2. the Sense of History in Greek and Shakespearean Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960) P

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

2. the Sense of History in Greek and Shakespearean Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960) P Notes CHAPTER ONE 1. Benjonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938) 6, 198-9. 2. The Sense of History in Greek and Shakespearean Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960) p. 83. In addition to Driver's, another study which does provocatively confront this issue is Ricardo Quinones's The Renais­ sance Discovery of Time (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972). Each of these has played an important role in the development of my argument, but each seems to me to consider Shakespeare in terms of rigid (and oddly polarized) notions about the perception of time in the Renaissance. Driver finds a Shakespeare who imaginatively embraces the 'Judea-Christian ordering of history' and sees in his art the fullest expression of 'the dramatic tradition of Christian culture'. Quinones turns the other way. He sees a Shakespeare reflecting the secularization of ideals that Burckhardt (called by Quinones 'our premier Renaissance historian') and others have found to characterize the Renaissance. Quinones focuses on Shakespeare's search for 'values of continuity' and argues 'that at the heart of the Shakespearean argument of time is the father-son link of generation'. 3. See V. A. Kolve, The Play called Corpus Christi (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966) pp. 57 -100; Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery Plays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972) pp. 54 -76; and chapters one and three of Peter Travis, Dramatic Design in the Chester Cycle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). 4. A Woorke concerning the trewnesse of the Christian Religion, trans. Sir Philip Sidney and Arthur Golding (London, 1589) Sig. 16'. 5. Though obviously the Middle Ages do not suddenly give way to a suc­ ceeding era, new habits of mind and modes of perception do emerge, however fitfully, to justify our idea of the Renaissance. The idea of time provides one of the clearest and most important test cases, and the literature on the subject is appropriately substantial. In addition to Quinones's book, useful studies include G. F. Waller, The Strong Necessity of Time (The Hauge: Mouton, 1976); Georges Poulet, Studies in Human Time, trans. Elliott Coleman (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1956) pp. 3-18; Erwin Panofsky, 'Father Time', Studies in Iconology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939) pp. 69-94; Douglas Bush, Prefaces to Renaissance Literature (New York: Norton, 1965) pp. 65-90; Carlo Cipolla, Clocks and Culture 1300-1700 (London: Collins, 1967); S. K. Heninger, Jr., Touches of Sweet Harmony (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1974) pp. 201-37; David A. Roberts, 'Mystery to Mathe· 174 Notes 175 matics Flown: Time and Reality in the Renaissance', Centennial Review 19 (1975) 136-56; D. C. Muecke, 'Aspects of Baroque Time and The Revenger's Tragedy', in Shakespeare and Some Others, ed. Alan Brissenden (Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press, 1976) pp. 104-22; and Sarah Hutton, 'Some Renaissance Critiques of Aristotle's Theory of Time', Annals of Science 34 (1977) 345-63. 6. Others, of course, have chosen a different approach and have usefully examined the philosophical implications of Shakespeare's treatment of time. Fredrick Turner's Shakespeare and the Nature of Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) is primarily concerned with, in the words of the subtitle, 'Moral and Philosophical Themes in Some Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare'. See also Soji Iwasaki, The Sword and the Word (Tokyo: Shinszki Shorin, 1973) which, by way of Renaissance iconographical traditions, focuses on the idea of time in Richard Ill, Macbeth, and King Lear; Wylie Sypher's The Ethic of Time (New York: The Seabury Press, 1976), which relates Shakespeare's con· sciousness of time to the understanding of time 'in our current science, philo· sophy, and ethic'; and three essays by Zdenek Stribrny in consecutive numbers of Shakespearejahrbuch 110-12 (1974-6) on 'The Idea and Image of Time' in the early histories, 'Shakespeare's Second Historical Tetralogy', and Troilus and Cressida. 7. Ortega y Gasset suggestively considers the question of what makes a fiction 'capable of coping with present reality' in his Meditations on Don Quixote, trans. Evelyn Rugg and Diego Martin (New York: Norton, 1963) pp. 135ff. 8. Quoted in T. W. Baldwin, William Shakespere's Five-Act Structure (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1947) p. 66. 9. Comeille et Ia dialectique du heros (Paris: Gallimard, 1963) p. 268. 10. The locus classicus for the distinction is, of course, Lessing's Laocoon ( 1766). Some of the critical implications of the issue are raised in Joseph Frank's well-known essay, 'Spatial Form in Modern Literature', first published in Sewanee Review 53 (1945) 221-40, 433-56, 643-53; and in the response to Frank's essay, including Walter Sutton's 'The Literary Image and the Reader', JAAC 16 (1957) 112-23; Jan Miel, 'Temporal Form in the Novel', MLN 84 (1969) 916-30; and three essays, including one by Frank himself, in vol. 4 (1977) of Cn'ticallnquiry. 