Difference between revisions of "Drama I: Shakespeare"

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==King Lear : plot survey==
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==King Lear : A Survey of the Plot==
  
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Two Parallel and interlinked plots
  
Parallel plots: parent—children relations
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*King Lear and his Daughters: Regan, Goneril, Cordelia
  
King Lear and his Daughters: Regan, Goneril, Cordelia
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:*The division of the kingdoms – King Lear tries to make arrangements for his succession and his old age
 +
3 daughters, 3 suitors (rulers of Albany, Cornwall, France), 3 parts of the kingdom
  
The division of the kingdoms – King Lear tries to make arrangements for his succession and his old age
+
:*Casting off Cordelia and staying with his 2 "good" daughters.
3 dughters, 3 suitors, 3 parts of the kingdom
+
  
Casting off Cordelia and staying with his 2 "good" daughters.  
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:*The two daughters prove unloving and undutiful.  
  
The two daughters prove unloving and undutiful.
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:*Lear is cast out, accompanied only by the fool, homeless, abandoned to the weather (famous heath scene).  
 
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Lear is cast out, accompanied only by the fool, homeless, abandoned to the weather (famous heath scene).  
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Cordelia comes to his aid with an army from France.
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The French army is defeated, Cordelia is made a prisoner and killed. Lear cannot save her, enters the stage carrying her dead body, dies over her dead body.
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+
 
+
Gloster plot:
+
 
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The Duke of Gloucester and his sons: Edgar (legitimate) and Edmund (illegitimate)
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+
Edmund makes it appear that Edgar is plotting his father's death. Edgar has to flee and pretends to be a homeless madman.
+
 
+
Edmund accuses his father of treason. Goneril and Regan have Gloster tortured and blinded. Then they cast him out and Edmund becomes Duke.
+
 
+
Edgar, still disguised as a homeless madman, looks after his blind father without telling him who he really is.
+
 
+
Gloster wants to be led to the cliffs of Dover in order to commit suicide. Edgar takes him onto flat ground and makes him jump. Then takes on different identity and convinces him that he has actually jumped and survived.
+
 
+
Meanwhile Edmund has become a trusted follower of both Goneril and Regan who are jealous of each other over him and plan to kill their husbands in order to marry Edmund.
+
 
+
Edgar joins the field of battle and fights and kills his brother and becomes the new Duke of Gloster.
+
 
+
 
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A story that seemed too terrible. Nahum Tate produces a revised version with a happy ending: Lear and Cordelia are saved, and Edgar ends up marrying Cordelia.
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The play is generally "tidied up", the brutal blinding of Gloster is removed etc.
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A long discussion about what
+
  
 +
:*Cordelia comes to his aid with an army from France.
  
 +
:*The French army is defeated, Cordelia is made a prisoner and killed. Lear cannot save her, enters the stage carrying her dead body, dies over her dead body.
  
  
 +
*The Gloster plot:
  
 +
:*The Duke of Gloucester and his sons: Edgar (legitimate) and Edmund (illegitimate)
  
 +
:*Edmund makes it appear that Edgar is plotting his father's death. Edgar has to flee and pretends to be a homeless madman.
  
 +
:*Edmund accuses his father of treason. Goneril and Regan have Gloster tortured and blinded. Then they cast him out and Edmund becomes Duke.
  
 +
:*Edgar, still disguised as a homeless madman, looks after his blind father without telling him who he really is.
  
 +
:*Gloster wants to be led to the cliffs of Dover in order to commit suicide. Edgar takes him onto flat ground and makes him jump. Then takes on different identity and convinces him that he has actually jumped and survived.
  
 +
:*Meanwhile Edmund has become a trusted follower of both Goneril and Regan who are jealous of each other over him and plan to kill their husbands in order to marry Edmund. When all is lost, goneril poisons Regan and stabs herself.
  
 +
:*Edgar joins the field of battle (between Lears daughters) and fights and kills his brother and becomes the new Duke of Gloster.
  
