Shakespeare, William (1564-1616), was an English playwright, poet, and actor. Many people regard him as the world’s greatest dramatist and the finest poet England has ever produced.
Shakespeare wrote at least 38 plays, two major narrative poems, a sequence of sonnets, and several short poems. His works have been translated into a remarkable number of languages, and his plays are performed throughout the world. His plays have been a vital part of the theater in the Western world since they were written about 400 years ago. Through the years, most serious actors and actresses have considered the major roles of Shakespeare to be the supreme test of their art.
Shakespeare used language of startling originality to portray many-sided characters and tell fascinating stories. Critics and readers celebrate him as a great student of human nature. A remarkable group of vivid characters populate his plays. They include rogues and aristocrats, housewives and stuffy teachers, soldiers and generals, shepherds and philosophers. The most successful of these characters create an impression of psychological depth never before seen in English literature.
Shakespeare has had enormous influence on culture throughout the world. His works have helped shape the literature of all English-speaking countries. His work has also had an important effect on the literary cultures of such countries as Germany and Russia. In addition, his widespread presence in popular culture extends to motion pictures, television, cartoons, and even songs.
Shakespeare’s characters, language, and stories are a source of inspiration, quotation, and imitation. Many words and phrases that first appeared in his plays and poems have become part of our everyday speech. Examples include such common words as assassination, bump, eventful, go-between, gloomy, and lonely, as well as such familiar phrases as fair play, a forgone conclusion, and salad days.
Shakespeare has so saturated modern culture that many people who have never read a line of his work or seen one of his plays performed can identify lines and passages as his. Examples include “To be, or not to be,” “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,” “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” and “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”
Shakespeare’s poetry is full of vivid metaphors and brilliant images. His verbal skill also reveals itself in a tendency for word play and puns. Critics and readers acknowledge his superb way with words even when the richness of his language blurs the sense of what his text means.
Besides influencing language and literature, Shakespeare has affected other aspects of our culture. His plays and poems have long been a required part of a liberal education. Generations of people have absorbed his ideas concerning heroism, romantic love, loyalty, and the nature of tragedy as well as his portraits of particular historical characters. To this day, most people imagine Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, and Richard III as Shakespeare portrayed them.
Shakespeare’s plays appeal to readers as well as to theatergoers. His plays—and his poems—have been reprinted and translated countless times. Indeed, a publishing industry flourishes around Shakespeare, as critics and scholars examine every aspect of the man, his writings, and his influence. Each year, hundreds of books and articles appear on Shakespearean subjects. Thousands of scholars from all over the world gather in dozens of meetings annually to discuss topics related to Shakespeare. Special libraries and library collections focus upon Shakespeare. Numerous motion pictures have been made of his plays. Composers have written operas, musical comedies, and instrumental works based on his stories and characters.
The world has admired and respected many great writers. But only Shakespeare has generated such varied and continuing interest—and such constant affection. The extent and durability of Shakespeare’s reputation is without equal.
Shakespeare’s life
During Shakespeare’s time, the English cared little about keeping biographical information unrelated to affairs of the church or state. In addition, playwriting was not a highly regarded occupation, and so people saw little point in recording the lives of mere dramatists. However, a number of records exist that deal with Shakespeare’s life. They include church registers and accounts of business dealings. Although these records are few and incomplete by modern standards, they provide much information. By relating these records to various aspects of English history and society, scholars have constructed a believable and largely comprehensive account of Shakespeare’s life. However, gaps remain. Perhaps the most frustrating gap is the general absence of personal papers that might provide access to the playwright’s thoughts and feelings. As a result, biographers almost always examine the plays and poems for autobiographical clues.
His life in Stratford
Shakespeare’s parents belonged to what today would be called the middle class. John Shakespeare, William’s father, was a glove maker who owned a shop in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon. Stratford is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) northwest of London in the county of Warwickshire. John Shakespeare was a respected man in the town and held several important positions in the local government.
William Shakespeare’s mother was born Mary Arden. She was the daughter of a farmer but related to a family of considerable social standing in the county. John Shakespeare married Mary Arden about 1557. The Ardens were Roman Catholics. Mary may also have been a Catholic, but the Shakespeares publicly belonged to the Church of England, the state church.
Early years.
The Shakespeares were a family of considerable local prominence. In 1565, John Shakespeare became an alderman. Three years later, he was elected bailiff (mayor), the highest civic honor that a Stratford resident could receive. Later, he held several other civic posts. But toward the end of his life, John Shakespeare had financial problems.
Beginning at about the age of 7, William probably attended the Stratford grammar school with other boys of his social class. The school’s highly qualified teachers were graduates of Oxford University. Students spent about nine hours a day in school. They attended classes the year around, except for three brief holiday periods. The teachers enforced strict discipline and physically punished students who broke the rules. The students chiefly studied Latin, the language of ancient Rome. Knowledge of Latin was necessary for a career in medicine, law, or the church. In addition, the ability to read Latin was considered a sign of an educated person. Young Shakespeare may have read such outstanding ancient Roman authors as Cicero, Ovid, Plautus, Seneca, Terence, and Virgil.
In spite of the long hours he spent in school, Shakespeare’s boyhood was probably not all boring study. As a market center, Stratford was a lively town. In addition, holidays provided popular pageants and shows, including plays about the legendary outlaw Robin Hood and his merry men. By 1569, traveling companies of professional actors were performing in Stratford. Stratford also held two large fairs each year, which attracted numerous visitors from other counties. For young Shakespeare, Stratford could thus have been an exciting place to live.
Stratford also offered other pleasures. The fields and woods surrounding the town provided opportunities to hunt and trap small game. The River Avon, which ran through the town, had fish to catch. Shakespeare’s poems and plays show a love of nature and rural life. This display undoubtedly reflects his childhood experiences and his love of the Stratford countryside.
Marriage.
On Nov. 27, 1582, Shakespeare received a license to marry Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a local farmer. The two families knew each other, but the details of the relationship between William and Anne have been a source of speculation. At the age of 18, William was young to marry, while Anne at 26 was of normal marrying age. The marriage appears to have been hurried, and the birth of their first child, Susanna, in May 1583 came only six months after marriage. Some scholars have suggested that William may have been forced to marry Anne because she was pregnant. However, birth and marriage records indicate that many women in England at that time were already pregnant before they married, and so Shakespeare’s marriage was not unusual. Early in 1585, Anne gave birth to twins, Judith and Hamnet. The record of baptism marks the start of an important gap in the documentary evidence of Shakespeare’s life.
The lost years.
Scholars have referred to the period between 1585 and 1592, when Shakespeare was called an “upstart” by a London writer, as the “lost years.” Scholars have proposed a number of theories about his activities during that time. But what is certain is that some time before 1592 Shakespeare arrived in London and began to work in the theater.
Early career in London
By 1592, Shakespeare apparently attracted the hostile attention of a jealous rival. Robert Greene was a university-trained writer who was among the first to attempt to make a career of writing for the stage and the commercial press. Greene’s Groats-Worth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance, a pamphlet published after Greene’s death in 1592, contains a harsh reference to Shakespeare. The English playwright Henry Chettle prepared the pamphlet for publication and may have been the true author. A passage in the pamphlet addressed to playwrights says:
… an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger’s heart wrapped in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum [Jack of all trades], is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.
The line “Tiger’s heart wrapped in a Player’s hide” echoes a line spoken by the Duke of York in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part III. The line is “O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide.” The pun on Shakespeare’s name makes the object of attack clear. Whether written by Greene or Chettle, this passage indicates that Shakespeare was in 1592 an actor who also wrote plays. He was successful enough to provoke the scorn and jealousy of competitors who considered themselves socially and culturally superior.
His work in theater companies.
After arriving in London, Shakespeare began an association with one of the city’s repertory theater companies. These companies consisted of a permanent cast of actors who presented a variety of plays week after week. The companies had aristocratic patrons, and the players were technically servants of the nobles who sponsored them. But the companies were commercial operations that depended on selling tickets to the general public for their income.
Scholars do not know which of the various companies first employed Shakespeare. Scholars have noted connections between Shakespeare’s early plays and a number of plays that were performed by the Queen’s Men, a company that played in Stratford in 1587. What is certain is that by 1594 Shakespeare was a sharer in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. As a sharer, Shakespeare was a stockholder in the company and entitled to a share in the company’s profits.
The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were one of the most popular companies in London. In large part because of Shakespeare’s talents, they would go on to become the dominant company in England during the late 1500’s and early 1600’s. Shakespeare’s position as sharer allowed him to achieve a level of financial success unmatched by other dramatists of the age, many of whom lived in poverty. Most playwrights were free-lancers who were paid a one-time fee for their plays and usually worked for several companies. After 1594, Shakespeare maintained a relationship with a single company.
His first poems.
From mid-1592 to 1594, London authorities frequently closed the theaters because of repeated outbreaks of plague. Without the income provided by acting and playwriting, Shakespeare turned to poetry. In 1593, Venus and Adonis became the first of Shakespeare’s works to be published. The publisher was Richard Field, a native of Stratford who may have known Shakespeare in childhood. As was customary at the time, Shakespeare dedicated his volume to a noble patron, in this case Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. Venus and Adonis proved to be extremely popular and was reprinted at least 15 times in Shakespeare’s lifetime.
In 1594, Field printed Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece. The book’s dedication to Southampton suggests a closer acquaintance between the writer and the aristocrat. The volume was not as popular as Venus and Adonis, but it still sold well. Seven editions had been published by 1632. Despite the commercial success of these early publications, Shakespeare made no effort to make a career of poetry. When the theaters reopened, he returned to acting and playwriting.
The years of fame
Throughout the 1590’s, Shakespeare’s reputation continued to grow. From 1594 to 1608, he was fully involved in the London theater world. In addition to his duties as a sharer and actor in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, he wrote an average of almost two plays a year for his company. During much of this period, Shakespeare ranked as London’s most popular playwright, based on the number of times his plays were performed and published. But his reputation was largely that of a popular playwright, not of a writer of unequaled genius.
Few people gave Shakespeare the praise that later generations heaped on him. An exception was the English clergyman and schoolmaster Francis Meres. In 1598, Meres wrote Palladis Tamia: Wit’s Treasury, a book that has become an important source of information about Shakespeare’s career. In this book, Meres said of Shakespeare: “As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latins: so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage.” Although Meres’s praise did not represent everyone’s opinion, it indicates that Shakespeare had become an established writer by at least the late 1590’s.
Shakespeare’s name did not appear on his earliest published plays, but the 1598 edition of Love’s Labour’s Lost includes his name on the title page. Later editions prominently advertise his authorship, in some cases falsely. In 1599, a printer named William Jaggard published The Passionate Pilgrim, a collection of 20 poems supposedly written by Shakespeare. However, the volume offered only five sonnets by Shakespeare, three taken from Love’s Labour’s Lost. By the end of the 1590’s, Shakespeare’s reputation was being used to sell books. And he had not yet written most of his great tragedies, such as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth.
By the late 1590’s, Shakespeare not only had become an established writer but also had become prosperous. In October 1596, John Shakespeare was granted a coat of arms, an emblem symbolic of family history, about 25 years after his initial application. Most scholars have suggested that William Shakespeare renewed the application on his father’s behalf and paid the necessary fees. To have a coat of arms was an important mark of social standing in England at that time. Certainly Shakespeare was eager to establish himself in Stratford. In May 1597, he purchased New Place, one of the town’s two largest houses. Shakespeare obviously remained a Stratford man at heart in spite of his busy, successful life in London. Records of business dealings and of minor lawsuits reveal that he preferred to invest most of his money in Stratford rather than in London.
The Globe Theatre.
As was customary, Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, rented performance space. For most of the 1590’s, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men performed in a building called The Theatre. The English actor and theatrical manager James Burbage had built the structure on leased land. Burbage was the father of the famous actor Richard Burbage, star of the Chamberlain’s Men. After a disagreement with the landlord, the company was forced to find new accommodations. Richard Burbage and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men dismantled The Theatre and moved it across the River Thames to a new site in Southwark. There they used the old timbers to erect a new theater called the Globe Theatre. The Globe could accommodate 3,000 spectators.
Shakespeare was one of six shareholders who signed the lease for the new site in 1599. He thus became part of the first group of actor-sharers to also be theater owners. Although this arrangement meant considerable financial risk, it also promised to be profitable if the new theater was a success. The Globe proved to be a wise investment, and it remained a home to Shakespeare’s acting company until the religious reformers known as Puritans closed the theaters in 1642, during the English Civil War.
The King’s Men.
In 1603, Queen Elizabeth I died and was succeeded by her cousin James VI of Scotland. As king of England, he became James I. James enjoyed and actively supported the theater. He issued a royal license to Shakespeare and his fellow players, which allowed the company to call itself the King’s Men. In return for the license, the actors entertained the king at court on a more or less regular basis.
James’s support came at a convenient time. An outbreak of plague in 1603 had closed the theaters for long periods, making theatrical life uncertain. In fact, James’s entry into London as king had to be postponed until 1604 because of the plague.
When James finally made his royal entry into London, the King’s Men accompanied him. The members of the company were officially known as grooms of the chamber. In spite of this title and the name King’s Men, the actors were not actually friends of the king. Their relationship to the royal court was simply that of professional entertainers.
The King’s Men achieved unequaled success and became London’s leading theatrical group. In 1608, the company leased the Blackfriars Theatre for 21 years. The theater stood in a heavily populated London district called Blackfriars. The Blackfriars Theatre had artificial lighting, mainly candles. The theater was probably heated and served as the company’s winter playhouse. The King’s Men performed at the Globe during the summer.
