William Shakespeare

This page began as a Spring 2023 English course on Shakespeare taught by Dr. Mary Villeponteaux. It is added upon during a Fall 2024 masters seminar by the same professor.

Additional resources:

• https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/approaching-shakespeare

General Biographical Information

Born/Died April 23(?) 1564-1616

Born in Stratford-Upon-Avon

• was NOT an aristocrat, but did belong to a prosperous, prominent Stratford family
• father, John Shakespeare was a glover (leatherworker)
• mother, Mary Arden, was made executor of her father’s estate and received a sizable inheritance although he had remarried
• 5 siblings
• went to grammar school but NOT university

November 1582 – He marries at 18 (which is considered quite young for the day)

• Anne Hathaway
• three children
  • Susanna, May 1583
  • Hamnet & Judith, 1585
• Unlike many in theatre, his family (wife and three children) were not involved. This would lead to later speculation about Shakespeare’s family life including his sexuality
• His sonnets written to a man also added to these questions; however they do mention a woman

The lost years 1585-1592

• In the late 1580s, Shakespeare goes to London and began his theatrical career.  But no records exist from this period of his life.

By 1592 he was famous enough to be attacked in print by playwright Robert Greene in his “Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit”. However, this was really the only bad thing written about him:

• Johannes fac totem Latin for “Jack of all trades”

Yes trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Iohannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey. 

In 1594, he forms the theatre company “Lord Chamberlin’s Men” which later became “The King’s Men” in 1603 when King James became the patron

In 1613, The Globe burned down during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, Shakespeare bought a house in London, and retired to his home in Stratford.

General Works Information

• 38 plays written in a mix of blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) and prose
• 2 narrative poems: 
  • Venus and Adonis (1593)
  • The Rape of Lucrece (1594)
• Sonnets (1609)

The “First Folio” of 1623

Almost all of Shakespeare’s works are a mix of prose and verse, although Richard II is all in blank verse

• These differences often point to something about what Shakespeare is trying to illustrate to the audience
• Often, upper class = verse, lower class = prose

• Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616.
• In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two actors and former colleagues, compiled his plays for publication.
• Folio format is expensive, was usually reserved for “serious” works like law or theology.

16th Century England

• Elizabeth I, 1558-1603
  • later succeeded by James I (The Jacobean Age)
• Protestant nation
• Growing middle class
• Exploration
• Colonization
  • Shakespeare’s works entered into the curriculum as a colonization tool to teach the othered what it meant to be English.
• Fear of foreign invasion and Catholicism
• Rapid growth of London:  from 60,000 people in 1520 to 375,000 in 1650.
• Religion in Renaissance England
  • The Tudors
    • Henry VIII (1509-1547)
    • Broke with the Roman Catholic Church, 1533-34.
    • Established the Protestant Church of England.
  • Edward VI (1547-1553)
    • Instituted further Protestant reforms in Church of England
  • Mary I  (1553-1558)
    • Returned England to the Roman Catholic Church.
  • Elizabeth I  (1558-1603)  
    • Reinstituted the Protestant Church of England.
  • In 1588 the Spanish Armada attacked England in an attempt to reinstate Catholicism but failed
• When England moves from Catholic to CoE, it does so very slowly – not much changed, right up until it did
  • Henry XIII dissolves the monasteries
  • takes many of the large land and wealth holdings
  • illustrates that while religion has been corrupted, politics isn’t much better
• Edward begins the real religious shift after Henry’s death
• After Edward’s death, Mary the Catholic (Mary I, “Bloody Mary”) became queen

Theatre in Shakespeare’s Age

• James Burbage, “The Theatre,” 1576
• Playhouses flourished
• Lord Chamberlain’s Men, 1594 (would become “The King’s Men” in 1603)
• Companies required patronage, licensure, and were under control of crown

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 1599

• Constructed from the timbers of Burbage’s Theatre
• Held 2,000-3,000
• A penny to enter, more for a seat
• “Groundlings” stood around the stage. Paid more for the upper seats
• DeWitt’s sketch of the Swan is the basis for some of our ideas about the Globe.
• South of the Thames, not I London proper but more of a red light district.
• Audience as a community
• Audience interaction with actors
• Closeness of audience to actors
• Everyone is in daylight – no artificial light
• Not very visually rich or elaborate
• Costumes are main expense and main visual appeal.
• Minimal props
• No backdrops
• Thrust stage
• No curtain so the scenes kind of ran together
• Women in the audience
• Women were not allowed to act, this would have caused a theatre to get shut down
  • women would be allowed on stage in 1660
  • Aristocracy fled during the civil war of 1642 (Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans). They would return after the Restoration with foreign theatre influences, including female actors and painted backdrops
• Boy actors playing the women’s parts
• Master of the Revels / Censor
  • Sir Edmund Tilney
  • became an office of censorship

A Company of Players

• Home-based businesses
• Boy actors played female roles.
• From Henslowe’s Diary:  A team of 15 actors put on a different play every afternoon for a week.  They began working on a new play roughly every three weeks.  Greatest expense was costumes.  

Attitudes Toward Theatre

• London city government saw crowds as potential rioters.  City government was also dominated by Puritans.
• Puritans fulminated against the theatre as effeminate and lewd.  Stephen Gosson’s School of Abuse (1579) is typical.
• Yet the Crown enjoyed plays and wanted them for entertainment.
• And plays were an extremely popular form of entertainment in London.
• Audience was diverse:  women and men; people of different social stations.
• “I heard a play at the Globe yesterday”:  Audiences appreciated the beautiful language of plays, though they also enjoyed the elaborate costumes.
• attitudes toward players were often negative much unlike our love of actors today
• actors could make a decent living but their lower status is probably attributable to before the stationary theatre, actors were typically vagabonds.

The Jacobean Age

• James I, 1603-1625
• Son of Mary, Queen of Scots
• James VI of Scotland before he inherited the English throne.
• Conservative political beliefs well known from his published treatises on divine right of kings.
• Jacobean Shakespeare
  • 1603:  The Lord Chamberlain’s Men became the King’s Men.  Their patron was James I.
  • 1608:  The King’s Men began using Blackfriar’s Theatre, though they performed at the Globe as well.

History Plays

• Shakespeare’s early reputation may have been based on his three historical plays about Henry IV
• Shakespeare’s 2nd Tetralogy
  • Richard II (1595)
  • Henry IV, Part I (1595-1597ish)
  • Henry IV, Part II (1598)
  • Henry V (1599)

Henry IV, Part I

• Backstory – The disposition scene had been removed for years by censors
• Act I – Kings decide to stop killing each other and lets Crusade instead
• Wales & Scotland fighting – still independent at this pointing history
• Difference between you (formal superior) and thou (informal inferior)
• Act 4, Scene 2 – Flagstaff misuses his ability to draft soldiers

Othello

• Coleridge characterized Iago as “motiveless malignity”

Further research ideas

• Women of Shakespeare – Emilie in Othello made me think of this one
• Title for a paper “There’s magic in the web of it” Othello III.iv.69
• Question: Othello III.iv.103 Shakespeare to write words and the rest of Emilie’s character this way

Elizabeth Williams – Victims of suicide in Shakespeare

• analyzed using a trauma studies lens
• existed before the language of trauma
• suicide is defined as a preference for death performed by oneself or allowed by another
• Williams argues that Shakespeare has an anti-suicide belief.
• The Rape of Lucrece
• does not treat suicide as honorable or contemptuous
• Lady Macbeth, Ophelia