 William
Shakespeare (baptised 26 April
1564; died 23 April 1616) - English poet
and playwright, widely regarded as the
greatest writer in the English language
and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.
He is often called England's national poet
and the "Bard of Avon“.
 His surviving works, including some
collaborations, consist of about 38 plays,
154 sonnets, two long narrative poems,
and several other poems.
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Shakespeare was not a man of letters by profession,
and probably had only some grammar school
education. He was neither a lawyer, nor an aristocrat
as the "university wits“
But he was very gifted and incredibly versatile, and
he surpassed "professionals" as Robert Greene who
mocked this "shake-scene" of low origins.
Though most dramas met with great success in the
Elizabethan Era, it is in his later years (marked by the
early reign of James I) that he wrote what have been
considered his greatest plays: Hamlet, Romeo and
Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and
Cleopatra, and The Tempest.
His plays have been translated into every major living
language, and are performed more often than those
of any other playwright.
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Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon.
At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom
he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and
Judith.
After the birth of the twins, left few historical traces
scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as
Shakespeare's "lost years“.
many apocryphal stories of this period, such as
Shakespeare fleeing to London to escape prosecution for
deer poaching. Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare
starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre
patrons in London. Some biographers claimed that S. had
been a country schoolmaster.
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In 1592 began a successful career in London as an actor,
writer, and part owner of a playing company called the
Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men.
retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three
years later.
Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and
there has been considerable speculation about such
matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious
beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were
written by others.
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Many of his plays were published in editions of varying
quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, two of
his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a
collected edition of his dramatic works that included all
but two of the plays now recognized as Shakespeare's.
Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his
own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present
heights until the 19th century. The Romantics, in
particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the
Victorians worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence called "bardolatry“. In the 20th century, his work was
repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements
in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly
popular today and are constantly studied, performed and
reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts
throughout the world.
 Shakespeare
produced most of his known
work between 1590 and 1613. His early
plays were mainly comedies and histories,
genres he raised to the peak of
sophistication and artistry by the end of
the sixteenth century. He then wrote
mainly tragedies until about 1608,
including Hamlet, King Lear, and
Macbeth, considered some of the finest
examples in the English language. In his
last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also
known as romances.
 There
are four periods in Shakespeare's
writing career.
 1. EARLY: 1590 – cca.1595. - mainly
comedies influenced by Roman and Italian
models and history plays in the popular
chronicle tradition.
 Comedies: The Taming of the Shrew, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream
 Histories: Henry VI (parts 1, 2, 3), Richard
III
 Early tragedies: Titus Andronicus, Romeo
and Juliet.
 MIDDLE:
about 1595-1599. - greatest
comedies and histories
 Comedies: As You Like It, Twelfth Night,
Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant
of Venice
 Histories: Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part
II, Henry V, Julius Caesar
 LATE:
1600-1612 – two subperiods:
 “Tragic” period
 “Romance” period
 about
1600 to about 1608 wrote mostly
tragedies:
 “The Four Great Tragedies”: Hamlet,
Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
 Other tragedies: Anthony and Cleopatra,
Timon of Athens, Coriolanus
 “Problem plays”: Troilus and Cressida,
All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for
Measure
about 1608 to 1613, mainly romances:
 The Tempest
 A Winter’s Tale
 Cymbeline
 Pericles
 OTHER WORKS: 154 sonnets and two long
narrative poems: Venus and Adonis and The Rape
of Lucrece
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two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a
married woman of dark complexion (the "dark lady"), and one
about conflicted love for a fair young man (the "fair youth").
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It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals,
or if the authorial "I" who addresses them represents
Shakespeare himself
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The 1609 edition was dedicated to a "Mr. W.H.", credited as
"the only begetter" of the poems. It is not known whether this
was written by Shakespeare himself or by the publisher,
Thomas Thorpe, whose initials appear at the foot of the
dedication page; nor is it known who Mr. W.H. was, despite
numerous theories, or whether Shakespeare even authorised
the publication.
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Critics praise the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the
nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time.