11. Dramatic Structure (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971) p. 25. 12. 'The Heresy of Plot', English Institute Essays, 1951, ed. Alan S. Downer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952) pp. 44-69. 13. The quoted phrases are from Dante's letter to Can Grande, though the distinction may be traced at least back to the fourth century and Evanthius' De Fabula. See Paul Wessner's introduction to Commentum Terenti, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1902-5). In the English Renaissance these were also the common terms of distinction. Consider Webbe's account in his Discourse of English Poetry (1586). There grewe at last to be a greater diuersitye betweene Tragedy wryters and Comedy wryters, the one expressing onely sorrowfull and lamentable Hystories, bringing in the persons of Gods and Goddesses, Kynges and Queenes, and great states, whose partes were cheefely to expresse most miserable calamities and dreadfull chaunces, which increased worse and 176 Notes worse, tyll they came to the most wofull plight that might be deuised. The Comedies, on the other side, were directed to a contrary ende, which, beginning doubtfully, drewe to some trouble or turmoyle, and by some lucky chaunce alwayes ended to the ioy and appeasement of all parties [Elizabethan Cn'tical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith (1904; rpt. London: Oxford University Press, 1967) I, p. 249]. 14. See chapter three of Heinrich Wolflin, Princrples of Art History, first published in 1915 and first translated into English by M.D. Hottinger (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1932). 15. I hope it is clear that these are not evaluative but purely descriptive terms. A work is not intrinsically better for being either open or closed. Two essential studies of the nature and significance of artistic closure are Barbara Herrnstein Smith's Poetic Closure (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968) and Frank Kermode's The Sense of an Ending (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967). 16. For one such examination see Frank Manuel, Shapes of Philosophical History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965). 17. Confessions, XI, 14, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (Baltimore: Penguin, 1964) p. 264. Cf. Pascal's remark about 'time' in Opuscules: 'Qui le pourra definir.1 et pourquoi l'entreprendre, puisque tous les hommes, concoivent ce qu 'on veut dire en parlant de temps, sans qu 'on le designe davantage'. 18. The Decline of the West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Knopf, 1926) p. 122. 19. Confessions, XI, 20, p. 261. Similarly, Luther writes, 'What the philo­ sophers say is true: "The past is gone; the future has not yet arrived; therefore we have, of all time, only the now. The rest of time is not because it has either passed away or has not yet arrived"'. Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St Louis: Concordia, 1956) 13, 100-1. 20. Confessions, XI, 24, p. 272. 21. Confessions, XI, 27, p. 276. 22. Confessions, XI, 11, p. 261. 23. Quoted by Manuel, p. 8. 24. Driver, p. 7. Though I disagree with his conclusions, I have, in these last two paragraphs, made much use of Driver's discussion, pp. 6-8. 25. See David Riggs. Shakespeare's Heroical Histon·es (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971) pp. 34-61. 26. Tillyard, p. 171. For similar views see Cairncross's introductions to the new Arden editions of the three Henry VI plays (London: Methuen, 1957, 1962, 1964); M. M. Reese, The Cease of Majesty (New York: StMartin's Press, 1961), pp. 165-206; and Irving Ribner's revised edition of The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1965) pp. 99-106. 27. Tillyard, p. 185. 28. A. L. French, 'Henry VI and the Ghost of Richard II', ES, 50 (1969), Anglo-American supplement, p. xxxvii; Brockbank, 'The Frame of Disorder: Henry VI', Early Shakespeare, ed. John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris (London: Edward Arnold, 1961) p. 98. See also H. M. Richmond, Shakespeare's Political Plays (New York: Random House, 1967) p. 45; and James Winny, The Player King (London: Chatto and Windus, 1968) p. 20. 29. Sir John Bourchier, Lord Berners, preface to The Chronicle of Froissart Notes 177 (London: David Nutt, 1901) p. 3. 30. The Union of the Two Noble Fam11ies of Lancaster and York (London, 1550, facsimile reprint, Menston, England: Scholar Press, 1970) Sig. D3• reign of Edward IV (reigns separately foliated). 31. Robert Ornstein also calls attention to the provisional context of the Hall quotation in his Kingdom for a Stage (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972)p.16. 32. Hall, Sig. D3•. 33. Ed. Lily B. Campbell (1938; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1960) p. 198. 34. The Dramatist and the Received Idea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968) p. 113. 35. See A.
