William Shakespeares dramatisches Werk E-Book

Ch. Schwab

• Herausgeber: Science Factory
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

William Shakespeare ist DER wichtigste Dramatiker Englands, seine Stücke werden auch heute noch regelmäßig an den Theatern der Welt aufgeführt – und an Schulen und Universitäten gelehrt. Dieser Band zeichnet ein Bild des Elisabethinischen Theaters und beleuchtet Shakespeares wichtigste Werke – mit Schwerpunkt auf die historischen Hintergründe. Aus dem Inhalt: The World Picture of the Elizabethan Age, Analysen von: "Romeo and Juliet", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Macbeth", "Richard III", "The Merchant of Venice", "King Lear", "Hamlet", "Othello"

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Coverbild: Hamlet:Pedro Américo - Macbeth: Johann Heinrich Füssli - Othello:von Alexandre-Marie Colin (1798-1875) (http://www.barbarapaul.com/shake/othello.html) - Romeo und Julia:Frank Dicksee - Shakespeare:By In Helmolt, H.F., ed. History of the World. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1902. Author unknown, but the portrait has several centuries [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

William Shakespeares dramatisches Werk

Shakespeare’s Historical Background and the World Picture of the Elizabethan Age

Introduction

The Tudor Dynasty before Elizabeth I or “Let us sit down and tell sad stories of dead kings”

The Elizabethan Age

James I

Merry England

Golden Age in a Nutshell

The Elizabethan World Picture

The Human Being

The Body Politic

The Meaning of Sin

World Picture: Conclusion

And the rest is silence

List of Works Cited

Zum Verhältnis tragischer und komischer Aspekte in William Shakespeares „Romeo and Juliet“

Einleitung

Die Tradition des Komischen

Analyse der komischen Aspekte in Shakespeares „Romeo and Juliet“

Die Tradition des Tragischen

Analyse der tragischen Elemente in Shakespeares „Romeo and Juliet“

Fazit

Literaturverzeichnis

Love Concepts in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Introduction

Love in Elizabethan Literature and Society

Shakespeare’s Depiction of Marriage and Love in his Romantic Comedies

Representations of Love and Marriage in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Conclusion

Works Cited

William Shakespeare Macbeth – Historische Fakten und Hintergründe

Einleitung

Geschichte Schottlands im 11. Jahrhundert und Beziehungen zum Drama

Shakespeares dramatis personae und die Realpersonen

Motive der Darstellung

Schlussbetrachtung

Literaturverzeichnis:

„Determined to prove a villain” – Zur Charakterisierung der Hauptfigur in Shakespeares Historie Richard III.

Einleitung

Zur Persönlichkeitsstruktur Richards

Richards Rollenspiel

Die Rolle der übrigen Figuren und ihr Beitrag zu Richards Entwicklung als „Villain“

Richards sukzessiver Verlust an Macht und Souveränität

Schluss

Literaturverzeichnis

Zur Funktion des Märchenhaften und seiner Entzauberung in Shakespeares Drama „The Merchant of Venice“

Einleitung

Märchen und Romance – Definitionen und Merkmale

Elemente des Märchenhaften in The Merchant of Venice

Summary and Conclusion

Literaturverzeichnis

King Lear – Sympathielenkung und Schuldfrage in Shakespeares King Lear

Einleitung

Sympathielenkung in Dramen nach Manfred Pfister

Textanalyse

Resümee

Literaturverzeichnis

„The Time is out of Joint“ –Neues Weltbild, neues Selbstbild in William Shakespeares „Hamlet“

Einleitung

Das 16. Jahrhundert – Treffpunkt zweier Welten ?

Hamlet – Ein Opfer seiner Zeit

Rachetragödie ohne Rache ?