  
 +
A contemporary perspective might take its cue from the title page:
  
 
==A Look at the Different Cultural Traditions about Shakespeare ==
 
==A Look at the Different Cultural Traditions about Shakespeare ==

Revision as of 13:28, 11 December 2007

Received Notions on Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Period

  • In the second half of her forty-five year reign (1558-1603) Elizabeth I., managed to establish stable power structures.
  • After the defeat of the Armada (1588) England was established as a European power.
  • There also occurred an unprecedented flourishing in
  • poetry (Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser)

drama (William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe) and philosophy (Sir Francis Bacon)

  • The change of monarch (James I., 1603-1625) brought a new quality to poetic and dramatic production. In the reign of Elizabeth it had been comparatively ‘happy’ and ‘playful’. After 1603 there was a decisive shift towards darkness and horror.
  • Shakespeare’s work is positioned at the threshold to modernity.
The “Elizabethan World Picture” (cf. E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, 1943) – an idea of order that was still basically medieval:
A “Great Chain of Being” linked everything from stones, plants, animals humans, to angels and God. For details cf. Royal Shakespeare Company on Chain of Being
But the Elizabethan world picture was gradually losing its credibility – the new cosmology (astronomy, Kopernikus)
Shakespeare is positioned at the point where cracks begin to show in the Elizabethan World Picture.

Whatever it is, Shakespeare does it best.


The received notions on King Lear reflect this:

  • Shakespeare’s best play
  • A play reflecting the darkness and horror of new Jacobean tragedy.
  • A play about the disturbance of the notion of order as defined in the great chain of being.
  • A play foreshadowing what Lukacs will call the "transcendental homelessness" of modern society:
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport. (Gloucester in King Lear)


At least since the 1980s, Shakespeare research has called these received notions into question. Shakespeare reception and Shakespeare studies have themselves become an object of historical investigation.


Shakespeare studies has started to analyse what has become known as the "Shakespeare Industry" Research on King Lear has pioneered a new departure in Shakespeare editing.


Actor, Author, Shareholder for

1594-1603 Lord Chamberlain’s Men 1603-1616 The King’s Men

Introductory Reflections on Shakespeare, Literature, Fiction and Drama

Fiction vs. Drama: Separate Histories

  • Fiction is a phenomenon of the book market. It is correlated with a relatively anonymous print culture, with mass production and individual consumption.
  • The theatre is a social phenomenon. Any performance gives a structure to space and distributes roles: not only among the actors but also for the audience.


Theatre in London 1599
Thus daily at two in the afternoon, London has two, sometimes three plays running in different places, competing with each other, and those which play best obtain most spectators. The playhouses are so constructed that they play on a raised platform, so that everyone has a good view. There are different galleries and places, however, where the seating is better and more comfortable and therefore more expensive. For whoever cares to stand below only pays one English penny, but if he wishes to sit he enters by another door and pays another penny, while if he desires to sit in the most comfortable seats, which are cushioned, where he not only sees everything well, but can also be seen, then he pays yet another English penny at another door. And during the performance food and drink are carried round the audience, so that for what one cares to pay one may also have refreshment. The actors are most expensively and elaborately costumed; for it is the English usage for eminent lords or knights at their decease to bequeath and leave almost the best of their clothes to their serving men, which it is unseemly for the latter to wear, so that they offer them then for sale for a small sum to the actors.
Thomas Platter, Diary (1599). [source: Norton Anthology Webpage]


  • A theatre creates a space where role playing is to be expected. It creates a safe area for imitative role playing.
The theatres in which Shakespeare's plays were performed occupied a particular place in the city. They had a particular spatial and social structure. They had specific conditions of performance (e.g.: a stage surrounded by the audience, no stage settings, contemporary costumes, very few props, no female actresses - women's roles were played by boys).
  • The theatre is a space subject to outside interventions by the authorities or by the popularion (censorship, closure of the theatres from 1642-1660) (There will be more on the institutional history of the theatre in England next week.)


