LectureIII William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

I. Historical Background

This is a greatest and most advanced revolution in the human history. This is the age the giants are needed and produced.

                        ------F. Engles

    The 16^th century in England was a period of the breaking up of feudal relations and the establishment of the foundations of capitalism. The Renaissance marks a transition from the medieval to the modern world. Generally, it refers to the period between the 14^th and mid-17^th centuries.

    Queen Elizabeth adopted a policy of tolerance and successfully maintained a balance between the feudal lords and the rising bourgeoisie s well as between the Protestants and the Catholics. It was a period of comparative peace and prosperity. The encouragement the Queen for exploration and rapid development in industry at home stimulated the commercial expansion abroad. The defeat of the Spanish “Armada” in 1588 by the English navy consolidated the English control over the sea.

A. Queen Elizabeth I: a powerful England with the fast development of capitalism.

It was a period of comparative peace and prosperity.

B. Renaissance: it means rebirth, was an intellectual movement sprung first in Italy in the 14^th century and gradually spread all over Europe. Two features are striking of this movement. The one is a thirsting curiosity for the classical literature. Another is the humanism, which means the new feeling of admiration for human beauty and human achievement.

“Renaissance ”is a French word that means rebirth or revival, is actually a movement stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture, the new discoveries in geography and astrology, the religious reformation and the economic expansion.

C. Humanism: Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. It sprang from the endeavor to restore a medieval reverence for the ancient authors and is frequently taken as the beginning of the Renaissance on its conscious, intellectual side, for the Greek and Roman civilization was based on such a conception that man is the measure of all things. Through the new learning, humanists not only saw the arts of splendor and enlightenment, but the human values represented in the works. Renaissance humanists found in the classics a justification to exalt human nature and came to see that human beings were glorious creatures capable of individual development in the direction of perfections, and that the world they inhabited was theirs not to despise but to question, explore, and enjoy. Thus, by emphasizing the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life, they voiced their beliefs that man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of this life, but had the ability to perfect himself and to perform wonders. Thomas More, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare are the best representatives of the English humanists.

D. The Enclosure Movement

   With the expansion of commerce the English merchants brought enormous wealth from abroad. The important trading field they were interested in was the wool. For centuries England had been famous for her wool export. As the demand for wool increased, some nobles and the burghers turned vast arable into pastures and a lot of peasants became landless. They were compelled to leave their land, and came to cities and owns, working as labourers.

E. The Flourishing of Drama

With the rapid expansion of cities and towns in the 16^th, century, drama flourished as there was no other means of entertainment for city dwellers and noblemen.

II. English literature in the Renaissance period.

    English literature in the Renaissance Period is usually regarded as the highlight in this history of English literature. In the second period of English Renaissance, that is, in Elizabethan Period, English literature developed with a great speed and made a magnificent achievement. The greatest and most distinctive achievement of Elizabethan literature is the drama. Thus appeared a group of excellent dramatists. They are John Lyly, Thomas Kyd, George Peele, Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Next to the drama is the Lyrical Poetry. Elizabethan Poetry is remarkable for its variety, its freshness, its youthfulness and its romantic feeling. A group of great poets appeared, and a large number of noble poetry was produced. In that period, writing poetry became a fashion. Queen Elizabeth herself was a poet. She suggested subjects and rewarded poets. Her ministers and courtiers obeyed her example and tried to rival each other in shaping beautiful verses. The gentry, as a matter of fact, also followed the example; and after the gentry, all educated people. The universities made themselves particularly busy with poetry. England then became " a nest of singing birds". The famous poets of that period were Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser.

Since English Renaissance Period was an age of poetry and drama, and was not an age of prose, there were not so many prose writers. In the beginning period, the great humanist, Thomas More, wrote his famous prose work "Utopia", which may be thought of as the first literary masterpiece of the English Renaissance. In Elizabethan Period, Francis Bacon wrote more than fifty excellent essays, which make him one of the best essayists in English literature.

Drama

   University Wits(John Lyly, Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe， George Peele), They were so called as they were influenced by Roman dramatists when they were at university.     

