William Shakespeare

“It's all moon's fault, when it gets too close to the

earth it makes everyone crazy” W.S.

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the most important dramatist. He is often called England's national poet ,he is a model for the English

literature and he is considered modern.

About Shakespeare

• Life (early years, last years, later years)• Theatre (Lord Chamberlain’s men)• Shakespeare plays • Themes• Shakespearean question• Shakespeare and Italy • The History of English

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SHAKESPEARE ‘S LIFE

Early years: W.S. was born on 23rd April 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire. His father belonged to the corporation of glovers and at one time was Bailiff of Stratford ; his mother came from a country family of some importance. In his youth he probably attended Stratford’s grammar school, since the knowledge of Latin, Greek and rhetoric which emerges from his plays is of the kind that was then taught in grammar schools. When he was eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, a girl eight years older than him, and in a few years they had three children. The young poet found himself with a large family and no income

Lost years: the period between 1585 and 1592 is known as “Lost years” because there are no documentary records about his activities.

Later years: around 1592 he decided to go to London to work for the theatre and

became an actor. Worked with the Lord Chamberlain’s company of players, later known as the King’s men. Returned to

Stratford around 1610 where he lived as a country gentleman. Died in 1616 at the age

of 52. It is rumored that he drunk too much and contracted a fever or that he

died for a cerebral hemorrhage.

Theatre

Shakespeare as a playwright is without a doubt the most well known and recognized ever existed in the world. The first work published by S. was the mythological poem Venus and

Adonis in 1593, dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. The theatre where Shakespeare worked was The Globe. The Globe Theatre was built in 1599 in London on the south bank of the River Thames in Southwark (one of the liveliest districts of the Elizabethan era) by Cuthbert Burbage. It was the theater of Shakespeare's company. It was destroyed by fire

in 1613 and was rebuilt in 1614 and demolished in 1644. After reconstruction work lasted more than twelve years, the theater of Shakespeare is alive again. It 'was inaugurated in

1997. It is called "Shakespeare's Globe Theatre". The Lord Chamberlain's Men was a playing company for whom Shakespeare wrote for most of his career. Richard

Burbage played most of the lead roles, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, while Shakespeare himself performed some secondary roles. Formed at the end of a

period of flux in the theatrical world of London, it had become, by 1603, one of the two leading companies of the city and was subsequently patronised by James I. It was

founded during the reign of Elizabeth I of England in 1594, under the patronage of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, then the Lord Chamberlain, who was in charge of court

entertainments.

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After its patron's death on 23 July 1596, the company came under the patronage of his son, George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon, for whom it

was briefly known as Lord Hunsdon's Men until he in turn also became Lord Chamberlain on 17 March 1597, whereupon it reverted to its previous name. The company became the King's Men in 1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's

patron. The company held exclusive rights to perform Shakespeare's plays. . . The wooden structure also known as "The Wooden” is 10

meters high, 30 meters in diameter and 90 meters is the circumference. Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, apparently linked to the fame of the great playwright, is the symbolic expression of Britain. In

Italy, in Rome, in the gardens of Villa Borghese in 2003 was inaugurated the "Silvano Toti Globe Theatre" built in just three

months and with the use of oak as the English one.

THEMES

• Through Language and Through Recurring Images

• Four Common Themes• Some Particular Themes

Through LanguageThe theme is conveyed most powerfully through language. This may be through individual

words uttered repetitiously throughout a play such as ‘blood’, ‘honest’ or ‘nothing’ or through the use of a particular language device such as antithesis and oxymoron.

The language genius Shakespeare uses a poetic, rich and theatrical language.

He coined new words and expressions still used today, in modern English.He chooses actual themes, as love, jealousy, racism, mourning, religion, family.

He confounds the reader/audience: he/it was asked to laugh in tragical scenes, and he/it was engaged in profound philosophical questions in a comic scene.

Through Recurring ImagesFor the audience, imagery builds up a sense of deep preoccupation of the play. Images of

light and darkness in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ are but one example; suffering bodies in ‘King Lear’; the theme of false appearance in ‘Macbeth’ are others.

As time passes, different generations look at the themes in Shakespeare with new eyes, redefining and reinterpreting as influenced by the political, social and cultural

conditions of each era. How you interpret the play we explore this semester will depend on your own cultural and societal values and mores and how you see the

characters and issues that they face.

Four Common Themes

1. ConflictHere lies the essence of all drama and in Shakespeare’s drama, conflict can

take many forms. It may be rivals in love and war, quarrels within families or quarrels between families, historical and political quarrels.

2. Appearance and reality

Shakespeare is a master of making people and things appear what they are not. Women pretend to be men, others pretend to be friends whilst

planning treachery, characters pretend to be mad; identities are mistaken. In some plays, the idea of appearance and reality lies at the

very heart of what the play is about. ‘Measure for Measure’ is depends on the notion of ‘appearance’ whilst in ‘Macbeth’ and ‘Hamlet’ there is

also deceit and treachery.

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3.Order, Disorder and ChangeAnother common element in Shakespeare’s plays is the idea of stability giving

way to confusion. This may happen to a person (King Lear goes mad), to society (England is divided by civil war), or nature (storms and tempests

fractured the lives of people and societies). (adapted from Gibson p.132) The ultimate ending in these plays is restoration - restoration to all that has been

destroyed, insight to those who have been in misery or madness. Indeed, Shakespearean scholars have argued diversely about whether Shakespeare

ends his plays with all restored or that disorder still exists. What we do know is that in every play characters change in this way. This may be from life to

death or the development of new insights and empathy.Here are some examples as outlined by Gibson:

- Nick Bottom is magically transformed into an ass in ‘Midsummer’s Night’s Dream’.