Shakespeare and Literature

Shakespeare did not produce 'literature'. His plays were to become a supremely important part of 'literature' in the course of the redefinition of literature in the eighteenth century.

In the eyes of his contemporaries, the plays produced by Shakespeare and many of his contemporary dramatists flourished at the same time as popular urban and as prestigious courtly entertainments.


In Macbeth at the Globe, 1610, the 20 of April, Saturday, there was to be observed, first, how Macbeth and Banquo, two noble men of Scotland, riding through a wood, there stood before them three women fairies or nymphs, and saluted Macbeth, saying three times unto him, "Hail, Macbeth, King of Codon; for thou shall be a King, but shall beget no kings," etc. Then said Banquo, "what all to Macbeth, and nothing to me?" "Yes", said the nymphs, "hail to thee, Banquo, thou shall beget kings, yet be no king"; and so they departed and came to the country of Scotland to Duncan, King of Scots and it was in the days of Edward the Confessor. And Duncan had them both kindly welcome, and made Macbeth forthwith Prince of Northumberland, and sent him home to his own castle, and appointed Macbeth to provide for him, for he would sup with him the next day at night, and did so.
And Macbeth contrived to kill Duncan and through the persuasion of his wife did that night murder the King in his own castle, being his guest; and there were many prodigies seen that night and the day before. And when Macbeth had murdered the king, the blood on his hands could not be washed off by any means, nor from his wives hands, which handed the bloody daggers in hiding them, which by means they became both much amazed and affronted. The murder being known, Duncan's two sons fled, the one to England, the other to Wales, to save themselves. They being fled, they were supposed guilty of the murder of their father, which was nothing so.
Then was Macbeth crowned kings; and then he, for fear of Banquo, his old companion, that he should beget kings but be no king himself, he contrived the death of Banquo, and caused him to be murdered on his way as he rode. The next night, being at supper with his noble men whom he had to bid to a feast, to the which also Banquo should have come, he began to speak of noble Banquo, and to wish that he were there. And as he did thus, standing up to drink a carouse to him, the ghost of Banquo came and sat down in his chair behind him. And he, turning about to sit down again, saw the ghost of Banquo, which fronted him so, that he fell into a great passion of fear and fury, uttering many words about his murder, by which, when they hard that Banquo was murdered, they suspected Macbeth. Then MackDove fled to England to the kinges sonn, and soon they raised an army and cam to Scotland, and at Dunstonanse overthrue Macbeth. In the meantime, while MacDove was in England, Macbeth slew MackDove's wife and children, and after in the battle MackDove slewe Macbeth. Observe also how Macbeth's queen did rise in the night in her sleep, and walked and talked and confessed all, and the doctor noted her words.

[Source: Dr. Simon Forman's Diary at http://shakespeare.about.com]


Shakespeare's status as an author

  • Shakespeare was mentioned and celebrated as the author of his plays (cf. title-page)
  • But during his lifetime no one was interested in his personality.
  • There were no manuscripts preserved.
  • There was no contemporary interest in personal records, diaries, letters, etc.
  • There were no literary reviews and periodicals, no theatre criticism.
  • The interest in Shakespeare's person and the criticism of his work was retrospective.

Publication vs. Performance

  • Plays were primarily written in order to be performed, not in order to be printed.
  • King Lear was registered at the Stationers' Company on 26 Nov 1607.

first performed "upon St. Stephen's night at Christmas last" and registered at the Stationers' Company on 26 Nov 1607. First Quarto in 1608.

  • Only about half of Shakespeares plays were published individually during his life-time (the Quarto editions).
  • The first edition of Shakespeare's Works (the Folio edition) was published in 1623, seven years after his death.