Literaturverzeichnis

Multiple Iago – The Character and Motives of Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello

Introduction

The temptation scene – Iago’s techniques of infiltration

“Honest” in Othello

Conclusion

Bibliography

Shakespeare’s Historical Background and the World Picture of the Elizabethan Age

Christian Schwab, 2005

Introduction

William Shakespeare may never have existed – or at least that is the point some scholars are trying to make. This paper is going to follow the opinion of the vast majority of literary experts and assume that Shakespeare did, in fact, exist. But mere existence is never enough. “No man is an island, entire of itself,” as John Donne liked to put it. The environment you live in and the surroundings that influence and inspire you are utterly significant. Future historians ourselves, we were taught that the present is a time span that doesn’t even last three seconds. After that, it’s the past. But the past is not the same as “history” itself. History is what historiographers have managed to reconstruct of the past, using archaeological, philological, literary, and other sources. As we are happy enough to know a lot about Shakespeare’s times, it would be foolhardy and arrogant to ignore this knowledge and focus on the plays themselves, letting the circumstances that they were written in slip out of our range of view.

It may be taken for granted that Shakespeare was indeed influenced by his historical environment, but nobody can say for sure to what extent. What if Shakespeare had lived in ancient Roman times or in the Cold War period? Would he have written different plays? To decide to what extent he was influenced is the task of those scholars who actually do research on the plays.

This paper, however, will focus on the actual socio-political, economic, and religious background of Sir William Shakespeare, particularly on the rule of Elizabeth I and James I and on the Elizabethan World Picture with its various manifestations in the English state during Shakespeare’s lifetime.

The Tudor Dynasty before Elizabeth I or “Let us sit down and tell sad stories of dead kings”

The Tudor era began with a significant event: on August 8, 1485, the troops of King Richard III of the House of York were defeated by the army of Henry Tudor, the Earl of Richmond, who had returned from his exile in France, in the vicinity of the small town of Bosworth, Leicestershire County. For nearly all of the 15th century, the two clans of England’s higher nobility had been struggling for power. Violence, counter-violence, conspiracy and maneuvering had encompassed the kingdom after Henry Bolingbroke (who would later become Henry IV) had driven Richard II off the throne in 1399. During the last years of the struggle that became known as “The Wars of the Roses,” the York family started to fight among themselves.

Since the royal court had always been involved in these wars, the conflict consumed a huge part of the national resources, created general instability and, as changing partisanship and political maneuvering became the order of the day, prompted a decline in moral standards.[1]

Not only do the five Tudor monarchs who reigned from 1485 till 1603 form a single genealogical line, they’re also a real family with Elizabeth’s life span covering about two thirds of that era.[2]

Henry VII

Henry VII marks the beginning of the Tudor dynasty. Having ended the Wars of the Roses and defeated the York family and Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, he immediately and single-mindedly set about to consolidate power in the crown.[3]

Henry VIII

Henry VIII separated the English church from Roman jurisdiction and founded a national church.[4] As religion and politics were virtually inseparable in the 16th century, the ecclesiastical reforms initiated by Henry VIII had a huge impact on the political landscape.[5] When he assumed the leadership of the English church, he had powers that no other king of England had ever possessed. Henry VIII also closed the monasteries and gave their land to the aristocracy. This course of action naturally ensured that the nobility would support his cause.[6]

Edward VI

Not much needs to be said about Edward VI, since he died at the tender age of sixteen. He founded some Grammar Schools[7] and shifted from Henry VIII’s Anglicanism to radical Protestantism.[8]

Mary I

Mary Tudor swiftly reversed the ecclesiastical reforms brought about by Henry VIII and Edward VI and reinstituted Catholicism as the state religion, thus bringing the nation to the brink of civil war. Mary had hundreds of Protestant activists and alleged heretics executed, thus gaining the charming nickname “Bloody Mary.”[9]

The Elizabethan Age

On November 17, 1558, a messenger informed Elizabeth that she had been made queen after the death of her unpopular half-sister. Obviously, the aristocracy was desperate to find a new monarch since Parliament had declared her to be an illegitimate child of Henry VIII when she was three years old. This status was never lifted, but Parliament decided that she was third in the line of succession after Edward and Mary. In 1554, Elizabeth was accused of participating in Wyatt’s Rebellion and was thrown into the Tower of London until she was subsequently pardoned by Mary. Shortly before her death, Mary is said to have recognized Elizabeth as her successor.

