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth's favourite at one time. We may suppose that the acquaintance was a lasting one, for in the next year Shakespeare dedicated to Southampton another poem, "Lucrece". These two poems were the only works in the publication of which Shakespeare took part himself.

At the same time Shakespeare became closely allied to the theatre company of the Lord Chamberlain's Servants (or the Chamberlain's), headed by the great tragedian, Richard Burbage. In 1599 the company built and occupied the best-known of Elizabethan theatres, the Globe. Shakespeare eventually became a leading share-holder and the principal playwright to the company. He was also an actor, but, obviously, not a first-rate one: the parts which we know for certain he played were the old servant Adam in "As You Like It" and the Ghost in "Hamlet". By 1597 he had prospered to such a degree that he bought the largest house in Stratford.

The first (and very complimentary) mention of Shakespeare as dramatist was made by the writer Francis Meres in 1598; Meres drew up a list of Shakespeare's plays, and also made mention of his sonnets, some of which were probably written at an earlier date. The sonnets appeared in a separate edition only in 1609, when the fashion for sonnets was on the decline, and the book didn't attract much attention.

In 1601 the Earl of Essex, fallen into great disfavour with the queen, attempted to raise an armed revolt against her. Among his allies were Southampton and many of his friends. On the day of their uprising they ordered Shakespeare's historical play "Richard II" to be performed at the Globe for propaganda purposes: they hoped that showing the dethronement of an unworthy king would arouse the people to follow them. The revolt turned out a complete failure; Essex was beheaded, Southampton and others imprisoned. We may suppose that Burbage and Shakespeare had a very narrow escape.

This was also the time when Shakespeare's great tragedies began to appear.

During the last years of his life Shakespeare wrote less and less; he tried composing in a new manner, originated by Beaumont and Fletcher and very fashionable at the time. In 1613, after the Globe had been destroyed by fire during a performance of "Henry VIII", he retired to Stratford and seems to have stopped writing altogether. We may suppose that by then he was a very ill man. On April 23, 1616, he died and was buried in the same Holy Trinity Church in Stratford where he was christened.

In 1623, two of Shakespeare's fellow-actors, John Heminge and Henry Condell, collected and published all his plays in a single volume, which is now known as the First Folio. Sixteen plays in the collection were printed for the first time, among them such masterpieces as "Julius Caesar", "Measure for Measure", "Timon of Athens", "Macbeth", "Antony and Cleopatra", "Coriolanus", and "The Tempest". Ben Jonson also took part in the publication; his great poem to the memory of Shakespeare, some lines of which form the epigraph to this chapter, was included in the book.

And that was the way Shakespeare's immortality began…

The Dating of Shakespeare's Plays

One of the main problems in the study of Shakespeare was the dating of his plays, which was satisfactorily solved in 1930 by a foremost Shakespearian scholar, Sir Edmund K. Chambers. This is the chronological table made by Sir Edmund; it is considered the most convincing one. The double dates indicate the theatrical season during which the particular play was first performed.

1590-1591 Henry VI, Part II

Henry VI, Part III

1591-1592 Henry VI, Part I

1592-1593 Richard III

The Comedy of Errors

1593-1594 Titus Andronicus

The Taming of the Shrew

1594-1595 The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Love's Labour's Lost

Romeo and Juliet

1595-1596 Richard II

A Midsummer Night's Dream

1596-1597 King John

The Merchant of Venice

1597-1598 Henry IV, Part I

Henry IV, Part II

1598-1599 Much Ado About Nothing

Henry V

1599-1600 Julius Caesar

As You Like It

Twelfth Night

1600-1601 Hamlet

The Merry Wives of Windsor

1601-1602 Troilus and Cressida

1603-1604 All's Well That Ends Well

1604-1605 Measure for Measure

Othello

1605-1606 King Lear

Macbeth

1606-1607 Antony and Cleopatra

1607-1608 Coriolanus

Timon of Athens

1608-1609 Pericles

1609-1610 Cymbeline

1610-1611 The Winter's Tale

1611-1612 The Tempest

1612-1613 Henry VIII

The only justifiable correction to this table was made by Leslie Hotson who proved "The Merry Wives of Windsor" to have been written around 1598.

It is quite possible that some of Shakespeare's early plays, such as the "Henry VI" trilogy or his revisions of older plays, were not written by him alone. It is almost certain that "Henry VIII" was written in collaboration with Fletcher, to whom the greater part of the text belongs.

There are some other plays, the authorship of which, at least partly, is attributed to Shakespeare, but it is wiser not to draw any definite conclusions about them.