Link to the first folio

http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:11596:4



Samuel Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare

http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ECCO?locID=bis&d1=0054400101&c=6&a1=johnson&d2=3&vrsn=1.0&h2=1&af=RN&a5=KE&ste=10&a6=KE&d5=d6&dd=0&srchtp=a&aa=AND&SU=All&a0=shakespeare&docNum=CW3314671813&al=All&ab=AND&d6=3&stp=DateAscend&d4=0.33&dc=tiPG&n=10


Pope’s edition of sh

http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ECCO?locID=bis&d1=0054500201&c=12&a1=pope&df=f&d2=3&vrsn=1.0&h2=1&af=RN&a5=KE&d3=3&ste=10&a6=KE&d5=d6&dd=0&srchtp=a&aa=AND&SU=All&a0=shakespeare&docNum=CW3309513099&al=All&ab=AND&d6=3&stp=DateAscend&d4=0.33&n=10





King Lear : A Survey of the Plot

Two Parallel and interlinked plots

  • King Lear and his Daughters: Regan, Goneril, Cordelia
  • The division of the kingdoms – King Lear tries to make arrangements for his succession and his old age

3 daughters, 3 suitors (rulers of Albany, Cornwall, France), 3 parts of the kingdom

  • Casting off Cordelia and staying with his 2 "good" daughters.
  • The two daughters prove unloving and undutiful.
  • Lear is cast out, accompanied only by the fool, homeless, abandoned to the weather (famous heath scene).
  • Cordelia comes to his aid with an army from France.
  • The French army is defeated, Cordelia is made a prisoner and killed. Lear cannot save her, enters the stage carrying her dead body, dies over her dead body.


  • The Gloster plot:
  • The Duke of Gloucester and his sons: Edgar (legitimate) and Edmund (illegitimate)
  • Edmund makes it appear that Edgar is plotting his father's death. Edgar has to flee and pretends to be a homeless madman.
  • Edmund accuses his father of treason. Goneril and Regan have Gloster tortured and blinded. Then they cast him out and Edmund becomes Duke.
  • Edgar, still disguised as a homeless madman, looks after his blind father without telling him who he really is.
  • Gloster wants to be led to the cliffs of Dover in order to commit suicide. Edgar takes him onto flat ground and makes him jump. Then takes on different identity and convinces him that he has actually jumped and survived.
  • Meanwhile Edmund has become a trusted follower of both Goneril and Regan who are jealous of each other over him and plan to kill their husbands in order to marry Edmund. When all is lost, goneril poisons Regan and stabs herself.
  • Edgar joins the field of battle (between Lears daughters) and fights and kills his brother and becomes the new Duke of Gloster.


A contemporary perspective might take its cue from the title page:

A Look at the Different Cultural Traditions about Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Life: born in Stratford upon Avon in 1564 1580s “eight lost years”



King Lear, a doubtful quarto

Folio has 100 lines that are not in the quarto, but lacks 350 other lines that are in the quarto.




The Tradition of Shakespeare performance and Acting editions

View of London at Shakespeare's time

[[1]]

View of the Globe theatre:

http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/anglistik/lit-wiss/intro-to-literature/2006-12-05/1600_globe_cutaway.html



Nahum Tate Subsequent revisions Acting in contemporary clothes.

Late eighteenth century to 1820 Ban on performing King Lear, because of the 'Madness of King George III'.

Early 19c: return to the original ending on stage (1838) Major concern with historically accurate costumes

20c Jan Kott: Shakespeare in our time. King Lear and Samuel Beckett's plays.

Received Idea: Each time makes its own Shakespeare





The interest in Shakespeare's person

17c none 18c legends, biographical notes accompany the works – Edward Malone finds documents – dark years (cf. still today, Greenblatt) 19c first: constructing Shakespeare's character from his plays. Looking for alternative Shakespeares (Bacon etc.)