The period from 1599 to 1608 was a time of extraordinary literary activity for Shakespeare. During these years, he wrote several comedies and almost all the tragedies that have made him famous. Shakespeare’s masterpieces during this period include the comedies Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night; the history Henry V; and the tragedies Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello.
The sonnets.
In 1609, a London publisher named Thomas Thorpe published a book called Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The volume contained more than 150 sonnets that Shakespeare had written over the years. Scholars have long been curious about the book’s puzzling dedication. It reads, in modernized spelling: “To the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets Mr. W. H.” We do not know whether these are Shakespeare’s or Thorpe’s words, nor do we know the identity of the mysterious W. H. For additional information on the sonnets, see the section Shakespeare’s poems.
His last years
During his last eight years, Shakespeare was the sole author of only three plays—Cymbeline, The Tempest, and The Winter’s Tale. He collaborated with John Fletcher, another English dramatist, in writing three more plays. In the past, some scholars argued that The Tempest, written about 1610, was Shakespeare’s last play. Such a theory was encouraged by the presence in the play of passages that sound like a farewell to the stage. However, in 1612 and 1613, Shakespeare worked closely with Fletcher, who replaced him as the chief dramatist for the King’s Men, on Cardenio (now lost), King Henry VIII, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. In addition, Shakespeare purchased a house in the Blackfriars district of London in 1613. The evidence thus suggests that Shakespeare gradually reduced his activity in London rather than ending it abruptly.
By 1612, Shakespeare had become England’s most successful playwright. He apparently divided his time between Stratford and London. He had lodgings in London at least until 1604 and probably until 1611. Such family events as his daughter Susanna’s marriage in 1607 and his mother’s death in 1608 would likely have called him back to Stratford. By 1612, he may have spent much of his time in the comforts of New Place in Stratford.
On Feb. 10, 1616, Shakespeare’s younger daughter, Judith, married Thomas Quiney, the son of his Stratford neighbor Richard Quiney. Six weeks later, Shakespeare revised his will. Within a month, he died. He was buried inside the Stratford parish church. His monument records the day of death as April 23, the generally accepted date of his birth. 
Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, died in 1596 at the age of 11. The playwright’s daughter Susanna had one child, Elizabeth, who bore no children. Shakespeare’s daughter Judith gave birth to three boys, but they died before she did. Shakespeare’s last direct descendant, his granddaughter Elizabeth, died in 1670.
England of Shakespeare’s day
During most of Shakespeare’s lifetime, England was ruled by Queen Elizabeth I. Her reign is often called the Elizabethan Age. Shakespeare’s works reflect the cultural, social, and political conditions of the Elizabethan Age. Knowledge of these conditions can provide greater understanding of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. For example, most Elizabethans believed in ghosts, witches, and magicians. No biographical evidence exists that Shakespeare held such beliefs, but he used them effectively in his works. Ghosts play an important part in Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Richard III. Witches are major characters in Macbeth. Prospero, the hero of The Tempest, is a magician.
Shakespeare’s London
had grown from 120,000 inhabitants in 1550 to 200,000 by 1600. By 1650, London contained 375,000 people. This exceptional population growth is remarkable considering London’s high mortality rate. The crowded and unsanitary city often experienced outbreaks of plague that regularly reduced the population. Sewage flowed in open ditches that drained into the Thames, and overbuilding led to slum conditions in many parts of the city. However, London continued to grow as the result of a massive flow of migrants, like Shakespeare himself, from the English countryside.
The crowded streets helped give London an air of bustling activity. But other factors also made London an exciting city. It was the commercial and banking center of England and one of the world’s chief trading centers. London was also the capital of England. The queen and her court lived there for much of each year, adding to the color and excitement. The city’s importance attracted people from throughout England and from other countries. Artists, teachers, musicians, students, and writers all flocked to London to seek advancement.
Although large for its day, London was still small enough so that a person could be close to its cultural and political life. The wide range of knowledge that Shakespeare showed in his plays has amazed many of his admirers. Yet much of this knowledge was the kind that could be absorbed by being in the company of informed people. The range of Shakespeare’s learning and the variety of his characters owe something to his involvement in London life.
Elizabethan society.
It was once common to claim that in the late 1500’s, when Shakespeare first began to write his plays, the English people were experiencing a period of great optimism and patriotism. Under Elizabeth I, they enjoyed a long period of relative peace while continental Europe was burdened by war. In 1588, the English Navy defeated the Spanish Armada, an invasion fleet designed to return Protestant England to Catholicism. After this victory, many English writers declared that God had chosen England to play a special role in world history. 
However, there were tensions beneath the surface in English life. England was still a Protestant country on the margins of a Europe dominated by Catholic forces. As the 1500’s drew to a close, the aged and childless Elizabeth refused to name a successor, leading to uncertainty about what would follow her death. The possibility of a succession crisis leading to a foreign invasion or civil war disturbed both the political powers and the common people.
The peaceful accession of James I in 1603 eased these anxieties, but the enormous expectations put upon the new king soon led to disappointment. Although initially met with enthusiasm, James quickly made enemies of a number of important parts of English society. The early 1600’s saw an increase in dramas portraying corrupt courts, though they were always represented as Italian. To many English people, the world appeared to be deteriorating and becoming, in Hamlet’s words, “an unweeded garden / That grows to seed.”
Certainly Shakespeare’s plays reveal a shift from optimism to pessimism. All his early plays, even the histories and the tragedy Romeo and Juliet, have an exuberance that sets them apart from the later works. After 1600, Shakespeare’s dramas show the confused, gloomy, and often bitter social attitudes of the time. During this period, he wrote his greatest tragedies. Even the comedies Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well have a bitter quality not found in his earlier comedies. A character in the tragedy King Lear cries out in despair, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. / They kill us for their sport.” These lines reflect the uncertainties of the time.
Elizabethans were keenly aware of death and the brevity of life. They lived in constant fear of plague. When an epidemic struck, they saw victims carted off to common graves. Yet death and violence also fascinated many Elizabethans. Londoners flocked to public beheadings of traitors, whose heads were exhibited on poles. They also watched as criminals were hanged, and they saw the corpses dangle from the gallows for days. Crowds also flocked to such bloodthirsty sports as bearbaiting and bullbaiting, in which dogs attacked a bear or bull tied to a post.
Elizabethan literature mirrored the violence and death so characteristic of English life. Shakespeare’s tragedies, like other Elizabethan tragedies, involve the murder or suicide of many of the leading characters.
In spite of their tolerance of cruelty, Elizabethans were extremely sensitive to beauty and grace. They loved many forms of literature, including poetic drama, narrative and lyric poetry, prose fiction, and essays. People of all classes enjoyed music, and English composers rivaled the finest composers in all Europe.
Instrumental music, singing, and dancing are important in Elizabethan drama. Some of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies might almost be called “musical comedies.” Twelfth Night, for example, includes instrumental serenades and rousing drinking songs as well as other songs ranging from sad to comic. Dances form part of the action in The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, and Romeo and Juliet.
The English ruler.
Shakespeare’s 10 history plays deal with English kings and nobility. Nine of the plays concern events from 1398 to the 1540’s. A knowledge of these events and of the Elizabethans’ attitude toward their own ruler can help a playgoer or reader understand Shakespeare’s histories.
During the 100 years before Elizabeth I became queen, violent political and religious conflicts had weakened the throne. From 1455 to the 1480’s, a series of particularly bitter civil wars tore England apart. The wars centered on the efforts of two rival families—the House of Lancaster and the House of York—to control the throne. The wars are called the Wars of the Roses because Lancaster’s emblem was said to be a red rose and York’s a white rose. Four of Shakespeare’s historical plays deal with the Wars of the Roses. These plays, in historical order, are Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III; and Richard III. A second sequence of plays, Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I and II, and Henry V, deal with earlier events that led up to the Wars of the Roses. These eight plays together describe events leading up to the establishment of the Tudor dynasty (line of rulers) and form an extended and sophisticated meditation on a long and turbulent period in English history.
Religion.
The two history plays that are not part of the major sequence running from Richard II to Richard III are King John and Henry VIII. Both deal largely with the problem of religious conflict. King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church and tentatively moved the English church toward Protestantism. His son, Edward VI, was fully committed to the Protestant cause and instituted sweeping reforms after he came to the throne in 1547. After Edward’s early death, his sister Mary succeeded in 1553 and returned England to the Catholic faith. Mary’s short reign was followed by the accession of Elizabeth, who reestablished Protestantism in 1558. Thus, from 1534, when Henry first declared independence from Rome, to 1558, when Elizabeth took the throne, every change in monarch was accompanied by a change in the official religion. A change in religion was always accompanied by attempts to suppress, often violently, those who remained loyal to the other faith.
As a result of the dynastic struggles of the 1400’s and the religious conflicts of the 1500’s, many Elizabethans came to believe that a strong but just ruler was necessary to keep social order. In seeing Shakespeare’s history plays, they would have understood his treatment of royal responsibilities as well as royal privileges. Elizabethans would have been aware of the dangers of a weak king—dangers that Shakespeare described in Richard II. They would also have been alert to the dangers of a cruel and unjust ruler, which Shakespeare portrayed in Richard III.
The Elizabethan theater
Shakespeare wrote his plays to suit the abilities of particular actors and the tastes of specific audiences. The physical structure of the theaters in which his works were presented also influenced his playwriting. He used many dramatic devices that were popular in the Elizabethan theater but are no longer widely used. Modern readers and theatergoers can enjoy Shakespeare’s plays more fully if they know about the various theatrical influences that helped shape them.
Theater buildings.
By the late 1500’s, Elizabethan plays were being performed in two kinds of theater buildings—later called public and private theaters. Public theaters were larger than private ones and held at least 2,500 people. They were built around a courtyard that had no roof. Public theaters gave performances only during daylight hours because they had no artificial lights. Private theaters were smaller, roofed structures. They had candlelight for evening performances. Private theaters charged higher prices and were designed to attract a higher-class audience. The King’s Men only acquired an indoor theater, the Blackfriars, in 1608 and began to perform there in 1609.
Most of Shakespeare’s plays were written for the public theater. However, The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest all take advantage of the different kinds of staging made possible by the Blackfriars. For example, these later plays used the more sophisticated stage machinery to represent flight. The more intimate space also allowed the inclusion of more musical interludes, both during the plays and during intermissions. Although the Blackfriars had an important impact on these later plays, what follows will focus chiefly on the design and structure of public theaters.
In 1576, James Burbage built England’s first successful public theater, called simply The Theatre. It stood in a suburb north of London, outside the strict supervision of London government authorities. Soon other public theaters were built in the London suburbs. These theaters included the Curtain, the Rose, and the Swan. In 1599, Shakespeare and his associates built the Globe Theatre. Detailed evidence of how the Elizabethan public theaters looked is limited. But scholars have been able to reconstruct the general characteristics of a typical public theater.
The structure that enclosed the courtyard of a public theater was round, square, or many-sided. In most theaters, it probably consisted of three levels of galleries and stood about 32 feet (10 meters) high. The courtyard, called the pit, measured about 55 feet (17 meters) in diameter. The stage occupied one end of the pit. For the price of admission, the poorer spectators, called groundlings, could stand in the pit and watch the show. For an extra fee, wealthier patrons could sit on benches in the galleries.
The stage
of a public theater was a large platform that projected into the pit. This arrangement allowed the audience to watch from the front and sides. The performers, nearly surrounded by spectators, thus had close contact with most of their audience.
Actors entered and left the stage through two or more doorways at the back of the stage. Behind the doorways were tiring (dressing) rooms. At the rear of the stage, there was a curtained discovery space. Scholars disagree about the details of this feature. But the space could be used to “discover”—that is, reveal—one or two characters by opening the curtains. Characters could also hide there or eavesdrop on conversations among characters up front on the main stage. The gallery that hung over the back of the main stage served as an upper stage. It could be used as a balcony or the top of a castle wall. The upper stage allowed Elizabethan dramatists to give their plays vertical action in addition to the usual horizontal movement. Some theaters may have had a small third-level room for musicians.
A half roof projected over the upper stage and the back part of the main stage. Atop the roof was a hut that contained machinery to produce sound effects and various special effects, such as the lowering of an actor playing a god. The underside of the hut was sometimes called the heavens. Two pillars supported the structure. The underside of the heavens was richly painted, and the interior of the theater undoubtedly had a number of other decorative features.
The main stage had a large trap door. Actors playing the parts of ghosts and spirits could rise and disappear through the door. The trap door, when opened, could also serve as a grave.
Scenic effects.
Unlike most modern dramas, Elizabethan plays did not depend on scenery to indicate the setting (place) of the action. Generally, the setting was unknown to the audience until the characters identified it with a few lines of dialogue. In addition, the main stage had no curtain. One scene could follow another quickly because there was no curtain to close and open and no scenery to change. The lack of scenery also allowed the action to flow freely from place to place, as in modern motion pictures. The action of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, for example, shifts smoothly and easily back and forth between ancient Egypt and Rome.
Although the stage lacked scenery, the actors employed various props (objects used on stage), such as thrones, swords, banners, rocks, trees, tables, and beds. Richard III calls for two tents, one at each end of the stage.
Costumes and sound effects.
The absence of scenery did not result in dull or drab productions. Acting companies spent much money on colorful costumes, largely to produce visual splendor. Flashing swords and swirling banners also added color and excitement.
Sound effects had an important part in Elizabethan drama. Trumpet blasts and drum rolls were common. Sometimes unusual sounds were created, such as “the noise of a sea-fight” called for in Antony and Cleopatra. Music also played a vital role. Shakespeare filled Twelfth Night with songs. In Antony and Cleopatra, the playwright included mysterious-sounding chords to set the mood before a fatal battle.