William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson

   Christopher Marlowe was the most gifted of them. His best plays are Tamburlain《帖木耳大帝》, The Jew of Malta《马尔他岛的犹太人》 and The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus《浮士德博士》.

   John Lyly  Euphues ,it was written in a peculiar style known as “Euphuism”, which consists in the use of balance sentences, words alliterating and riming or identical.  

•Alexander and Campaspe 《亚历山大和坎帕斯比》 •King Midas 《弥达斯王》

  George Peele His best play is The Old Wives' Tale《老妇之谈》

  Thomas Kyd The Spanish Tragedy《西班牙悲剧》

   Robert Greene格林, 罗伯特  《尤弗伊斯》《潘多斯托》

  Ben Jonson his main comedies: Every Man in His Humour, Volpone, The Alchemist The Silent Woman

Poetry :  Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser

   Philip Sidney is well-known as a poet and a critic of poetry. His is known mainly for his three principal works: Arcadia《阿卡迪亚》, Astrophel and Stella and Apology for Poetry《诗辩》

   Edmund Spenser, his masterpiece is The Faerie Queene.

   Prose

   Thomas More, wrote his famous prose work "Utopia"

   Francis Bacon wrote more than fifty excellent essays

III  William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is one of the most remarkable playwrights and poets the world has ever known. He was man of the late Renaissance who gave the fullest expression to humanist ideals. With his 37/38/39 plays, 154 sonnets and 2 long poems, he has established his giant position in world literature. His works have been translated into every major language in the world. He has been given the highest praises by various scholars and critics in the world over. His contemporary poet and dramatist Ben Jonson dedicated a poem in praise of him: “… he was not of an age, but for all time!”. That is definitely true.

Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon, a small town to the northwest of London. His father was a burgher, a well-to-do glove maker and later became an alderman of the town. From various records it is clear that his father John Shakespeare, having enjoyed prosperity in business for some time, became less prosperous and Shakespeare might have helped him in his butcher’s shop. A bond dated Nov. 26, 1582, affords clear evidence that Shakespeare married with Anna Hathaway of Stratford. At this time Shakespeare was only eighteen, and the bride was eight years older. It was very probable that it was a hurried marriage because their first child Susanna was christened on May 26, 1583. The fact that the child was born only six months after the marriage suggests that it was a forced marriage and an ill-matched one.　　
　　 In 1584 Shakespeare left his native town. Why he did so remains a mystery. The most popular explanation was that he was prosecuted by a big landlord for poaching on his estate. Then until 1592 when he reappeared as a rising actor, Shakespeare disappeared from view. During the period he is said to have wandered through the country, finally coming to London, where he performed various mean jobs, including holding horses at a theater.

The earliest record of Shakespeare’s career is a reference in Robert Greene’s essay in which Shakespeare is mentioned as “an upstart crow…in his own conceit the only shakescene in a country.”　　 Shakespeare probably began to write plays around 1590, at first in collaboration with other playwrights or engaged in revising old plays. Then his two narrative poems were published. Venus and Adonis (1593), a poem about the love between a handsome young man, Adonis, and the goddess of love and how the youth was killed by a wild boar. The Rape of Lucrece (1594) is about a Roman lady who was raped and committed suicide and how she was avenged.　　
　　 Shakespeare’s career as an actor and playwright stretched for more than twenty years. Many of his plays were popular and quite a number of them were published in his lifetime without his knowledge. After his death a collection of his plays, 37 in all, were published in folio form by two of his friends in 1623. In the early years of his career Shakespeare was a shareholder in the playhouse. In 1611 or 1612, he retired or partly retired from London and went back to live in his native town. He died in Stratford in 1616.

Shakespeare’s writing career may be roughly divided into four stages:

The first period (1590-1594)—It is Shakespeare’s period of apprenticeship.

The second period(1595-1600) mature period of “great comedies” and historical plays.

The 3^rd period (1601-1607) the period of “great tragedies and dark comedies. his greatest tragedies—Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth.

The 4^th period (1608-1612) period of romantic drama.

