English dramatic poet. The four centuries which separate us from Shakespeare are nourished of its work: at the dawn of modernity, on the popular scene of its theater out of wooden as in the palates of Elisabeth Tudor and Jacques Stuart, Shakespeare made available to England Antiquity reappearing, and, such Puck of the one night Dream of summer, surrounded the universe of its time of the magic circle of its poetry, renewing the language and its figures and proposing new myths to us.
No work was more read and played. Rewritten, censured or idolized, it was even removed with its author considered too little informed to have written it. Allotted to about twenty different substitutes, played on the large scenes of the world, it returns from now on to its author. Voltaire inclined himself in front of the genius of that which “created the theater”, but did not find “the least spark of good taste” in “its monstrous jokes”. Goethe seized some, then Victor Hugo, who made of it “a man ocean” with equal of Eschyle or Dante. Shakespeare inspired Marx, fascinated Freud, and its work is used as reference to the large currents of modern criticism.
Years of youth The town of Stratford-upon-Avon, where was born Shakespeare, in 1564, is only with a hundred miles of London. This proximity explains why this borough, whose name means “the road crossing the ford”, was the flourishing place of markets and fairs, and which it was decimated by the epidemics of plague; in addition, capital came from the bands of strolling players of actors protected by the queen or the nobility: Stratford was the place of a changing fortune, which marked the childhood and the adolescence of Shakespeare.
A sizeable family
William was the third child of John and Mary Shakespeare. Five their eight children survived, and two of them became actors: William himself and her Edmund junior (born in 1580), who followed it to London. When the father settled in Stratford, it was glover. It bought the house of Henley Street, birthplace of the poet. Respected craftsman, it climbs the levels of notoriety and became baillif, i.e. mayor of the city, in 1568.
The family of Shakespeare was marked by the religious upheaval which occurred when the Queen Elizabeth succeeded the catholic Marie Tudor in 1558. The older sister of Shakespeare was baptized in the catholic faith, while William was it according to the rite of the Church of England. John Shakespeare adhered to the new Church and was not worried. Among the tasks which fell on to him, it was to take care that the frescos of the vault of Guildhall, too judged papists, were bleached with lime. It chooses a new Master for the school, which, since the Reform, had become grammar school of the king. William was probably allowed there towards the four years age, and it learned how there to read in the book of prayers Anglican. It is only by September years that it could profit from the humanistic culture of schoolmasters resulting, for the majority, of Oxford.
Reverse of fortune
Around 1578, the notable John Shakespeare did not dare any more to come to the church, of fear of being stopped there for debts. That which had been one of the most estimated personalities of Stratford had to give up the honors (one wanted to seek the causes of this decline in its catholic past but, although a catholic profession of faith was found in the roof of its house, one never could prove that John was persecuted for religious reasons).
When it left the school, did William follow one of her Masters in Lancashire to become tutor there? What we know, it is that at seventeen years, it was of return to Stratford and promised in marriage to a girl of a farmer of Shottery, Anne Hathaway, eight years his elder, that it married in 1582. The couple had three children: Susanna, born six months after the marriage (she will marry in 1607 a considered doctor, John Hall), and, in 1585, the twins Hamnet and Judith.
“Lost years”
One is unaware of about very of Shakespeare between the year of the birth of the twins and that where one knows it in London. Was he apprentice in his father, or in Lancashire? There did it meet the actors of the count de Derby, Lord Strange? The assumption is not unrealistic, since these actors will belong later, like Shakespeare itself, with the troop of the Lord chamberlain. One thought of a voyage in France and Italy. Would it have set out again towards London with the actors of the troop of the queen, who had passed to Stratford in 1587? Shakespeare had a family to nourish, and the actors could hope to grow rich while investing in the very new construction industry by the theaters. Thus were born The Theater in 1576, Courtine in 1577 and The Pink in 1587. Shakespeare would have initially earned money by keeping the horses of the gentlemen to the door of these theaters. What is certain, it is that it starts to write.