Acting companies
consisted of only men and boys because women did not perform on the Elizabethan stage. A typical acting company had 8 to 12 sharers, a number of salaried workers, and apprentices. The sharers were the company’s leading actors as well as its stockholders. They had charge of the company’s business activities. They bought plays and costumes, rented theaters, paid fees, and split the profits. The salaried workers, who were called hirelings, took minor roles in the plays, performed the music, served as prompters, and did various odd jobs. The apprentices were boys who played the roles of women and children.
The acting companies operated under the sponsorship either of a member of the royal family or of an important noble. Most sponsorships were in name only and did not include financial support. From 1594 to 1603, Shakespeare’s company was sponsored, in turn, by the first and second Lord Hunsdon, a father and son. The first Lord Hunsdon held the important court position of lord chamberlain until he died in 1596. In 1597, his son became lord chamberlain. Thus from 1594 to 1603, Shakespeare’s company was mostly known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. After James I became king of England in 1603, he singled out the company for royal favor. It was then known as the King’s Men.
Shakespeare was unusual among Elizabethan playwrights. He not only wrote exclusively for his own company but also served as an actor and sharer in it. The close association between Shakespeare, his fellow actors, and the conditions of production had enormous influence on his dramas. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays with a particular theater building in mind and for performers whom he knew well. Each major actor in the company specialized in a certain type of role. For example, one played the leading tragic characters, and another the main comic characters. Still another actor played old men. Shakespeare wrote his plays to suit the talents of specific performers. He knew when he created a Hamlet, Othello, or King Lear that the character would be interpreted by Richard Burbage, the company’s leading tragic actor.
Shakespeare’s comedies reveal the influence that specific actors had on the creation of his plays. From 1594 to 1599, the company’s leading comic actor was Will Kemp. During this time, many of the comedies seem designed to take advantage of Kemp’s talents as a physical comedian who specialized in playing rustic characters. He was especially known for performing jigs, short pieces of song and dance with simple plots that were performed at the end of the main play. After Kemp left the company, Robert Armin took his place, and the style of Shakespeare’s comedy shifted noticeably. The playwright skillfully used Armin’s more sophisticated and intellectual comic talents in such lively but thoughtful comedies as Twelfth Night and As You Like It.
Elizabethan acting companies were eager to stage plays that had roles for all their major performers. This, in part, explains the appearance of comic characters—such as the first gravedigger in Hamlet, the porter in Macbeth, and the fool in King Lear—in even the most violent and severe of Shakespeare’s tragedies.
The exact nature of Elizabethan acting style remains a puzzle. Parodies of acting—such as the “Pyramus and Thisbe” play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream or the “Mousetrap” in Hamlet—provide some clues about what was considered good acting. Occasional comments on performance, such as Hamlet’s famous advice to the players, provide another way in which scholars can reconstruct standards of performance. In addition, a consideration of the physical conditions of the theater allows for some conclusions. Most scholars agree that Elizabethan actors spoke their lines more rapidly than modern performers do. In addition, Elizabethan actors had an especially clear and musical speaking style. This method of speaking developed from years of acting experience and from the Elizabethan love for the musical possibilities of the English language.
Dramatic conventions.
The writing and staging of Elizabethan plays were strongly influenced by various dramatic conventions of that time—customs that the audience accepted and did not take literally. The most widespread convention was the use of poetic dialogue. Although Shakespeare’s plays contain prose and rhymed verse, he chiefly used an unrhymed, rhythmical form of poetry called blank verse.
Two common conventions that audiences expected were soliloquies and asides. In a soliloquy, an actor, who is alone on the stage, recites a speech directly to the audience. Or he speaks aloud to himself his thoughts and feelings. In an aside, a character speaks words that the other characters onstage are not supposed to hear. Audiences also liked and expected long lyrical speeches. Many of these speeches had little direct relation to the play’s action. Mercutio’s “Queen Mab” speech in Romeo and Juliet is a famous example.
The boy actors were thoroughly trained and highly skilled, but Shakespeare was always aware of the artificial nature of boys playing female roles. Frequently, the audience was reminded of this fact, as when Cleopatra worries that the victorious Romans will make her watch “Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness.” This forces the audience to recognize that the actor voicing this concern is himself a boy. At the same time, the fiction of Cleopatra’s remarkable attractiveness succeeds largely on the strength of Shakespeare’s poetry. The same is true of other beautiful women in the plays. “The Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear” of Juliet lies more in Shakespeare’s language than in the physical attractions of the performer.
Disguise played an important part in Elizabethan drama. Audiences enjoyed comic situations in which a boy played a girl character who disguised herself as a boy. Female characters masquerade as men in several of Shakespeare’s plays, including As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, and Twelfth Night. Social conditions also made disguise an effective theatrical device in Elizabethan times. The Elizabethans recognized sharp distinctions between social classes and between occupations. These distinctions were emphasized by striking differences in dress. Nobles were immediately recognized by their clothing, as were doctors, lawyers, merchants, or pages. Characters could thus easily disguise themselves by wearing the garments of a certain social class or occupation.
Another convention found in Shakespeare’s plays is called the “bed trick” and is used in All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure. In this convention, a male character is tricked into believing that he has had sexual relations with one woman when another has secretly substituted herself for the object of his desire.
Shakespeare’s audiences.
Shakespeare wrote most of his plays for audiences with a broad social background. To the Globe Theatre came a cross section of London society, ranging from apprentices skipping work to members of the nobility passing the time. But most of the Globe’s audience consisted of prosperous citizens, such as merchants, craftworkers, and their wives, and members of the upper class. The theaters of London were an attraction, and visitors to the city were often part of the audience.
Shakespeare’s plays were also produced at the royal court, in the houses of noble families, and sometimes in universities and law schools. For most of his career, he thus wrote plays that had to appeal to people of many backgrounds and tastes.
Shakespeare’s plays
Scholars do not know exactly what Shakespeare wrote. With the possible exception of a short passage from Sir Thomas More, no manuscripts in Shakespeare’s handwriting exist. Thus, editors have had to sort through the early printed documents to determine what was written by Shakespeare. Their labors have been greatly assisted by Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, published in 1623. This volume, called the First Folio, was published by a group of publishers led by Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount. The publishers were assisted by two leading members of the King’s Men, John Heminge and Henry Condell, who were able to provide copies of the 18 plays that had not appeared before in print. Along with these 18 plays, the First Folio republished an additional 18 plays, making a total of 36.
The 36 plays in the First Folio form the basis of what has become known as Shakespeare’s canon (accepted complete works). Although attributed (credited) to Shakespeare in versions published in 1609 and 1611, Pericles was not included in the First Folio. Most scholars accept the play as Shakespeare’s, though many argue that it is a collaboration with the English dramatist George Wilkins.
More open to dispute is The Two Noble Kinsmen, thought to be a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher. Past scholars regularly excluded this play from the canon. Since the mid-1900’s, however, most collections of Shakespeare’s works have included it, bringing the total number of plays to 38. Collaboration, which was common among playwrights of the period, is one of the complicating factors in determining what Shakespeare wrote. It is now generally accepted that several plays in the First Folio are not solely his work.
Further complicating the establishment of the canon is the existence of various apocryphal plays—that is, plays not now considered Shakespearean texts. However, Edward III, long considered an apocryphal play, has been included in a number of prestigious editions. There are also two lost plays, Love’s Labour’s Won and Cardenio, credited to Shakespeare in records of his day.
The Shakespeare canon is not permanently fixed. New attributions remain possible. But when considered as a whole, the body of work accepted as Shakespearean has remained remarkably stable over the last 300 years.
Much Shakespearean research has been devoted to determining the order in which Shakespeare’s plays were written and first performed. The Elizabethans kept no records of premieres of plays, and no newspapers existed to provide opening-night reviews. The publication dates of the individual plays provide some help because plays were almost always performed before they were published. But because there was often a considerable delay between performance and publication, the publication dates do not indicate exactly when a play was performed.
To establish the order in which Shakespeare’s plays were probably written and first performed, scholars have relied on a variety of literary and historical evidence. This evidence includes records of performances, mention of Shakespeare’s works by other Elizabethan writers, and references in Shakespeare’s plays to events of the day. Scholars can also roughly date a play by Shakespeare’s literary style. But for many of the plays, precise dates remain uncertain.
The First Folio divided the plays into three categories—comedies, histories, and tragedies. Modern scholars have added a fourth category, romance. At each stage of his career, Shakespeare tended to concentrate on a certain kind of drama, depending on the tastes of his audience at that time. For example, he wrote 9 of his 10 histories during a period when such plays were especially popular.
Shakespeare generally followed the Elizabethan custom of basing his plots on published historical and literary works. But he differed from most other dramatists in one important way. In retelling a story, Shakespeare shaped the borrowed material with such genius that he produced a work of art that was uniquely different from its source.
This section describes the plots and notable characteristics of the 38 existing plays that make up the generally accepted canon of Shakespeare’s dramatic work. The plays have been divided into four periods, each of which reflects a general phase of Shakespeare’s artistic development. Within each period, the plays are discussed in the order in which they were probably first performed.
For readers interested in a specific play, the Shakespeare’s plays table with this article lists the plays alphabetically and gives the period in which a description of each play may be found.
The first period (1590-1594)
The plays of Shakespeare’s first period have much in common, though they consist of comedies, histories, and a tragedy. The plots of these plays tend to follow their sources more closely than do the plots of Shakespeare’s later works. The plots also tend to consist of a series of loosely related episodes, rather than a tightly integrated dramatic structure. In addition, the plays generally emphasize events more than the portrayal of character.
In his first period, Shakespeare’s use of language indicates that he was still struggling to develop his own flexible poetic style. For example, Shakespeare’s descriptive poetry in this period is apt to be flowery, rather than directly related to the development of the characters or the story. Speeches often use highly patterned schemes that involve word and sound repetitions.
The Comedy of Errors
is a comedy chiefly based on the play Menaechmi by the Roman playwright Plautus. The play was first performed during the period from 1589 to 1594 and first published in 1623.
The action in The Comedy of Errors takes place in the ancient Greek city of Ephesus. The plot deals with identical twin brothers, both named Antipholus. Each brother has a servant named Dromio, who also happen to be twin brothers. The twins of each set were separated as children, and neither twin knows where his brother is living. One twin and his servant live in Ephesus. Their brothers live in Syracuse. After Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse arrive in Ephesus, a series of mistaken identities and comical mix-ups develops before the twin brothers are reunited.
The Comedy of Errors has little character portrayal or fine poetry. But the play is filled with intrigue, broad humor, and physical comedy, which makes it highly effective theater.
Henry VI,
Parts I, II, and III, are three related histories partly based on The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York (1548) by the English historian Edward Hall and on the Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577) by the English historian Raphael Holinshed, often called Holinshed’s Chronicles. Each part was probably first performed during the period from 1589 to 1592. Part I was published in 1623, Part II in 1594, and Part III in 1595.
The three parts of Henry VI present a panoramic view of English history in the 1400’s. The action begins with the death of King Henry V in 1422. It ends with the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. The plays vividly mirror the Wars of the Roses—the series of bloody conflicts between the houses of York and Lancaster for control of the English throne. Part I deals largely with wars between England and France. But all three plays dramatize the plots and counterplots that marked the struggle between the two royal houses.
The Henry VI plays are confusing to read because of their large and shifting casts of characters. The plays are more successful on the stage. In performance, the constant action, exaggerated language, and flashes of brilliant characterization result in lively historical drama. The New Oxford Shakespeare (2016) lists English playwright Christopher Marlowe as co-author of the plays.
Richard III
is a history partly based on Hall’s 1548 The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York and on Holinshed’s Chronicles of 1577. The play was probably first performed from 1592 to 1594 and was first published in 1597.
The play deals with the end of the Wars of the Roses. It opens with the hunchbacked Richard, Duke of Gloucester, confiding his villainous plans to the audience. He addresses the audience in a famous soliloquy that begins, “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York.” Richard refers to the success of his brother Edward, Duke of York. Edward has overthrown Henry VI of the House of Lancaster and taken the English throne. Now weak and ill, he rules England as Edward IV. Richard wants to gain the crown for himself. He has his other brother, the Duke of Clarence, murdered. After King Edward dies, Richard sends the Prince of Wales, the dead king’s son, and the prince’s younger brother to the Tower of London. After seizing the throne as Richard III, he has the two boys murdered.
Before long, Richard’s allies turn against him and join forces with the Earl of Richmond, a member of the House of Lancaster. Richmond’s forces defeat Richard’s army at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Richard utters the famous cry “A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!” after his mount is slain during the battle. Richmond finally kills Richard and takes the throne as King Henry VII.
Richard is a superb theatrical portrait of evil. Although Richard is thoroughly wicked, his soliloquies give his character depth, and his frequent asides engage the audience. He pursues his schemes with such energy and resourcefulness that he wins the grudging admiration of the audience.
The Taming of the Shrew
This play dramatizes how Petruchio, an Italian gentleman, woos the beautiful but shrewish (bad-tempered) Katherine, whose biting tongue has discouraged other suitors. Petruchio marries her. But before and after the wedding, he systematically humiliates Katherine to cure her of her temper. After many comical clashes between the two, Petruchio’s strategy succeeds and Katherine becomes an obedient wife. At this point, Petruchio reveals himself to be genuinely fond of Katherine.
The Taming of the Shrew 
Titus Andronicus
is a tragedy possibly based in part on The History of Titus Andronicus, a story by an unknown English author. The play was probably first performed about 1594 and was first published in 1594. Some scholars believe the English dramatist George Peele wrote part of the play.
This play is a revenge tragedy, which was popular in the Elizabethan theater. The action takes place in and around ancient Rome and involves a succession of violent acts. The central conflict is between Tamora, the captured queen of the Goths, and Titus Andronicus, a Roman general. The exchange of insults and injuries reaches its climax at a feast in which Titus serves Tamora a pie containing the remains of two of her sons.