The early years were years of his apprenticeship, dating from 1592 to 1594. During this period he wrote his early history plays or histories and a group of comedies. They are King Henry VI in three parts (1590-1592), Richard III (1593), Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594), and Love’s Labour Lost (1594). This is a period of experimentation. It is marked by imitation of existing plays, by the spirit of youthfulness and rich imagination, by exaggerated language and by the frequent use of rhymed couplets.　　
　　The second period is a period of rapid growth and development, dating from 1595 to 1600. Such plays as Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595), Romeo and Juliet (1596), The Merchant of Venice (1597), the two parts of Henry IV (1597-1598), As You Like it (1598), Julius Caesar (1599), and Henry V (1599), were all written in this period. They show more careful and artistic work, better plot, and a marked increase in the knowledge of human nature.　　
　　The third period is a period of gloom and depression, dating from 1601 to 161608. It is a period of his tragedies, such as Hamlet (1601), Othello (1604), King Lear (1605), and Macbeth (1605).　　
　　The fourth period is a period of restored serenity, from 1608 to 1612. It is a period of calm after storm, with such plays as The Winter’s Tale 91610) and The Tempest (1611).　　
　　Any summing up of Shakespeare’s achievements will be inadequate. However, the following points may be of some help to readers:　　
　　1. Shakespeare represented the trend of history in giving voice to the desires and aspirations of the people. After long years of domestic and foreign wars, both the people and the newly risen bourgeoisie were longing for peace under a strong monarch who would unite the whole country. In the first two periods, Shakespeare wrote a number of plays of England as their background. The whole length of the historical period from Richard II, who was the last medieval king and was displaced by Henry IV, to the defeat of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth by Henry VII,, was covered by Shakespeare in his plays. So his plays include the whole transitional period of England from medieval time to modern time. The Elizabethans saw in these plays the deposition of Richard II, the military virtues of Henry V, the War of the Roses and the rising of the Tudor family, i.e., a whole period of historical transition. It is also true that in the gallery of kings Shakespeare directly or indirectly indicates his view of an ideal king in Henry V who in his youth mixed among the common people and who in a crucial moment won fame by defeating the French army. In the victory of Henry V we see the victory of the new age over the feudal age. The education of Prince Hal, his acquaintance with all strata of life, and his refusal of the extremes of riot (Falstaff) and vain glory (Percy) shows the growth of an ideal king. Shakespeare’s history plays, therefore, are permeated with patriotism and a feeling of national grandeur.
　　2. Shakespeare’s humanism: More important than his historical sense of his time, Shakespeare in his plays reflects the spirit of his age. The sudden awakening of national glory was inseparable with the sudden discovery of the glory that man found in himself. This humanist outlook prevails in his comedies as well as in his late tragedies. And we can trace the change in his humanism. In his early stage, his plays were permeated with optimistic spirit, no matter whether in comedies or tragedies. He had firm belief in the nobility of human nature and in the power of love. People were innocent and were looking at the world with a wonderful eye as if their eyes were newly open to the wonder of the world. Man, who had been debased in the Medieval Age, was now master of himself, and could overcome evils and wickedness in this world. Even in the tragedy this is clear in the dialogue between Romeo and Juliet in the garden when Romeo compares Juliet to the Sun and her eyes to the two “fairest stars in all the heaven”. But as the years went on Shakespeare became more mature and his knowledge of human nature grew in depth. The more he knew about human nature, the more he was depressed at the ugliness and baseness of human nature. This pessimistic outlook appears in his tragedies. However, the human dramatist at last overcome spiritual crisis and recovered his faith in human nature and wrote the beautiful romances which ended his career.
　　3. Shakespeare’s characters are “round”, in the sense that they have many aspects or dimensions. In his characters, vice and virtue commingle and that is true of the common sense of humanity. They are different from the wooden puppets that the stock-in-trade of the inferior dramatists. For example, Richard III is, in a way, a hero as well as a villain, his psychology being far from simple. Shylock in The merchant of Venice, is not simply a villain, an alien devil, who is bad because he does not accept the religious and social standard of the gentiles, but also a figure of power and dignity whose speech and behavior, for all his conventional villainy, almost redeems him as a tragic hero.
　　4. Shakespeare’s originality: Shakespeare drew most of his materials from sources that were known to his audience; some from Roman dramas, some from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and some from other writers’ plays. But his plays are original because he instilled into the old materials a new spirit that gives new life to his plays. The best example is Hamlet, which bears many resemblances to Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy.
　　5. Shakespeare as a great poet: Shakespeare was not only a great dramatist, but also a great poet. Apart from his sonnets and long poems, his dramas are poetry. They are rich in images, conceit, metaphors and symbols. He was well versed in writing lyrical verse as well as poetry of great passion and agony. His style varies with the different moods he expressed. It can be lyrical, poetical, ecstatic, pathetic, cynical, sarcastic, and ironic.
　　6. Shakespeare as master of the English language: Shakespeare was the master of the English language. It is estimated that he had a command of about 15,000 words. Many of his quotations and phrases have been absorbed into the English language. He was especially successful in handling the different meanings of the same word, or words having the same sound but different meanings.

