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Show -- 6 • llnltferslty Journill • MllntMy, June Zf, 1996 • fCOntlnuecl from page SJ not exactly in its infancy. It was, in a manner of speaking, about 700 years old. Its beginnings were in the "Trope" of the ninth century; this was followed by "Liturgical" plays leading to "Miracle plays," and eventually to "Morality plays" in the15tth century; about the beginning of the 16th century the "Interlude," a brief semi-dramatic comedy with coarse and farcical humor, appeared. The drama as it was known in Shakespeare's time was strongly influenced by the tragedies of Seneca and the comedies of Plautus and Terence. This Roman influence was pervasive, and Shakespeare, like his predecessors and contemporariesLyly, Kyd, Greene, Peele, and Marlowe--made heavy use of it. The Roman plays provided examples of dramatic elements which many writers attempted to make universal. Tragedy employed such techniques as division into five acts, the so-called unities of time, place, and action, the exclusion of comedy from t,a gedy, the practice of having action reported on stage ratner than taking place there, the emphasis on character, the use of a chorus, and the employment of such stock devices as tyrant, confidant, and ghost. The Roman comedies provided examples of wit, of sententiousness, of wellconstructed plots, and natural dialogue. Shakespeare rejected the practice of the unities. though he observed them in The Comedy of Errors and The Tempest. In addition to the plays based on the Roman playwrights, the translation of Plutarch's Lives into English by Thomas North gave Shakespeare a host of subjects for his Roman plays, such as Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. In fact, some of his Roman plays render whole pages of North into verse. hakespeare's plays are loosely divided into omedies, tragedies, and histories. hakespeare was to perfect the technique of riling tragedy and comedy, but it is with English history that he begins. His sources were the chronicles of Edward Hall and Raphael Holinshed, which provided a wealth of information pertaining to Queen Elizabeth's royal predecessors. Though chronicle plays were rare before 1590, from 1590 to 1600 they were the most popular plays performed in London, and every playwright turned to writing them. The reason for their popularity is not difficult to find . In 1588 the English navy defeated the powerful Spanish Armada. Patriotism was now rampant, with historians and poets celebrating England and its traditions. Shakespeare's venture into history began with his first tetralogy (there was to be a second)--the three parts of Henry VI and Richard Ill. The lack of dramatic unity in Henry VI reveals a young dramatist still struggling with his craft. In Richard Ill, Christopher Marlowe's influence is still present; but then the play was written in the manner of Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Edward II, although the sources are Hall and Holinshed. With Richard Ill, Shakespeare can be seen strengthening his technique. Shakespeare's early comedies are clearly the work of a man learning his craft, and though his first comedy, The Comedy of Errors, lacks originality and has some technical oroblems. it has been said that modern Enalish I comedy first sees the light in it. His first tragedy, on the other hand, Titus Andronicus, with its scenes of rape, mutilation, and cannibalism, repulses many critics who cannot believe that Shakespeare wrote it; but seen by an Elizabethan audience, it was sheer melodrama, a reworking of an old popular one. In adapting the play, he reduced 10 acts to five, and demonstrated maturity in the handling of action and suspense. By now, 1592, Shakespeare at age28 had served an apprenticeship in the theatre, revealing a promise in all three dramatic genres-history, comedy, and tragedy. And in that year, his predecessor, the playwright and pamphleteer Robert Greene, displayed his peevish attitude toward Shakespeare in his infamous, condemnatory lines: "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tyger's heart wrapt in a Player's hide supposes that he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you ; and being an absolute Johannes tac totum [Jack-of-all-trades], is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." The remark makes fun of a line in Henry VI, part II : "O tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide." The publisher of Greene's spiteful letter was quick to follow it up with an apology-in response to protests, no doubt-attesting to Shakespeare's honesty as a man and to his "grace in writing.· Greene died soon after writing his attack. As luck would have it, Shakespeare had no sooner tried his wings as a writer than the theatres were closed; and they remained closed until 1594, except for a few brief weeks. London had devastating visits of the plague, and had had for two hundred years. When the plague appeared, the commoners got the worst of it, and public gatherings were discouraged. But Shakespeare did not let his talents go undeveloped during this period. He then turned to poetry. Even the briefest treatment of Shakespeare must consider his role as a poet, a man living and writing in an age when poetry had achieved a valued and respected place in the sphere of human exoression. I is important to realize that drama is traditionally classified as a form of poetry. The classification usually run something like this: dramatic poetry, epic poetry, narrative poetry, lyric poetry, elegiac poetry, etc. Because the presence of poetry is not always found in drama, many scholars prefer to use the expression "poetic drama." By Shakespeare's time, the medium of the play traditionally included the use of blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter lines) with rhymed couplets rounding out a scene or act of a play. Thus, Shakespeare thought of drama as a splendid vehicle for poetry simply because it was. Still, The Merry Wives of Windsor is nearly all in prose, an unusual approach to the drama for Shakespeare Regarded in a way that permits distinction, Shakespeare's poetry is expressed in two waysinternally, as songs in his plays, and externally, as independent, separately published poems. In the latter group are found his first deliberate and extended attempts as a poet, his Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594). They were very popular in his lifetime with the reading public-which consisted of the literate and the wordly people of the day. The two narrative poems reveal Shakespeare's dexterity, if not his sincerity, his vivid imagination and inventive use of the English language. They seem artificial only because they were composed in a conventional mode. It was the way writers then thought they were supposed to write. Both poems rely on long elaborate and flowery speeches rather than on action for their effect. Venus and Adonis went through 16 editions by 1640. The Rape of Lucrece by that date went through eight editions. Both poems were praised for their eloquent treatment of classical subjects, based on stories told by the Latin author Ovid. While Venus and Adonis is filled with erotic, sensual imagery, The Rape of Lucrece has not even the comedic element of the first poem to recommend it; to many it seems strarkly cold and distant. Shakespeare dedicated both poems to Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton, a young, wealthy, intelligent patron of the arts. That Shakespeare needed someone to advance his career as a writer is certain. When he arrived in London he had no social standing, no influence, no friends, and no money. As a result he required a rich and preferably noble patron who would be willing to repay Shakespeare's verses with his favors. Southampton must have appeared to Shakespeare to be the perfect patron . And Southampton must have taken immediately to the older Shakespeare (Southampton was only 19 when Shakespeare dedicated the first poem to him). The two men became intimate friends. The second example of Shakespeare's independent poems is his sonnet sequence of 154 sonnets, each containing fourteen lines. The sonnets are thought to have been written between 1593 and 1600. Although the sonnets can be arranged in loosely fitted groups, no suitable order for them has been discovered. Because there is no attempt to tell a story, there is nothing irrevocable about the sequence. What themes there are are intermittent. There is, however, an unrelenting /continued on page 1J |