In spite of the play’s emphasis on spectacular violence, it does have moments of highly charged and effective poetry. The most complex character is Aaron the Moor, Tamora’s lover and a self-declared villain in the mold of Richard III. Aaron’s plotting drives much of the action, but when the child he has fathered with Tamora is threatened with death, he displays an unexpected warmth and humanity.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
is a comedy partly based on Diana (about 1559), a story by the Spanish author Jorge de Montemayor, and on The Book of the Governor (1531), an educational work by the English author Sir Thomas Elyot. The play was probably first performed in 1594 and was first published in 1623.
The play is a witty comedy of love and friendship set in Italy. Two friends from Verona, Valentine and Proteus, meet in Milan. They soon become rivals for the love of Silvia, the daughter of the Duke of Milan. Valentine discovers Proteus as his friend is about to force his attentions on Silvia. Proteus repents his action, and Valentine forgives him. Valentine then tells his friend that he can have Silvia. But Valentine’s generosity becomes unnecessary. Proteus learns that Julia, his former mistress, has followed him to Milan disguised as a page. Proteus realizes that he really loves Julia. He marries her at the end of the play, and Valentine marries Silvia.
In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare introduced several features and devices that he later used so effectively in the great romantic comedies of his second period. For example, he included beautiful songs, such as “Who Is Silvia?”; scenes in a peaceful, idealized forest; and a young woman, disguised as a page, braving the dangers of the world.
King John
is a history primarily based on The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England (1591), a play by an unknown English author. King John also uses Holinshed’s Chronicles and may draw on other historical sources as well. Shakespeare’s play was probably first performed about 1594 and was first published in 1623.
The story concerns the efforts of England’s King John to defend his throne against the claims of his older brother’s son, Arthur, the young Duke of Brittany. John defeats and captures Arthur, who is supported by the king of France. When the young prince dies under suspicious circumstances, many of John’s nobles abandon him and join an invading French force. The rebellious English lords only return to John when they learn that the French, if victorious, will execute their English supporters. A long war is avoided by the intervention of Pandulph, the papal representative, just as King John dies either from poison or illness.
Although King John is on morally questionable ground, he is supported by Philip Faulconbridge, the illegitimate son of Richard I. Faulconbridge is arguably the moral center of the play. His sarcastic and witty comments on the action orient the audience’s response to the play, which is deeply concerned with loyalty, allegiance, and legitimacy.
The second period (1595-1600)
During his second period, Shakespeare brought historical drama and Elizabethan romantic comedy to near perfection. Particularly in his histories and comedies of this period, Shakespeare demonstrated his genius for weaving various dramatic actions into a unified plot, rather than writing a series of loosely connected episodes. Throughout the second period, Shakespeare steadily developed the matchless gift for characterization that marks the great tragedies he produced in the early 1600’s.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The play begins in Athens, Greece, with preparations for a wedding between Theseus, Duke of Athens, and Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. But most of the action takes place in an enchanted forest outside Athens. In the forest, two young men, Lysander and Demetrius, and two young women, Hermia and Helena, wander about together after they become lost. Lysander and Demetrius both love Hermia and ignore Helena, who loves Demetrius. Oberon, king of the fairies, orders the mischievous elf Puck to anoint Demetrius’s eyes with magic drops that will make him love Helena. However, Puck mistakenly anoints Lysander’s eyes, creating much comic confusion. Puck finally straightens out the mix-up.
In a subplot, Oberon quarrels with Titania, his queen. He then anoints Titania’s eyes with the magic drops while she sleeps so that when she awakens, she will love the first living thing she sees. At this time, Nick Bottom, a weaver, and his comical friends are rehearsing a play they plan to present at the duke’s wedding. When Titania awakens, she sees Bottom and falls in love with him. To increase Titania’s humiliation, Puck gives Bottom the head of a donkey. Aided by her fairy attendants, Titania woos Bottom until Oberon takes pity on her and has Puck remove the spell. The play ends with the duke’s wedding. The two young couples—Lysander and Hermia and Demetrius and Helena—also marry during this ceremony. Bottom and his friends perform their hilariously silly play at the wedding celebration.
For A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare wrote some of his most richly lyrical poetry. Oberon tells Puck, “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows / Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows.” The passage transports the audience in imagination to a magic wood where flowers bloom and fairies play. Shakespeare balanced this romantic fantasy with the rough humor of Bottom and his friends. The self-absorbed Bottom ranks as one of Shakespeare’s finest comic figures. The comedy also has a serious side. Gaily but firmly, it makes fun of romantic love. As Puck comments, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
Richard II
is a history partly based on Holinshed’s Chronicles. The play was probably first performed in 1595 and was first published in 1597.
As the play begins, King Richard exiles his cousin Bolingbroke from England. Later, Richard seizes Bolingbroke’s property. While Richard fights rebels in Ireland, Bolingbroke returns to England and demands his property. After Richard learns of Bolingbroke’s return, he hurries back to England to find his cousin leading a force of nobles who are discontented with Richard’s rule. Instead of preparing the royal army to fight Bolingbroke, Richard wastes his time in outbursts of self-pity. He finally gives up his crown to Bolingbroke without a fight. Bolingbroke then orders that Richard be put in prison.
After Bolingbroke is crowned Henry IV, the imprisoned Richard is killed by a knight who mistakenly believed that the new king wanted Richard murdered. At the end of the play, Henry vows to make a journey to the Holy Land to pay for Richard’s death.
In Richard II, Shakespeare seriously explored for the first time the idea that a person’s character determines his fate. The play is a study of a weak, self-centered man. Richard becomes so out of touch with reality that his only defense of his kingdom is the hope that his “master, God omnipotent, / Is mustering in his clouds on our behalf / Armies of pestilence.” When he faces the certain loss of his crown, Richard compares himself to Christ, who “in twelve, / Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand none.”
Love’s Labour’s Lost
is a comedy probably based on several sources, none of which was a chief source. The play was probably first performed in 1596 and was first published in 1598.
King Ferdinand of Navarre and his friends Berowne, Longaville, and Dumain vow to live in seclusion without the company of women for three years to pursue philosophical study. But the princess of France unexpectedly arrives at the king’s court with three female companions. The comedy centers on the efforts of the men to woo the women while pretending to keep their vow. At the play’s end, the men propose to their visitors, who promise to give their answer in a year and a day.
This witty comedy has more references to events of the day than do any of Shakespeare’s other plays. Many of these references have lost their meaning for modern audiences, which makes numerous passages difficult to understand. In addition, much of the language is elaborate and artificial. But Shakespeare included two simple and lovely songs—”When Daisies Pied and Violets Blue” and “When Icicles Hang by the Wall.” Love’s Labour’s Lost also has handsome scenes of spectacle and several entertaining comic characters.
Romeo and Juliet
is a tragedy based on The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), a poem by the English author Arthur Brooke. The play was probably first performed in 1596 and was first published in 1597.
Romeo and Juliet deals with two teenage lovers in Verona, Italy, who are caught in a bitter feud between their families, the Montagues and the Capulets. Romeo, a Montague, and his friends come uninvited to a masked ball given by the Capulets. At the ball, Romeo meets Juliet, a Capulet, and they fall in love. The next day, the couple are secretly married by Friar Laurence. Returning from the wedding, Romeo meets Juliet’s cousin Tybalt, who tries to pick a fight with him. But Romeo refuses to fight his new relative. To defend the Montague honor, Romeo’s friend Mercutio accepts Tybalt’s challenge. As Romeo attempts to part the young men, Tybalt stabs and kills Mercutio. In revenge, Romeo kills Tybalt. As a result, Romeo is exiled from Verona. Loading the player...
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: Romeo
Juliet’s father, unaware that she is already married, tries to force her to marry a kinsman named Paris. To allow Juliet to escape from her father’s demand, Friar Laurence gives Juliet a drug that puts her into a deathlike sleep for 42 hours. The friar sends a messenger to the exiled Romeo to tell him of the drug, but the messenger is delayed. Romeo hears that Juliet is dead and hurries to the tomb where she has been placed. There, he takes poison and dies by Juliet’s side. Juliet awakens to find her husband dead and stabs herself. The discovery of the dead lovers convinces the two families that they must end their feud.
The popularity of Romeo and Juliet owes much to Shakespeare’s sympathy for the young people in the play. Although the play does suggest that the boldness of young love is dangerous, Shakespeare does not present Romeo and Juliet as responsible for their fate. Instead, the play draws attention to the violence and aggressiveness that shapes the adult world. The success of the play also comes from effective characterizations and intensely lyrical poetry. Shakespeare’s language shows signs of the simpler, more direct style he would use in his later tragedies.
The Merchant of Venice
is a comedy partly based on a story in Il Pecorone, a collection of tales written about 1378 by the Italian author Giovanni Fiorentino. The play was probably first performed in 1597 and was first published in 1600.
Antonio, a merchant in Venice, Italy, borrows money from the Jewish moneylender Shylock to help his friend Bassanio. Antonio has promised Shylock a pound of his flesh if he does not repay the loan in three months. The three months pass, and Shylock demands his money. But Antonio cannot pay. Shylock then demands the pound of flesh.
Meanwhile, Bassanio has courted and married the beautiful and gifted heiress Portia. She has a plan to save Antonio from Shylock. Shylock goes to court to demand the flesh. Portia, disguised as a learned lawyer, asks him to reconsider in a famous speech that begins, “The quality of mercy is not strained.” Shylock remains firm. Portia then explains that he can, according to the contract, take one pound of flesh but not a drop of blood. If Shylock spills any blood, he will not only forfeit his own property but his life as well. Shylock drops his demand, and Antonio is saved.
In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare combined comic intrigue with a vivid portrait of hatred and greed. Although the play ends happily for everyone except Shylock and the melancholy Bassanio, it is not a light-hearted comedy. In Shakespeare’s time, both the church and the state considered moneylending at high interest a crime. Shylock was thus a natural object of scorn. On the surface, Shakespeare’s view of him reflected the attitudes of the day. But the dramatist treated the moneylender as a human and even sympathetic person. For example, Shakespeare provided Shylock with an eloquent statement of how it feels to be part of a harshly treated minority: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
Henry IV,
Parts I and II, are two related histories based on Holinshed’s Chronicles and on The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, a play by an unknown English author. Part I was likely first performed in 1597 and was first published in 1598. Part II was probably first performed in 1598 and was first published in 1600.
The two parts of Henry IV dramatize events that follow the murder of England’s King Richard II. In Part I, the guilt-ridden Henry IV wants to go to the Holy Land in repentance for Richard’s death. But political unrest in England prevents him. At the same time, Prince Hal, his son, leads an apparently irresponsible life with his brawling friends, led by the fat, jolly knight Sir John Falstaff. Falstaff’s clowning provides most of the play’s humor. The king quarrels with Henry Percy, known as Hotspur, the fiery young son of the powerful Earl of Northumberland. As a result of the quarrel, the Percy family revolts. At the Battle of Shrewsbury, Hal reveals himself to be a brave warrior and kills Hotspur.
Part II of Henry IV also has many scenes of Falstaff’s clowning. These scenes are set against the background of the continuing Percy rebellion and the approaching death of Henry IV, who is ill. Hal’s brother, Prince John, finally defeats the rebels. The king dies, and Hal takes the throne as Henry V. He quickly reveals his royal qualities and rejects Falstaff and his friends, telling them to stay away until they have abandoned their wild living.
Of the two plays, Part I is more memorable. It introduces Falstaff, best characterized by his comment in Part II that “I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.” Falstaff is a bragging, lying, and thievish drunkard. But his faults are balanced by his clever sense of humor, his contagious love of life, and his refusal to take either himself or the world seriously. Falstaff is one of the great comic roles in the theater.
As You Like It
is a comedy partly based on Rosalynde (1590), a novel by the English author Thomas Lodge. The play was probably first performed in 1599 and was first published in 1623.
Rosalind and her cousin Celia leave the court of Celia’s father, Duke Frederick, after he unjustly banishes Rosalind. Accompanied by Touchstone, the court jester, the two young women take refuge in the Forest of Arden. Also in the forest are Orlando, who loves Rosalind; Jaques, a melancholy philosopher; Audrey, a goatherd; Silvius, a shepherd; and Phebe, a shepherdess. Duke Frederick’s brother, who is Rosalind’s father and the rightful ruler of the land, also lives in the forest with a band of merry outlaws.
Rosalind, disguised as a young shepherd named Ganymede, meets Orlando in the forest. Not recognizing the young woman in disguise, Orlando agrees to pretend that Ganymede is Rosalind so he can practice his declarations of love. Rosalind finally reveals her identity and marries Orlando. Oliver, Orlando’s formerly wicked brother, marries Celia, Touchstone marries Audrey, and Silvius marries Phebe. The news that Rosalind’s father has been restored to his dukedom completes the comedy’s happy ending.
Like many other Elizabethan romantic comedies, As You Like It concerns young lovers who pursue their happy destiny in a world seemingly far removed from reality. Although evil threatens, it never harms. Shakespeare enriched the play with beautiful poetry as well as several charming songs.
Shakespeare consistently balanced the merry laughter of As You Like It with notes of seriousness and even sadness. Touchstone’s wit and Jaques’s remarks question the nature of love and the values of society. The play discusses the advantages and disadvantages of city and country life. Jaques adds a strong note of melancholy to the play with his famous description of the seven ages of man. At the end of the description, he claims that man’s final fate is “second childishness and mere oblivion, / Sans [without] teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
Henry V
is a history partly based on Holinshed’s Chronicles and on The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, a play by an unknown English author. Henry V was probably first performed in 1599 and was first published in 1600. 