Shakespeare's Plays

Shakespeare's literary work may be divided into four periods. The first period, dating from the beginning of his career to 1594, may be called the period of apprenticeship. The plays of that period were written under the influence of the University Wits and are cruder in their stage-craft and psychology than his later works. However, we must admit that one play written during that time, "Richard III", remains one of his most popular and most frequently staged works.

During the second period, from the 1594-1595 season up to 1600, Shakespeare wrote plays belonging mainly to two dramatic genres: histories (historical, or chronicle, plays) and comedies. The two tragedies written during those years, "Romeo and Juliet" and "Julius Caesar", differ greatly from his mature tragedies. The former, one of his most popular and frequently produced plays, is a true masterpiece; but its treatment of the material places it apart from his great tragedies. "Julius Caesar" in its construction resembles a history rather than a tragedy.

Shakespeare's Comedies

The comedies of Shakespeare did not establish a lasting tradition in the theatre, as did those written by Jonson or Moliere. The plays of these authors portray the everyday life of their time with the characters exaggerated almost into satirical grotesques. The comedies of Shakespeare are composed on opposite principles. The scene is usually set in some imaginary country, and the action is based on stories that are almost fairy-tales. But within these non-realistic settings and plots are placed true-to-life characters depicted with the deep insight into human psychology for which Shakespeare is famed. Each comedy has a main plot and one or two sub-plots, and sometimes it is the sub-plot we play most attention to. The comic characters of these plays always have an English flavour, even if the scene is laid in Athens, Illyria, or the inexplicable Forest of Arden. All these plays are written in easy-flowing verse and light, tripping prose. The text is full of jokes and pun, some of which contain topical allusions, which are hard to understand in the 20^th century. All the comedies tell of love and harmony, at first disturbed, finally restored. In them Shakespeare often treats one of his favourite motifs: the right of an individual to free choice in love, despite the conventions and customs of the time. To emphasize this point, Shakespeare more often than not embodies that tendency in a female character; his typical comedy heroines are brave, noble, full of initiative and free in speech. Another often recurring motif in the comedies is the contrast between appearance and reality. Shakespeare makes us see the importance of self-knowledge. In the complicated plots of his comedies the heroes and heroines select wrong partners so often because they have formed wrong opinions about their own characters. However, Shakespeare treats their mistakes good-humouredly, and the comedies end happily with the characters understanding themselves and those they love, and everything brought to a harmonious conclusion.

Let us look more closely at one of his so-called "golden comedies", "Twelfth Night", the last play of his second period.

"TWELFTH NIGHT"

This comedy is built around the typical Shakespearian conflict between true and false emotion. Duke Orsino tries to convince himself that he is in love with Countess Olivia, literally hypnotizing himself into an "ideal" passion, modelled after Petrarch's sonnets, and growing more absorbed by his feelings after each rebuff received from her. In her turn, Olivia is in deep grief for her dead brother, having renounced all joy of love. In Shakespeare's opinion this is treachery to human nature, a view that is shared by Sir Toby Belch and Maria, the comic characters that personify the optimism of the Renaissance. "The villain of the piece" is Malvolio, a stuck-up hypocrite; in this figure Shakespeare caricatures rigid Puritan ethics, showing the contrast between Malvolio's outward morality and his inner dishonesty, cruelty and stupidity. "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Sir Toby asks him. It must be remarked that Shakespeare's irony in depicting Malvolio is not bitter, and for all our antipathy to him, Malvolio remains a humorous than a satirical figure; otherwise the light vein of the play would be unbalanced.

After the plot has been quite tangled up, its solution is provided by the twin sister and brother, Viola and Sebastian; the marriage of Orsino to Viola and Sebastian to Olivia brings the desired happy ending, with the true passion in each case driving out the artificial one.

Viola is one of the famous Shakespearian comedy heroines, a true woman of the Renaissance: she is brave, adventurous, clever, witty, and capable of deep feeling. We see that in "Twelfth Night" three types of emotion are contrasted: the genuine and active love of Viola, the self-inducted infatuation of Orsino, and the so-called "love" of Malvolio, born out of his desire for gain and social elevation.

The play is written with great skill; the comic sub-plot of Sir Toby, Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, Maria and Malvolio is intermingled with the lyrical story that forms the main plot, by the hand of a truly great master. Comedy and poetry are, so to speak, brought to a common denominator. The songs in "Twelfth Night" are probably the best Shakespeare ever wrote.

The songs are sung by Feste, Olivia's jester. He strikes a sobering note in the play. The wisest of all, he is able to see through all pretence, and the play turns on pretences, conscious or unconscious. An onlooker in all the events, he is the only character who finds no personal happiness in the final count. He gains nothing for himself, and the merry comedy ends with his sad song about "the rain that raineth every day"…

Shakespeare's Histories

Shakespeare' s histories, or chronicle plays, are more closely related to his tragedies than to the comedies. This was the genre in which he started his career as a playwright, and beginning with his first works, he gives us a vast dramatic cycle in which he deals with themes in the historical process, the laws of historical development, and the nature of power.

