William Shakespeare

Unit six closed by saying you meet Shakespeare already knowing the forms he inherited: the sonnet, blank verse, the public stage and the revenge pattern. This unit is that meeting. Its governing idea is that most Shakespeare questions are answered by three moves: identify a speech by its place, situation and voice; read a soliloquy as an argument; and place a passage in the comic or tragic shape. We move in four steps: the life, the Folio's kinds and three sonnets; then the comedies and histories; then the tragedies and the late romance; and then the craft, verse, fools and famous lines, with Jonson's verdict and three procedures that turn all of it into answers.

We begin with the man, the Folio that saved his plays, and three of his sonnets.

First, the little we know of his life.

ENL 0601 Shakespeare's Life and the First Folio

William Shakespeare, fifteen sixty-four to sixteen sixteen, was born and died in Stratford-upon-Avon. A London actor and playwright, he was a partner in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later the King's Men. His colleagues Heminges and Condell published thirty-six plays in the First Folio of sixteen twenty-three. Stratford, London, the Folio. Few facts survive about his life.

The plays fall into four kinds.

ENL 0602 The Kinds of Play: Comedy, History, Tragedy, Romance

The First Folio sorted the plays into comedies, histories and tragedies. Critics later grouped the last plays, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, as romances, a term first used in eighteen seventy-seven. The comedies end in marriage, the tragedies in death. Comedies, histories, tragedies, romances. The romances are a later critics' category.

The sonnets address two figures.

ENL 0603 The Sonnets: Fair Youth and Dark Lady

Shakespeare's hundred and fifty-four sonnets, published in sixteen-oh-nine and dedicated to an unknown "Mr. W. H.," trace a friendship with a beautiful young man and a romance with a dark lady. The anchor stresses that their autobiographical elements are unproven. A young man, a dark lady, a mystery. Do not treat the sonnets as diary.

First, the summer's day.

ENL 0604 Sonnet 18

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The speaker finds summer too short and changeable for the comparison, and ends by promising that the beloved's "eternal summer shall not fade," because the poem itself will last as long as men can breathe and read. The beloved outlasts summer through the poem. The poem praises its own power to preserve.

Next, a sonnet of decline.

ENL 0605 Sonnet 73

"That time of year thou mayst in me behold": the speaker compares his age to late autumn, to twilight, and to a dying fire on its ashes. The couplet turns to the listener, whose love grows stronger because the end is near. Autumn, twilight, embers, then the turn. The three images shrink in time.

Then a sonnet that mocks the conventions.

ENL 0606 Sonnet 130 and the Anti-Petrarchan Turn

"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun": the speaker refuses every Petrarchan comparison, coral lips, snowy breasts, golden hair. The couplet turns: his love is "as rare / As any she belied with false compare." The poem mocks the convention to praise honestly. No sun, no coral, no snow, yet rare. The poem is affectionate, not insulting.

Now the comedies, where confusion ends in marriage, and the histories, where a prince grows up.

Two comedies, one wood and one twin.

ENL 0607 A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night

A Midsummer Night's Dream sends four Athenian lovers and a troupe of amateur actors into a forest where quarrelling fairies meddle with them. In Twelfth Night, shipwrecked Viola, disguised as the page Cesario, loves Duke Orsino, who loves Countess Olivia, who loves Cesario. A magic wood; a disguised twin. Both end in sorted marriages.

A third comedy has two pairs of lovers.

ENL 0608 Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado, set in Messina, pairs two couples. Claudio and Hero's match is nearly wrecked by the villain Don John's slander, while Benedick and Beatrice trade witty insults until friends trick them into love. The title puns on "noting," gossip and overhearing. A slandered bride; two sparring wits. The wit pair, not the plot pair, takes centre stage.

One comedy darkens around a bond.

ENL 0609 The Merchant of Venice

Antonio borrows from the Jewish moneylender Shylock for his friend Bassanio, pledging a pound of flesh, and defaults. The Folio calls it a comedy, but it is remembered for Shylock, his speech "Hath not a Jew eyes?" and Portia's "The quality of mercy is not strain'd." A bond, a pound of flesh, mercy. Its treatment of Shylock is much debated.

The histories follow one prince.

