Introduction to Shakespeare
Plan for this talk
1.
2.
3.
4.
England at Shakespeare’s time
The Renaissance in London and in the theatre
Three types of plays
Shakespeare’s themes
1.
2.
3.
Love
Power
Order - the Chain of Being
5. Shakespeare’s language
6. Shakespeare as a Renaissance writer
2
Elisabeth og James I
Shakespeare 1564 - 1616
• Stability – well… sort of
• After civil war, reformation, fighting within the
Tudor family over who should rule, fear of Spain
• Henry, Edward, Mary, Elizabeth,
• First colonies, Spanish gold, the weather in 1588
• Still: religious ”cleansing,” fear of war, uncertainty
about succession
• 1603: James I – new royal family: the Stuarts
3
4
5
The Rose – cutaway
6
The stage at Shakespeare’s
Globe
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Three types of plays
• Comedy: young persons want to get married,
there is some obstacle, the obstacle is
removed, everyone is happy.
• Tragedy: a person is led to his (her) death by
fate or by his own personality. He and others
die.
– History play: a tragedy, but with characters from
English or Roman history
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Shakespeare’s themes
• Love
– Courtly love
– New view of marriage
Modern readers’ themes
• The Renaissance – the
chain of being
• Power
• Language
• Identity
• Gender and race
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Courtly love
• Courtly Love:
A formal declaration of
love from a man to
another person.
• Mostly came in the
form of the sonnet: 14
lines of five iambs . _
• abab cdcd efef gg
• Example in a second…
• Shakespeare produced
154 sonnets
• He uses the sonnet
form for formal
occasions in his plays.
10
Sonnet 18
(the first 4 lines)
.
-
.
Shall
I
.
.
-
.
-
com pare
thee
to
a
sum mer’s
-
.
-
-
.
-
Thou
art
more
love ly
and
more
tem pe rate
.
-
.
-
.
-
-
.
Rough
winds
do
shake
the
dar ling
buds
of May
.
-
-
.
-
.
-
.
And
sum mer’s
lease
hath
all
too
short
a date
.
-
.
.
.
.
Day
-
-
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SONNET 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
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Marriage
• Traditonal view of marriage:
• Decided by parents, based on what was good for the
family
• In the renaissance we meet the idea that
marriage could be based on feeling
• Many of Shakespeare’s play deal with this: How and if it
is possible to make both the parents and the young
persons happy about a marriage.
• All the comedies are about this
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Power
• Three subthemes:
– What must a person do to get/keep power
– How does getting power change a person
– What happens when no one assumes power
• Two renaissance thinkers:
– Machiavelli, ”The Prince” 1532 – about how to be
a strong ruler
– Thomas Hobbes, ”Leviathan” 1651 – about the
chaos of the Kingless society
14
Order!
The chain of being
• Each person had a particular role to play in the
world. Breaking this role would make the world ”go
wrong”
– If a non-King tried to become King
– If a woman behaved like a man
– If humans entered the world of e.g. fairies or witches
• If this happened nature might misbehave:
– unseasonal weather or animals behaving strangely
– magical things occurring, e.g. a man with a donkey’s head
– ghosts
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Pic
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Language
• Shakespeares language in the plays is mostly ”blank
verse” – five iambs, no rhyme
Blank verse: Hamlet, I, 4
– The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold
• Variations:
– Non-nobels/common people speak prose
– Mythological creatures often rhyme
– Rhymed lines should make you pay attention
• In other words: we can (often) tell a character’s
position on the chain of being from his language.
18
Language 2
• How to say ”you”
– singular
• nom: thou
• akk + dat: thee
• gen: thy/thine
– plural
• nom, akk, dat: you
• gen: your/yours
• Oldfashioned verb
forms
– 2nd sg: -(s)t
• thou lovest
– 3rd sg: th
• he loveth
– §§110-111 in EGS
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The renaissance
• New view of marriage
• Focus on the individual’s role in society
– and in the world
• The magical/mythological world parallel
to the human world
• The strong ruler
• The ”something-for-everybody” plays
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