The Tradition of Shakespeare editing

17c: 4 folios 18c: rival editors, who produce editions of Shakespeare's works according to their own best judgment

NICHOLAS ROWE (1709) Alexander POPE (1725) Lewis Theobald (1733) Thomas Hanmer (1744) Warburton (1747) Samuel Johnson (1765) …

19c: philological efforts. First half: 3 Variorum editions (recording all known variants and giving the various editors' arguments and textual explanations) Steevens. 1803 1st Variorum, 1813 Second Variorum. Edward Malone third Variorum (1821)

1863-66 Cambridge Shakespeare, new editorial principle: only Folio and Quartos (which are divided into good, bad and doubtful) The conflated text


From 1890s: First Arden edition, editions of single works.

Since the early 1980s: strong criticism of the "conflated texts" (Randall McLeod, "Un Editing Shakespeare", Sub-Stance 33/34 (1982): 26-55. Gary Taylor and Michael Warren, eds. The Division of the Kingdoms: Shakespeare's Two versions of King Lear. Oxford, 1983) Gary Taylor, Inventing Shakespeare, Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft West Jahrbuch 1986: 26-44.



The Tradition of Shakespeare criticism

17c: very little 18c: prefaces, later journals and magazines 19c: great critics: S.T. Coleridge, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt …


The Shakespeare Industry

From 1760s: Shakespeare cult, birthplace, stratford.

1807 und häufig wieder aufgelegt: Thomas Bowdler, The Family Shakespeare ("in which nothing is added to the original; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read in a family").

Victorian bardolatry.


Print culture, Market oriented, public sphere Vs. Performance, spectacle, which creates a set of roles not only for actors but also for audience. A matter for the authorities to supervise. A place to meet, site of disorderly conduct (prostitution / selling oranges etc.). A place for interacting. A place that is organised by and reflects class distinctions. The existence of stage censorship. Censorship of print publications ends in 1694 (??) Censorship of the stage is introduced in 1737 and lasts until 1968


Argument 7: The Elizabethan drama prospered both as a popular urban and as a prestigious courtly entertainment

In relation to sh., two views coexist in both scholarly and in wider cultural perspectives:

  1. sh. is of all ages and all nations.
  2. we must be aware of sh.'s historical conditions of living and working.

This has generated a some recurring questions and points of reference, o fwhich it is useful to be aware:


Received Notions about Elizabethan Drama. The Elizabethan world picture (Tillyard), Elizabeth the central agent. change from Elizabethan to Jacobean (dark), social change theories,

Shakespeare greatest English author, popular, courtly author,

"Shakespeare does it best",

questions of how to edit Shakespeare properly - create the text Shakespeare wanted to write.

England as global player (Drake etc.).

Early modern period-debate. Shakespeare legend - "the dark years", "the lost years".

The working basis of research on Sh. and the early modern period is

  • each (later) period makes its own sh., according to its needs.
  • for the same reason (or: as this shows:) sh. is relevant to all periods.
  • sh. is a central figure for our understanding of the early modern period.
  • All our images of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan / jacobean periods are continually revised; they maintain both Sh and the period(s) in close relation to current concerns and developments (20th century Theatre

two options:

  1. new adaptations and appropriations fo sh.
  2. return to the original sh.

main concerns of scholarly debate on sh.

  • sh.s biography
  • sh.s text
  • sh.s historical or transhistorical significance (Why Shakespeare?)
  • history of reception, appropriation, sh.cult


Renovations in Shakespeare research, the past fifty years

From conflated texts to rediscovery of the different historical documents and conditions of performance

from romantic historicizing stage settings to

Shakespeare cult - from national genius to brilliant popular entertainer



Problematic aspects: construction of the period. Privileged focus on Shakespeare, work and Elizabteh-reductions. The problems of conflated texts. The Elizabethan age did only later - in the 19th century - become the period in which the modern concept of British identity developed.

What to do with an Elizabethan or Jacobean play?

locate contemporary editions (EEBO) and compare them to later printed editions (act and scene divisions, stage directions, asides, title-pages, the text itself). Be attentive to the signs for different contexts and uses which you may discern in each text.

look at the tradition of interpretation and performance.

look at characters, conflicts, information management,




From conflated texts to historical documents available at EEBO.