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Introduction
(1564–1616). More than 400 years after they were written, the plays and poems of William Shakespeare are still widely performed, read, and studied—not only in his native England, but also all around the world. His works have been translated into almost every language and have inspired countless adaptations. On the stage, in the movies, and on television, Shakespeare’s plays are watched by vast audiences. People read his plays again and again for pleasure. Shakespeare is often called the English national poet. He is considered by many to be the greatest dramatist of all time.
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Shakespeare’s continued popularity is due to many things. His plays are filled with action, his characters are believable, and his language can be thrilling to hear or read. He is astonishingly clever with words and images. Underlying all this is Shakespeare’s deep insight into humanity—how people of all kinds think, feel, and act. Shakespeare was a writer of great perceptiveness and poetic power. He used these talents to present characters showing the full range of human emotions and conflicts.
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While watching a Shakespearean tragedy, the audience may be moved and shaken. Shakespeare sets husband against wife, father against child, and the individual against society. He uncrowns kings, levels the nobleman with the beggar, and questions the gods. Great men fall victim to an unstoppable train of events set in motion by their misjudgments. These plays are complex investigations of character and motive.
A Shakespearean comedy is full of fun. The characters are lively; the dialogue is witty. In the end, young lovers are wed; old babblers are silenced; wise men are content. The comedies are largely joyous and romantic.
Shakespeare’s history plays dramatize the sweep of English history in the late Middle Ages. They tell the story of the period’s kings and the rise of the house of Tudor. Shakespeare intercuts scenes among the rulers with scenes among those who are ruled. This creates a rich picture of English life at a particular historical moment—a time when England was struggling with its own sense of national identity and experiencing a new sense of power. (For more information on Shakespeare, his works, and his world, seeWilliam Shakespeare at a glance. For a collection of videos for teachers, seeteaching Shakespeare.)
Shakespeare’s Life
Boyhood in Stratford
Chris Wright
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in 1564. This was the sixth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Shakespeare was christened on April 26 of that year. The day of his birth is unknown. It has long been celebrated on April 23, the feast day of St. George.
Shakespeare was the third child and oldest son of John and Mary Arden Shakespeare. Two sisters, Joan and Margaret, died before he was born. The other children were Gilbert, a second Joan, Anne, Richard, and Edmund. Only the second Joan outlived William.
Shakespeare’s father was a tanner and glovemaker. He was an alderman of Stratford for years. He also served a term as high bailiff, or mayor. Toward the end of his life John Shakespeare lost most of his money. When he died in 1601, he left William only a little real estate. Not much is known about Mary Shakespeare, except that she came from a wealthier family than her husband.
Chris Wright
Stratford-upon-Avon is in Warwickshire, in the Midlands region of central England. In Shakespeare’s day the area was well farmed and heavily wooded. The town itself was prosperous and progressive. It was proud of its grammar school. Young Shakespeare almost certainly went to that school, though when or for how long is not known. He may have been a pupil there until about the age of 15. His studies must have been mainly in Latin. The schooling was of good quality. All four schoolmasters at the school during Shakespeare’s boyhood were graduates of Oxford University.
Nothing definite is known about Shakespeare’s boyhood. Because of the content of his plays, it is thought that he must have learned early about the woods and fields, about birds, insects, and small animals, about trades and outdoor sports, and about the country people he later portrayed with such good humor. Then and later Shakespeare must have picked up an amazing stock of facts about hunting, hawking, fishing, dances, music, and other arts and sports. Among other subjects, he also must have learned about alchemy, astrology, folklore, medicine, and law. As good writers do, Shakespeare must have collected information both from books and from daily observation of the world around him.
Marriage and Life in London
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In 1582, when Shakespeare was 18, he married Anne Hathaway. She was from Shottery, a village a mile (1.6 kilometers) from Stratford. Anne was eight years older than Shakespeare. From this difference in their ages, a story arose that they were unhappy together. Their first daughter, Susanna, was born in 1583. In 1585 a twin boy and girl, Hamnet and Judith, were born.
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What Shakespeare did between 1583 and 1592 is not known. Long after Shakespeare’s death, people began to tell various stories about what Shakespeare had done during this period. They say that he may have taught school, worked in a lawyer’s office, served on a rich man’s estate, or traveled with a company of actors. One famous story says that about 1584 he and some friends were caught poaching on the estate of Sir Thomas Lucy of Carlecote, near Warwick, and were forced to leave town. A less likely story is that he was in London in 1588. There he was supposed to have held horses for theater patrons and later to have worked in the theaters as a page.
