LECTURE NOTES XI

RENAISSANCE LITERATURE IN ENGLAND [3]

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE [2]
Sources:
Primary Sources:
Shakespeare,W. Plays [individual] in The Arden Shakespeare Third Serie, gen. Eds .R.Proudfoot
and A.Thompson (London: Routledge, 1982)
Shakespeare, W., Plays [individual] in the Worlds Classics series, gen.ed.S.Wells (Oxford: OUP)
Secondary Sources:
Baugh, A., ed., A Literary History of England (London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1948), pp. 519529; 533-540
Daiches, D., A Critical History of English Literature, vol.2 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1969),
246-308
Day, M.S., Day, M.S., A History of English Literature to Sixteen Sixty (Doubleday, 1963), pp.
277-325
Fletcher, R.H., A History of English Literature (Boston: Badger, 2007 [1919]), pp. 166-174
Moody, W.V., Lovett, R. M., History of English Literature (New York: Scribner, 1918), pp. 124142

(ii) The Main Period (1598-1611)

(a) The great tragedies
Julius Caesar
Sources: North's translation of Plutarch's The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
Themes:
- tragical relation between personal morality and political efficiency
- shows "how a man can be destroyed by his own virtue"
- well articulated play, in fluid blank verse
Hamlet
Sources: Saxo Grammaticus, History of the Danes and F. Belleforest, Histories tragiques,
the original Hamlet [Ur-Hamlet] [Ur: German prefix for old, original) - lost play
Themes:
- an old-fashioned revenge play treated in a heroic tradition
- revenge is not going to restore either the lost world or bring back health to a tainted society
- it shows
how moral sensitivity can respond to a wicked world
how an idealist man can face reality
how powerful imagination may be
Othello
Sources: Italian novella Hecatommithi, (1565) by G. Cinthio.
Themes:
- it is less a study in jealousy but a description of the anguish that a beautiful and innocent being
can be guilty and deceitful
- the paradox of evil which is bred out [may originate in] of innocence

King Lear
Sources: Celtic mythology and folk tradition
Themes:
- most elemental and primeval of Shakespeare's plays
- shows how the road to true humility passes through bitter insight
- it makes use of archetypal images to produce a cosmic view of individual tragedy and destiny
- a combination of psychological and symbolic descriptions
- existence as determined by the confusion between
true and false visions
self-knowledge and self-blindness
- the question of what is natural and unnatural
- the Fool acquires a different, tragic key
- Folly is assimilated to revealing the truth and contributes to the tragic dimension
- shows a concern for impersonal justice : "None does offend none; all are guilty and in need not
of justice but forgiveness"
Macbeth
Sources: R. Holinshed: Chronicles of England and Scotland
Themes:
- the destruction brought about by the appetite for power
- a mystique of the crown, which represents the achievement of the ultimate earthly ambition the
false heroism that originates in the lack of faith
- the degree to which power can corrupt and breed immorality
- the main characters are not so much damned as they are reduced to moral nothingness
- Macbeth: initially a heroic figure loyal and brave - becomes an obsessed nihilist
- Lady Macbeth: a devoted wife - is driven by power to self-destruction, to the inability to control
her body and spirit
Antony and Cleopatra
(also listed as a Roman play)
Source: North's Plutarch: The Lives of noble Grecians and Romans
Themes:
- contrast between two worlds,
the Roman world, marked by order, structure, loyalty, reason
the Eastern magic of Egypt, characterized by disorder, betrayal, passion
conflict between public duty and private passion
- Cleopatra: one of S.'s most complex female characters: queenly, beautiful, skilful, noble,
generous, but also domineering, hysterical, jealous, coward,
- Antony: heroic, generous, noble, loyal to his friends, but selfish and immature
(b) The problem plays
- are neither comedies nor tragedies
- have no cheerfulness but show human behaviour as gross and despicable
Timon of Athens
Themes:
- human ingratitude and hypocrisy
- man living in a world of beasts

Troilus and Cressida

Themes:
- a double perspective: the context of the moment and the larger context of past and future
- the English (Renaissance) vision of the Troy tradition
- the Greek represent the realistic, unscrupulous modern man (Ulysses)
- the Trojans represent the old-fashioned, traditional world (Hector)
- the degradation of chivalry and the muddled notions of honour
- shows how ideal passion is mixed with casual faithlessness
All's Well That Ends Well
Theme:
- a mechanical handling of folk theme which combines two topics: the healing of a king and
the wife who wins back her husband by an astute trick
Measure for Measure
Theme:
- the older ruler who offers to save a girl's relative (brother, father, husband) on condition she
yields to him and afterwards breaks his promise
- the recurrent idea that all are guilty and that mercy not justice is required
Coriolanus
(belongs to the Roman plays)
Themes:
- tragic implication of private virtue
- the effects of lack of self-knowledge, arrogance, lack of imagination, and the inability to handle
people
(iii) The Late Period (1599-1613)
- The Romance plays (tragicomedies)
(called romances by the poet S.T.Coleridge [18th -19th c], who claimed they possessed a
romantic element) :
Pericles
Cymbeline
The Winter's Tale
The Tempest
Sources: mythology, folklore, and magic
Themes:
- new faith in the essential goodness of man
- remoteness of setting - a symbolic world where innocence can triumph and the past can be
undone through miraculous redemption
- the recovery of a lost child
- the significance of innocence and virginity
- the importance of moral patterns
- masques allegorical performances meant to underline certain moral dimensions
Shakespeares work:
Due to the power with which it expresses its epoch and to the way it questions essential aspects of
human being, Ss work has made a major contribution to the literature of all ages.

C.TEXTS
W.Shakespeare, Hamlet [I,ii]
O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew, 130
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world !
Fie on't, ah fie, 'tis an unweeded garden 135
That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead - nay not so much, not two So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother 140
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly - heaven and earth,
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet within a month 145
Let me not think on't; frailty, thy name is woman A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body
Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason 150
Would have mourned longer - married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules - within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, 155
She married. Oh most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets.
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
Source:
W.Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. Ph.Edwards (Cambridge: CUP, 2003)