ENL 0610 The History Plays: Richard II to Henry V

The second tetralogy, often called the Henriad, runs from Richard II through the two parts of Henry IV to Henry V, following Prince Hal from tavern companion of the witty rogue Falstaff to the king who rallies his men: "Once more unto the breach." Hal grows from tavern prince to king. Falstaff is comic, but the plays are histories.

Now the tragedies, the core of what the exam tests, and the late romance that turns tragedy toward forgiveness.

First, the tragedy of two young lovers.

ENL 0611 Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet, young lovers from feuding families of Verona, marry in secret and die through a chain of mistakes and haste. Shakespeare took the story from Arthur Brooke's verse version of fifteen sixty-two. Mercutio's dying curse is "A plague o' both your houses!" Feud, secret marriage, double death. Chance and haste, not one villain, drive the end.

Next, the most famous tragedy of all.

ENL 0612 Hamlet: Plot and Problem

Prince Hamlet learns from his father's ghost that his uncle Claudius murdered the king and married his mother. Hamlet delays, feigns madness and stages a play to test the king, and the tragedy ends in a duel in which nearly everyone dies. Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play. Ghost, delay, play, duel. Why Hamlet delays is the classic critical question.

Hamlet thinks aloud.

ENL 0613 Hamlet's Soliloquies

Hamlet thinks aloud alone on stage. "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt" mourns his mother's hasty remarriage. "To be, or not to be, that is the question" weighs living against dying and fear of what follows death. The soliloquies make his mind the play's real action. A mind arguing with itself, aloud. Know each soliloquy's subject.

A trusted friend destroys a marriage.

ENL 0614 Othello and Iago

Othello, a Moorish general in Venice's service, is manipulated by his ensign Iago into believing his wife Desdemona unfaithful, and kills her before learning the truth. Iago himself warns of jealousy, "the green-ey'd monster." The play is set in Venice and Cyprus. A trusted liar, a jealous husband. Iago's motives are left obscure.

A king tests his daughters' love.

ENL 0615 King Lear

King Lear divides his kingdom by his daughters' flattery, rewarding Goneril and Regan and banishing honest Cordelia, who says "nothing." His answer, "Nothing will come of nothing," begins his fall into madness, while Gloucester's subplot of blindness parallels his. The anchor prints Act One. A love test, a banished daughter, madness. The subplot mirrors the main plot.

A prophecy leads to murder.

ENL 0616 Macbeth

Three witches prophesy that the Scottish general Macbeth will be king; urged by Lady Macbeth, he murders King Duncan and rules by further killing. Lady Macbeth sleepwalks, "Out, damn'd spot," and Macbeth reflects that life is "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow." It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. Prophecy, murder, guilt, despair. Ambition, not fate alone, is the subject.

Two worlds pull at one man.

ENL 0617 Antony and Cleopatra

Based on North's translation of Plutarch, Antony and Cleopatra follows the Roman general and the Egyptian queen from the Sicilian revolt to Cleopatra's suicide after Actium, with Octavius Caesar as antagonist. Enobarbus says of her, "Age cannot wither her." Rome against Egypt, duty against love. The play spans many places and years.

The career ends on an island.

ENL 0618 The Tempest and the Romances

The Tempest, one of the last plays Shakespeare wrote alone, sets the magician Prospero on an island with his daughter Miranda, the spirit Ariel and the savage Caliban. It ends in forgiveness, not revenge. Miranda exclaims, "O brave new world," and Prospero says, "We are such stuff / As dreams are made on." Magic, an island, forgiveness. Romances end in reconciliation.

Last, the craft of the plays and three procedures that turn this unit into answers.

The plays move between verse and prose.

ENL 0619 Shakespeare's Verse and Prose

Most of Shakespeare's serious speech is blank verse, but he mixes in prose, especially for comedy, as in the Henry IV plays, where Falstaff's tavern wit is prose. The witness notes that his mature plays switch between prose and poetry as scenes turn comic or serious. Blank verse for weight, prose for wit. Rhymed couplets often close a scene.

One figure tells the truth by joking.