In his first historical tetralogy, which includes the three parts of "Henry VI" and "Richard III", Shakespeare shows the evils of feudalism. In these plays, which show the Wars of the Roses, the predatory nature of the feudal overlord is made very clear. The plays are a series of battles and conspiracies, of alliances formed and broken; they are full of treachery, brutality and suffering. Among the warring lords there arises a figure which is, probably, the most sinister one in all Shakespeare's plays. This is Richard, son to the Duke of York, who later becomes King Richard III. He first appears in "Henry VI" and says of himself:

Why, I can smile, and murder while I smile;

……………………………………………..

And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,

And frame my face to all occasions.

……………………………………………..

I can add colours to the chameleon;

……………………………………………..

Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?

Tut! were it further off, I'll pluck it down.

("Henry VI", Part III, III, 2)

This blood-thirsty hunchback is drawn as a villain on the grandest scale imaginable. Cruel, hypocritical, utterly unscrupulous, he is helped in his career by a tremendous will-power, an unshakable courage, a mighty intellect, a deep knowledge of human psychology, and a genuine, if cynical, wit. In "Richard III" we see how, having attained the crown, for the sake of which he has committed one crime after another, he finds his former energy gone. Only on the eve of the Battle of Bosworth, where he is to perish, do his powers return, and he addresses his followers, proclaiming his immoral creed:

Go, gentlemen, every man unto his charge:*

……………………………………………

Conscience is but a word that cowards use,

Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe:

Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.

March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell;*

If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.

("Richard III", V, 3)

_________

Let every man do his duty

Let us go to battle in a rush

These words of Richard Crookback are the quintessence of the principles that Shakespeare so profoundly hated.

The first historical tetralogy was written in a monumental, and yet in a rather crude manner; there is no subtle psychology in it, many characters are painted all black or all white (mostly all black). In the second historical tetralogy, which deals with an earlier period of English history (it consists of "Richard II", the two parts of "Henry IV", and "Henry V"), Shakespeare rose to the heights of his poetic and dramatic power. The theme of feudal decay is developed here with considerably greater finesse than in the first tetralogy. Probably the figures that embody the theme most vividly are to be seen in "Henry IV". The first is Henry Percy, nicknamed Hotspur. All the feudal virtues are seen in him: he is brave, straightforward, honourable, strong-willed. Although his manners are rude, and he is fiery-tempered and quarrelsome, we never doubt his honesty and his great ability as a warrior. Yet despite all this, Shakespeare shows Hotspur to be historically doomed: his participation in feudal civil wars brings disaster to the country, and his valour serves only to forward his personal ambition and makes all his heroic deeds fruitless. Another character in "Henry IV" is Sir John Falstaff, one of Shakespeare's greatest creations. If Hotspur is the concentration of feudal honour, Falstaff is a knight utterly devoid not only of feudal prejudices, but of all moral principles. When he has to take part in a battle, he tries to avoid it and discourses as follows:

"Can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take a grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is in that word, honour? What is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! - Who hath it? he that died o'Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no. Is it insensible, then? yea,* to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. Why? detraction will not suffer it:* therefore I'll none of it.* Honour is a mere scutcheon:…"*

("Henry IV", Part I, V, 1)

_____________

yea (old use) - yes

Slander will not permit it (honour) to live with the living

I'll have none of it

scutcheon - a coat of arms

Coward, glutton, drunkard, Falstaff is cynical to the last degree; but he possesses a marvellous sense of humour and does not hesitate to aim his irony at himself as well; and this good-natured sense of humour gives him a peculiar charm.

When Shakespeare began analysing the nature of p ower and politics, the situation in England was such that the necessity of political stability, guaranteed by an undisputed monarchy, was apparent, and such a point of view was upheld by the theory of the Divine Right of Kings. By this theory, royal power is granted by God Himself, and anyone revolting against the lawful king is in a state of moral sin. Consciously or unconsciously, in his chronicle plays Shakespeare undermined this theory to a great extent. In such histories as "Richard II" and "Richard III" he proves convincingly that the dethronement and even the killing of an unworthy or a villainous king is a righteous and justifiable act.

But that is not all. If we look at Shakespeare's histories as a single whole, we may see that, all other things apart, they contain a profound and detailed treatise upon the nature of monarchy. In them Shakespeare shows us all the possible types of autocratic rulers.

King John - a mediocre villain.

Richard III - a great villain who, all the same, is a true genius. The historical Richrd III was not such a dyed-in-the-wool (absolute) scoundrel as Shakespeare shows him; in depicting him, Shakespeare wanted to demonstrate the depths of depravity to which a villainous king would sink if endowed with the intellect of a genius.