Extensively educated, Elizabeth was fluent in French, Italian, Latin, and Greek. Upon her enthronement she is said to have personified all the magic of flourishing femininity. She selected men of lower birth to be her advisors, as the old nobility used to be Catholic. The most prominent figure among her staff was William Cecil, a brilliant man of political shrewdness as well as diligence and carefulness. As she was a devout believer in absolutism, Elizabeth did not tolerate criticism. But the people preferred her wise autocracy to the raging madness of the struggling parties of the Wars of the Roses. Her motto became video et taceo (observe and remain silent). Her policy was indeed characterized by hesitation, as she used her virginity as a means of playing with different foreign rulers to gain advantages for her country. Elizabeth was very vain and had alarming manners: She used to hug her courtiers and foreign ambassadors, and there exists today even a rumor that, after he had spent seven years in exile as a punishment for farting in the presence of the queen, when Edward de Vere returned to court, she said to him something to the effect that she had already forgotten about the fart.

Elizabeth had the habits of cursing, of laughing loudly, of dancing, gambling, and hunting, and she loved masques and drama. Her power did not consist in logic, but rather in feminine intuition and in being a good observer. She was a role model of vitality, but not of virtue. Elizabeth reintroduced religious reformation to England, but she also represented the Renaissance. Sharing the Machiavellian belief in a more or less unscrupulous leader, she recognized the need for some religion in order to ensure social stability although she personally despised theological dogmas. The queen demanded outer conformity in order to protect the national unity: everybody was allowed to believe what he or she wanted to believe, as long as he or she obeyed the law.[10]

By skillfully taking advantage of the conflicts between Spain and France, Elizabeth managed to ward off these outer menaces and gain a period of ten years for England to consolidate politically and economically. The victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588 secured England’s position as a leading Protestant power and the first naval power of the world.[11]

A certain dark atmosphere obscured England during the last years of her rule. The people ceased loving her. They felt that she had outlived herself. Her health was deteriorating and Parliament vehemently resisted her attempts to violate parliamentary freedom. Since she hesitated to settle the problem of her succession, Robert Cecil and others secretly entered into clandestine negotiations with James VI of Scotland. Elizabeth died on March 24, 1603.[12]

Elizabeth was a symbolic figure. One school of thought has come near to canonizing Elizabeth. According to their view, she was bright, independent, cautious, and able to distinguish the essential from the temporary. She was also circumspect by nature and experience, her prudence deriving from an enormous sense of royal responsibility. She used apparent indecision strategically, to purchase time and to gain advantage from delay. Her negotiation of a via media (a middle way) between Catholics and Protestant reformers was a brilliant act of diplomacy. The disappointments and crises of her reign – the execution of the Scottish queen, the military conflicts in France and the Netherlands, the fierce monetary inflation at the end of the century – all these were probably inevitable, not her fault.

The negative complement of this hagiographic approach is the approach that claims the queen was capricious, bull-headed, vacillating, and out of touch with reality. Her uncertainty was a function of monstrous personal vanity, which exaggerated her fear of making a mistake. Her unwillingness to make decisions disabled any attempt at consistent policy; the disappointments and crises of her reign – diplomatic, military, and economic – were all her fault.[13]

James I

James VI of Scotland was crowned on July 29, 1567, when he was only thirteen years old. He received a humanistic education, too much instruction in theology and too little in morality, and became the most educated drunkard in Europe. He promised to defend Protestantism. His manners were very brusque, his walking was clumsy, his voice was shrill, his talking was a blend of coarseness and pedantry, but it is said to have at least included some wisdom. A phlegmatic ruler, James liked to rest on Elizabeth’s laurels. He was priggish and generous, shy yet insidious, superstitious, educated, and believed in demons – foolish in some ways and wise in others. Not only did James I demand the entire political power that Henry VIII and Elizabeth had had over their intimidated underlings, but he also claimed a divine and absolutist position.