De Stratford in London Shakespeare shares its life between Stratford and London, where it chooses its addresses according to their proximity with such or such theater. The legend wants that it stopped on the way in Oxford in a tavern held by the Davenant family, and that to sir William Davenant is her son.
The count of Southampton
In 1592, Shakespeare is twenty-eight years old. It already starts to be made a name thanks to the representations of Henri VI. The first comedies are in gestation, but the plague bursts, and the theaters are closed during two years. Here thus writing lyric philosopher's stones, Venus and Adonis, erotic poem, and, in a more didactic kind, the Rape of Lucrèce, of which the topic had been able to inspire its first tragedy, Titus Andronicus. These great narrative poems are worth in Shakespeare the friendship and the support of Henry Wriothesley, count de Southampton, of which initial W.H. let think that it is the dedicatee of the Sonnets, published in 1609, but composed in these years. The identity of the “brown lady” of the sonnets remains mysterious. The presence in Southampton de Giovanni Florio, translator of Montaigne, will be determining. At the end of 1594, Shakespeare lives in the district of Bishopsgate, not far from the Theater; he then wrote at least two comedies, the Comedy of the errors, the Shrew tamed and, undoubtedly, the Two Gentlemen of Vérone, variation on the topic of the Sonnets. He finishes his first historical tetralogy, the three parts of Henri VI, their continuation with Richard III and King Jean. The first tragedy, describing the invasion of Rome by Goths, Titus Andronicus, moderates a violence in Sénèque by a poetic inspiration inspired of Ovide.
The shareholder of the troop of the Lord chamberlain
The money beared by the poems dedicated to Southampton made it possible Shakespeare to buy a share in the company of actors of the Lord chamberlain, who had just constituted himself in 1594, the year of the reopening of the theaters. The creative activity of the author takes a new rise then. The recent lyric experiment is felt in the parts of this period: Lost sorrows of love, the one night Dream of summer, which, like Romeo and Juliette, sing the topic of the separation of the lovers. Poetry enters the history with Richard II, while the two parts of Henri IV make alternate the comic scenes and the tragic scenes. Divisions in kinds grow blurred under the influence of poetry.
Mournings and success
In 1596, dies at the eleven years age Hamnet, the son of Shakespeare, whose male descent is from now on extinct. By a cruel irony of fortune, a few months later, the playwright receives the title of gentleman and the escutcheon formerly coveted without success by his father. He acquires the house of New Place, in Stratford, in 1597. The following year, Francis Meres writes that Shakespeare is to be put on the same plan as Plaute and than Sénèque. Famous at thirty-four years, he however almost did not still write any works by which the posterity knows it. The Merchant of Venice and Beaucoup of noise for nothing, comedies of maturity, go back to this time.
The parts of Shakespeare are played court, in the royal palaces of Greenwich and Whitehall, in the colleges of lawyers, Inns off Short, in the new theaters of left bank and the Right Bank, whose architecture takes as a starting point the courses of inn where formerly the actors occurred. For some time, Shakespeare moved on Right Bank of the Thames. It misses a theater specific to the troop of the Lord chamberlain.
The theater of the Earth
Following an argument between the owner of the ground of the Theater and Burbage, actors who had made it build, the theater is dismounted, and it wood transported to the south of the Thames. This wood will be used for construction of the Earth, whose Shakespeare is one of the shareholders. The three stages of covered steps and the floor can accommodate 3 000 people. Shakespeare from now on will grow rich. The Queen Elizabeth orders to him a comic continuation for Henri IV with Falstaff like central figure. They will be the Merry Gossips of Windsor. Shakespeare finishes the second tetralogy of the stories with Henri V, where it mentions this “O out of wooden”, this very new Earth which symbolizes the world. Julius Caesar is one of the first parts that one, and As you play there will like it is written with the idea to attract with the Earth the refined public of the private theaters.