 Holinshed’s
Chronicles – the source for most
of the history plays – events from English
history
 A surge of national pride and patriotism,
especially after the victory over the Armada
 Shakespeare often focuses on a part of
characters’ lives and omits significant events
for dramatic purposes
 Events that S. chose to dramatize were the
collapse of the medieval society of England
in the Wars of the Roses, and the loss of
territories in France
Plays often regarded by critics as Tudor
propaganda
 Warning against dangers of civil war
 Plays celebrate the founders of Tudor dynasty
and demonize members of the rival House of
York (Richard III)
 On the one hand, the plays serve the politics of
the time by showing how a rebellion against the
rightful monarch leads to bloodshed and chaos;
on the other hand, S. uses the well-known
dramatic ideas:
 The Fall of Princes
 The Fortune’s Wheel
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Elizabethan comedy – different meaning from
modern comedy
 Shakespearean comedy – a happy ending, usually
marriage, and a light-hearted tone and style
 Greater emphasis on situations than characters
(numbing the audience's connection to the
characters, so that when characters experience
misfortune, the audience still finds it laughable)
 A struggle of young lovers to overcome difficulty,
often presented by elders
 Separation and re-unification
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Deception among characters (especially mistaken
identity)
A clever servant
Tension between characters, often within a family
Multiple, intertwining plots
Use of all styles of comedy (slapstick, puns, dry
humor, witty banter, practical jokes)
Pastoral element (courtly people living an idealized,
rural life), originally an element of Pastoral Romance,
exploited by Shakespeare for his comic plots and
often parodied for humorous effects.
Best comedies: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth
Night, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing
 Several
of Shakespeare's comedies, such as
Measure for Measure, All's Well That Ends
Well, The Merchant of Venice - an unusual
tone - a difficult mix of humour and tragedy
- classified as problem plays.
 It is not clear whether the uneven nature of
these dramas is due to an imperfect
understanding of Elizabethan humour and
society by modern audience, a fault on
Shakespeare's part, or a deliberate attempt
by him to blend styles and subvert the
audience's expectations.
Influences: Aristotle – tragedy meant to arouse
pity and fear in the audience; leads to catharsis
(emotional release and purification brought
about by an intense emotional experience);
characters: kings and nobles; the main
character: of a high social and moral standing
but with a tragic flaw/fault/mistake
(misjudgment, ambition, gullibility, jealousy,
indecisiveness) which brings about his downfall
and final demise. Revenge tragedy – especially
popular – a wronged hero plans and executes
revenge.
 Seneca – violence; hero’s wrong decisions; stoic
acceptance of his fall; five-act structure
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Four stages in a man’s life: as a son (Hamlet), a
lover and a husband (Othello), a man of
ambition (Macbeth) and a father/old man (King
Lear)
 All protagonists have potential for both good and
evil
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 Hamlet
(1600 – 1601)
A revenge tragedy; blank verse
 The mystery of procrastination – hero’s tragic flaw
remains unclear (too sensitive for such a brutal task
– Goethe; paralyzed by his habit of thinking –
Coleridge; psychoanalytical interpretation, Oedipal
complex – Freud / Ernest Jones)
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 Othello
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(1603 – 1604)
Domestic tragedy with a tinge of the revenge
motif in the character of Iago
Illusion vs. reality; ocular proof
Tragic flaw – trusting nature; gullibility;
jealousy
Master of malicious plotting – Machiavellian
character of Iago (Vice)
 King
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Lear (1605 – 1606)
Ancient British history
The division of kingdom – tragic mistake;
disruption of hierarchy
Greedy, ungrateful children
 Macbeth
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(1606)
Scottish history
Two characters willfully embrace evil (unlike
Othello, Hamlet and Lear)
Inner conflict; tragic flaw: hero’s ambition
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they bear similarities with medieval romance
literature and are different from comedies in many
ways.
Shakespeare's romances share the following features:
A redemptive plotline with a happy ending involving
the re-uniting of long-separated family members;
Magic and other fantastical elements;
A deus ex machina, often manifesting as a Roman god
(such as Jupiter in Cymbeline or Diana in Pericles);
A mixture of "civilized" and "pastoral" scenes (such as
the gentry and the island residents in The Tempest)
Influenced by tragicomedies by Beaumont and
Fletcher; and courtly masque by Ben Jonson
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distinctiveness of the late romances has
been questioned – the plays certainly share
common features with earlier Shakespearean
works such as Twelfth Night, with earlier
romances by other authors back to the
ancient world, and with works in genres like
pastoral. Yet Shakespeare's late plays have a
distinctive aura to them, with elements of
tragicomedy and masque blended with
elements of comedy and romance and
pastoral – not into a chaos as might be
expected, but into coherent, dramatically
effective and appealing plays
 Improvement
of blank verse
 Combination of traditional with freer style
 Development of characters
 Wide range of themes