Recommended publications
  • “Savage and Deformed”: Stigma As Drama in the Tempest Jeffrey R
    “Savage and Deformed”: Stigma as Drama in The Tempest Jeffrey R. Wilson The dramatis personae of The Tempest casts Caliban as “asavageand deformed slave.”1 Since the mid-twentieth century, critics have scrutinized Caliban’s status as a “slave,” developing a riveting post-colonial reading of the play, but I want to address the pairing of “savage and deformed.”2 If not Shakespeare’s own mixture of moral and corporeal abominations, “savage and deformed” is the first editorial comment on Caliban, the “and” here Stigmatized as such, Caliban’s body never comes to us .”ס“ working as an uninterpreted. It is always already laden with meaning. But what, if we try to strip away meaning from fact, does Caliban actually look like? The ambiguous and therefore amorphous nature of Caliban’s deformity has been a perennial problem in both dramaturgical and critical studies of The Tempest at least since George Steevens’s edition of the play (1793), acutely since Alden and Virginia Vaughan’s Shakespeare’s Caliban: A Cultural His- tory (1993), and enduringly in recent readings by Paul Franssen, Julia Lup- ton, and Mark Burnett.3 Of all the “deformed” images that actors, artists, and critics have assigned to Caliban, four stand out as the most popular: the devil, the monster, the humanoid, and the racial other. First, thanks to Prospero’s yarn of a “demi-devil” (5.1.272) or a “born devil” (4.1.188) that was “got by the devil himself” (1.2.319), early critics like John Dryden and Joseph War- ton envisioned a demonic Caliban.4 In a second set of images, the reverbera- tions of “monster” in The Tempest have led writers and artists to envision Caliban as one of three prodigies: an earth creature, a fish-like thing, or an animal-headed man.
    [Show full text]
  • Module A: Tempest and Hag-Seed Essay
    MODULE A: TEMPEST AND HAG-SEED ESSAY • Textual conversations allow audiences to understand and appreciate changes in attitudes and values over time, by considering the resonances and dissonances that exist between texts. • This is evident when comparing William Shakespeare’s tragicomedy, The Tempest, with Margaret Atwood’s postmodernist appropriation, Hag- Seed. • Both composers communicate the different attitudes and perspectives towards similar concepts of humanity, exploring values of x in their respective context. • Ultimately, this enhances our understanding of these ideas, while also demonstrating how perspectives on social and historical contexts can change over time. • The Tempest explores themes of power and literal imprisonment through its setting and characters. • This is evident in Prospero’s enslavement of Caliban, a native of the island, who is referred to as a “poisonous slave, got by the devil himself”. • Prospero’s use of derogatory language and animalistic imagery, symbolises the negative attitudes of colonisers towards natives in the 1600s. • Caliban’s submissiveness, which is due to a paralysing fear of Prospero’s magic, “I must obey. His art is of such power”, further symbolises this power imbalance between colonisers and natives. • Power and imprisonment are further explored through Prospero. Prospero himself, experiences the retribution of power after being exiled by his “unlawful brother”, Antonio. • Prospero presents Antonio as a brother “so perfidious!”, symbolising his anger and desire for vengeance after 12 years of being imprisoned on the island. • The opening stage directions ‘a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning’ symbolically introduces the disruption to natural order of the Jacobean chain of being through Prospero’s sovereign overthrow, stimulating the desire for revenge.