A theatrical quarrel
In 1600, the theaters are in war: between the private theaters, like Blackfriars, where occur the swarms of children, of which it is made mention in Hamlet, and the theaters public, popular, like the Earth, which Shakespeare defends, a quarrel bursts which influences the writing of the parts of this period. Ridiculous Ajax de Troïlus and would Cressida be Ben Jonson? The comic one is more subtle since Armain replaced Kempe in the role of the insane one: , The buffoon of the Night of the kings, a public in change is conceived to like Feste. In 1601, the Earth is the place of a political drama: the partisans of Essex pay the troop of the Lord chamberlain so that Richard II is played, so that the queen recognizes herself in the image of this deposed king. The actors of Shakespeare leave unscathed the test. The Essex rebel is carried out, and imprisoned Southampton. The same year, the father of Shakespeare dies. It is the year of Hamlet, drama of the dead father and the revealing theater of truth.
Shakespeare and Jacques Ier
In 1603, when Jacques Stuart goes up on the throne, the troop of the Lord chamberlain becomes that of the king. But, again, the plague devastates London: the closed theaters, the actors become again itinerant. However, in 1604, one finds Shakespeare in London, placed at a taken refuge French Protestant. Its comedies darken: All's well that ends well and Measures for measurement approach Othello by the set of themes of the abandoned or calumniated wife. Soon, it is the disillusioned moor of King Lear. And for Jacques I er, absolutist and superstitious, friendly however artists, Shakespeare writes Macbeth. Honest Banquo is represented there like the ancestor of Stuarts. The last tragedies gréco-Romans - Antoine and Cléopâtre, Coriolan and Timon of Athens - betray a political pessimism and a tragic direction of the insulation of the individual. In 1608, year of the death of his/her mother, Shakespeare creates the character of Volumnia, the mother of Coriolan.
Blackfriars, the other theater
In 1609, the troop of the king acquires Blackfriars, covered theater installed in an unused monastery. Shakespeare is withdrawn definitively in Stratford, and he writes from now on for these two theaters. Blackfriars is an interior theater with artificial lights. One can play the winter there. This new theatrical place undoubtedly contributed to change the style of the six last parts of the career of the poet, which understand four romantic dramas, Périclès, Cymbeline, the Tale of winter and the Storm, a comedy written in collaboration with Fletcher, the Two Noble Cousins, and a last history, Henri VIII.
Shakespeare dies in 1616. It is buried in Stratford in the church of Trinity Church. One can read on his tomb the following worms: “Keeps itself, soft friend for the sake of Jesus/to excavate dust contained here. Blessed either that which saves these stones. And curses that which disturbs my bones.”
Comedies and stories
In 1623, friendly actors of Shakespeare, Heminges and Condell, make publish a folio of its dramatic works (three of the thirty-eight parts do not appear in it: Troïlus and Cressida, Périclès, Two Noble Cousins).
Battles of words
The poetic gravity of the majority of the Shakespearean comedies engages to seek of them the sources in the medieval romantic tradition rather than in the ancient satire which is appropriate to Ben Jonson. But the comedies are also dependant on the Latin sources (the Comedy of the errors must much in Plaute), as of the Italian sources (the tamed Shrew takes as a starting point the Arioste). Prose, new arrival on the scene, often brings closer the actors to their public.
The comedies work out a reflection on the power of the language. The life and death devote to it a battle of words (lost Sorrows of love). The women, all rhetoricians, play the main role there: Rosalinde (As you will like it), Portia (the Merchant of Venice), Isabelle (Measurement for measurement), Béatrice (Much noise for nothing). They gain the victories of the life and the love against puritan hypocrisy and the Machiavellian traps: Portia and Isabelle save condemned to death, Rosalinde and Béatrice denounces the melancholy in love.
The comedy, a production of the language
The comedy puts the world at back to make reappear the harmony. The women disguise themselves as men. Following the example of the comedies of Plaute, substitution and duality traverse those of Shakespeare: the twins (the Comedy of the errors, the Night of the kings), the doubles (Two Gentlemen of Vérone, Two Noble Cousins), the woman who replaces another in the bed of an unsteady lover (All's well that ends well, Mesure for measurement). Under the effect of the philter of Obéron and metamorphoses of Ovide, one becomes the different one in the one night Dream of summer. The magic is discovered to be only the stratagems of the theater. The lie serves the truth, that is to denounce jovial Falstaff (Merry Gossips of Windsor) or the disaster Malvolio (the Night of the kings). Death is pretense, and calumniated heroin resurrects (Much noise for nothing). Because it puts in scene the language, the comedy, while nourishing tragedy, dodges the torments of them. It will find its blooming in the romantic dramas.