The play continues the action of Henry IV, Part II, and presents an idealized portrait of England’s King Henry V. The king decides to press a claim he believes he has to the French throne. He heads an army that lands in France. Inspired by Henry’s leadership, the outnumbered English troops defeat the French at the town of Harfleur. The two armies then meet in battle near the village of Agincourt. Against overwhelming odds, the English win a great victory. The triumphant Henry is received at the French court. There he is promised the throne and the hand of Katherine, the French princess.
The play consists of loosely related episodes unified by the character of the brave but modest king. Shakespeare filled Henry V with patriotic passages, especially the king’s famous address to his troops at Harfleur. It begins, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.” The speech concludes, “The game’s afoot! / Follow your spirit; and upon this charge / Cry ‘God for Harry! England and Saint George!’”
Henry claims to hate war in general. Yet he finds himself carried away by the glamour and glory of the French campaign. Although the play occasionally seems to glorify war, Shakespeare sets the heroics against a background of political treachery and empty honor. Comic scenes mock the vanity of the royal court. These scenes remind audiences that monarchs and their councils plan wars, but ordinary people must fight and die in them.
Julius Caesar
is a tragedy partly based on Lives by the ancient Greek biographer Plutarch, as translated by the English writer Sir Thomas North. The play was probably first performed in 1599 and was first published in 1623.
The play takes place in ancient Rome and concerns events before and after the assassination of the Roman ruler Julius Caesar. In spite of its title, the play’s central character is Brutus, a Roman senator and Caesar’s best friend. Brutus reluctantly joins a plot to murder Caesar because he believes Rome’s preservation requires Caesar’s death. The conspirators attack Caesar in the Roman Capitol, and his final words are “Et tu, Brute? [You too, Brutus?] Then fall, Caesar!”
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Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: Antony
Brutus defends the assassination to a crowd of Romans. But he unwisely allows the clever and eloquent Mark Antony to deliver a funeral speech over Caesar’s body. Antony tells the people, “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” He then describes the plotters with heavy sarcasm as “honorable men.” At the same time, Antony points out Caesar’s virtues and thus gradually turns the crowd into a mob ready to avenge Caesar’s death. The conspirators are forced to flee Rome.
Mark Antony leads an army that defeats the conspirators at the Battle of Philippi. At the end of the battle, Brutus takes his own life. Over his corpse, Antony states, “This was the noblest Roman of them all.” Antony says that the other plotters killed Caesar out of envy but only Brutus acted with “honest thought / And common good to all.”
Julius Caesar has become a popular play because of its magnificent language and sharp character portraits. For example, Caesar describes the plotter Cassius as having a “lean and hungry look.” But the real interest in Julius Caesar centers on the character of Brutus. A thoughtful, withdrawn man, he is torn between his affection for Caesar and his strong sense of duty to the Roman republic.
Much Ado About Nothing
This romantic comedy concerns the attempts by the villainous Don John to slander the virtue of Hero, the daughter of the governor of Messina, Italy. Hero is about to be married to Claudio, a young lord from Venice. Don John manufactures an accusation of infidelity that causes Claudio to jilt Hero at the altar. After much intrigue, Don John’s plot is exposed and the couple happily marry. Much of the interest in the play centers on the relationships between Beatrice, Hero’s cousin, and Benedick, a lord of Padua. These two witty characters trade insults for much of the play, but they come together in an attempt to restore Hero’s damaged honor and soon realize that they are themselves in love. This combination of sharp intelligence and lack of self-knowledge produces rich comedy. Broad humor is supplied by the talkative village constable, Dogberry, and his assistant, Verges.
Twelfth Night
is a comedy partly based on a story in Barnabe Riche: His Farewell to Military Profession (1581), a collection of tales by the English author Barnabe Riche. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was probably first performed in 1600 and was first published in 1623.
Viola and Sebastian, who are twins, become separated during a shipwreck. Viola finds herself stranded in the country of Illyria. She disguises herself as Cesario, a page, and enters the service of Duke Orsino. The duke sends the page to woo Countess Olivia for him. But the countess falls in love with Cesario. Meanwhile, Viola only complicates matters further by falling in love with the duke.
The romantic action alternates with scenes of realistic comedy involving the fat knight Sir Toby Belch and his friends. One friend, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, fights Cesario in a comic duel. Maria, Countess Olivia’s lady-in-waiting, tricks the countess’s steward, Malvolio, into thinking that Olivia loves him. The plot becomes increasingly tangled when Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother, appears and readily agrees to marry Olivia. In the final scene, Viola, still disguised, is confronted by Olivia, who is confused by the youth’s refusal to acknowledge their recent marriage. Duke Orsino is enraged by the treachery of “Cesario” and threatens violence. But all is resolved when Sebastian reappears and Viola reveals her identity. Viola and Orsino then declare their mutual love, and the play concludes anticipating their marriage. Only Malvolio is left unhappy.
In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare created a perfect blend of sentiment and humor. In addition, he provided Feste, Olivia’s clown, with witty comments on the foolish ways of people. Feste’s songs contribute both gaiety and sadness to the mood of the play. In one famous song, he reminds the audience that they should enjoy the present because nobody can know what the future will bring:
What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What’s to come is still unsure: In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty! Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
Only Malvolio, who thinks he is more moral than other people, spoils the gentle mood of the play. Sir Toby Belch angrily asks him, “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”
The Merry Wives of Windsor
is a comedy possibly based on an unknown source or sources. The play was probably first performed in 1600 and was first published in 1602.
According to a popular though unproven story, Queen Elizabeth requested the play. She so enjoyed the comic character Sir John Falstaff in the Henry IV plays that she asked Shakespeare to write a comedy portraying Falstaff in love. The comedy dramatizes Falstaff’s efforts to make love to Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, two honest housewives in the town of Windsor. Instead of winning their love, Falstaff ends up the victim of a number of comical tricks invented by the women.
Although The Merry Wives of Windsor lacks the romantic poetry of most Shakespearean comedies, the play is highly entertaining. The Falstaff in this work has less imagination and wit than the Falstaff in the Henry IV plays. But the character remains theatrically effective, even though the audience laughs at him rather than with him, as in the earlier plays.
The third period (1601-1608)
Shakespeare wrote his great tragedies during the third period of his artistic development. Except possibly for Pericles, every play of this period shows Shakespeare’s awareness of the tragic side of life. Even the period’s two comedies—All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure—are more disturbing than amusing. For this reason, they are often called “problem” comedies or “bitter” comedies. Pericles represents Shakespeare’s first romance—a drama that is generally serious in tone but with a happy ending.
During this period, Shakespeare’s language shows remarkable variety and flexibility, moving easily back and forth between verse and prose. The verse shows an increasing tendency to allow sentences to extend past the end of the verse line. Shakespeare used a rhythmic pattern called iambic pentameter in most of his writing. This pattern, or meter, consists of 10 syllables alternately unaccented and accented in each line. In the third period, he shows a marked tendency to vary the standard iambic pentameter line, creating an overall effect of increased verbal fluidity. The writing of this period also is marked by especially dense descriptive language. Shakespeare’s language becomes a flexible dramatic tool that makes possible the skillful psychological portraits that mark this period.
Hamlet
Prince Hamlet of Denmark deeply mourns the recent death of his father. He also resents his mother’s remarriage to his uncle Claudius, who has become king. The ghost of Hamlet’s father appears to the prince and tells him he was murdered by Claudius. The ghost demands that Hamlet take revenge on the king.
Hamlet broods about whether he should believe the ghost. In his soliloquies, he criticizes himself for not acting against his uncle. He also considers suicide. Hamlet decides to have a band of traveling actors perform “something like the murder of my father” before the king to see if Claudius will show any guilt. The king’s violent reaction convinces Hamlet that the ghost has told the truth. But Hamlet rejects a chance to kill Claudius while the king is on his knees in prayer.
Polonius, the king’s adviser, decides to eavesdrop on Hamlet while the prince is visiting his mother in her sitting room. He hides behind a curtain, but Hamlet becomes aware that someone is there. Hamlet stabs Polonius through the curtain and kills him.
Claudius exiles Hamlet to England for killing Polonius. He also sends secret orders that the prince be executed after he arrives in England. But Hamlet intercepts the orders and returns to Denmark. He arrives in time to see the burial of Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius. The young woman, whom Hamlet had loved, had gone insane following her father’s death and drowned after falling into a river.
Laertes, Ophelia’s brother, blames Hamlet for the deaths of his sister and father. He agrees to a plot suggested by Claudius to kill Hamlet with a poisoned sword in a fencing match. Laertes wounds Hamlet during the duel and, in turn, is wounded himself by the poisoned weapon. While watching the match, Hamlet’s mother accidentally drinks from a cup of poisoned wine Claudius had prepared for Hamlet. Although dying from his wound, Hamlet kills Claudius. At the end of the play, Hamlet, his mother, Claudius, and Laertes all lie dead.
Shakespeare handled the complicated plot of Hamlet brilliantly. In this play, he also created perhaps his greatest gallery of characters. The role of Hamlet in particular is considered one of the theater’s greatest acting challenges. Shakespeare focused the play on the deep conflict within the thoughtful and idealistic Hamlet as he is torn between the demands of his emotions and the hesitant skepticism of his mind. Hamlet reveals this conflict in several famous and eloquent soliloquies. The best known is the soliloquy that begins, “To be, or not to be.”
Troilus and Cressida
is a dark comedy based on several sources, none of which was a chief source. The play was probably first performed in 1602 and was first published in 1609.
The story takes place during the Trojan War, fought between ancient Greece and the city of Troy. It dramatizes the disastrous love affair between two Trojans, Troilus, one of the king’s sons, and Cressida, a woman whose father has joined the Greeks. Cressida is suddenly sent to the Greek camp in exchange for a Trojan prisoner. Despite her promise to be faithful to Troilus, she accepts the love and protection of the Greek warrior Diomedes in the enemy camp. The play ends with the death of Troilus’s brother, the great Trojan hero Hector.
In spite of its heroic setting, Troilus and Cressida is neither noble nor stirring. The play’s satirical account of the heroic virtue associated with the epic tradition results in dark cynicism. Although the play has some splendid language, no single character provides an authoritative vision of the events shown. This atmosphere of moral confusion, along with the play’s extreme shifts between sexual humor and psychological realism, have led many critics to classify it as one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays” because it does not seem to fit neatly into any recognized dramatic category.
All’s Well That Ends Well
is a comedy partly based on a story in The Palace of Pleasure (1567, revised in 1575), a collection of tales by various European authors, translated by William Painter, an English author. The play was probably first performed in 1603 and was first published in 1623.
This play takes place in France and Italy. Helena, the beautiful orphaned daughter of a physician, loves Bertram, a nobleman. In Paris, Helena cures the French king of an illness and wins Bertram as her husband in reward. But Bertram considers Helena beneath him socially and deserts her immediately after the wedding. He tells her in a letter that she can never call him husband unless she gets a ring from his finger and becomes pregnant by him. In Florence, Bertram attempts to seduce the young Diana. But Helena, having followed her husband, intervenes. She has Diana demand Bertram’s ring in exchange for meeting him. Using the bed trick, Helena substitutes herself for Diana and makes love to Bertram. When Bertram finds that Helena has fulfilled both conditions, he is forced to accept her as his wife.
On the surface, All’s Well That Ends Well resembles other Elizabethan comedies of romantic intrigue. But unlike Shakespeare’s earlier comedies, it has little gaiety and romance. Helena has many of the virtuous traits found in other Shakespearean heroines, but her dogged pursuit of the unworthy Bertram puzzles some critics. Although the play does not emphasize character development, Helena’s struggle to save Bertram from his own worst inclinations does present a complex vision of human nature. The play anticipates elements of the late romances in its use of such fairy-tale elements as miraculous cures, and its emphasis on reconciliation.
Measure for Measure
is a comedy partly based on Promos and Cassandra (1578), a play by the English author George Whetstone. Shakespeare’s play was probably first performed in 1604 and was first published in 1623.
Vincentio, Duke of Vienna, turns over the affairs of the city to Angelo, his stern deputy. The duke hopes Angelo will introduce needed moral reforms in Vienna. In one of his first acts, Angelo sentences Claudio to death for making Juliet, his fiancée, pregnant. Claudio’s sister, Isabella, pleads with Angelo for Claudio’s life. Overcome by her beauty, Angelo agrees to save Claudio if she will allow him to make love to her. Isabella refuses, preferring to let her brother die rather than yield her honor. After much intrigue and plotting, including a bed trick like the one that appears in All’s Well, Claudio is saved, Isabella keeps her virtue, and Angelo’s wicked deeds are exposed.
Many critics have objected to the happy ending of Measure for Measure. They consider it false to the spirit of the play. The first part of the play is serious, almost tragic. The latter part becomes a typical romantic intrigue. This lack of artistic unity creates problems. The first part of the play, for example, raises serious questions about the nature of justice that remain unanswered at the play’s end. Because of these perplexing moral entanglements, Measure for Measure is another play that critics have classed as a “problem play” that cannot easily be categorized.
In spite of its flaws, Measure for Measure has many excellent features. Shakespeare drew the characters of Angelo and Isabella with keen understanding. He also included much broad comedy that is highly effective. In addition, his dramatic poetry at times equals that of the best in his tragedies.
Othello
Othello, a noble Black Moor (North African), has spent his life as a soldier and become a general in the army of Venice, then a self-governing area called a city-state, ruled by nobles. Othello elopes with Desdemona, the beautiful daughter of a Venetian senator. Immediately after the marriage, Othello is ordered to Cyprus to defend against an expected attack from the Turks. Desdemona insists on accompanying her new husband. Iago, Othello’s aide, declares his hatred of the Moor and begins to plot his downfall. The play’s dramatic core consists of scenes in which Iago convinces Othello that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him with Michael Cassio, Othello’s lieutenant. A master of psychological manipulation, Iago prefers insinuation to outright lying. He successfully exploits Othello’s insecurity over his race, age, and lack of sophistication. Tormented by thoughts of Desdemona’s infidelity, Othello murders her. After the Moor learns he has been tricked, he stabs himself and dies, describing himself as “one that loved not wisely, but too well.”
Othello is one of Shakespeare’s most powerful tragedies. The action moves rapidly without any unimportant plot developments. The language is also direct and forceful. Both Othello and Iago use especially vivid images, but when Othello is enraged, his language becomes fractured and incoherent. The play is centered on the impossibility of truly knowing the mind of another and insists on the fragility of human goodness and love.
King Lear
is a tragedy partly based on Holinshed’s Chronicles; on The True Chronicle History of King Leir, a play by an unknown English author; and on Arcadia (1590), a romance in prose and verse by the English author Sir Philip Sidney. King Lear was probably first performed in 1605 and was first published in 1608.
The main plot concerns Lear, an aged king of ancient Britain. He prepares to divide his kingdom among his three daughters—Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia. Lear becomes angry when Cordelia, his youngest daughter, refuses to flatter him to gain her portion of the kingdom. Lear rashly disinherits her, but the king of France agrees to marry her even though she has no dowry. Lear also exiles his trusted adviser, Kent, for supporting Cordelia.
Regan and Goneril soon show their ingratitude. They deprive Lear of his servants and finally force him to spend a night outdoors during a storm accompanied only by his jester, called the Fool. Lear’s mind begins to snap under the strain. But as he descends into madness, he finally sees his errors and selfishness. Cordelia returns from France leading an army and finds the king insane. Lear recovers his sanity and recognizes her. Armies raised by the wicked sisters capture Lear and Cordelia, who is put to death. Meanwhile, Goneril has poisoned Regan in a bitter quarrel over a man they both love and then killed herself. Order is finally restored in the kingdom. But Lear dies of a broken heart as he kneels over the body of Cordelia.
Shakespeare skillfully wove a subplot into the main story of Lear and his daughters. Gloucester, a nobleman in Lear’s court, makes the mistake of banishing his faithful son, Edgar, and trusting his wicked son, Edmund. Edmund soon betrays his father, who is blinded by Regan’s husband. Edgar, disguised as a beggar, discovers his blind father and comforts him. Having realized his error in rejecting Edgar, Gloucester wants only to take his own life. Edgar remains in disguise and attempts to teach his father the importance of patience and optimism. But after the battle between Cordelia’s forces and those of her sisters, Edgar reveals himself to his father, who dies overwhelmed by joy and grief.
In King Lear, Shakespeare created the brilliant characterizations that mark his dramas at their best. The characters realize their mistakes, which reflects Shakespeare’s basic optimism. But they do so too late to prevent their destruction and that of the people around them. Lear is widely regarded as the bleakest of Shakespeare’s tragedies.
Macbeth
is a tragedy partly based on Holinshed’s Chronicles. Macbeth was probably first performed in 1606 and was first published in 1623.
This play is set in Scotland. Returning from battle with his companion Banquo, the nobleman Macbeth meets some witches. They predict that Macbeth will first become thane (baron) of Cawdor and then king of Scotland. After the first part of the witches’ prophecy comes true, he begins to think the second part may also come true. King Duncan visits the Macbeths. Encouraged by Lady Macbeth, Macbeth murders Duncan and throws suspicion on the king’s two sons, Malcolm and Donalbain. The princes, fearing for their lives, flee, and Macbeth is crowned king of Scotland.
But Macbeth has no peace. Malcolm has escaped to England, where he seeks support against Macbeth. In addition, the witches had also predicted that Banquo’s descendants would be kings of Scotland. Macbeth therefore orders the murder of Banquo and his son, Fleance. Macbeth’s men kill Banquo, but Fleance escapes. Macbeth is now hardened to killing. He orders the murder of the wife and children of his enemy Macduff, who has fled to England. Macduff joins Malcolm, who leads an army against Macbeth. By this time, Lady Macbeth, burdened with guilt over the murders, has become a sleepwalker. She finally dies. At the end of the play, Macduff kills Macbeth in battle. Duncan’s son Malcolm is then proclaimed king of Scotland.
In Macbeth, Shakespeare wrote a tragedy of a man’s conscience. During the course of the play, Macbeth changes from a person of strong but imperfect moral sense to a man who will stop at nothing to get and keep what he wants. By the play’s end, he has lost all emotion. He cannot even react to his wife’s death, except to conclude that life is only “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” On the other hand, Lady Macbeth encourages murder in the beginning. But her conscience grows as her husband’s lessens. In addition to its psychological insights, Macbeth has many passages of great poetry. The play is also noted for its bitter humor, which reinforces the tragic action.
Timon of Athens
is a tragedy partly based on Plutarch’s Lives as translated by Sir Thomas North. The play was probably first performed in 1607 and was first published in 1623. Some scholars believe that Thomas Middleton wrote part of the play.
Timon is a nobleman in ancient Athens. Surrounded by flatterers, he spends his money extravagantly. But after he becomes penniless, his friends desert him. Their ingratitude turns Timon into a bitter person who hates humanity. Timon leaves Athens and goes to live in a cave near the sea, where he finds a buried treasure. But his new-found wealth brings him no happiness. He dies, still bitter, in his cave.
Although Timon of Athens has flaws, it also has passages of great eloquence. Several such passages occur when Timon pours out his scorn for humanity. Throughout the play, Shakespeare portrays people at their worst, with few of the noble qualities that lighten the gloom in his great tragedies.
Pericles
is a romance partly based on a story in Confessio Amantis (1390), a collection of European tales retold by the English poet John Gower. Pericles was probably first performed in 1607 and was first published in 1609. Some scholars believe that George Wilkins wrote part of the play.
This play consists of many loosely related episodes and is uneven in quality. The action in Pericles covers many years and ranges over much of the ancient Mediterranean world. The plot deals with the adventures of Prince Pericles of Tyre. Upon discovering that the beautiful woman he has been courting is corrupt and vicious, Pericles flees, only to become shipwrecked. Poor and unknown, he comes ashore at Pentapolis. Despite his tattered appearance, the king’s daughter, the virtuous Thaisa, recognizes his basic nobility, and they marry. They have a daughter, Marina, but soon the three family members are separated. The loss of his wife and daughter causes Pericles to fall into a deep melancholy from which he recovers only when reunited first with his daughter and then with his wife.
Pericles shares a number of qualities with the later romances Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest. Character development is less important than a complex plot that threatens to end in tragedy only to come to an almost miraculous happy conclusion. Along the way, there is real suffering and even death, but all difficulties are redeemed by the joy of recovery and reunion. The two characters who are most fully portrayed are Pericles and Marina, whose radiant and saintly virtue protects her from the evils of the world.
Antony and Cleopatra
is a tragedy partly based on Plutarch’s Lives as translated by Sir Thomas North. The play was probably first performed in 1607 and was first published in 1623.
Mark Antony shares the rule of the Roman Empire with Octavius Caesar and Lepidus. Antony lives in Roman-conquered Egypt, where he pursues a love affair with Cleopatra. Political problems in Rome and the death of his wife force Antony to leave his life of pleasure and return home. In Rome, he marries Octavius’s sister Octavia for political reasons. But Antony soon returns to “his Egyptian dish.” Octavius then prepares for war against him.
Antony decides unwisely to fight Octavius at sea. During the battle, Cleopatra’s fleet deserts him, and Antony flees with the queen. After Cleopatra’s ships desert him in a second battle, Antony finally realizes that he has lost everything. Cleopatra deceives him into thinking that she is dead, and Antony attempts suicide. But before he dies, he learns that Cleopatra is still alive. Antony returns to her and dies in her arms. Cleopatra is captured by Octavius, who plans to lead her in triumph through Rome. Although under guard, Cleopatra obtains poisonous snakes and uses them to take her own life. She dies anticipating her reunion with Antony in the afterlife.
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Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra: Enobarbus
The dazzling poetry of Antony and Cleopatra is one of the play’s most notable features. Early in the play, Enobarbus, one of Antony’s officers, gives a famous description of Cleopatra that begins, “The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, / Burned on the water.” Cleopatra is a wonderfully complex character. She goes from playfulness to irritation, from sweet intimacy to fierce anger, all in an instant. At the same time, she shows courage and determination. As Enobarbus says, “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety.”
When Enobarbus becomes convinced that Antony has abandoned reason, he deserts him to join the realist Octavius. In a grand gesture, Antony sends Enobarbus the treasure he has left behind. Enobarbus, overwhelmed by his own disloyalty, dies of a broken heart.
Shakespeare’s dramatic use of poetry creates portraits of the play’s two main characters that are filled with ambiguity. From the perspective of the Romans especially, they appear to be nothing more than aging pleasure seekers. But the lovers describe themselves in lofty poetic language. The play suggests that there is something noble about them.
Coriolanus
is a tragedy partly based on Plutarch’s Lives as translated by Sir Thomas North. The play was probably first performed in 1608 and was first published in 1623.
Caius Marcius, a general in ancient Rome, wins the name Coriolanus after he captures Corioli, the capital city of a people known as the Volscians. Coriolanus returns to Rome in triumph and is nominated for the important office of consul. But he cannot hide his scorn for the common people, whose support he needs to become consul. Coriolanus’s superior attitude leads to his exile. He joins forces with his old enemy, the Volscian general Tullus Aufidius, and heads an army against Rome. Coriolanus’s mother, wife, and young son meet him outside the city and beg him to spare it. Moved by their pleas, Coriolanus withdraws his troops. Aufidius denounces him as a traitor and has him murdered.
In Coriolanus, Shakespeare raised issues that remain particularly important today. The tragedy questions the values of personal popularity and political success. It also debates the conflicting interests of public and private life. Shakespeare’s direct and dramatic verse contributes to the play’s power.
The fourth period (1609-1614)
During his final period, Shakespeare wrote five plays—four romances and a history. Scholars believe Shakespeare collaborated with John Fletcher, who took over for Shakespeare as the lead dramatist for the King’s Men, on two of these plays—Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen.
The four romances are beautifully constructed, and their poetry ranks among Shakespeare’s finest writing. But unlike his masterpieces of the third period, the romances seem detached from reality. Scholars disagree on the reason for this change in Shakespeare’s works. Some claim he was calmly looking back on his life and philosophically summing up his career. Other scholars believe that the romances are a response to the growing popularity of plays that mixed comic and serious elements and that in writing them Shakespeare was adapting his work to the changing tastes of his audience. These claims are not, however, mutually exclusive. Throughout his career, Shakespeare was attentive to the desires of his audience. At the same time, his work never appears merely commercial.
Cymbeline
is a romance partly based on several sources, none of which was a chief source. Cymbeline was probably first performed in 1609 and was first published in 1623.
Cymbeline, king of Britain, angrily exiles the poor but honorable Posthumous after the young man marries Imogen, the king’s daughter. The treacherous Iachimo bets Posthumous that Imogen is not virtuous. Iachimo then tries to seduce her. He fails but tricks Posthumous into believing that he has succeeded. Posthumous orders his wife killed, but she escapes disguised as a court page. After many adventures, Imogen and her husband are happily reunited. Iachimo, filled with regret, confesses his wickedness.
Cymbeline is a lively mix of historical elements. It includes portrayals of ancient Britons, classical Romans, and, in Iachimo, an Italian plotter who appears modern. Cymbeline’s queen is the sort of wicked stepmother found in fairy tales. Her son, Cloten, is a cowardly clown. Although Posthumous is brave and virtuous, the play’s most appealing character is the loyal and resourceful Imogen.
The play includes a subplot that involves the recovery of Imogen’s two brothers, who had been stolen in infancy. These elements unfold against the background of an international conflict between Britain and the Roman Empire. The resolution of all these conflicts allows the play to end in a celebration of global peace.
The Winter’s Tale
is a romance partly based on Pandosto (1588), a prose romance by the English author Robert Greene. The play was probably first performed in 1611 and was first published in 1623.
Leontes, king of Sicilia, becomes uncontrollably jealous of his faithful wife, Hermione, and suspects her of sleeping with his boyhood friend Polixenes. Polixenes is now the king of Bohemia, and he has been visiting Sicilia for the past nine months. Leontes tries to have Polixenes murdered, but he escapes and returns to Bohemia. Leontes then orders his wife to prison, where she gives birth to their daughter, Perdita. Leontes declares the child illegitimate and orders that she be abandoned in a deserted place. Leontes sends agents to consult the oracle of Apollo and puts Hermione on trial for adultery. As the trial begins, a report arrives from the oracle declaring Hermione’s innocence. But Leontes rejects the oracle and immediately learns that his young son has died of grief. At this news, Hermione falls into a deathlike faint. Suddenly convinced of his error, Leontes is left to mourn the loss of his wife, daughter, and son.
Meanwhile, Perdita has been saved by an old shepherd. She grows into a lovely young woman and wins the love of Florizel, prince of Bohemia. But Florizel’s father, Polixenes, angrily disapproves of their romance, and the couple flee to Leontes’s court for protection. There, Leontes discovers that Perdita is his daughter. The king’s happiness is complete when he is also reunited with his wife, who was thought to be dead. Instead, with the help of a lady-in-waiting, she had been living in seclusion, hoping for Perdita’s return.