- In ‘Twelfth Night’, a false letter tricks Malvolio into changing from a puritan steward to a foolish would be lover

- Sometimes change happens in unique contexts: the woods, a heath, an island or a near magical setting of some kind.

Time usually underlines the changes witnessed in the plays. 3

4.LevelsGibson points out that themes work at three different

levels in each play:1. The individual level (psychological, personal).

Personal conflict, mental or spiritual disorder may be experienced by a specific character/s

2. The social level (family, nation, society)3. The natural level (cosmic, supernatural or nature).

This can be witnessed in the forms of storms, witches, ghosts or nature itself. Disruptions and conflict in the life of the characters is mirrored by disruptions in nature which are then often restored by the end of the play.

Some Particular Themes

• 1. Macbeth. ambition, evil, order and disorder, appearance and reality, violence and tyranny, guilt and conscience, witchcraft and magic

• 2. Romeo and Juliet. love and hate, fate and free will, life and death, youth against age, fortune.

• 3. The Tempest. nature V nurture, imprisonment and freedom, colonialism, illusion and magic, forgiveness and reconciliation, sleep and dreams, transformation

• 4. Hamlet. procrastination, madness, revenge, sin and salvation, poison, theatre and acting, corruption

• 5. King Lear. justice, nature, sight and blindness, the tortured and broken body

• 6. Othello. jealously, racism, self-deception

Shakespeare plays

• Along with acting, he also wrote some of the most renowned and studied literature written in the English language. He wrote 37 very successful plays.

• Comedies : The Taming of the Shrew The comedy of errors The Two Gentlemen of Verona Love's Labour's Lost, A midsummer Night’s Dream , The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night ,The Merry Wives of Windsor, All's well that ends well, Measure for Measure, Pericles Prince of Tyre, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest.

• THE TRAGEDIES: Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet ,Julius Caesar, Hamlet ,Troilus and Cressida ,Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra ,Coriolanus, Timon of Athens.

• THE POEMS: The Sonnets, The passionate pilgrim, The phoenix and the turtle, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece.

• The themes in the works of Shakespeare burrow into the psychology of the individual, dealing with human aspirations, and wonder about the reality of the real and the madness. Most important is the question of death, love, revenge and power, which makes man a slave of his passions.

Shakespearean questionThe Shakespeare authorship question is the argument about whether someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. Anti-Stratfordians—a collective

term for adherents of the various alternative-authorship theories—say that Shakespeare of Stratford was a front to shield the identity of the real author or authors, who for some reason did not want or could not

accept public credit. Although the idea has attracted much public interest, all but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe belief and for the most part acknowledge it only to rebut

or disparage the claims.

Shakespeare's authorship was first questioned in the middle of the 19th century, when adulation of Shakespeare as the greatest writer of all time had become widespread. Shakespeare's biography,

particularly his humble origins and obscure life, seemed incompatible with his poetic eminence and his reputation for genius, arousing suspicion that Shakespeare might not have written the works attributed to him. The controversy has since spawned a vast body of literature and 80 authorship candidates have been

proposed, including Francis Bacon, the 6th Earl of Derby, Christopher Marlowe, and the 17th Earl of Oxford.Supporters of alternative candidates argue that theirs is the more plausible author, and that William

Shakespeare lacked the education, aristocratic sensibility, or familiarity with the royal court that they say is apparent in the works.Those Shakespeare scholars who have responded to such claims hold that

biographical interpretations of literature are unreliable in attributing authorship and that the convergence of documentary evidence used to support Shakespeare's authorship—title pages, testimony by other

contemporary poets and historians, and official records—is the same used for all other authorial attributions of his era. No such direct evidence exists for any other candidate and Shakespeare's authorship

was not questioned during his lifetime or for centuries after his death.Despite the scholarly consensus, a relatively smallbut highly visible and diverse assortment of supporters,

including prominent public figures, have questioned the conventional attribution. They work for acknowledgment of the authorship question as a legitimate field of scholarly inquiry and for acceptance of

one or another of the various authorship candidates.

Shakespeare and Italy Over the centuries scholars have been puzzled by Shakespeare's profound

knowledge of Italian. Shakespeare had an impressive familiarity with stories by Italian authors such as Giovanni Boccaccio, Matteo Bandello, and Masuccio

Salernitano. In an attempt to solve the mystery of Shakespeare's Italian aptitude, one former teacher of literature has unleashed a new hypothesis on a world

eager to hear anything fresh about the Bard.In his book Shakespeare era italiano (2002), retired Sicilian professor Martino Iuvara

claims that Shakespeare was, in fact, not English at all, but Italian. His conclusion is drawn from research carried out from 1925 to 1950 by two professors at

Palermo University. Iuvara posits that Shakespeare was born not in Stratford in April 1564, as is commonly believed, but actually was born in Messina as

Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza. His parents were not John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, but were Giovanni Florio, a doctor, and Guglielma Crollalanza, a

Sicilian noblewoman. The family supposedly fled Italy during the Holy Inquisition and moved to London. It was in London that Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza decided to change his name to its English equivalent. Crollalanza apparently

translates literally as 'Shakespeare.' Iuvara goes on to claim that Shakespeare studied abroad and was educated by Franciscan monks who taught him Latin,

Greek, and history. He also claims that while Shakespeare (or young Crollalanza) was traveling through Europe he fell in love with a 16-year-old girl named

Giulietta. But sadly, family members opposed the union, and Giulietta committed suicide.

Lavoro realizzato da:

Antonio Marino (narrator)Martina Schiassi (speaker)Angelo Vigliotti (group orienter)Luigi Campolieti (task orienter)Cosima Malerba (controller)