    [Show full text]
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare Being Most
    A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare Being Most Shamelessly Condensed for a Small Company and Limited Duration by Jennifer Moser Jurling With Mechanics Set Forth for Use in the Role-Playing Game The Play's the Thing, by Mark Truman With Thanks to MIT for http://shakespeare.mit.edu/ DRAMATIS PERSONAE OBERON, king of Faerie. Part: Faerie. Plot: Betrayer to Titania. Prop: Lantern. PUCK, servant to Oberon. Part: Faerie. Plot: Sworn to Oberon. Prop: Disguise. TITANIA: queen of Faerie. Part: Faerie. Plot: Rival to Oberon. Prop: Coin. THESEUS: duke of Athens. Part: Ruler. Plot: In Love with Hippolyta. Prop: Crown. HIPPOLYTA: queen of Amazons. Part: Maiden. Plot: In Love with Theseus. Prop: Crown. PETER QUINCE: director, Athens Acting Guild. Part: Hero. Plot: Rival to Nick Bottom. Prop: Letter. NICK BOTTOM: actor in the guild. Part: Fool. Plot: Rival to Peter Quince. Prop: Lantern. SNUG: actor in the guild. Part: Commoner. Plot: Friend to Peter Quince. Prop: Disguise. Note to Playwright: You may wish to use “In Love with Hippolyta” as Oberon’s starting plot and “In Love with Theseus” as Titania’s starting plot. Of course, these can also be added later or not at all. ACT I Faerie king Oberon and his queen, Titania, quarrel. (Titania has a changeling human boy among her attendants, and she refuses to let him be one of Oberon’s henchmen. They also argue over Oberon’s love for Hippolyta and Titania’s love for Theseus.) Oberon enlists his servant Puck to fetch a flower that will enable him to cast a love spell on Titania, so that she will fall in love with a monstrous beast.
    [Show full text]
  • “From Strange to Stranger”: the Problem of Romance on the Shakespearean Stage
    “From strange to stranger”: The Problem of Romance on the Shakespearean Stage by Aileen Young Liu A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English and the Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Jeffrey Knapp, Chair Professor Oliver Arnold Professor David Landreth Professor Timothy Hampton Summer 2018 “From strange to stranger”: The Problem of Romance on the Shakespearean Stage © 2018 by Aileen Young Liu 1 Abstract “From strange to stranger”: The Problem of Romance on the Shakespearean Stage by Aileen Young Liu Doctor of Philosophy in English Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Jeffrey Knapp, Chair Long scorned for their strange inconsistencies and implausibilities, Shakespeare’s romance plays have enjoyed a robust critical reconsideration in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But in the course of reclaiming Pericles, The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest as significant works of art, this revisionary critical tradition has effaced the very qualities that make these plays so important to our understanding of Shakespeare’s career and to the development of English Renaissance drama: their belatedness and their overt strangeness. While Shakespeare’s earlier plays take pains to integrate and subsume their narrative romance sources into dramatic form, his late romance plays take exactly the opposite approach: they foreground, even exacerbate, the tension between romance and drama. Verisimilitude is a challenge endemic to theater as an embodied medium, but Shakespeare’s romance plays brazenly alert their audiences to the incredible.
    [Show full text]
  • CHARLES FUSSELL: CYMBELINE CHARLES FUSSELL B
    CHARLES FUSSELL: CYMBELINE CHARLES FUSSELL b. 1938 CYMBELINE: DRAMA AFTER SHAKESPEARE (1984, rev. 1996) CYMBELINE [1] I. Prelude 4:03 [2] II. Duet: Imogen and Posthumus 3:26 [3] III. Interlude 1:39 [4] IV. Aria: Iachimo 1:10 [5] V. Imogen 3:39 [6] VI. Scene with Arias: Iachimo 10:19 [7] VII. Interlude 2:14 [8] VIII. Scene: Cloten 1:21 [9] IX. Song: Cloten 3:22 [10] X. Recitative and Arioso: Imogen and Belarius 3:04 ALIANA DE LA GUARDIA soprano [11] XI. Duet, Dirge: Guiderius and Arviragus 3:58 MATTHEW DiBATTISTA tenor [12] XII. Battle with Victory March 4:05 DAVID SALSBERY FRY narrator [13] XIII. Scene: Ghosts (Mother and Sicilius) and Jupiter 5:17 [14] XIV. Duet: Imogen and Posthumus 3:07 BOSTON MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT [15] XV. Finale: Soothsayer and Cymbeline 4:14 Gil Rose, conductor TOTAL 55:02 COMMENT By Charles Fussell The idea of a musical depiction of this work came as a result of seeing the Hartford Stage productions of Shakespeare. Their Cymbeline, directed by Mark Lamos (who later moved to opera), ended with an unforgettable scene between Imogen and her husband: “Why did you throw your wedded lady from you? Think that you are upon a rock and throw me again.” His reply, “Hang there like fruit, my soul, till the tree die.” This exchange touched me deeply and really convinced me to try some music for the songs that appear in the play as well as this beautiful expression of love. I noticed the familiar “Hark, hark the lark” was sung by the frightful Cloten.
    [Show full text]
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream
    THE SHAKESPEARE THEATRE OF NEW JERSEY EDUCATION PRESENTS SHAKESPEARE LIVE! 2017 A Midsummer Night’s Dream BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE STUDENT-TEACHER STUDY GUIDE COMPILED AND ARRANGED BY THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF THE SHAKESPEARE THEATRE OF NEW JERSEY Shakespeare LIVE!, The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s educational touring company, is part of Shakespeare in American Communities: Shakespeare for a New Generation, a national program of the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with Arts Midwest. Additional support for Shakespeare LIVE! is provided by The Investors Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, The Provident Bank Foundation, and the Turrell Fund. COVER: Mustardseed, Peasblossom and Moth from the 2015 touring production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM THIS PAGE: The Mechanicals from the 2015 touring production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. ALL PHOTOS by Jerry Dahlia ©2015 unless noted. In This Guide: Classroom Activities for Teachers and Students ...............................p2 Shakespeare: Helpful Tips For Exploring & Seeing His Works .......p3 About the Playwright ................................................................................p4 Shakespeare’s London .............................................................................p5 Shakespeare’s Verse ..................................................................................p6 “Are you SURE this is English?” .............................................................. p7 A Midsummer Night’s Dream: An Introduction ...................................p8 Midsummer:
    [Show full text]
  • Shakespeare and Brecht: a Study of Dialectic Structures in Shakespearean Drama Amd the Ir Influence Om Brecht's Theatre Amd Dramatic Theory
    University College London SHAKESPEARE AND BRECHT: A STUDY OF DIALECTIC STRUCTURES IN SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA AMD THE IR INFLUENCE OM BRECHT'S THEATRE AMD DRAMATIC THEORY. Submitted for the degree of PhD at The University of London. DOC ROSSI 1991 1 ProQuest Number: 10609419 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10609419 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT This thesis explores aspects of Brecht's adaptations of Shakespeare's plots and rhetoric while focusing particularly on matters of structural influence. Both authors use metafictional references in their plays to foreground a stylised artificiality, thereby pointing to the interaction of social and literary semiotics. These 'alienating' strategies expose the construction and the limitations of ideologies presented in a play, demanding recognition of the dialectical processes thus engaged. The study of Brecht's theory and practice against the background of Shakespeare's drama produces new insight into B:recht's works; similarly, Shakespeare's plays viewed against the background of Brecht's theatre and dramatic theory provide new insight into Shakespeare's literary practice.
    [Show full text]
  • The Function of Forest in the Faerie Queene: Seeing the Woods for the Trees
    The Function of Forest in The Faerie Queene: Seeing the Woods for the Trees Nicholas Randell April 1987 The Function o£ Forest in The Faerie Queene: Seeing the Woods £or the Trees Nicholas Randell April 1987 Generally, the mention of place in\regard to/The Faerie Queene summons up the image of Alma's House of Temperance, the Bower of Bliss, or Isis' Temple. These settings are highly stagey: the narrative comes to a halt) and the reader is expected to interpret the composite images of the scene. The crocodile at Isis' feet enJoys the same relationship to her as Justice does to equity. Equity, its allegorical representative embodied in Isis, exercises a restraining influence over the "cruel doome" of Justice, i.e., the crocodile that Isis stands on. These places smack of the unreal; they and their set pieces exist primarily to illustrate a moral orientation or philosophical position. In Acrasia's Bower of Bliss, of course, unreality is Just the point. With its "painted flowres" it caters to the whims of the men it hopes to ensnare. The Bower exists for them. It is made to please: "The dales for shade, the hills for breathing space"! (The Faerie Queene. II, xii,5S) But what of place when The Faerie Queen's narrative rolls right along? What about the landscape that doesn't make man happy or remind him of one or another truth? All the symbolic places of The Faerie Queen are, in a very real sense, interludes of a larger piece, brief moments in a landscape that undulates about them.
    [Show full text]
  • Macbeth and Lady Macbeth Page 14 What Is It to Be a Man? Page 15
    MACBETH Introduction WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE The activities in this pack are inspired by the rehearsal room process and have been created around Michael Boyd's 2011 production of Macbeth. The activities can work in a classroom (or hall or studio space), either as stand-alone practical approaches to the text or as supporting activities for students seeing the production They have been designed with KS3 and KS4 students in mind, but can be adapted for other age groups. More activities on Macbeth are available in The RSC Shakespeare Toolkit for Teachers, available online in the RSC Shop These symbols are used CONTENTS throughout the pack: Macbeth's ambition Page 2 Making a start Page 3 READ - contextual notes from the rehearsal room Malcolm – The young king Page 6 Banquo's ambition for his son Page 9 ACTIVITY – Get on your feet for a classroom activity Fleance flash forward Page 11 Macduff and his family Page 12 WATCH - video Macbeth and Lady Macbeth Page 14 What is it to be a man? Page 15 ABOUT RSC EDUCATION We want children and young people to enjoy the challenge of Shakespeare and achieve more as a result of connecting with his work. Central to our education work is our manifesto for Shakespeare in schools; Stand up for Shakespeare. We know that children and young people can experience Shakespeare in ways that excite, engage and inspire them. We believe that young people get the most out of Shakespeare when they: Do Shakespeare on their feet – exploring the plays actively as actors do See it Live – participate as members of a live audience Start it Earlier – work on the plays from a younger age As an organisation, the RSC has four values.
    [Show full text]
  • The Historical Context of Macbeth
    The Historical Context of Macbeth EXPLORING Shakespeare, 2003 Shakespeare wrote Macbeth sometime between 1605 and 1606, shortly after the ascension of King James of Scotland to the English throne. The new monarch brought Scotland—previously known to the English only as a mysterious, conquered neighbor—into the public limelight. The period of James' reign was further marked by political and religious conflict, much of which focused the kingdom's attention on the danger of regicide. Events in History at the Time of the Play Sources Following the process used in the creation of many of his plays, Shakespeare drew the plot for Macbeth from historical sources—particularly Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577), the authoritative historical text of the period. Although Holinshed contains the story of Macbeth and Duncan, Shakespeare did not rely on this only; rather, he combined different stories and different versions of the same story to create his drama. The Chronicles include an account of King Malcolm II (reigned 1005-34), whose throne passed first to Duncan I (reigned 1034-40) and then to Macbeth (reigned 1040-57), both of whom were his grandsons. For his portrayal of the murder through which Macbeth took Duncan's throne, Shakespeare mined another vein of the Chronicles—King Duff's death at the hands of one of his retainers, Donwald. In combining the two events, Shakespeare crafted a specific tone for the tale of regicide. When King Malcolm II of Scotland died in 1034, his last command was that the throne should pass to his oldest grandson, Duncan.
    [Show full text]
  • Written by 'L'ravis Beacham No Portion of This Script Lna.Y
    ,. KILLING ON CARNIVAL ROW Written by 'l'ravis Beacham No portion o.f this script lna.y be performed, reproduced, or .used by any means, or quoted or published in any ·medium without the ·prior: written consent of Kopelso:il Entertainment. · ·r·.,, ___ '¥.. ! July 22, 2005 . ·.~·:;, © 2005 . KOPELSON EN'l'ER'l'AI.NMEN'l' All Rights Reserved · EXT. SEWER TUNNEL -- NIGHT not just a "broken and bent archway" An archway at the end of an alley. Broken and bent long . ' ago, crnsted with moss. A trickle of water cuts through. not just "wet" A SCREAM from within. Laboured BREATHING, the rapid SPLISH SP:LASH of footfalls. AISLING COBWEB, beautiful and intense, bursts from the tunnel into the narrow alley. doesn't just come out, but "bursts" Her body, petite, young, and frail, tense with fear. From her back sprout a pair of large moth-like wings, fragile, intricate, frayed at the edges. tells us exactly why/how her wings are fragile Aisling Cobweb is a faerie. And she's running for her life. She catches her tattered skirt on !lletal grating and stumbles face first. she turns, panicked. ·· In the darkness, distant at first, an eerie WAIL. Her eyes widen. "tattered skin" tells us Aisling, flexes her wings, and takes to she has already been caught. so she is not just THE AIR running. she is escaping. with frantic agility. She flies, weaving between narrow ) alleys, dodging gas lanterns and sagging clothes-lines. She is not just Her papery wings carry her swerving around tight corners. running, she is "weaving and She slams into the s.ide of a steep inclined dodging." But ROOF not just "weaving and where she scrambles for a foothold on the.slate-shingles.
    [Show full text]
  • Chicago Shakespeare Theater Is Chicago’S Professional Theater Dedicated Timeline 12 to the Works of William Shakespeare
    TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 1 Art That Lives 2 Bard’s Bio 3 The First Folio 4 Shakespeare’s England 4 The English Renaissance Theater 6 Barbara Gaines Criss Henderson Courtyard-style Theater 8 Artistic Director Executive Director On the Road: A Brief History of Touring Shakespeare 9 Chicago Shakespeare Theater is Chicago’s professional theater dedicated Timeline 12 to the works of William Shakespeare. Founded as Shakespeare Repertory in 1986, the company moved to its seven-story home on Navy Pier in 1999. Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” In its Elizabethan-style courtyard theater, 500 seats on three levels wrap around a deep thrust stage—with only nine rows separating the farthest Dramatis Personae 14 seat from the stage. Chicago Shakespeare also features a flexible 180-seat The Story 15 black box studio theater, a Teacher Resource Center, and a Shakespeare Act-by-Act Synopsis 15 specialty bookstall. Something Borrowed, Something New: Shakespeare’s Sources 17 Now in its twenty-eighth season, the Theater has produced nearly the entire 1606 and All That 18 Shakespeare canon: All’s Well That Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Tragedy and Us 20 As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Cymbeline, Hamlet, Henry IV A Scholar’s Perspective: Hereafter 21 Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3, Henry VIII, Julius What the Critics Say 23 Caesar, King John, King Lear, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Macbeth, Measure Why Teach Macbeth? 34 for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Pericles, A Play Comes to Life Richard II, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, A Look Back at Macbeth in Performance 38 The Tempest, Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, Dueling Macbeths Erupt in Riots! 42 The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and The A Conversation with the Director 43 Winter’s Tale.
    [Show full text]