The legitimation of the power
Shakespeare did not follow the chronology by writing its historical parts. With Henri VI and Richard III, it starts with the end, as if it wanted initially to tell the arrival of Tudor to the power to analyze the causes then of them. Locating its historical work between 1199 (advent of Jean without Ground) and 1547 (death of Henri VIII), it revives the history of Plantagenêts and Tudor, of King Jean in Henri VIII.
The medieval diagram of the fall of the princes structure its historical dramas. This kind discussed since Aristote - is the truth in poetry or the history? - and condemned soon, being used for propaganda of Tudor, allows the poet - who takes as a starting point the Historia regum Britanniae, Geoffroi de Monmouth (around 1100-1155) and by the Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1577), of Raphael Holinshed - to connect the didactic medieval one to the political reflection of the Rebirth. When Shakespeare puts in scene the war of the Two-Pinks (1455-1485), Machiavel already wrote the Prince. The key question is that of morals in policy. The first tetralogy (three parts of Henri VI and Richard III) tries to explain the birth of the tyrant, while the second (Richard II, two parts of Henri IV and Henri V) described the advent of the national hero. Each tetralogy ends in a marriage to underline the return of the harmony. Fascinated by the topic of the double, Shakespeare exploits by poetizing it the theory of the two bodies of the king, making these historical frescos a reflection on the power and the legitimacy which one will recognize in the tragedies which will follow.
Romantic tragedies and dramas
One cannot reduce tragic work to the diagrams of the tragedy in Sénèque and the tradition of casibus virorum illustrium, of Boccace. By the width of its vision and its coherence set of themes, Shakespeare renews the tragedy.
Of the heroes devoured by time
One can oppose the six tragedies gréco-Romans - inspired for most Vies of Plutarque (Julius Caesar, Antoine and Cléopâtre, Coriolan, Timon of Athens) - to the five tragedies which draw their narrative substance from Italian tales (Romeo and Juliette, Othello) or from historical or legendary chronicles (Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth).
Dark forests of Titus Andronicus, where Lavinia, violated, the torn off language, reinvents means of expression, with the talkative platforms of the speakers of Julius Caesar and of Coriolan, whose hero refuses the facilities, to the camps of the war where the acts are initially words (Troïlus and Cressida, Antoine and Cléopâtre) to the dumb shore where dies the Timon misanthropist, its tragedies gréco-Romans study the report of the language to the body, the power, the act of war. The five great tragedies put in scene their heroes vis-a-vis a destiny which takes an always ambiguous form - phantom (Hamlet), untrue words (Othello, Macbeth), misleading melancholy (Romeo and Juliette), ambivalent silence (King Lear) -, that they seek to materialize without patience that the faith in Providence would give them. They will be devoured by time, then the order will reappear.
Magic or Providence?
The romantic dramas seem to be a happy end with all work. Admittedly, there are spaces of the madness which resemble the moor of Lear in the Storm, where Caliban would be poor Tom of the New World. But if, in the last parts, Shakespeare always mixes with death, it integrates the new currents of thought, it purifies the magic of any superstition, and seems to believe in the hope of a European peace concretized by the marriage of Elisabeth Stuart with the Elector Palatine. The love is there with the test, that it is for Ferdinand (the Storm) or Posthumus (Cymbeline); as for the heroes of Périclès and Tale of winter, they find the love only after long years. The stratagems of conversion take supernatural forms, like the alive statue of Perdita (the Tale of winter). When Thaïsa awakes sleep of death (Périclès), the despair of Juliette is forgotten. At the dawn of the Thirty Year old war, these parts revive the Elizabethan Rebirth in a new language.