AKC 3 T&RS – Autumn Term 2007 – Afterlives
18/10/07
AKC 3 - 18 OCTOBER 2007
SHAKESPEARE’S AFTERLIFE
SARAH DUSTAGHEER, KING'S COLLEGE LONDON
Email: sarah.dustagheer@kcl.ac.uk
In his afterlife, Shakespeare has been established as an unparalleled, individual literary
genius whose work transcends time to express universal human truths about love, death,
life and everything in between. How accurate is this ‘afterlife’? How does it compare
with the reality of Shakespeare’s life in the early modern theatre industry? Does it limit
our understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare’s work?
Shakespeare in Collaboration
(1) Christopher Marlowe - Edward II (1594) and Shakespeare’s Richard II. Marlowe’s
The Jew of Malta (1591/2) and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (1596)
John Fletcher - Henry VIII
George Wilkins - Pericles
Thomas Nashe - Act I of Henry VI (?)
(2) As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights
And kill sick people groaning under walls:
Sometimes I go about and poison wells
The Jew of Malta, Act Two, scene three, lines 176-8
(3) I am Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses,
affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the
same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and
summer as a Christian is?
The Merchant of Venice, Act Three, scene one, lines 52-57
Shakespeare in Context
(1) ‘London, what are thy suburbs but licensed stews? Can it be so many brothel-houses
of salary sensuality and sixpenny whoredom should be set up and maintained….?’
Thomas Nashe, Christ’s Tears Over Jerusalem
(2) We must get her ravished or be rid of her
Pericles, Act Four, scene four, line 5
(3) ‘Good traders in the flesh’
‘Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss’
Troilus and Cressida: Act Five, scene ten, lines 45, 53
(4) Mistress Overdone: But shall all our houses of resort in the suburbs be pulled down?
Pompey: To the ground, mistress
Mistress O: Why, here’s a change in the commonwealth! What shall become of me?
AKC 3 T&RS – Autumn Term 2007 – Afterlives
18/10/07
Pompey: Come: fear you not: good counsellors lack no clients: though you change your
place you need not change your trade
Measure for Measure, Act One, scene two, line 94-100
(5) They have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the course
Macbeth, Act V, scene seven, lines 1-2
(6) I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him thus
Othello, Act Five, scene two, lines 358-9
(7) Antigonus: A savage clamour!
Well may I get abroad! This is the chase;
And I am gone for ever [Exit pursued by a bear]
The Winter’s Tale, Act Three, scene three, line 56-8
Shakespeare in Performance
‘the common haunters [visitors to the theatre] are, for the most part, the lewdest persons
on the land, apt for pilfery, perjury, forgery, or any roguery’
Henry Crosse, Virtue’s Commonwealth (1603)
Theatre ‘enrages the hearts and minds of [...] spectators; yea, oft, times animate and
excite them to anger, malice, duels, murders, revenge, and more than barbarous cruelty,
to the great disturbance of the public peace’
William Prynne, Histriomastix: The Player’s Scourge (1633)
Reading List
Jonathan Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare (London: Picador, 1997) – chapters 6 and 7
describe how Shakespeare was established as the highest example of genius and
England’s national poet
Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996) – in particular see Appendix 2 for contemporary references to playgoing
Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992)
Tiffany Stern, Making Shakespeare: From Stage to Page (London: Routledge, 2004) –
see chapter 2: Text, Playhouse and London
Full details about the AKC course, including copies of the handouts, can be found on the
AKC website at: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/akc. If you have any queries please contact the
AKC Course Administrator on ext 2333 or via email at dean@kcl.ac.uk. Please make a
note in your diary that the AKC Examination will take place on Monday 21 April
between 14.30 and 16.30.
YOU MUST REGISTER FOR THE COURSE using the form on the website. You will
need to register for the exam separately, information will be provided next semester.