Like Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale concerns exile, women suffering from male jealousy, and the reuniting of loved ones. Also like the earlier play, The Winter’s Tale takes a potentially tragic situation and uses it to stress recovery rather than destruction. Still, there is loss. The young prince and the lord sent to dispose of Perdita are both dead. The play’s conclusion includes a wonderful piece of theater in which a supposed statue of Hermione comes to life. The conclusion is finely balanced between the joy of reconciliation and the painful knowledge of loss.
The Tempest
is a romance partly based on several sources, none of which was a chief source. The Tempest was probably first performed in 1611 and was first published in 1623.
Prospero, the wrongfully deposed Duke of Milan, Italy, lives on an enchanted island with his beautiful daughter, Miranda. The mischievous spirit Ariel and the monster Caliban serve Prospero, who is a skilled magician. Using magic, Prospero creates a tempest (storm) that causes a ship carrying his enemies to be wrecked on the island. The ship also carries the young prince Ferdinand. Miranda loves him at first sight and cries out, “O brave new world that hath such creatures in it.” With his magic, Prospero brings Miranda and Ferdinand together and upsets plots laid against him by his shipwrecked enemies. Prospero appears before his enemies and forgives them. He decides to give up his magic and return to Italy, where Ferdinand and Miranda can marry.
Like Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest tells a story in which old injuries are forgiven and the characters begin a new and happier life. In The Tempest, Shakespeare blended spectacle, song, and dance with a romantic love story, beautiful poetry, and broad comedy. The result of this blending is a brilliant dramatic fantasy. In one of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches, Prospero tells the audience:
Loading the player...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-capped tow’rs, 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.
Prospero from The Tempest
Many scholars have taken these lines to be Shakespeare’s farewell to his profession. But no one knows if he intended the speech to be autobiographical.
Henry VIII
is a history partly based on Holinshed’s Chronicles and on The Book of Martyrs (1563), a religious work by the English author John Foxe. The play was probably first performed in 1613 and was first published in 1623. Many scholars believe that John Fletcher wrote part of the play.
The play dramatizes the events that led to England’s break with the Roman Catholic Church. It deals with King Henry VIII’s annulment (cancellation) of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (spelled Katherine in the play) and his marriage to Anne Boleyn. The play also covers the fall of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey as the king’s adviser and the rise of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer as Wolsey’s replacement. Henry VIII is a loosely constructed drama and better known for its pageantry than for its characterization. But the play attempts to move beyond the anger found in almost all the historical accounts of England’s split from Catholicism available during Shakespeare’s lifetime. The play’s alternate title, All Is True, suggests a mildly ironic attempt to create an account of the country’s recent past that covers all the major events and invites agreement among the various sides.
The Two Noble Kinsmen
is a romance chiefly based on “The Knight’s Tale” from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The play was probably first performed in 1613 or 1614 and was first published in 1634. Most scholars believe Shakespeare wrote it with John Fletcher.
The play tells the story of two young aristocrats from Thebes, Palamon and Arcite. Although Thebes is ruled by the tyrant Creon, the two friends decide that loyalty requires them to help defend their city against the attack of Theseus, king of Athens. The two are captured in battle and taken to Athens. In prison, Palamon sees and falls in love with Emilia, the sister of Hippolyta, the wife of Theseus. Arcite, too, falls in love with Emilia.
The two friends argue bitterly over their claims to Emilia. Arcite is released from prison and exiled, but he remains in Athens in disguise. Palamon manages to escape from prison and encounters the disguised Arcite in the woods. The two are about to fight a duel over Emilia when they are discovered by Theseus, who condemns them both to death. The king is talked into sparing the two on the condition that they return in a month to fight each other. The winner will marry Emilia, and the loser will be executed.
In preparation for the fight, Arcite prays to Mars, the god of war. Palamon prays to Venus, the goddess of love, and Emilia prays to Diana, the goddess of virginity. Arcite wins the fight but afterward is thrown from his horse and fatally injured. Palamon, on the verge of execution, is permitted a final interview with his dying friend, who confesses that he has wronged Palamon and urges him to take Emilia. Theseus spares Palamon and agrees to his marriage to Emilia.
The Two Noble Kinsmen, like other late romances, has an artificial quality and an improbable plot designed to highlight the guiding role of Providence in human affairs. Like Henry VIII, the play emphasizes courtly ceremony and pageantry. However, the play’s central focus is on a friendship between two men that is jeopardized by their rivalry for the same woman. Some of the play’s best dialogue concerns the qualities and claims of friendship.
Shakespeare’s poems
Shakespeare wrote two long poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Both are narrative poems—that is, they tell a story. Shakespeare also composed a sequence of 154 sonnets, which concludes with a short poem called “A Lover’s Complaint.” He contributed another short lyric, “The Phoenix and the Turtle,” to an anthology of poetry titled Love’s Martyr (1601).
The narrative poems
Venus and Adonis
(1593) draws on the Metamorphoses, a collection of tales in verse by the ancient Roman poet Ovid. The poem tells how Venus, the goddess of love, tries to win the love of the handsome young mortal Adonis. He resists her and is finally killed by a wild boar while hunting.
Shakespeare wrote Venus and Adonis in six-line stanzas. Most of the lines are iambic pentameter. The lines of Venus and Adonis rhyme ababcc, which means the first and third lines rhyme, as do the second and fourth, and the fifth and sixth.
The poem is witty and filled with sexual references. But the work is most notable for its vivid settings and its formal and elaborate speeches. Venus and Adonis represents Shakespeare’s successful attempt to write the kind of love poetry that was fashionable in court circles and enormously popular.
The Rape of Lucrece
(1594) is also partly based on the works of Ovid, as well as on writings by other authors. The poem tells of Lucrece, the virtuous wife of a Roman nobleman. Raped by Sextus Tarquinius, son of the tyrant Roman king Lucius Tarquinius, Lucrece demands that her husband and his friends swear to revenge her ruined honor. She then kills herself. Her supporters publicize the deed, and the people expel the Tarquins and establish the Roman Republic.
Shakespeare wrote The Rape of Lucrece in rime royal, which uses seven-line stanzas of iambic pentameter that are rhymed ababbcc. The poem is more serious in tone than Venus and Adonis. Although the poem describes a violent event that has enormous consequences, it mostly consists of elaborate speeches.
The sonnets
In the late 1500’s, it was fashionable for English gentlemen authors to write sequences of sonnets. Some sonnet sequences followed a narrative pattern that was autobiographical in varying degrees. For this reason, scholars have tried to learn about Shakespeare’s life from his sonnets. But they have reached no general agreement on autobiographical information that the poems might contain. Loading the player...
Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare
Scholars generally do agree, however, that Shakespeare addressed the first 126 sonnets to a young nobleman and that the next 26 concentrate on a woman. But they have not been able to identify either person. They have long debated over the nature of Shakespeare’s relationship with the young man and have come to no general conclusion. A similar uncertainty surrounds the woman known as the “dark lady.” The sexually charged sonnets concerning this figure reveal a mixture of desire and disgust. Attempts to identify the “dark lady” have been unconvincing.
In several of the first 126 sonnets, the speaker refers to another poet he considers a rival for his young friend’s affection and support. Scholars have proposed many candidates for the role of the “rival poet,” but no general agreement has emerged. Sonnets 153 and 154 are a notable departure from the preceding poems. Ultimately inspired by an epigram in Greek, both sonnets treat Cupid, the Roman god of love. This shift in subject matter has caused some scholars to question the authenticity of these last two sonnets. The volume concludes with “A Lover’s Complaint,” which tells the story of a jilted woman in 47 stanzas of rime royal.
Composition and publication.
Shakespeare probably wrote the sonnets over several years, though their dates are not clear. He wrote the poems in three units of four lines each with a concluding couplet (two-line unit). Shakespeare’s sonnets rhyme abab cdcd efef gg.
Two of the sonnets originally appeared in a book of poetry called The Passionate Pilgrim (1599). Thomas Thorpe published the sonnets as a collection in 1609. Thorpe dedicated the book to Mr. W. H., whom he called “the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets.” Scholars do not know who Mr. W. H. was or even if he inspired the poems or merely collected them for the publisher. The individual poems have no titles. Scholars refer to them either by their first line or by the number Thorpe assigned to them. Because the volume was not clearly authorized by Shakespeare, scholars have raised questions about the order in which the poems appear.
Themes.
In the sonnets addressed to his aristocratic friend, Shakespeare treated a variety of subjects. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (sonnet 18) praises physical beauty. “When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes” (sonnet 29) describes the power of friendship to cheer the poet. “Devouring time, blunt thou the lion’s paws” (sonnet 19) tells of poetry’s power to confer immortality. Loading the player...
Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare
The sonnets’ most common themes concern the destructive effects of time, the quickness of physical decay, and the loss of beauty, vigor, and love. Although the poems celebrate life, it is always with a keen awareness of death. This awareness of death is perhaps best expressed in “Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth” (sonnet 146).
A distrust of love and human nature runs through the “dark lady” sonnets. Sonnet 138, which appears below, reflects this attitude. In addition, the poem is representative of the entire sequence in two ways. The sonnet tells of the poet’s concern over the passing of time, and it shows his strong emotion controlled by his highly intellectual wit.
Loading the player...When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutored youth, Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue: On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed. But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told. Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
Shakespeare's Sonnet 138
“The Phoenix and the Turtle”
This 67-line poem appeared in 1601 in the collection called Love’s Martyr. It praises ideal love, using as symbols two birds, the phoenix and the turtledove. The poem has philosophical and symbolic qualities that have led to various biographical, political, and religious interpretations by critics.
Shakespeare’s style
Writing at a time when early modern English was assuming its fully modern form, Shakespeare and other Elizabethan writers looked upon the English language as alive and changing. They did not consider it fixed for all time in a set of correct and unbreakable rules. Shakespeare, for example, used both has and its earlier form hath. In the same way, he used the pronouns thee and thou as well as their modern equivalent, you. Shakespeare experimented freely with sentence structure and vocabulary to create special effects. He also used various literary devices to present information and ideas in a dramatic and appealing way. But Shakespeare’s style is perhaps best known for its brilliant use of language to create vivid pictures in the mind.
Shakespeare’s style has helped shape the language of all English-speaking countries. This influence has chiefly been felt directly through his writings. But it has also been felt through the interest his work has aroused in the literature of the Elizabethan period in general. Many later writers in English have accepted the Elizabethan style as their model. As a result, much English and American literature reflects the highly individualized enthusiasm of most Elizabethan writing.
Vocabulary.
Shakespeare’s vocabulary of about 29,000 words is remarkably rich. Like his fellow writers, he put old words to new uses, borrowed from other languages, and invented new terms. What sets apart Shakespeare’s verbal creativity is that so many of his innovations were adopted by English speakers. Thomas Nashe, a contemporary of Shakespeare’s, also freely invented words, but most of them are now forgotten.
However, the richness of Shakespeare’s vocabulary sometimes raises difficulties for modern readers. Not all the words and meanings used by Shakespeare remain current. Perhaps the trickiest are the class of words that look familiar and modern but carry changed meanings and associations. The adjective silly was beginning to carry the modern meaning of foolish or stupid, and Shakespeare uses it in this sense in Love’s Labour’s Lost and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But the word was used in its earlier meaning of helpless when Queen Margaret describes herself as a “silly Woman” in Henry VI, Part III. Most editions of Shakespeare’s plays include notes that define such words.
Rhetoric.
Shakespeare and other Elizabethan writers were trained in rhetoric—the art of using language to persuade. Based on classical and medieval models, Renaissance rhetoric was an established discipline offering a body of rules and techniques that could be studied, practiced, and absorbed. Rhetorical training was so central to Elizabethan culture that some critics, such as Sir Francis Bacon, began to worry that it promoted an interest in words at the expense of a knowledge of things. Traditionally, the discipline of rhetoric is divided into (1) invention, (2) arrangement, (3) style, (4) memory, and (5) delivery. Although Shakespeare was familiar with each of these parts, style is the most important category for the study of his work. Style includes rhetorical figures—devices or patterns in language that change or embellish meaning. These figures are conventionally divided into tropes and schemes. Tropes involve a change in a word’s usual meaning. Schemes are verbal patterns that do not change the meaning of the words.
Classical rhetoric has an extensive classification of schemes, most of which involve word or sound repetition. For example, Shakespeare made frequent use of anaphora, the repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive clauses or lines of verse. In the opening of Richard III, the Duke of Gloucester says:
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, Our bruised arms hung up for monuments, Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
In addition, this passage uses antithesis, the joining of opposite ideas, to emphasize the contrast between past and present. When the anguished King Lear realizes he will never see his dear, dead daughter again, he laments “Never, never, never, never, never.” This is an example of epizeuxis, the emphatic repetition of a word or phrase. The line is also a powerful and entirely natural expression of loss.
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Shakespeare's As You Like It: Jaques
The most important trope is metaphor—a figure of speech in which one thing is identified as another. For example, when Ophelia calls Hamlet “The expectancy and rose of the fair state,” she is identifying him as a perfect example of young manhood. In As You Like It, for example, Jaques begins a famous soliloquy with a metaphor:
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.
Shakespeare enjoyed using puns. When Claudius, who is both uncle and stepfather to Hamlet, addresses the prince as “son,” Hamlet bitterly remarks “A little more than kin, and less than kind.” This pun plays on the sense of kind as benevolent and as belonging to the natural order. Hamlet is suggesting that Claudius’s marriage to Gertrude is both unnatural and malicious. Claudius then asks, “How is it that the clouds still hang upon you?” Hamlet replies, “Not so, my lord. I am too much in the sun.” The sun/son pun refers back to Claudius’s initial form of address. Such serious punning is an essential part of Hamlet’s character. Elsewhere, Shakespeare’s characters pun for the sheer fun of it.
Imagery.