No one has ever described James I as brilliant. It has become permissible and even customary to think of the first Stuart king as a fool. This extreme characterization is probably a result of the gap between his conception of his own talents and achievements and the judgment that history has rendered. His efforts constituted a kind of showboating; in reality James was an indolent, self-satisfied man who preferred to spend the day hunting rather than wrangling over the quotidian details of national policy.[14]

Merry England

In 1581, England’s population was roughly five million. Prices were growing about five times faster than wages. As the living conditions for laborers and craftsmen deteriorated, slums sprang up at the margins of London. Domestic trade was superseded by overseas trading companies such as the East India Company. London became one of the most flourishing economic centers in the world. The economic structure of England was changed profoundly by the discovery and colonization of the American continent. As for economic importance, the Mediterranean was replaced by the Atlantic Ocean. Instead of a marginal position in the geography of the economic world, England now held a very favorable central position.

The social system remained intact, but the lively interaction between the classes prevented the sterile shutting-off of individual classes.

The existence of a broad and wealthy middle class prevented the emergence of a deep gap between the aristocracy and the poor common people.

All the driving forces of this exciting age merge into the „Elizabethan ecstasy.” Conquest, discovery, the wealth of the middle class, theological debates, wide-spread interest in literature and theater, the lasting peace, and the victory over Spain were the seeds that produced Shakespeare.[15]

England being threatened by the Catholic nations in Continental Europe created a wave of patriotism.[16] However, rising unemployment and taxes, the war against Spain, and Irish rebels created a situation that sparked criticism of the government and society.[17]

The main function of Parliament was not to make policy, but to discuss it; officially it met to authorize taxation and to endorse important acts of state. The Crown retained the right to call the members into session, which it did mainly when it required money or official support for national or international policy; from the Elizabethan era to the outbreak of the English Revolution, the monarchs tended to use Parliament to their own advantage when possible and otherwise to ignore or tolerate it.[18]

Golden Age in a Nutshell

“William Shakespeare was born into a dying culture.”[19] I, for one, do not think that we can oversimplify the Golden Age to such an extent. Of course, a lot of things were dying in Shakespeare’s England – Catholicism, for example. But on the other hand, as Kastan rightly says, the children of the 1560s built a new Protestant culture on the ruins of the old religion. Thus the order of their society was maintained, rather than left with an empty place where the old traditions had been. A new and flourishing Renaissance culture replaced the old Catholic culture in England, and Shakespeare played a major role in shaping this new culture.

The heritage of the Reformation was a new intellectual culture, a revamped political ideology, a reinvented national identity, and a new economic system.[20] As far as concerns the history of Shakespeare’s England, it is not at all unusual that popular and patriotic branches of historiography mystify and glorify this period. What is special about the myth of the Golden Age is its inescapability. On no level of elaboration or professionalism is the depiction of that period able to emancipate itself from myth; there is no distinction made between historical reality and historical myth: they interact at any time and the facts bow to the pattern of the historical myth.[21] This may have changed slightly in the seventies with the rise of “social history”. But instead of reshaping the political picture of the Golden Age, historians instead concentrated on the economic aspects of history, leaving the actual myth intact and adding an intense social criticism.

The problem that historians struggle to overcome might be that the political and the cultural heyday of Renaissance England do not concur. The great political achievements occur between the Elizabethan Settlement and the defeat of the Armada; the development of drama reaches the top only after 1588. Due to Elizabeth’s unusually long rule, the foundation for a period of flourishing theatrical culture could be laid. It took decades of continuity for the English self-consciousness to prosper in a way so as to produce Shakespeare’s plays.[22]

The Elizabethan World Picture

The Elizabethan Age is a time of upheaval because the world picture of the Middle Ages slowly changes to the world picture of the Modern Times, which means that the notion of a theocentric universe shifts to the idea of a world focused on the human being. The alteration is indicated by three main symptoms: diverging judgments on reality, changing norms of human behaviour and discussions about the human ability to obtain cognition.[23] The consequences of these discussions are many revaluations and turnabouts. A well-known metaphor to describe Elizabethan times is the one of “the world upside down”[24].

Tillyard describes the Elizabethan age as a time of two contradictory principles: on the one hand the faith in humanism and the present life and on the other hand the belief in an afterlife refusing the presence because of secular ruin.[25]

The first important aspect to mention about the Elizabethan Age, however, is the fact that the changes of that time did not influence the world picture.[26] But, what is a “world picture”? How is the term defined?

