collection 4: literary focus reflect influences from mythology and ancient history primarily use...

Collection 4: Literary Focus

• Reflect influences from mythology and ancient history

• Primarily use iambic pentameter

• Display an immense range of human emotions

• Represent cornerstones of centuries of English literature

Characteristics of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Plays

• He lived just over fifty years, but he created some of the most influential literature in the English language.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Plays

• His work still fascinates us because his characters are complex, his ideas are illuminating, and his language is precise and poetic.

The Sonnets of Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

• His themes—often concerning love, ambition, marriage, and murder—still engage us.

The Sonnets of Shakespeare Even if he had written no plays, Shakespeare would have earned an immense reputation as the author of Sonnets, published in 1609.


• Series of 154 sonnets featuring a male speaker and a recurring subject: love.

• There are many questions about the series:

Is the speaker an invented character or the poet himself? If the poet himself speaks, who is addressed—who is the young man, the rival poet, the dark lady, and others?

Further controversy among the critics: Besides the identity of the speaker and persons addressed in the sonnets, other issues remain unsettled.


• Is the order in which the sonnets were first published what Shakespeare would have wanted?

• Would a rearranged sequence tell a more coherent story? Should they be rearranged?

Despite such issues, there is consensus about the artistic merit of the sonnets and their profound observations about human experiences..

The Sonnets of Shakespeare

A sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem, usually about love.

The English, or Shakespearean, sonnet consists of three quatrains (rhyming four-line units) followed by a couplet (a pair of rhyming lines) at the end.

• The three quatrains often express related ideas.

• The couplet sums up the poet’s message.


The Shakespearean Sonnet’s Form

Each line consists of five unstressed syllables alternating with five stressed syllables, as in this fresh example:

Like most sonnets, the Shakespearean sonnet is written in a particular meter, or rhythmic pattern, called iambic pentameter:


How silent is the hour before each dawn.˘ ˘ ′ ˘ ′ ˘ ′ ˘ ′

= unstressed syllable = unstressed syllable˘ ′

′


• Shakespeare may present a comparison with a twist, as he does in Sonnet 18 where an imperfect summer’s day is compared to love.

The logical organization of ideas in Shakespeare’s sonnet varies from poem to poem.

• Often in his sonnets, there is a turn, or shift in focus, beginning at the third quatrain.

Rhyme scheme: abab

efef

cdcd

gg



• The English had been writing and performing plays for centuries before the Renaissance.


• Early medieval drama probably originated in the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic liturgy.

The Rise of the Renaissance Theater

• Drama eventually moved out of the churches and into the marketplace.

• Guilds staged cycles of plays about the history of the human race.

Several types of plays were written and produced before the Renaissance.


• Miracle and Mystery Plays: taught people stories from the Bible and saints’ lives.

• Morality Plays: provided instruction on how to live and die according to Christian principles.

• Interludes: were one-act plays, some along the lines of morality plays, others farcical and rowdy.

The Rise of the Renaissance Theater

Written mostly in the 1590’s, Shakespeare’s early plays were some of his most performed and admired. Among them were

• Richard III, a history play about a deformed usurper who becomes king

• The Comedy of Errors, a rowdy farce about mistaken identity

• Titus Andronicus, a blood-and-thunder tragedy

• Romeo and Juliet, a poetic tragedy about ill-fated lovers


Shakespeare’s Plays

In the late 1590’s, Shakespeare entered a period of great prosperity.


• He completed a cycle of plays about the Wars of the Roses: Richard II and both parts of Henry IV and Henry V.

• During that time he also wroteJulius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and A Merchant of Venice.



As the seventeenth century began, Shakespeare was writing his greatest tragedies:

Hamlet

Antony and Cleopatra

Othello

MacbethKing Lear

These plays are preoccupied with evil, violence, and death, but there is no evidence that Shakespeare himself was unhappy when he wrote them.


• He staged productions, managed the playhouse, and coordinated the actors.

Shakespeare was a man of business and action as well as a consummate writer.


• He provided good parts in every play for the principal actors, sometimes doubling or tripling roles for performers in his company.

• He planned scenes to accommodate multiple roles and Renaissance stage conventions.


Drama in England was three centuries old when the idea of housing it in a permanent building began to alter performances.

• Touring companies had been accustomed to improvised theaters.

• Timbers from the first public theater were used to build the Globe in London in 1599.

• The Globe is probably the most famous theater because Shakespeare’s company owned it, and many of his plays were first performed there.


The Globe

Unfortunately, the original theater was destroyed by fire in 1613: Scholars were left to surmise its configuration.


The main building

THE STAGE

The tiring house (or backstage area)

The main building—a wooden structure three stories high and roughly circular in shape— surrounded a spacious yard open to the sky.

The Globe

The Globe was a public theater able to house an amazingly large crowd– up to 3,000 people!

• The stage projected halfway out into the yard, so actors performed very close to their audiences.

• Performers were expected to be able to sing, dance, wrestle, fence, and clown.

• Special effects were in high demand, so trap doors helped witches and devils emerge as if from hell. The sky above the stage represented heaven.


The Globe

The third section of the Globe was the tiring house, a tall building that provided a two-story back wall for the stage.

• It contained simple machinery, dressing rooms, and a curtained space below the wall.

• It supported a gallery above the wall for musicians or for “discoveries” of things hidden from the audience until the proper time.


The rebuilt Globe theater closed in 1642, but a full-scale model was constructed in London in 1997. It houses a theater company and exhibits..

The Globe

Actors carrying lanterns meant it was time to imagine nightfall; a few bushes on stage were understood to be a forest; a spoken line about sunrise led the audience to imagine dawn.


Renaissance audiences lent their own imaginations to the make-believe happenings on stage.

The Power of the Imagination

People heard music in the theater, too: Trumpets announced arrivals and departures, and varied songs established mood or revealed character.

Music for the Masses

Ask Yourself

1. What are the required elements of the Shakespearean sonnet?

2. How were outdoor settings created on the Renaissance stage?

[End of Section]


The End

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