William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)
 General Context

• Shakespeare wrote at the fin du siecle marked by the

Humanists’ optimism and in the first decade of the 17th
century that was highly marked by pessimism,
gloominess and depression.
I will tell you why. So shall my anticipation prevent your
discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult
no feather. I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost
all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, and indeed
it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly
frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory;
 this most excellent canopy, the air—look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden
fire—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and
pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving
how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in
apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The
paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of
dust? Man delights not me. No, nor woman neither, though by
your smiling you seem to say so. (Hamlet, Act II, scene 2, page
13)
• A similar downward, declining path can be seen in
Hamlet. Hamlet was educated at Wittenberg and he was
put face to face with the harsh reality in Elsinore.
• The quotation mirrors a similar evolution of the English
realities down to its irregular, unpredictable and ultimately
obsolete state of being.
• The dramatic production was immediately affected by
non-literary circumstances:
the general crisis of Humanism called forth by the
sharpening of the social conflicts;
the setting up of monopolies (The East India Company
rose to account for half of the world's trade);
the conflicts between the gentility/nobility and the crown
(The Gunpowder Plot, 1605- a failed assassination
attempt against King James I of England and VI of
Scotland, Essex's Rebellion- an unsuccessful rebellion
led by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, in 1601
against Elizabeth I of England and the court faction led
by Sir Robert Cecil to gain further influence at court);
the reinforcement of the Puritans and of the Catholics
favoured by the new Stuart dynasty;
 the threatening Civil War.
 Mentality was now governed by chaos, futility, instability
which led Una Ellis Fermor (The Jacobean Drama) state
that the Elizabethans’ love of life has been immediately
replaced by an interest in death.
 Biographical Data

• Shakespeare was born on 23rd of April 1564 at Stratford-

upon-Avon;
• the school books attest the fact that he was the son of
John Shakespeare, a glover and a trader in wood, timber,
wool and who, according to different documents, was a
well inlaid yeoman and of Mary, one of Robert Arden’s
inheritresses.
• William attended the Stratford grammar school for a few
years and then he may have helped his father in the
different employments the latter had.
• At 18 he married Ann Hathaway whom he had three
children Susanna and the twins Hamnet and Judith.
• In 1585 he moved in London and his patron Henry
Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton instructed him in the
Italian music and painting of the Renaissance.
• He became a Johannes-fac-totum, a horsekeeper for the
gentlemen that were present at the theatre spectacles,
then a stage boy, a prompter, a reviser, adapter, co-
author of plays and a playwright on his own (around
1589).
• As shareholder of the Globe theatre (starting with 1599)
he considerably improved his financial situation. Around
1612 he returned to his birthplace where he died at 23rd
april 1616.
 Literary Activity

• In a 1592 pamphlet Robert Greene named him Shake-

scene;
• In 1595, referring to the poems Venus and Adonis and
The Rape of Lucrece, John Weever named him the
honey-tongued Shakespeare.
• Francis Meres drew up the first list of Shakespeare’s
plays (in Lalladis Tamia)- he brought to the foreground the
imaginative style of his poems and Sonnets.
• As far as the plays are concerned, he remarked that as
Plautus and Seneca are the best Roman tragedians and
comedians, Shakespeare is among the English dramatists
the most brilliant one. He was considered to exceed
Chaucer and Spenser.
• Some literary researchers may not have been at ease with
the fact that such a great and widely read artist as
Shakespeare has studied just a few years at the Stratford
grammar school.
•Thus as from the mid 19th century the authorship of the
Shakespearian literary work was attributed to Marlowe,
Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, Earl of Derby, of Rutland.
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet;
(Romeo and Juliet, II, 2)
• Shakespeare’s text stands on its own and makes out of it
the only Shakespeare’s biographer which faces readers
with a thoughtful, reflective artist, a fine/matchless
psychologist, a complete writer (extremely sensitive, witty
and humane, endowed with a great sense of observation
and a remarkable artistic self-control).
• His plays overwhelm readers with their author’s massive
knowledge; a large variety of domains is approached:
commentaries on art (Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s
Dream), law (The Merchant of Venice), music (The
Merchant of Venice), painting (Timon of Athens), logic and
rhetoric (Love’s Labour’s Lost), philosophy and ethics
(Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida), navigation (The Tempest),
botany (The Winter’s Tale, Hamlet), astrology and history.
his profound acquaintance with the rural and urban life, the
court life, the English folklore.
 The sources of his insipiration are likewise diverse:
Renaissance romances and prose, the Bible, from Vergil
and Ovid to Edmund Spenser, from Francois de
Belleforest to Raphael Hollinshed (The Hollinshed’s
Chronicles), from Boccaccio to Chaucer, from the
tragedian Seneca to the proseman Seneca.
• The American researcher Sister Miriam Joseph
(Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of the Language)
underlined the fact that the grammar schools focused on
studying the Latin and Greek grammar, as well as on
rhetoric
• at Stratford Shakespeare learned Latin and Greek and he
also achieved profound command of the figures of
speech- metaphors, comparisons-used in character
portrayals or descriptions of nature.
• Shakespeare surely had an eye for detail, an acute sense
of observation rendered by symmetrical and architectural
literary images:
I REMEMBER the players have often mentioned it as an
honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he
penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath
been, 'Would he had blotted a thousand,' which they
thought a malevolent speech.
 I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance, who
chose that circumstance to commend their friend by
wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candor, for
I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side
idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an
open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave
notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with
that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be
stopped
'Sufflaminandus erat,' as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit
was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too.
Many times he fell into those things, could not escape
laughter, as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one
speaking to him: 'Cæsar, thou dost me wrong.' He replied:
'Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause; and such like,
which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his
virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to
be pardoned.'
(Ben Jonson, On Shakespeare)
• Shakespeare studied a lot human nature; the true value of
his art is given by his refined observations of human nature.
For the rest of him, the innner man,five words sum up the essence of his
quality and character as seen in his images: sensitiveness,balance,
courage, humour and wholesomeness...In his own outlook on life he is
absolutely clear but rarely bitter. In looking at evil he sees it not in
terms of sin and sinner nor does he attach blame to it, but he views it
with concern and pity as a foul and corrupt condition or growth
produced by the world order, yet alien to it as disease is to a body
which if health is to be attained must at all costs be expelled. (Caroline
Spurgeon, Shakespeare’s Imagery and What it Tells Us)
• His work is as a general rule divided in 3 periods:
1)1589-1600-poems, sonnets, historical plays, serene
comedies and his first tragedies- his outloook on life is
quite optimistic;
2)1600-1608- the great tragedies and a few dark
comedies- imprinted with bitterness and delusion caused
by Shakespeare’s personal life and by the incertitudes of
the age;
3) 1608- 1613- romances- serene outlook on life.
• The sonnets - In contrast with the Petrarchan sonnet *14
lines divided into an octave and a sestet ABBA ABBA
CDC CDC, Shakespeare’s form of the sonnet is 3
quatrains and a couplet rhyming abab cdcd efef gg.
• The 154 Shakespearean sonnets fall into 2 main groups :
• A) Sonnets 1-126 addressed to a young man described
as a sweet boy with a woman’s face;
• B) Sonnets 127-152 are addressed to a married woman
whom he claimed to be his mistress (the Dark Lady)
• Some sonnets are very defamatory, injurious. The last
two are versions of a Greek epigram on Cupid, claimed
not to be of Shakespeare. It is believed that they were
either simple exercises in poetical virtuosity or that they
were inspired from Shakespeare’s emotional life.
• The poems and the sonnets share many similar features,
both thematically and stylistically- artificial expression,
ornamental alliterations, undecipherable word plays,
brevity, there are many instances of solecism and many
unexpected words
• There is a central image in each sonnet that turns into a
large, expanded metaphor.
• In sonnet XIV- astrology prevails. As a whole, they are
irregular and in artistry they don’t equate the great
Shakespearean plays.
• Venus and Adonis (1592-1693) is inspired from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses - 199 stanzas of 6 disyllabic lines
rhyming ababcc -it professes the supreme force of nature
and it condemns asceticism.
• The Rape of Lucrece (1593-1594)- is about faithfulness
and virtuosity; it contains 267 stanzas of 7 lines rhyming
ababbcc; it is redundant and wordy, full of endless
monologues and its merits are rather dramatic than lyric.
• Romeo and Juliet (1595-1586)- is possibly inspired from
Arthur Booke’s poem. The name (appearance) has no
significance for the two lovers, their love (essence) is
stronger. They will actually know the reality in the vault.
• There are several other oppositions to be philosophically
rendered in Friar Lawrence’s speeches who plays the part of the
Chorus in the ancient Greek tragedies.
• There is a musical opposition in between the scenes and the
remarks as well as in between images: the light is the dominant
image.
• Romeo and Juliet is a fate tragedy (fate-blind destiny). A
Montague and a Capulet cannot be together because of their
families’ hatred. On the other hand, Othello is a free- will tragedy,
as the hero freely makes choices. He becomes the victim of the
malignant Iago out of his decisions.
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream opposes and interconnects
two distinct worlds - the world of the human beings and the
world of the fairies, the world of reason and the world of
the senses, the world of factuality and the world of fantasy.
• Conflictual situations dominate all of Shakespeare’s plays,
both comedies and tragedies.
• Hamlet symbolises the contradictions and sufferings of
mankind, the typical quest of a mind searching for answers
beyond the limits of the knowable. It is the quest for
meaningfulness and authenticity.
• Richard III concentrates on the hero who is full of
paradoxes; he proves he is an artist in villainies as he will
do everything to gain he crown of England; he is a true
Machiavellic character, but his extraordinary ambition
makes readers admire him for what they themselves
needed in order to achieve greatness.
• Shakespeare’s plays constantly question the limits of
knowledge. He was aware that absolute knowledge
cannot be reached, but just like his characters he was
constantly searching for truth and order.
• In Renaissance it was believed that knowledge comes
primarily through the senses.
• In A Midsummer Night’s Dream senses produce errors in
the mind of the characters by producing false images that
lead to deception.
• Hamlet is aware that truth is relative and he realises that
there is no relation between language and reality - you
cannot communicate knowledge through words, they are
deceiving.
 Shakespearean characters construct illusions for
themselves, fictionalise their existence, either because their
knowledge of reality is limited or because language, senses
are provisional.