According to Ulrich Suerbaum, a “world picture” is a complex of ideas, convictions and principles that are known and accepted by all contemporaries. But, it is not the result of what an epoch knows or thinks to know about the world, it is rather a system of categories and notions to perceive the world. This common apprehension was shared by all Elizabethans and may therefore be called the “Elizabethan World Picture”.[27]

Uwe Baumann remarks that even if the Shakespearian Age shows differences of opinion concerning all spheres, the world picture is based on a consensus of notions to explain the perceptible reality.[28] In this context Baumann agrees with Suerbaum: “Dieses Weltbild dient als Rahmen, in den der Einzelne verschieden viele und verschieden differenzierte Detailkenntnisse und -meinungen einordnen kann”[29]. This opinion modifies Tillyard’s synthetic view of the Elizabethan world picture. Consequently, Baumann stands for a modified understanding of the term “world picture”.[30]

W. R. (real name?) Elton mainly concentrates on the diverse features of the world picture in Shakespeare’s times, which comprise diversity, variety, inconsistency and fluidity. Moreover, he focuses on the three main principles[31]: the frame of order, the great chain of being and the hierarchy within the system.

The Meaning of Order

Without knowing the meaning of order at the time we could hardly understand the Elizabethan world picture. According to Tillyard, people in the Elizabethan Age are not in doubt about the existence of this order[32] because this composition is regarded as the condition of everything else following.[33] The simple question Sir Thomas Elyot asks in his work The Book named the Governor, which he wrote in 1531, perfectly illustrates the belief in an organized system: “Take away order from all things, what should then remain? Certes nothing finally, except some man would imagine eftsoons chaos.”[34] Moreover, people rely on God as the powerful organizer above all universal and earthly orders.[35] Once again an extract from Sir Thomas Elyot’s book underlines this circumstance: “Hath not He (God) set degrees and estates in all His glorious works?”[36] But, as Elizabethan society strongly confide in this cosmic order, people fear the destruction of the system, which then would lead to total disorder, which existed before creation.[37] By taking Hooker and his work in this respect into account it becomes obvious what Elizabethan society gave credence to:

Now if nature should intermit her course and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have…what would become of man himself, whom these things now do all serve? See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world?[38]

Apart from that, the importance of hierarchy within this organized world picture has to be mentioned. It is revealed by the following quotation taken from Raleigh’s work:

For that infinite wisdom of God, which hath distinguished his angels by degrees, which hath given greater and less light and beauty to heavenly bodies, which hath made differences between beasts and birds, created the eagle and the fly, the cedar and the shrub, and among stones given the fairest tincture to the ruby and the quickest light to the diamond, hath also ordained kings, dukes or leaders of the people, magistrates, judges, and other degrees among men.[39]

Tillyard, Suerbaum and Baumann agree on the opinion that people at the time believed in a universe created by God who gave every creature, from the low minerals up to the archangels[40], its unique place within an all-embracing hierarchy, which was subdivided in “degrees”.[41]

Additionally, Elton mentions that every creature has received its unique place from God in accordance with its distance from divine perfection.[42]

At this point it is worth having a look at Suerbaum’s and Baumann’s comments on the Elizabethan world order. In contrast to Tillyard, who calls the predominant idea “a general conception of order”[43], Suerbaum and Baumann consider it to be a “frame of order”[44], which firstly is the basis for all sciences, secondly includes material and mental nature and thirdly unites both past and present phenomena.[45] However, all three support the assumption that the unity of the cosmos springs from God. This also means that all Elizabethans thinking about the concept of their world simultaneously sense religious connotations.[46]

Whereas both Tillyard and Suerbaum talk about a conception, a system or a frame of order, Russ McDonald calls it an “ideology of order”. According to him, the theory of a universal organization, which is handed down by religious and political thinkers of the Middle Ages, in connection with the belief that God created the universe allotting one certain place for everyone and everything, is the precondition for a harmonic and productive society[47]. Therefore order and hierarchy prove to be useful for both Elizabeth’s and James’ government. According to McDonald this is enough evidence to call the Elizabethan world order not only a “doctrine” but also rather an “ideology”.[48]

