William Shakespeare

1
William Shakespeare
He was not of an age, but for all time! -Ben
Jonson
2
About Billy

• Born on April 23, 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon
• Married Anne Hathaway in 1582. On marriage cert.
  his name is spelled Shags-spere. Not kidding.
• She was likely pregnant at the time, as were up
  to 40 of brides in that part of England at the
  time.
• Children Susanna (1583), twins Hamnet Judith
  (1585)
• Moved to London by 1592
• Long affiliated with Lord Chamberlains Men

• Company began performing in the Globe in 1599
• Was not concerned with preservation of works
• Number of plays printed during his life 18
• No certain chronology of writings or performances

3
Shakespeare or Shakspe

• We are not sure how best to spell his name- but
  then neither, it appears, was he, for the name is
  never spelled the same way twice in the
  signatures that survive Willm Shaksp, William
  Shakespe, Wm Shakspe, William Shakespere, Willm,
  Shakspere, and William Shakspeare.
• Curiously, one spelling he didnt use was the one
  now universally attached to his name.
• According to one estimate 70 of men and 90 of
  women could not even sign their own names at the
  time.
• Many of the following slides come from Bill
  Brysons Book Shakespeare

4
Shakespeare or Shakspe

• It is perhaps worth noting that the spelling we
  all use is not the one endorsed by the Oxford
  English Dictionary, which prefers Shakspere

5
Language of the Time

• Some 12,000 words entered the language between
  1500 and 1650, about half of them still in use
  today, and old words were employed in ways that
  had not been tried before.
• Spelling was variablea dictionary published in
  1604, A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Words,
  spelled words two ways on the title page.

6
Shakespeares Words

• He coined-or to be more carefully precise, made
  the first recorded use of- 2,035 words.
• Hamlet alone gave audiences about 600 words that,
  according to all other evidence, they had never
  heard before.
• Here are some countless, critical, frugal, vast,
  horrid, excellent, hereditary, leapfrog, dwindle,
  assassination, lonely, zany.

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Phrases

• Some of his inventions one fell swoop, vanish
  into thin air, be in a pickle, flesh and blood,
  foul play, tower of strength, with bated breath,
  foregone conclusion.
• If we take the Oxford English Dictionary as our
  guide, S produced roughly 1/10 of all the most
  quotable utterances ever written or spoken in
  English!

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• Started off writing histories and comedies
• Series of romantic comedies starting 1595
• Wrote tragedies in early 1600s (Hamlet, Othello,
  etc)
• Dark Comedy-- Troilus Cressida, Alls Well
  That Ends Well, Measure for Measure
• Romances-- patterns of loss/recovery,
  suffering/redemption, despair/renewal (Pericles,
  Cymbeline, The Winters Tale, The Tempest)
• London was a city where a single theatre held
  more people than in his hometown!

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The Theatre

• Theatres as dedicated spaces of entertainment
  were a new phenomenon in Englandused to be in
  halls of great homes or inns yards.
• Plays were at 2pm because of no lights
• Lines of play let people know if it was supposed
  to be night, indoors, etcnot much of a set
• The money for tickets was dropped into a box,
  which was taken to a special room for
  safe-keepingthe box office!

10
The Theatre

• The disdain for female actors was a Northern
  European tradition. In Spain, France, and Italy,
  women were played by women.
• Even poor people went to the theatre, especially
  during the depressed years, just like movies were
  for Americans in the 1930s.

11
The Theatre

• To prosper, a theatre in London needed to draw as
  many as 2,000 spectators a day-about 1 of the
  citys population-200 or so times a year!
• To keep customers coming back, it was necessary
  to change the plays continually. Most acting
  companies performed at least 5 different plays a
  weekused all spare time to memorize lines!
• Makes sense why Shakespeare would have written so
  many (36) plays. And why he re-wrote plays (Romeo
  and Juliet for example)

12
The Theatre

• There were no formal directors in Shakespeares
  day
• Actors could sometimes be required to memorize
  15,000 lines in a season. About the number of
  words in a 200 page book.
• Shakespeare never used a plot from his own times,
  and none were set in London

13
The Theatre

• In classical drama plays were strictly either
  comedies or tragedies. Elizabethan playwrights
  refused to be bounded by such rigidities and put
  comic scenes in their darkest tragedies.
• In so doing, they invented comic relief
• Also, classical drama has no soliloquies and no
  asides.

14
The Theatre

• The practice of pausing between acts didnt begin
  until plays moved indoors, late in Shakespeares
  career, and it became necessary to break from
  time to time to trim the lights!

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End of a Career

• Billy retired to Stratford-on-Avon in 1610
• Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616 in Stratford
• His epitaph reads Good friend for Jesus sake
  forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here Blest be
  the man that spares these stones, And curst be he
  that moves my bones.

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Whats Happening in England?
Elizabethan London
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Around Town

• There was only one bridge across the Thames until
  around 1800 (the London Bridge)
• In Shakespeares time, tea and coffee were still
  unknown
• Such was the popularity of sugar that peoples
  teeth often turned black, and those who failed to
  attain the condition naturally sometimes
  blackened their teeth to show they had had their
  share of sugar, too!
• From Bill Brysons Shakespeare

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Around Town

• Tobacco was introduced to London the year after
  Shakespeares birth, was used for pleasure but
  also for a broad range of complaints. For a time,
  pupils at Eton faced a beating if caught
  neglecting their tobacco!

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Monarchy in 16th and early 17th Century England
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Key Events

• Plague
• Low tolerance for religion (specifically
  Catholicism)
• Role of women (despite Elizabeths rule)
• Golden Age of Literature
• Sense of nationalism develops
• Cultural Renaissance

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King James

• He reigned from 1603-1616
• He was not, by all accounts, the most visually
  appealing of fellows. He was graceless, and had
  a disconcerting habit, indulged in more or less
  constantly, of playing with his codpiece. And his
  tongue appeared too big for his mouthmade his
  drinking and eating unpleasant to watch.
• He didnt bathe much and didnt change his
  clothes often either.
• But he liked the theatre.
• King James Version of the Bible finally
  influenced a conformity of spelling.

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The Plague

• In non-plague years 16 of infants died in
  England.
• In Shakespeares birth year 66 of infants died.
• In a sense, his greatest achievement in life
  wasnt writing Macbeth or the sonnets, but just
  surviving his first year!
• From Bill Brysons Book Shakespeare

23
Nonsense

• A person with an income of 20 pounds a year was
  permitted to don a satin doublet but not a satin
  gown, while someone worth 100 pounds a year could
  wear all the satin he wished, but could have
  velvet only in his doublets, but not in any
  outerwear, and then only so long as the velvet
  was not crimson or blue. Silk netherstockings
  were restricted to knights and their eldest
  sonsamazing Ss plays were so deep if these were
  concerns of the day.
• From Bill Brysons Book Shakespeare

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Shakespeares Works

• 154 Sonnets
• 12 Comedies (All's Well That Ends Well, As You
  Like It, Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost,
  Measure for Measure, Merchant of Venice, Merry
  Wives of Windsor, Midsummer Night's Dream, Much
  Ado about Nothing, Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth
  Night, Two Gentlemen of Verona)
• 10 Histories (Henry IV, Part I Henry IV, Part
  II Henry V Henry VI, Part I Henry VI, Part II
  Henry VI, Part III Henry VIII King John
  Richard II Richard III)
• 11 Tragedies (Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus,
  Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth,
  Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, Titus
  Andronicus, Troilus and Cressida)
• 4 Romances (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winters
  Tale, The Tempest)

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T R A G E D Y

• Tragedy A drama or literary work in which the
  main character is brought to ruin or suffers
  extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a
  tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope
  with unfavorable circumstances

• Tragedy
• Sad
• Protagonist dies
• Fault is moral
• Sense of waste
• Aristotelian
• fall of person of high estate
• Own fault, not moral
• Catharsis- expulsion of pity and fear

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M A C B E T H
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History of That Play

• Written and performed for King James I (1606)
• Tragedy with a historical emphasis
• Real Macbeth ruled from 1040-1057 killed Duncan,
  revenged by Malcom (son) in 1057-- reigned until
  1093
• Banquo is said to be an ancestor of James I

• Assassination was key issue for James-- had
  already survived one attempt
• Loosely based on Gunpowder Plot of 1605
• Witchcraft punishable by death (Salem trials in
  1692)
• Some witch scenes believed to be added by Thomas
  Middleton after Shakespeares death

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The Curse

• The "Curse of Macbeth" is the misfortune that
  happens during the production of the play.
• The theory goes that Shakespeare included actual
  black magic spells in the incantations of the
  weird sisters. Those who appear in the play or
  those who mention the play's name within the
  confines of a theatre risk having these evils
  brought down on their heads.
• The tragedy of Macbeth is considered so unlucky
  that it is hardly ever called by name inside the
  profession. People refer to the play as "that
  play, the unmentionable" or "the Scottish
  play." It is supposed to be bad luck to quote
  from the play or to use any sets, costumes, or
  props from a production.

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• August 7, 1606-- The boy actor playing Lady
  Macbeth died back stage on opening night.
  Shakespeare had to fill-in.
• Amsterdam, 1672-- the actor playing Macbeth
  substituted a real dagger for the blunted stage
  one and with it killed Duncan in full view of the
  entranced audience.
• New York, 1849-- performance at Astor Place, a
  riot broke out in which 31 people were trampled
  to death.
• 1934, four actors played Macbeth in a single
  week. In 1937, Macbeth had to be postponed for
  three days after a change in directors and
  because of the death of Lilian Boylis. In 1954,
  the portrait of Lilian Boylis crashed down on the
  bar on opening night.

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• 1934-- British actor Malcolm Keen turned mute
  onstage, and his replacement, Alister Sim, like
  Hal Berridge before him, developed a high fever
  and had to be hospitalized.
• 1937-- when Laurence Olivier took on the role of
  Macbeth, a 25 pound stage weight crashed within
  an inch of him, and his sword which broke onstage
  flew into the audience and hit a man who later
  suffered a heart attack.
• 1942-- Macbeth production headed by John Gielgud,
  three actors -- Duncan and two witches -- died,
  and the costume and set designer committed
  suicide amidst his devilish Macbeth creations.
• Bermuda, 1953--The indestructible Charlton Heston
  suffered severe burns in his groin and leg area
  from tights that were accidentally soaked in
  kerosene.

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• New York, 1970-- An actor's strike felled Rip
  Torn's production
• 1971-- two fires and seven robberies plagued the
  version starring David Leary
• 1981-- production at Lincoln Center, J. Kenneth
  Campbell, who played Macduff, was mugged soon
  after the play's opening.
• The superstition is not so much about doing the
  play as about naming it. You are not supposed to
  mention the title in a theatre.
• The most common remedy to get rid of the curse is
  that the offender must step outside, turn around
  three times, spit, and say the foulest word
  he/she can think of, and wait for permission to
  re-enter the theatre.

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(No Transcript)
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Other Act 1, Scene 1s

• Romeo Juliet-- fight scene between Montague and
  Capulet household Romeo professes love for
  Rosaline
• Othello-- Roderigo upset with Iago Iago upset
  because Othello appointed Cassio lieutenant
  Brabanzio finds out about Desdemonas marriage to
  Othello

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• Julius Caesar-- Flavius and Murellus are upset
  over the citys support of Caesar and his victory
  over Pompey (a leader they used to support)
• Much Ado About Nothing-- Don Juan and crew return
  victorious from battle Beatrice and Benedick
  relationship set up plan to hook-up Claudio and
  Hero

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Macbeth Act 1, Scene 1

• Three witches appear out of a storm and plan to
  meet again after the battle to confront Macbeth.
  They disappear as quickly as they appeared (scene
  is 13 lines).

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A desert place. Thunder and lightning. Enter
three witches. 1st witch When shall we three
meet again In thunder, lightning, or in
rain? 2nd witch When the hurlyburlys
done, When the battles lost and won.5 3rd
witch That will be ere the set of sun. 1st
witch Where the place? 2nd witch Upon the
heath. 3rd witch There to meet with
Macbeth. 1st witch I come, Graymalkin!10 2nd
witch Paddock calls. 3rd witch Anon! All
Fair is foul, and foul is fair Hover through
the fog and filthy air. They vanish
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Literary Allusion
Act 4, Scene 1 Line 45