Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков

School of Stratford-upon-Avon; but the school owed nothing to Edward VI or his Council, and was not new by some centuries. This renaming of the school merely marks the change from the old Guild system to a more modern form of administration.

It was during this period of transition that the poet’s father, John Shakespeare, came to Stratford. By 1557 John Shakespeare had so prospered in business that he was able to return to the district of his birth to marry the youngest daughter of Robert Arden.

Of the marriage of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden there were eight children – four sons and four daughters. William, the third child and first son, was christened on 26th April 1564. The only member of this group to survive the poet was his younger sister Joan.

In 1582 William married Ann Hathaway the daughter of an old family friend. The first child of the marriage, Susanna, was born in May 1583. Ann Hathaway may have been eight years older than her husband, but this is not absolutely certain. In February 1585, the twins, Hamnet and Judith, were christened at Stratford.

How Shakespeare intended to support a wife and family is a natural question, and fortunately the only tradition about Shakespeare’s youth that has any trustworthy pedigree behind it supplies the answer.

Shakespeare’s next step is his departure to London. Conscious, like a later country schoolmaster, of the genius within him, he naturally sought the field where alone his talents could find their full employment.

London

Shakespeare began as any educated young man might have begun by adapting for his purposes the models prescribed by the fashion of his time, the Latin authors familiar to him from his schooling.

Shakespeare had of course to make the major contributions to the fortunes of a large and important Company of actors, and at times this part of his task affected his work, but such plays as “Hamlet” and “Othello” are clearly the creations of a man who had thought long and deeply about his art. The poet soon developed an original style of his own that commanded the applause of a wide public. In spite, however, of his popularity and success he was content to repeat himself but from about his thirty-fifth year started on the series of tragic masterpieces, matched, if at all, only by the drama of ancient Athens.

First Period

From Shakespeare’s arrival in London (1584) to his joining the Lord Chamberlain’s men (1594)

No definite date can be given for Shakespeare’s arrival in London; but by 1594 he had a body of work to his credit that might have occupied a considerable number of years. Before the end of this period Shakespeare had established himself as a popular dramatist and as a poet of whom much was expected.

“Venus and Adonis”, although Shakespeare’s first published work, was that of a writer of recognised reputation. His success had been made on the stage; but actors were very unwilling to publish their pieces, partly owing to lack of copyright protection, partly owing to their belief that publication would lessen their takings at the theatre.

One can with some confidence assign to the period before the poems: his first tragedy, “Titus Andronicus”; his comedies, “The Comedy of Errors”, “The Taming of the Shrew”, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”; his history plays, “Henry VI”, and possibly “Richard III”. Shakespeare must have been working as a dramatist for some years before 1590. This period of successful work explains how by 1594 he could take a leading place in the first company of the age.

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Approximate Order of Composition of Shakespeare’s Works

Second Period

From Shakespeare’s joining the Lord Chamberlain’s men (1594) to the opening of the Globe Theatre (1599)

During this period Shakespeare was living, as the subsidy rolls indicate, in easy circumstances in London. T he period opens with a group of “poetical plays”, “Midsummer-Night’s Dream”, “Richard II”, “Romeo and Juliet”. The comedy is perfect in its kind and unsurpassed for the marvellous harmony it establishes among so many apparently discordant elements. The tragedy is another of the early masterpieces and anticipates in its spacious design and intensity of handling the works of Shakespeare’s full maturity. But for some years to come comedy and prose were the main interest, and this, in the figure of Falstaff, overwhelms even the historical interest in the two parts of “Henry IV”. With Falstaff gone, there is little left for “Henry V” but pageantry; yet this opportunity for costume effects and patriotic verse may have been not unwelcome to Shakespeare as a suitable opening for the new Globe Theatre in 1599.

Third Period

From the opening of the Globe Theatre (1599) to the taking over of the Blackfriars Theatre (1608)

The Globe Theatre was opened about May 1599. Near the beginning of this period Shakespeare’s father died, in 1601; at the end, his mother, in 1608. His daughter Susanna married a wellknown physician John Hall in 1607.

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The great public event of the time was the death of Queen Elizabeth and the arrival of James in London in May 1603. The King at once took over the Lord Chamberlain’s Company and they were known as the King’s Men.

As before, however, Shakespeare must have given unremitting attention to his art, for he was now from his thirty-fifth year to engage in the most sustained and intense effort of his career. The plays that were to make the name of the Globe for ever famous were very different from “Henry V”. During the next ten years Shakespeare produced there his seven great tragedies: “Julius Caesar”, “Hamlet”, “Othello”, “Lear”, “Macbeth”, “Anthony and Cleopatra”, “Coriolanus”.

Many explanations have been offered for this apparently sudden shift in Shakespeare’s interest. Some have blamed the dark lady of the Sonnets and the conduct of the friend for inducing a mood of gloom and misanthropy; others have dwelt on Shakespeare’s connections with Essex and Southhampton, and the former’s death on the block, as the cause of his disillusionment and pessimism; others again see in the tragic mood Shakespeare’s infection with the spirit of a new age. Many critics have dwelt on the bitterness and disgust in the works of this period.

King Lear has been described as a tragedy of ingratitude – an ingratitude that divided parent from child and split the very core of human existence. The heart of Shakespeare’s drama is not reached till the storm and tempest are over and we come on the stillness of Lear’s reconciliation with Cordelia. Here at last he recognises goodness for what it is in its own right. And the play’s real theme is the gratitude of the converted heart at such a revelation.

The tragic period is seen as the natural development of the previous period and to be explained only in so far as we can explain to ourselves the growth and nature of Shakespeare’s art.

Fourth Period

From the taking over the Blackfriars Theatre (1608) to the burning of the Globe Theatre (1613)

The plays of this period have happy endings; but to distinguish their peculiar colouring from that of his earlier comedies they have been called Romances. But the tragedies are the foundation on which the Romances rest.

During the first performance of “Henry VIII”, on 29th June 1613, the Globe was burnt to the ground; and this accident, for lack of more precise knowledge, may be taken as marking the conclusion of Shakespeare’s work as an actor and dramatist.

Stratford

Shakespeare seems to have passed his last days quietly at Stratford, though there is a record of at least one visit to London. He died on St. George’s day, 23, April 1616, and was buried, having this right as a tithe-holder, in the Chancel of the Church at Stratford.

The First Folio

In 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, his old friends and fellow-actors, John Heminge and Henry Condell, gave the world the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays known as the First Folio. Heminge and Condell attributed thirty-six plays to Shakespeare and arranged their content in three sections: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Their long friendship with Shakespeare, their admiration for his genius, their position in the company made Heminge and Condell in some respect well qualified for their task.

Shakespeare did not print his plays when he produced them because actors did not favour such a procedure. They feared that publication might affect adversely their takings at the theatre, and the financial return was insufficient to overcome this fear. Yet in spite of these considerations nineteen of Shakespeare’s plays were printed in some form or other during his lifetime.

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Of all the scenes that have ever been written in plays, one of the most famous is The Balcony Scene in “Romeo and Juliet”. It is probably the most romantic scene in the world's literature.

After Romeo and Juliet have met at a party and fallen in love, Juliet goes up to bed. But she cannot sleep so she stands at her window and pretends she is talking with Romeo.

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