Henry VI - a kind, learned, weak-willed, religious man; he has none of the qualities necessary to be ruler of a kingdom, so he brings as much suffering upon his country as a villainous king would.

Richard II - "a vain, shallow, foppish king with the soul of an artist". In him Shakespeare portrays egotism with the same skill as he portrays ambition in Macbeth or jealousy in Othello. It is only after losing his crown and being imprisoned that Richard begins to understand life and attains a certain majesty.

His cousin Henry Bolingbroke, later King Henry IV, is a shrewd but unscrupulous politician. Having dethroned Richard II, he establishes a dangerous precedent, and his former allies, various feudal lords, try to dethrone him in his turn, which starts a long series of feudal civil wars. Into his mouth Shakespeare puts one of the most beautiful soliloquies he ever wrote.

It is night. The old king, mortally ill, roams the empty halls of his palace; his soul is tortured by the news of feudal uprisings, and he is unable to sleep.

How many thousand of my poorest subjects

Are at this hour asleep! - O sleep, O gentle sleep,

Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,

That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,

And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,

Upon uneasy pallets, stretching thee,

And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,

Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great,

Under high canopies of costly state,

And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody?

O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile

In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch,

A watch-case or a common 'larum bell?

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast

Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains

In cradle of the rude imperious surge,

And in the visitation of the winds,

Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them

With deafening clamour in the slippery shrouds,

That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose

To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;

And in the calmest and most stillest night,

With all appliances and means to boot,

Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

("Henry IV", Part II, III, 1)

______________

thee (old use) - you

wilt (old use) - will

steep - plunge

liest thou (old use) - do you lie

crib - a hut

pallet - a straw mattress

thy (old use) - your

canopy - a covering over a bed

the vile - the low-born

watch case - a place from which a watch is kept

a common 'larum bell - an alarm bell of a common (village community)

surge - stormy sea

shrouds - a set of ropes which support the masts of a ship

hurly - uproar

to boot - in addition

(the) low - those in lowly situations

But there is an antithesis to all these monarchs.

Shakespeare's Ideal King. At first we see him in "Henry IV" as Harry, Prince of Wales, when he is far from ideal. A brave but cynical young man, he spends his days in riotous living and forgets the feelings and duties of a son. Upon learning of his father's mortal illness, however, he suddenly changes and, after becoming Henry V, turns into a model of virtue with a speed that is hardly convincing.

In "Henry V" he is as different from Prince Hal in "Henry IV" as, incidentally, is the dull and stupid Falstaff in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" from the wonderful figure in "Henry IV".

Henry V is endowed with all the qualities which, in Shakespeare's opinion, a good king should possess to be really good. Shakespeare's Henry bears no resemblance to the historical Henry V, a cruel, effeminate and unscrupulous ruler. But Shakespeare used the figure of Henry V for the purpose of creating his ideal king just as he used the figure of Richard III to show the most vicious king possible.

The king in the play is brave, open-hearted, generous and democratic, more resembling a well-to-do farmer or artisan than the first aristocrat of the land. Courting the French princess, he says himself: "…thou wouldst find me such a plain king, that thou wouldst think I had sold my farm to buy my crown" ("Henry V", V,2). Unlike all other kings described by Shakespeare, he places the interests of his country far above his personal interests. Under his sceptre he unites the different nations inhabiting the British Isles (the English, Scots, Irish and Welsh) on a basis of perfect equality. What is more important, he achieves a harmonious unity of all classes, paying particular attention to the common people. Indeed, the victory at Agincourt* is shown in the play as the victory of the English peasantry over the arrogant French nobility, who simply ignored the common people.

And yet the play is a failure, that is to say, a failure for Shakespeare. Had it been written by any one else, its author would have been proclaimed a genius, but for Shakespeare it is inferior to many of his other works. Some passages, including many of Henry's own speeches, the address of the Duke of Burgundy in which he persuades the warring monarchs to come to a peace agreement, and especially the speeches of the Chorus,* rank among the highest achievements of the great poet. But the figure of Henry, which forms the centre of the play, is lifeless and unconvincing, and no wonder: the character has no model in real life. In all European history we won't find a single monarch resembling Shakespeare's King Harry even distantly. But still, in "Henry V" Shakespeare made an attempt to prove that a good king is possible, if only theoretically.

Such were his views in his younger days. But when the time of his great third period came, they underwent considerable change…

· A historical victory of the English over the French, achieved in the famous battle at Agincourt, a village of Northern France, in 1415 (during the Hundred Year's War).

· The Chorus in Shakespeare's theatre was a single actor who commented on the action of plays, usually in the prologues and epilogues, and occasionally between the scenes.