Shakespeare is against religious persecution and racial discrimination, against social inequality and the corrupting influence of gold and money.

1.      you—thou—thee       your—thy—thine   are—art

2.      about Hamlet

Hamlet is considered to be the summit of Shakespeare’s art. It was written in 1601-1602 and first published in 1603. Hamlet is the profoundest expression of Shakespeare’s humanism and his criticism of contemporary life.

The story: The king of Denmark, is recently dead, and his brother Claudius has assumed the throne and married his widow Gertrude. Young Hamlet learns from the ghost of his father that Claudius murdered him by pouring poison into his ear, and is commanded to avenge the murder without injuring Gertrude. Hamlet tells the story to his best friend Horatio and plans to pretend to be mad at first. He welcomes a group of visiting players, and arranges a performance of a play about fratricide (crime of killing one’s brother or sister), which Claudius breaks off, in apparently guilty and fearful fury, when one of the players appears to murder his uncle by pouring poison into his ear. Hamlet refrains from killing Claudius while he is at prayer, but kills Polonius by mistake. Polonius is his lover Ophelia’s father. Claudius sends Hamlet to England with sealed orders that he should be killed on arrival. However, Hamlet outwits his murderers and returns to Denmark. During Hamlet’s absence, Ophelia has gone mad with grief from Hamlet’s rejection of her and her father’s death, and is found drowned. Her brother Laertes returns from France intent on avenging his sister’s death. Hamlet and Laertes meet in the graveyard where Ophelia is to be buried, and fight in her grave. Claudius arranges a fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes, giving the latter a poisoned foil; in a scuffle (混战) an exchange of weapons results in the deaths of both fighters, not before Gertrude has drunk a poisoned cup intended for her son, and the dying Hamlet has succeeded in killing Claudius.

3. translation of the selected part of Hamlet:

生存还是毁灭，这是一个值得思考的问题；默默忍受命运的暴虐的毒箭，或是挺身反抗人世的无涯的苦难，通过斗争把它们扫清，这两种行为，哪一种更高贵？死了；睡着了；什么都完了；要是在这一种睡眠中，我们心头的创痛，以及其他无数血肉之躯所不能避免的打击，都可以从此消失，那正是我们求之不得的结局。死了；睡着了；睡着了也许还会做梦；恩，阻碍就在这儿：因为当我们摆脱了这一具朽腐的皮囊以后，在那死的睡眠里，究竟将要做些什么梦，那不能不使我们踌躇顾虑。人们甘心久困于患难之中，也就是为了这个缘故；谁愿意忍受人世的鞭挞和讥嘲、压迫者的凌辱、傲慢者的冷眼、被轻蔑的爱情的惨痛、法律的迁延、官吏的横暴和费尽辛勤所换来的小人的鄙视，要是他只要用一柄小小的刀子，就可以清算他自己的一生？谁愿意负着这样的重担，在烦劳的生命的压迫下呻吟流汗，倘不是因为惧怕不可知的死后，惧怕那从来不曾有一个旅人回来过的神秘之国，是它迷惑了我们的意志，使我们宁愿忍受目前的磨折，不敢向我们所不知道的痛苦飞去？这样，重重的顾虑使我们全变成了懦夫，决心的赤热的光彩，被审慎的思维盖上了一层灰色，伟大的事业在这一种考虑之下，也会逆流而退，失去了行动的意义。