By 1592, however, Shakespeare was definitely in London and was already recognized as an actor and playwright. He was then 28 years old. In that year Robert Greene, a playwright, accused Shakespeare of borrowing from the plays of others.
Between 1592 and 1594, plague kept the London theaters closed most of the time. During these years Shakespeare wrote his earliest sonnets and two long narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Both were printed by Richard Field, a schoolmate from Stratford. These long poems were well received and helped establish Shakespeare as a poet.
Shakespeare Prospers
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From about 1594 onward, Shakespeare was an important member of a theatrical company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. It became the most successful company of actors in England. Until 1598 Shakespeare’s theater work was confined to a district northeast of London. This was outside the city walls, in the parish of Shoreditch. Located there were two playhouses, The Theatre and the Curtain. Both were managed by James Burbage, whose son Richard Burbage was Shakespeare’s friend and the greatest tragic actor of his day. Along with Shakespeare, Richard Burbage was a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.
Up to 1596 Shakespeare lived near The Theatre and the Curtain in Bishopsgate, where the North Road entered the city. Sometime between 1596 and 1599, he moved across the Thames River to a district called Bankside. There, the Rose Theatre had been built by Philip Henslowe, who was James Burbage’s chief competitor in London as a theater manager. Another theater, the Swan, was built nearby in Bankside. The Burbages also moved to this district in 1598 and built the famous Globe Theatre there for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The theater’s sign showed Atlas supporting the world. Shakespeare was associated with the Globe Theatre for the rest of his active life. He owned shares in it, which brought him much money.
Meanwhile, in 1597, Shakespeare had bought New Place, one of the largest houses in Stratford. During the next three years he bought other property in Stratford and in London. In 1596 Shakespeare’s father, probably at his son’s suggestion, applied for and was granted a coat of arms. It bore the motto Non sanz droict—Not without right. From this time on, Shakespeare’s father could write “Gentleman” after his name. This probably meant much to Shakespeare, for in his day actors were classed legally with criminals and vagrants.
Shakespeare’s name first appeared on the title pages of his printed plays in 1598. In the same year the English writer Francis Meres, in Palladis Tamia; Wit’s Treasury, praised him as England’s greatest playwright in comedy and tragedy. Meres’s comments on 12 of Shakespeare’s plays showed that Shakespeare’s genius was recognized in his own time. Other writers of his time also praised Shakespeare. Writer and poet John Weever lauded “honey-tongued Shakespeare.” Ben Jonson, a major playwright, poet, and literary critic, granted that Shakespeare had no rival in the writing of comedy, even in the ancient Classical world. He wrote that Shakespeare equaled the ancients in tragedy as well. Jonson sometimes criticized Shakespeare harshly, including for not following the Classical rules of drama—for not limiting his plays to one location and about one day of action. Jonson also faulted Shakespeare for mixing high and low elements—lofty poetry with vulgarity and kings with clowns—in his plays.
Honored As Actor and Playwright
Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603. King James I followed her to the throne. Shakespeare’s flourishing theatrical company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, was taken under the king’s patronage and was renamed the King’s Men. Shakespeare and the other actors were made officers of the royal household. In 1608–09 the company began to perform regularly at the Blackfriars Theatre. This was a smaller and more aristocratic theater than the Globe. While the Globe was a large open-air public playhouse, Blackfriars was a “private” indoor theater with high admission charges. Thereafter the company alternated between the two playhouses, with Blackfriars becoming its theater for the winter season. Plays by Shakespeare were also performed at the royal court and in the castles of the nobles.
Shakespeare is not known to have acted after 1603. During his acting career Shakespeare seems to have played only secondary roles, such as old Adam in As You Like It and the ghost in Hamlet.
In 1607 Shakespeare’s older daughter Susanna married John Hall, a doctor. That same year Shakespeare’s brother Edmund, also a London actor, died at the age of 27. The next year Shakespeare’s first grandchild, Elizabeth, was born. (Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, had died at the age of 11, in 1596.)
Death and Burial at Stratford
Shakespeare retired from his theater work and returned to Stratford about 1612. In 1613 the Globe Theatre burned. Shakespeare lost much money because of the catastrophe, but he was still wealthy. He had a financial share in the building of the new Globe. A few months before the fire Shakespeare had bought as an investment a house in the fashionable Blackfriars district of London.
On April 23, 1616, Shakespeare died in Stratford at the age of about 52. This date is according to the Old Style, or Julian, calendar of his time. The New Style, or Gregorian, calendar date is May 3, 1616. Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford.
A stone slab—a reproduction of the original one, which it replaced in 1830—marks his grave. It bears an inscription, perhaps written by himself:
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here. Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.
Chris Wright
On the north wall of the chancel is a monument to Shakespeare, which seems to have been built by 1623. It consists of a portrait bust enclosed in a stone frame. Below it is an inscription in Latin and English celebrating Shakespeare’s genius. This bust and an engraving by Martin Droeshout, prefixed to the First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays (1623), are the only pictures of Shakespeare that have been accepted as showing his true likeness. Another probably authentic likeness of Shakespeare is the “Chandos” portrait, an oil painting attributed to J. Taylor from about 1610.
Shakespeare’s will, still in existence, bequeathed most of his property to Susanna and her daughter. He left small mementoes to friends. Shakespeare mentioned his wife only once, leaving her his “second best bed” with its furnishings. Much has been written about this odd bequest. Some people have interpreted it as being a slight toward Shakespeare’s wife. Others have contended that it may have been a special mark of affection. The “second best bed” was probably the one they used. The best bed may have been the one reserved for guests. At any rate, Shakespeare’s wife was entitled by law to one-third of her husband’s goods and real estate and to the use of their home for life. She died in 1623.
The will contains three signatures of Shakespeare. These, with three others, are the only known specimens of his handwriting in existence. Several experts also regard some lines in the manuscript of Sir Thomas More as Shakespeare’s own handwriting. Shakespeare spelled his name in various ways. His father’s papers show about 16 spellings. Shakspere, Shaxpere, and Shakespeare are the most common.
Ben Jonson wrote a eulogy of Shakespeare that is remarkable for its feeling and acuteness. In it he said:
Leave thee alone, for the comparison Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age, but for all time! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were To see thee in our waters yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, That so did take Eliza, and our James!
Did Shakespeare Really Write the Plays?
The outward events of Shakespeare’s life are ordinary. He appears to have been a hard-working member of the middle class. Shakespeare steadily gathered wealth and apparently took good care of his family. In modern times, many people have found it impossible to believe that such a seemingly ordinary man could have written the plays. They feel that he could not have known such heights and depths of passion. They believe that the people around Shakespeare expressed little realization of his greatness. Some say that a man with his level of schooling could not have learned about the professions, the aristocratic sports of hawking and hunting, the speech and manners of the upper classes.
Readers, playgoers, actors, and writers in Shakespeare’s own lifetime—and for more than a century and a half after—never questioned that Shakespeare was the author of the plays. Since the 1800s many people have tried to prove that Shakespeare did not write the plays or that others did. For a long time the leading candidate was Sir Francis Bacon. Books on the Shakespeare-Bacon argument would fill a library. After Bacon became less popular as a candidate, Christopher Marlowe, William Stanley, 6th earl of Derby, and then other people were suggested as the authors. Nearly every famous Elizabethan was named. Some people have even claimed that “Shakespeare” is an assumed name for a whole group of poets and playwrights.
Since the late 20th century, the strongest candidate proposed (other than Shakespeare himself) as the author of the plays is Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford. It is true that Oxford did write poetry, as was common among gentleman of the time. He may also have written some plays. A major problem with the theory that Oxford wrote the Shakespeare plays is that he died in 1604. Many of Shakespeare’s plays—including such great works as King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest—were written between 1604 and about 1614.
In addition, people who lived at the same time as Shakespeare never suggested that anyone other than him had written the plays. Shakespeare was a well-known actor who performed in London’s top acting company. He was widely known by the leading writers of his time as well. Both Ben Jonson and John Webster praised him as a dramatist. Many other tributes to Shakespeare as a great writer appeared during his lifetime. Shakespeare’s fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell collected the plays into a book called the First Folio and wrote a foreword describing their methods as editors. Any theory proposing that Shakespeare did not write the plays must suppose that the people of the time were all fooled by some kind of secret arrangement. Those people who were in the know would have had to have maintained the secret of a gigantic literary hoax without a single leak or hint of gossip.
Moreover, to argue that an obscure Stratford boy could not have become the Shakespeare of literature is to ignore the mystery of genius, which cannot be learned in school. Some great writers have had less schooling than Shakespeare. Shakespeare had a good education for the time, though it is true that he did not attend a university. However, university training in Shakespeare’s day centered on theology and on Latin, Greek, and Hebrew texts. Studying these kinds of texts would not have greatly improved Shakespeare’s knowledge of contemporary English life. Shakespeare’s social background was essentially similar to that of other major writers of his time. Most of the great writers of his era were not aristocrats, who had no need to earn a living by their pens.
Secrets of the Sonnets
Many people want to know more about Shakespeare’s private life. They have searched his plays for hints, with little result. However, he left 154 sonnets, published—probably without his involvement—in 1609. Many readers believe that these reveal an important part of his life. However, whether the sonnets are autobiographical—about Shakespeare’s personal life and feelings—has been much debated. Shakespeare was such a skilled dramatist that he could certainly have created an intriguing storyline for the sonnets that had nothing to do with his own life. In any event, as poetry, the sonnets are superb.
Shakespeare’s sonnets tell of the poet-narrator’s close relationship with a young nobleman. This nobleman wrongs him by stealing the affections of a dark-haired sweetheart and by transferring his friendship to another poet. In the end the beloved young nobleman is forgiven.
Whether this really happened or was only invented makes up the “problem of the sonnets.” People have tried to find out who the “friend,” the “dark lady,” and the “rival poet” actually were. One theory is that the friend was William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. Another is that he was Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton. Many people assert that Shakespeare’s sonnets are so full of detailed passion they probably refer to some actual happening. However, this cannot be proved.
Shakespeare’s other nondramatic poems include Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Both are full of gorgeous imagery and pagan spirit and are very obviously the work of a young man. There are also about 60 songs scattered throughout the plays. The songs show the finest Elizabethan qualities in their originality, melodies, and rhythms.
Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Age
Elizabethan Times
The English Renaissance reached its peak in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). In this period England was emerging from the Middle Ages. An absorbing interest in heaven and an afterlife was transformed into an ardent wonder about this world and humankind’s earthly existence. The Elizabethan period was an age marked by curiosity and bold exploration.
Shakespeare lived at a time when the English language was growing fast. It was suited to magnificent poetry. Shakespeare’s vocabulary was enormous, but its size is less remarkable than its expressiveness. English speech reached its peak of strength between 1600 and 1610. Then the King James Version of the Bible was being made, Bacon was writing his famous Essays, and Shakespeare was composing his great tragedies.
The people of the English middle class were thought to be typically stern, moral, and independent. London’s citizens held fast to their rights. They did not hesitate to defy the royal court if it became too arrogant. Nobles, citizens, and common people all loved the stage, its pageantry and poetry. Wealthy people encouraged and supported the actors. They paid for the processions, masques, and tournaments that the public loved to watch. Men of the royal court competed with one another in dress, entertainment, and flattery of the queen.
The queen herself was the symbol of the glory of England. To her people Elizabeth I stood for beauty and greatness. During her reign the country grew in wealth and power, despite plagues and other calamities.
Drama in the Elizabethan Age
Joe Cocks Studio Collection, Shakespeare Centre Library
England’s defeat of the great Spanish naval fleet called the Armada in 1588 raised English spirits high. The English gloried in what they saw as the greatness of their nation. During the years 1590–1600 England became intensely interested in its past. Playwrights catered to this patriotism by writing chronicles, or history plays. These were great sprawling dramas telling the stories of England’s kings. Shakespeare wrote 10 of them. The same interest spread to the history of other countries of Europe.
When Shakespeare came to London, he found the theater alive and strong. Men and women of various social classes enjoyed going to the theater, and plays were shrewdly written for the public’s taste. The theater was as popular then as movies and television are now. London’s first public playhouse, named The Theatre, had been opened in 1576. A group of talented men, the University Wits, had already developed new types of plays out of old forms and had learned what the public wanted.
Playwrights of the time seem to have been practical men, bent on making a living. They may have been well educated, but they were more eager to fill the theaters than to please the critics. The result was that almost from the start the drama was a popular art. It was not, as in France, a learned and classical art.
Shakespeare was quick to detect changes in popular taste. He wrote his plays to be acted, not read. Shakespeare took whatever forms were attracting attention and made them better. To save time he borrowed basic plots from other works. Sometimes Shakespeare expanded and adapted old stories, while sometimes he worked with more recent tales.
A dramatist in those days was also likely to be an actor and producer. He joined a company and became its playwright. He sold his manuscripts to the company and kept no personal rights in them. Revising old plays and working with another writer on new ones were common. Such methods saved time. The demand for plays was great and could never be fully met.
No manuscripts of Shakespeare—with the possible exception of a scene from Sir Thomas More—and very few manuscripts of other dramatists of the period have survived. The dramas were written to be played, not printed, and were hardly considered literature at all.
In the Elizabethan Age, actors were called “players.” A company of players was a cooperative group that shared the profits. Its members had no individual legal or political rights. Instead the company looked for a patron among the rich nobles. Members became the noble patron’s “servants,” or “men,” and received his protection—thus Shakespeare’s company was called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later the King’s Men) and its chief rival was called the Admiral’s Men (later Prince Henry’s Men). A company was usually made up of 8 or 10 men who took the main parts. Other actors were hired as needed. Boys or young men took the female parts, for women did not appear on the stage.
The theaters
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Public theaters were usually round, wooden buildings with three galleries of seats. The pit, or main floor, was an open yard and had no roof. There were no seats in the pit, and its occupants were called “groundlings” because they stood on the ground. Admission to the pit was usually a penny. It cost more to watch the play from the galleries, boxes, and stage. Plays were put on in the afternoon. Private theaters were of the same general design, except that they were square and entirely roofed.
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Shakespeare wrote most of his plays for the Globe Theatre. Historical research indicates that its main stage was about 43 or 44 feet (about 13 meters) wide and that it projected 27 feet (some 8 meters) into the pit. The stage had a roof of its own. Behind the main stage was a recessed inner stage, which could be hidden by curtains. Above the inner stage was a second inner stage, with curtains and a balcony. Above this was a music room. Its front could be used for dramatic action. On top of the stage roof were hoists for raising and lowering actors and props. On performance days a flag was flown from a turret above the hoists.
The Elizabethans may have used no scenery, but their stage was not entirely bare. They used good-sized props, heavy hangings, and elaborate furniture. Their costumes, usually copied from the fashionable clothes of the day, were rich. The outer stage was generally used for outdoor scenes and mass effects. The inner stage was used for indoor scenes and for cozy effects, as scenes between lovers. The upper stage was used for scenes at windows or walls.
The stage influences Shakespeare’s methods
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The Elizabethan stage had much to do with the form of Shakespeare’s plays. Because the stage was open and free, it permitted quick changes and rapid action. As a result the play Antony and Cleopatra has more than 40 changes of scene. The outer stage, projecting into the audience, encouraged speechmaking. This may be one reason for the long and impassioned speeches of the plays.
With no women actors, boys and young men made up as women seemed natural somehow. With no stage lighting and with the daytime sky above, the author had to write speeches about the time, season, and weather of the play. There are more than 40 such speeches in Macbeth. The actors were close to the audience; the groundlings were close to the aristocrats. Shakespeare had to appeal to them all. He mixes horseplay with philosophy and coarseness with lovely poetry.
Shakespeare’s Plays
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Shakespeare wrote at least 38 plays. The chief sources of his plots were Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and a book on English history by Edward Hall. Shakespeare also drew on many other works, including some Italian novelle, or short tales. He borrowed a few plays from older dramas and from English stories. What Shakespeare did with the sources is more important than the sources themselves. If his original gave him what he needed, he used it closely. If not, he changed it. These changes show Shakespeare’s genius as a dramatist.
Some difficulties stand in the way of a modern reader or audience’s enjoyment of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare wrote more than 400 years ago. The language he used is naturally somewhat different from the language of today. Some words have different meanings now than they did in Shakespeare’s time. For example, rage then meant “folly,” while silly could mean “innocence” and “purity.” In Shakespeare’s day, words sounded different too, so that ably could rhyme with eye or tomb with dumb. The way words were put together into phrases was also often different. What sounds formal and stiff to a modern listener might have sounded fresh to an Elizabethan. Modern printed editions of the plays often include notes that can help readers understand the language differences.
The worst handicap to enjoyment of the plays is the notion that Shakespeare is a “classic,” a writer to be approached with awe. The way to escape this difficulty is to remember that Shakespeare wrote his plays for everyday people and that many in the audience were uneducated. They probably regarded him as a funny and exciting entertainer, not as a great poet.