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Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare used rhetorical techniques to create rich imagery that gives his writing its unique style. A famous example of his brilliant imagery comes from Macbeth. Horrified by his murder of King Duncan, Macbeth looks at his bloodstained hands and says:
What hands are here? Ha! They pluck out mine eyes! Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No. This my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.
The image of Duncan’s blood turning all the oceans incarnadine (blood-red) reveals the terrifying guilt Macbeth feels over committing the murder.
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Richard II by William Shakespeare
Another vivid example of Shakespeare’s imagery appears in Richard II. Richard warns Bolingbroke that his rebellion against the king will bring the horrors of civil war to England:
He is come to open The purple testament of bleeding war. But ere the crown he looks for live in peace, Ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers’ sons Shall ill become the flower of England’s face, Change the complexion of her maid-pale peace To scarlet indignation, and bedew Her pastures’ grass with faithful English blood.
Verse form.
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Shakespeare's use of blank verse
Shakespeare reinforced his imagery with the rhythm of his verse. He composed his plays largely in blank verse—that is, in lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter. In such a pattern, each line is divided into five units called feet, with the accent falling on every second syllable. Of all English metrical patterns, blank verse—particularly when occasionally varied—comes closest to the rhythms of everyday speech. In his earliest plays, much of Shakespeare’s blank verse was highly regular and stopped or paused at the end of each line. In addition, plays from his first decade of work display a high percentage of rhymed lines, which make the verse more forced. But as his writing developed, Shakespeare’s verse became increasingly flexible and natural sounding. Perhaps most significantly, verse dialogue in Shakespeare’s later work increasingly tends to have a speaker end at midline with the next speaker completing the verse line.
While Shakespeare’s verse becomes increasingly accomplished, his plays also employ prose in a sophisticated way. A number of early plays do not use prose, but most of the plays beginning with Shakespeare’s second period exhibit some mixture of prose and verse. The two plays with the highest percentage of prose are The Merry Wives of Windsor and Much Ado About Nothing. In addition, most of the characters associated with prose, such as Falstaff, are notably comic and witty. Whether comic or serious, prose usually serves to mark a shift in tone.
Publishing history
No manuscripts of Shakespeare’s plays exist. As a result, modern editions of the plays must be based on early published texts. There are two kinds of these texts, quartos and folios. A quarto is a small volume containing one Shakespeare play. A folio is a large volume of his collected plays. Twenty of Shakespeare’s plays first appeared in quarto form. For his remaining 18 plays, the First Folio of 1623 is the only source.
The publishing history of Shakespeare’s plays has been a story of constant attempts by editors to correct errors and deficiencies in the quartos and folios. Editors have also worked to make Shakespeare’s text accessible to their readers by marking scene and act divisions, commenting on stage directions, and explaining difficult words and phrases.
Quartos
have traditionally been classified as good or bad. The good quartos are thought to have been printed either from Shakespeare’s own manuscripts or from accurate handwritten copies. Generally, the good quartos provide a clear and readable text, but they are not free from error. The bad quartos, in contrast, have some notable deficiencies, including textual errors and a tendency toward compression or abbreviation. Initially, five plays were identified as bad quartos, but soon an additional three plays were added. For a long time, scholars believed that the bad quartos were illegally produced by memorial reconstruction—a process in which an actor or actors who appeared in a play would recall the play’s language for transcription and publication. Scholars are increasingly skeptical of whether the entire set of bad quartos can be explained as memorial reconstructions. Scholars now agree generally that the bad quartos contain valuable textual information.
Folios.
Shakespeare did not live to supervise the publication of his own work. The first edition of his collected plays, known as the First Folio, was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death. It included 36 plays (Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen were excluded) arranged in three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. The two principal publishers, Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, formed a group that included William Jaggard (Isaac’s father), John Smethwick, and William Aspley to share the costs of production and split the profits.
Heminge and Condell obtained the texts of the plays from various sources, including quartos and playhouse promptbooks. A promptbook was a copy of the script with detailed directions for performing the play. The First Folio was followed by the Second Folio (1632); the Third Folio (1663-1664), which added seven plays (Pericles and another six now referred to as the Shakespeare Apocrypha and not considered authentic); and the Fourth Folio (1685). The final three folios show attempts at editorial corrections, but since each successive folio is based on the preceding one, these corrections are not considered authoritative.
Editions of the 1700’s and 1800’s.
During the 1700’s, the business of editing Shakespeare began seriously. In 1709, Nicholas Rowe produced an innovative multivolume edition that represented a profound departure from the earlier folios. Among Rowe’s innovations were adding a short biography of Shakespeare, carefully observed scene and act divisions, elaborate stage directions that identify locations as well as actions, and illustrations showing dramatic moments in the plays.
Other notable editors of the 1700’s, with the year in which their edition appeared, included Alexander Pope (1725), Lewis Theobald (1733), Samuel Johnson (1765), Edward Capell (1768), and Edmond Malone (1790). Theobald’s edition is particularly important for its many corrections that try to restore the text to its original meaning. Johnson’s edition is significant for its scholarly comments on the plays themselves. Malone’s edition is notable for its commitment to authenticity. It is the first edition to include a scholarly description of the language and poetry of the Elizabethan Age, a rigorous examination of the many unverified facts included in Rowe’s biography, a full chronology of the plays, and Shakespeare’s sonnets.
The first variorum editions of the plays appeared in the 1800’s. Variorum editions include notes by previous editors as well as alternate versions of disputed passages. The most elaborate is the New Variorum edited by H. H. Furness and others. The first volume was published in 1871. The project was later taken over by the Modern Language Association, a professional association for scholars of language and literature.
In the 1800’s, the most important edition of the plays probably was the nine-volume Cambridge Shakespeare (1863-1866) edited by W. G. Clark, J. Glover, and W. Aldis Wright. In 1864, the edition was published in a single volume. Known as The Globe Shakespeare, it became the standard work for scholarly reference.
Modern Shakespeare editions
reveal an increasing tendency toward specialized marketing. Editors and publishers concentrate on producing editions for a particular target audience. For example, the Folger Shakespeare Library and Barnes & Noble publish editions designed to make Shakespeare accessible to high school readers. Bantam Classics Shakespeare and the Penguin Group’s Pelican Shakespeare and Signet Classics Shakespeare all offer paperbacks with light annotations intended to appeal to both the college market and general readers. Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and the Arden Shakespeare publish series of single volumes for the scholarly market. Editions of the complete works, with texts and reliable commentary, include The Riverside Shakespeare and The Complete Works of Shakespeare edited by David Bevington.
Shakespearean criticism
Shakespearean criticism—that is, serious analysis of Shakespeare and his works—did not begin until the late 1600’s. During Shakespeare’s lifetime, Robert Greene apparently attacked Shakespeare for thinking he could write as well as university-educated playwrights. Francis Meres considered Shakespeare the best English stage dramatist for comedy and tragedy. The First Folio, which appeared in 1623 after Shakespeare’s death, contained a number of poems praising Shakespeare. The poems included a famous tribute by the playwright Ben Jonson. Jonson said of Shakespeare, “He was not of an age, but for all time!” The poet John Milton’s first published poem was a tribute to Shakespeare that appeared in the Second Folio of 1632. In another poem of the same period, Milton described Shakespeare as “fancy’s child” singing “native wood-notes wild.” These writings contain the seeds of future Shakespearean criticism, but they are too brief to be considered formal criticism.
Neoclassical criticism.
Scholars have traditionally called the period of English literature from 1660 to 1798 the Neoclassical period because of its interest in the classical writers of ancient Greece and Rome. During this period, drama criticism was heavily influenced by the theories of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Neoclassical critics believed that Aristotle had established certain rules for writing drama. Among these were the three unities of action, place, and time. According to these unities, a play should depict a single action without the distraction of subplots and that action should be confined to a single place and a single day. The Comedy of Errors and The Tempest are the only Shakespeare plays to observe the three unities. Shakespeare’s refusal to observe the unities as well as his tendency to mix comedy with tragedy provoked the scorn of critics who worshiped the classical past. However, many Neoclassical critics were willing to attribute Shakespeare’s violation of classical rules to ignorance. Such critics identified Shakespeare as a natural genius who did not need the resources of classical culture.
A landmark of Neoclassical criticism of Shakespeare appeared in John Dryden’s An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668). This work is usually considered the first major critical engagement with Shakespeare’s work. In the essay, Dryden contrasted the “irregular” Shakespeare with the “regular” Ben Jonson. Dryden wrote that he admired Jonson for being “the more correct poet.” However, he loved Shakespeare, who “needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature” but “looked inwards, and found her there.”
The most sensitive Neoclassical criticism came from the writer Samuel Johnson. He praised Shakespeare for holding up a “faithful mirror of manners and of life.” He also recognized the universal appeal of Shakespeare’s plays. At the same time, Johnson criticized what he considered to be Shakespeare’s weaknesses. For example, Johnson objected to many comic sexual passages, which he considered vulgar, and thought that Shakespeare was often distracted by punning and wordplay. Perhaps more seriously, Johnson accused Shakespeare of frequently failing to observe poetic justice, in which the good should be rewarded and the wicked punished.
Romantic criticism.
A movement called Romanticism, which stressed imagination, emotions, and love of nature, began to influence English literature in the 1790’s. Its influence lasted through most of the 1800’s. The Romantic critics tended to glorify Shakespeare almost as a god who could do no wrong. They celebrated Shakespeare’s failure to observe the rules of classical literature—which the Neoclassical critics had seen as a flaw—as evidence of Shakespeare’s genius. Some Romantic critics argued that Shakespeare’s plays should properly be read as magnificent poetry. According to this view, staging diminishes plays that only operate at their full potential in the reader’s imagination.
The Romantics produced many outstanding works of criticism. These works included Charles Lamb’s On the Tragedies of Shakespeare (1811) and William Hazlitt’s Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays (1817). The lectures and essays of Samuel Taylor Coleridge also rank as landmarks of Shakespearean criticism.
Romantic criticism reached its peak in Edward Dowden’s influential Shakspere: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art (1875). Dowden has perceptive things to say about the individual characters, but he always pursues his ultimate goal, “a real apprehension of Shakespeare’s character and genius.”
The anti-Stratfordians.
During the 1800’s, admiration for Shakespeare grew so intense that it resulted in a totally uncritical attitude toward the man and his works. Some people so admired Shakespeare’s plays that they refused to believe an actor from Stratford-upon-Avon could have written them. Shakespeare’s commonplace country background did not fit their image of the genius who wrote the plays. These people, called anti-Stratfordians, proposed several other writers as the author of Shakespeare’s works. The writers they suggest are sometimes called claimants. Almost all the claimants were members of the nobility or the gentry, the class just below the nobility. The anti-Stratfordians believed that only an educated, sophisticated man of high social standing could have written the plays.
Sir Francis Bacon was the first and, for many years, the most popular candidate proposed as the real author of Shakespeare’s plays. Bacon’s followers remain active today. However, other anti-Stratfordians have had their own favorites. Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, is now more popular than Bacon. Other people to whom authorship has been credited include Roger Manners, the 5th Earl of Rutland; William Stanley, the 6th Earl of Derby; and Sir Walter Raleigh. Some anti-Stratfordians have also claimed that the writer Christopher Marlowe was the actual author. Despite the claims made for these men, no important Shakespearean scholar doubts that Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems.
The early and middle 1900’s.
The first important work of Shakespearean criticism of the 1900’s was Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) by the English scholar A. C. Bradley. Bradley’s work represents the peak of character criticism, an approach to the plays that gives priority to the psychological complexity and realism of the characters. Bradley’s achievement provoked a number of criticisms and reactions. Other scholars accused him of treating literary characters as though they were real people. In The Wheel of Fire (1930), G. Wilson Knight explored how metaphors and other figurative language conveyed Shakespearean themes. In Shakespeare’s Imagery (1935), Caroline Spurgeon approached the plays by studying the clusters of images they used.
The British playwright Harley Granville-Barker wrote an influential series called The Prefaces to Shakespeare (1927-1945) that approached the plays scene by scene from the practical standpoint of the actor. Psychoanalytic approaches tried to understand the unconscious motives of Shakespeare’s characters. The British psychoanalyst Ernest Jones wrote Hamlet and Oedipus (1949), an influential psychoanalytic account of Hamlet. E. M. W. Tillyard of the United Kingdom and Hardin Craig of the United States used intellectual history to chart the Elizabethan world of ideas that produced Shakespeare and his plays. The American scholar Lily B. Campbell emphasized the ways in which the plays offered commentary on Elizabethan political events.
Modern criticism
uses a variety of approaches to the study of Shakespeare. One major development in Shakespeare scholarship during the late 1900’s was feminist criticism. In its initial phase, feminist criticism focused on recovering female voices and experience, often by paying particular attention to female characters in the plays. Later work turned to questions of gender and sexuality and has studied the way in which Shakespeare’s plays and poems contribute to the formation of culturally specific forms of femininity and masculinity.
Another dominant form of Shakespeare criticism is called New Historicism. New Historicism tries to understand Shakespeare’s plays as products of the time and place in which they were written. It examines how they relate to the economic and political system of Elizabethan England. Unlike earlier historical forms that understood literature as a simple reflection of historical circumstances, New Historicism emphasizes the way in which the plays actually contributed to the shaping of early modern English culture.
A branch of criticism called performance studies focuses on acting, stage design, and the theoretical implications of performance. Such work is unified by a desire to treat the plays as plays—drama performed under particular, concrete circumstances. Still another major development in Shakespeare criticism focuses on the early printed texts. Such work has deepened our understanding of the way in which Shakespeare’s texts circulated well beyond the playhouses of London and have contributed to a sense that there are multiple versions of many of Shakespeare’s plays.