ENL 0620 The Fool and the Clown

Shakespeare's fools speak truths others will not. In King Lear, the Fool mocks the king's folly in giving away his power; in Twelfth Night, the clown Feste sings and observes that "pleasure will be paid." The fool's licence to jest lets him tell the truth. The jester who tells the truth. The fool is often the wisest voice.

Some lines name their plays.

ENL 0621 Famous Lines and Their Plays

Some lines name their plays at once: "All the world's a stage," As You Like It; "If music be the food of love," Twelfth Night; "Lord, what fools these mortals be," A Midsummer Night's Dream; "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," Hamlet. The line names the play. Learn the speaker too.

A rival left a famous verdict.

ENL 0622 Ben Jonson on Shakespeare

In his poem for the First Folio, Ben Jonson praised Shakespeare as "Sweet Swan of Avon" and declared, "He was not of an age but for all time!" Jonson noted that Shakespeare had "small Latin and less Greek," yet outshone Kyd and "Marlowe's mighty line." Not of an age, but for all time. Jonson praises and qualifies at once.

Here is the method for naming a play from a speech.

ENL 0623 Identifying a Shakespeare Play From a Speech

Identification questions quote a speech and ask its play or speaker, so narrow by stages. Setting words come first: Denmark for Hamlet, Venice for Othello or The Merchant, fairies for the Dream, an island for The Tempest, witches for Macbeth. Then the situation: a son mourning his mother's remarriage is Hamlet; a father dividing his kingdom is Lear. Then the kind, comic confusion or tragic meditation, and the voice, prose wit for a clown, formal blank verse for a noble. Decide on the most specific detail, and do not guess Hamlet by reflex.

Here is the method for reading a soliloquy.

ENL 0624 Reading a Soliloquy

A soliloquy shows a character thinking, so read it as an argument with itself, never as a speech to someone on stage. Identify the speaker and the event that prompts it. Find the question posed: whether to act, to live, to trust. Follow the reasoning, where each but, yet or "ay, there's the rub" marks a turn. Notice the imagery that carries the feeling, a sea of troubles, a sleep of death. Note where the speaker arrives. "To be, or not to be" poses life against death, turns on the fear of what dreams may come, and ends with conscience making cowards of us all: the argument explains the delay.

Here are the comic and tragic shapes.

ENL 0625 Shakespeare's Comic and Tragic Structures

A comedy opens on a social obstacle, a harsh law or a parent's refusal, moves its lovers into a second world such as a forest where identities blur, and returns them resolved in marriages, as the Dream and Twelfth Night do. A tragedy opens on a great figure's fatal choice or knowledge, Lear's love test, the ghost, the witches, and falls to deaths that restore an order the hero does not live to see. The romances take the tragic first half and turn it toward forgiveness. Some plays mix the shapes, so judge a passage by its own scene.

The capstone gathers Shakespeare for the exam.

ENL 0626 Shakespeare's Place in the Exam

Shakespeare is the author this exam is most likely to name. His life is sparse in facts: Stratford, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later the King's Men, and the First Folio of sixteen twenty-three, which sorted the plays as comedies, histories and tragedies; later critics named the romances. The sonnets address a young man and a dark lady, and their biography is unproven. The comedies move lovers through confusion to marriage, and The Merchant of Venice darkens the form around Shylock. The histories follow Hal from Falstaff's tavern to Henry the Fifth's battle. The tragedies are the core: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet's delay and soliloquies, Othello and Iago, Lear with Gloucester's parallel blindness, Macbeth's ambition, Antony and Cleopatra. The Tempest ends in forgiveness. Blank verse carries the serious action and prose the comic, the fools tell the truth, and Jonson called him not of an age but for all time. Quotations are the commonest question, so learn the famous lines with their plays and speakers.

This unit met Shakespeare with three moves. We began with the few facts of his life, the First Folio and the four kinds of play. We read three sonnets: eighteen's verse that preserves, seventy-three's shrinking images, and one hundred thirty's honest praise. We summarized the comedies and the histories, from the magic wood to Henry the Fifth. We walked the tragedies, from Romeo and Juliet to Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest's forgiveness. And we turned craft into method: name a play from a speech by place, situation and voice; read a soliloquy as an argument; place a passage in the comic or tragic shape. Unit eight, Donne, Jonson and the Early Seventeenth Century, turns to his successors.