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When studying the plays, it can be helpful to read them twice. The first reading can be a quick one, to get the story. The second, more leisurely, reading can bring out details. The language itself should be studied. It has great expressiveness and concentrated meaning. An edition of the plays with good explanatory notes is helpful.
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Most of all, it is important to remember that Shakespeare’s plays were intended to be seen acted in a theater, not read. Modern audiences who want to see the plays can choose from numerous film versions as well as many and varied stage productions. Some productions of Shakespeare’s plays try to present them in a way that is as true as possible to how they were probably originally presented. Others may adapt the dramas, slightly or freely. Many productions set the plays in modern or other times.
Shakespeare’s Four Periods
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Shakespeare’s playwriting can be divided into four periods. The first period was his apprenticeship. Between the ages of 26 and 30 Shakespeare was learning his craft. He imitated Roman comedy and tragedy and followed the styles of the playwrights who came just before him. Shakespeare may have written works with other playwrights; such collaborations were a common practice of the time period. The Senecan tragedy, a type of play that told a story of bloody revenge, was in style at this time. Shakespeare’s first tragedy, Titus Andronicus, was this type of revenge drama. It was his only early tragedy. During this early period Shakespeare wrote a number of romantic comedies as well as some chronicle, or history, plays about English kings of the 15th century.
With Hamlet, written about 1599–1601, Shakespeare’s third period begins. For eight years he probed the problem of evil in the world. Shakespeare wrote his great tragedies—Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra—during this period. At times he reached an almost desperate pessimism. Even the comedies of this period are bitter.
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In his fourth and last period Shakespeare used a new form—the romance or tragicomedy. His romances tell stories of wandering and separation leading eventually to tearful and joyous reunion. They have a bittersweet mood. The Tempest is the most notable of these late romances.
List of Plays
The following is a list of all of Shakespeare’s plays in the order in which they are thought to have been written. Despite much scholarly argument, it is often impossible to date a play precisely. However, there is some general agreement, especially for plays written in 1588–1601, in 1605–07, and from 1609 onward.
Shakespeare’s Plots and Characters
Shakespeare’s insight into the human condition and his poetic skill combined to make him the greatest of playwrights. His plots alone show that Shakespeare was a master playwright. He built his plays with care. He seldom wrote a speech that did not forward the action, develop a character, or help the imagination of the spectator.
Many of Shakespeare’s plots are nevertheless frankly farfetched. He belonged to an age that favored the romantic and the poetic. Theatergoers often wanted to be carried away to other times and places or to a land of fancy. There were really no such places as Shakespeare’s Bohemia or Illyria or the Forest of Arden, though the names were real. Shakespeare has never been equaled in the invention of supernatural creatures—ghosts, witches, and fairies.
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Yet Shakespeare’s art is realistic in the sense that it is true to the way people think and act. Shakespeare’s people seem alive and three-dimensional. His best portrayals are those of his great heroes. Yet even Shakespeare’s minor characters are almost as good. For example, Shakespeare created in his plays more than 20 young women, all about the same age, of the same station in life, and with the same social background. They are as different, however, as any 20 young women in real life. The same can be said of Shakespeare’s old women, men of action, churchmen, kings, villains, dreamers, fools, and country people. Shakespeare’s characters are complex. Like real people, they can be great and yet foolish, bad and yet likable, good and yet faulty.
The Poetry of the Plays
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No other writer in the world is so quotable or so often quoted as Shakespeare. He expressed deep thoughts and feeling in words of great beauty or power. In the technical skills of the poet—rhythm, sound, image, and metaphor—Shakespeare remains the greatest of craftsmen. His range is immense. It extends from funny puns to lofty eloquence, from the speech of common men to the language of philosophers.
Shakespeare’s plays are often written in a form of poetry called blank verse. Blank verse is unrhymed. Its meter is iambic pentameter, meaning that each line has 10 syllables alternating between unstressed and stressed syllables. This form was first used in Italy in the 16th century and was soon taken up by English poets. The University Wits, especially Christopher Marlowe, developed it as a dramatic verse form. Shakespeare perfected it. He and later John Milton made blank verse the greatest form for dramatic poetry in English. Blank verse is an excellent form for poetic drama. It is just far enough removed from prose. Blank verse is not monotonous and forced, as rhymed verse sometimes can be. Blank verse is more ordered, swift, and noble than prose. At the same time it is so flexible that it can seem almost as natural as prose if it is well written.
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To gain an impression of the power and variety of Shakespeare’s poetry, read such passages as Prospero’s speech in The Tempest, Act IV, Scene i:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air; And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears. Soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-ey’d cherubims; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
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Then compare other great passages, such as Shylock’s (in The Merchant of Venice) “Signior Antonio, many a time and oft”; Mercutio’s (in Romeo and Juliet) “O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you”; Richard II’s “No matter where; of comfort no man speak”; Hamlet’s “How all occasions do inform against me”; Claudio’s (in Measure for Measure) “Ay, but to die, and go we know not where”; Othello’s “Soft you, a word or two before you go”; Jaques’s (in As You Like It) “A fool, a fool! I met a fool i’ the forest”; and Cleopatra’s (in Antony and Cleopatra) “Give me my robe, put on my crown.” Each speech could come naturally from the speaker and from no one else. Each is very moving. Each has great rhythmic flow and force.
How the Plays Came Down to Us
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Since the 1700s scholars have edited and reworked the text of Shakespeare’s plays. They have had to do so because the plays were badly printed, and no original manuscripts of them survive.
In Shakespeare’s day plays were not usually printed under the author’s supervision. When a playwright sold a play to his company, he lost all rights to it. He could not sell it again to a publisher without the company’s consent. When the play was no longer in demand on the stage, the company itself might sell the manuscript. Plays were eagerly read by the Elizabethan public. This was even more true during the plague years, when the theaters were closed. It was also true during times of business depression. Sometimes plays were taken down in shorthand and sold. At other times, a dismissed actor would write down the play from memory and sell it.
About half of Shakespeare’s plays were printed during his lifetime in small, cheap pamphlets called quartos. Most of these were made from fairly accurate manuscripts. A few were in garbled form.
In 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, his collected plays were published in a large, expensive volume called the First Folio. It contains all his plays except two of which he wrote only part—Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The collection also omits Cardenio, a play that Shakespeare is thought to have written with John Fletcher; this play is now lost (seeDouble Falsehood). The title page of the First Folio features an engraved portrait of Shakespeare that is thought to be an authentic likeness.
The First Folio was authorized by Shakespeare’s acting group, the King’s Men. Two of Shakespeare’s fellow actors, John Heminge and Henry Condell, collected and prepared the plays for publication. Some of the plays in the First Folio were printed from the more accurate quartos and some from manuscripts in the theater. It is certain that many of these manuscripts were in Shakespeare’s own handwriting. Others were copies. Still others, such as the Macbeth manuscript, had been revised by another dramatist.
Shakespearean scholars have studied the First Folio intensively to help determine what Shakespeare actually wrote. They have done so by studying the language, stagecraft, handwriting, and printing of the period and by carefully examining and comparing the different editions. They have modernized spelling and punctuation, supplied stage directions, explained difficult passages, and made the plays easier for the modern reader to understand.
Another hard task has been to find out when the plays were written. The plays themselves have been searched for clues. Other books have been examined. Scholars have tried to match events in Shakespeare’s life with the subject matter of his plays.
These scholars have used detective methods. They have worked with clues, deduction, shrewd reasoning, and external and internal evidence. External evidence consists of actual references in other books. Internal evidence is made up of verse tests and a study of the poet’s imagery and figures of speech, which changed from year to year.
The verse tests follow the idea that a poet becomes more skillful with practice. Scholars long ago noticed that in his early plays Shakespeare used little prose, much rhyme, and certain types of rhythmical and metrical regularity. As he grew older he used more prose, less rhyme, and greater freedom and variety in rhythm and meter.
The Folger collection is the greatest of all. It was assembled by Henry Clay Folger, onetime president of Standard Oil. He bequeathed it to the trustees of Amherst College to be administered for the use of the American people forever. Folger also provided the library building and endowed the library to provide for its expansion and upkeep. The Folger Shakespeare Library opened in 1932. The collection now consists of about 280,000 books and manuscripts, plus playbills, prints, paintings, and other materials, as well as a model Elizabethan theater. The library possesses more than 80 copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio. Though called a Shakespeare library, the Folger collection also includes other rare works from the Renaissance. Indeed, the library contains the world’s second largest collection of books printed in England before 1641.
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