To put it in a nutshell, the meaning of order in Elizabethan times is the notion of a system, which is based on God as the source, including material and mental nature and uniting past, present and future phenomena. McDonald’s argumentation is problematic because the theory of a universal organization cannot only be passed on by religious and political thinkers of the Middle Ages, but also by ordinary people. In this context Tillyard remarks that the “conception of order…must have been common to all Elizabethans of even modest intelligence.” Therefore ideas also have to be handed down by average people. Thus, the Elizabethan world picture is not a set of beliefs, mainly political ideas on which people, parties or countries base their actions[49], but a system of notions –not based on knowledge- people have in the Elizabethan Age. The most common idea every Elizabethan agreed on is the hierarchical system within a frame of order created by God who allotted one unique place to each creature of the cosmos.

The Macrocosm

The following description of the macrocosm may be considered to be the best known universal concept in Elizabethan times. According to this idea heaven and the macrocosm consisting of the stars and their spheres are located above the moon. People thought of the universe as a system of concentric circles with the elemental area in the centre. The globe is made of the two heavy elements of soil and water and the two light elements of air and fire in form of ether, which makes up the atmosphere. With the moon as the first element of the macrocosm the spheres or the so-called heaven of the seven planets begins, which were, in Elizabethan Age, apart from Luna, Mercury, Venus, Sol, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. In this context Tillyard adds that everything beneath the sphere of the moon is characterized by mutability and the rest of the cosmos by constancy.[50] The eighth sphere is the starry sky with the stars and the signs of the zodiac[51], which are reflected in the translucent ninth heaven, the Coelum Cristallum. The tenth heaven, the so-called Primum Mobile with which God moves the whole system, holds the universe together. And finally the eleventh sphere, the Coelum Empyraeum, God lives in with the blessed ones and the nine angel choirs. Apart from that, the movements of all stars are tuned and therefore music of the spheres is produced, which is supposed to be the epitome of harmony. But since mankind’s original sin human beings are unable to hear the music of the sphere. Although the belief in a universe with the earth in its centre shifted to the faith in a system in which the sun is the focus, the notion of the macrocosm described above hardly changed. The reason for this is that the sun has always been a special planet and the earth did neither lose its significance nor its unique character. Apart from that, heaven eight to heaven eleven are no longer separated, but both the starry sky and the home of the blessed ones are regarded to be one sphere.[52] Angels, as God’s messengers, however, were thought to inhabit the whole range of the cosmos.[53]

To sum up, Elizabethans had a very concrete idea of how the universe above the moon was constructed. Despite the major change from the earth as the focal point to a system in which the sun was in the center, the Elizabethan notion of the macrocosm kept its stability.

The Hierarchical Order – illustrated by Metaphors

The Elizabethan world picture explains its numerous notions with the help of pictures and metaphors, which mainly come from classical antiquity.[54] As already mentioned, the position a creature held in the world order reflected its value within the system. The relationship between higher and lower placed creatures was the one of power in relation to obedience as a subject. At the same time it was an organized system of difference and similarity. Therefore the Elizabethan world order is on the one hand a hierarchical system and on the other hand a system of correspondences.[55] Furthermore, a quotation from Spencer’s Hymn of Heavenly Beauty illustrates Elizabethan ideas both about the world order and God’s variety of creation:

Then look, who list thy gazeful eyes to feed

With sight of that is fair, look on the frame

Of this wide univers and therein read

The endless kinds of creatures which by name

Thou canst not count, much less their natures’ aim

All which are made with wondrous wide respect

And all with admirable beauty deckt.[56]

The best-known pictures to explain the hierarchical world order were both “the chain of being” and the “scale of degree”. Moreover, the universe as a musical composition, as an organ with registers or as a stringed instrument were also common images of explanation.[57]

The Chain of Being

The first image of interest is the chain of being. People gave credence to a linked chain that started at the pedestal of God’s throne leading down to the lowest creature. Except the two extremities, each creature was at the same time smaller and bigger than another one[58]. Sometimes the chain was also regarded to be a ladder[59] leading from earth up to heaven. An excerpt from Sir John Fortescue’s Latin work on the law of nature clearly shows people’s belief: