Literary Survey Part 2: Unit 10-12 - English Literature

Literary Survey part 2: Unit 10 – 12 The Jacobean & Caroline Age followed by the Puritan Interregnum Rep. Early Modern / Renaissance England 1485-1660 The Stuarts - After Elizabeth’s childless death, a Ea...

Literary Survey part 2: Unit 10 – 12 The Jacobean & Caroline Age followed by the Puritan Interregnum Rep. Early Modern / Renaissance England 1485-1660 The Stuarts - After Elizabeth’s childless death, a Early Tudor Age 1485-1558 new dynasty emerges: the Stuarts (Henry VII, VIII, Edward VI, Mary I) - Whereas Elizabeth was willing to Elizabethan Age 1558-1603 reach a compromise with her subjects as Jacobean Age: James I 1603-1625 far as power, religion etc. are concerned, Caroline Age: Charles I 1625-1649 the Stuart Kings fail to do so - In the long run, their increasingly Commonwealth Interregnum 1649-1660 absolutistic arrogance leads to civil o Oliver Cromwell war… King James I (1604-25) - Elizabeth’s nearest relative: King James VI of Scotland (son of Elizabeth’s cousin: Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots) becomes James I of England - Tudor → Stuart: Unification of English + Scottish Crown - The reign of King James I is called the Jacobean Age (1604-25) o That of his son Charles I is called the Caroline Age (1635-1649) The Stuarts Increasingly absolutistic attitude The Stuarts don’t consult Parliament & don’t accept the Parliamentary right to control the state budget Rumours of Pro-Catholic sympathies The rise of radical Protestant opposition o A movement opposed to the Stuart aristocracy AND the Anglican Church of England established by Henry VIII: the Puritans led by Oliver Cromwell Increasing social, political and religious tensions lead to the outbreak of the civil war (1642- 9) of the o Parliamentary forces (Roundheads) vs. o King’s forces (Cavaliers) o And the beheading of King Charles I (1649) ➔ The first time in Western history that a king as God’s deputy on earth was accused of treason and sentenced to death!! Commonwealth Interregnum (1649-1660) - After the execution, Oliver Cromwell proclaims the Commonwealth (1649-53) - Begins as a republican experiment + deteriorates into a military dictatorship: o The Protectorate headed by the Lord Protector Cromwell (1553-60) - The Commonwealth as a Puritan Utopia gone wrong o Civil war as holy war, a final /U apocalyptic battle of good vs. evil to reach a timeless state of utopian bliss o Cavaliers (king’s party) vs. Roundheads (Puritan republicans) o The utopia of a regained paradise on earth The Puritan utopia of a “Paradise Regained” vs. a military dictatorship - Puritanism: radicalized form of Protestantism o Zeal (burning wish to establish a religious Commonwealth) o Belief in predestination: divine providence1 (=belief that God has predetermined the life of every single person; Puritans consider worldly wealth as a sign of God’s providence) o Driving force of US republicanism: the Pilgrim Fathers (1620) ▪ Origin of American republicans & democrats ▪ Consider themselves favoured by God, God’s own people ▪ Cf. US anthem “in God is our trust” etc. The Literary System during the Jacobean, Carolien Age + Interregnum 17th century Poetry - Verse Epic – John MILTON!!! - Sonnet becomes less important - New forms & traditions emerge o Metaphysical (witty logical reasoning) and / or religious poetry: ▪ John Donne ▪ George Herbert ▪ Andrew Marvell ▪ Herny Vaughan, Thomas Traherne etc. o Cavalier Poetry (the royalist party in the civil war cavaliers / royalists :: Parliamentary forces / roundheads) ▪ Herrick, Suckling, Lovelace 1.1 Verse Epic John Milton (1608-1674): Poetry, Verse Epic, Prose - VIP poet - Universally learned poeta doctus (understands Latin, Ancient Greek, Hebrew) - Cromwell’s “Latin Secretary” (type of minister of foreign affairs) - Has to vindicate2 the execution of Charles I among England’s European neighbouring countries - 1660 dismissed from office - Emerging blindness → cultivates this blindness in terms of Renaissance Self-fashioning → because as a “blind” poet, he finds himself among the most famous poets of all time such as Homer etc. who were also blind Epic Poetry: Milton, Paradise Lost (1667) - To strengthen Cromwell’s Commonwealth, Milton writes a Puritan national epic - Next to Spenser’s The Fairie Queene (celebrating the reign of Queen Elizabeth I), Milton’s Paradise Lost is the second very important early modern English national epic - The epic (→ Homer, Virgil): a very long narrative poem about the foundational myths / making of a nation in elevated language 1 Providence: göttliche Vorhersehung 2 Vindicate: rechtfertigen First Lines → iambic Pentameter OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast → topic: loss of christian history of Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, humans With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed, In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth Rose out of Chaos: […] What in me is dark → Milton tries to justify and Illumine, what is low raise and support; interpret from a Puritan vantage That of the highth of this great Argument point I may assert th’ Eternal Providence, And justifie the ways of God to men. ➔ Plot: Satan’s rebellion against God, God’s victory over Satan and his crowd, and the revenge of Satan (i.e. a heavenly civil war similar to the one fought by Cromwell against the Stuart King) ➔ Satan causes the Fall of Mankind – the species made in God’s image: seduces Eve ➔ Adam and Eve have to leave Eden (→ Paradise Lost); their fall turns out to be a blessing in disguise, however: felix culpa ➔ By way of hard work (→ Puritan work ethos), Mankind descending from Adam and Eve conquers the earth and brings about the civilizing process ➔ Christ’s sacrificial death atones for the fall of mankind and finalizes God’s victory over Satan Paradise Lost: Puritan interpretation of History 1) Biblical history :: the history of Mankind “secular” history as a part of God’s biblical design End: the Second Coming of Christ and the final judgement preceded by an apocalyptic battle of good vs. evil o Cf. John’s book of the apocalypse (The Apocalypse / Revelation to John / The Book of Revelation → final book of the New Testament) o The Puritan civil war as a kind of “apocalypse now” to be followed by a utopian state of eternal bliss 2) Puritan interpretation of history: freedom of choice vs. providence Puritan work ethos Fallen man – felix culpa: Christ as the second Adam o Atones for man’s original sin / fall from grace (cf. other way around in Gryphius’ Carolus Stuardos i.e. postfiguration of Christ’s sacrifice ~ King Charles dying) Milton’s Latinate diction: like other humanists, he attempts to make English as refined and perfect as Latin (cf. early modern rise of the vernacular languages: two language systems co-exist!!)  Paradise Lost: New approach to Love & Marriage Milton propagates a new ideal of marriage based on mutual love and responsibility Adam’s solidarity with Eve Milton applied for a divorce: separation is better than living on together unhappily Paradise Lost: Problems / Implicit Contradictions Satan is presented as a vicious but very charismatic character (Pygmalion-effect?) The Fall of Satan described in “sublime” terms; epic machinery The civil war in heaven is won by God vs. the execution of the Stuart King as God’s representative on earth The charismatic Cromwell (who rebelled against and executed the King) in the position of Satan? → Milton as an early modern Homer - Foundational myths of ancient Greece → early modern England - Milton fashions himself as a counterpart of Homer! - Both Homer and Milton became blind: illuminate from within – rather than with their eyes proper, they see with their mind’s eye: fancy, inspiration etc. - Homer and Milton inspired by divine visions: the poet as prophet / seer: poeta vates - Milton fuses the subject positions of the Homeric poet-seer (poeta vates) and the learned poet (poeta doctus) → Milton’s “Blindness” Presented in one of his sonnets When I consider how my light is spent,  We have to use our talents, and Ere half mydays in this dark world and wide, work hard to make the best of our lives And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent  Last couplet: struggle of speaker with Puritan work attitude; but he says if To serve therewith my Maker, and present you lose your ability to work (blindness) My true account, lest He returning chide: you still serve! “Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?” The universally learned poeta doctus I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent fashions himself as a prophetic / divinely inspired poeta vates That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need Either man’s work or His own gifts. Who best Ancient Greek Archetype: blind Homer Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state ∞ Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed, Biblical tradition: Samson Agonistes And post o’er land and ocean without rest; (Milton writes a closet Drama entitled Theyalso serve who only stand and wait.” Samson Agonistes); Simeon; parable of the talents Poetry: - Sonnet becomes less important, new forms & traditions emerge o Metaphysical (witty logical reasoning) and / or Religious Poetry  ▪ John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan, Thomas Traherne etc. o Cavalier poetry (royalist party in the civil war: cavaliers :: parliamentary forces: Roundheads): Herrick, Suckling, Lovelace 1.2 Metaphysical and / or religious poetry Abrupt, vivid (medias in res), self-analytical vs. ornate style of conventional Elizabethan poetry Complex intellectually reasoning; paradox bold and unexpected imagery: metaphysical conceit Tensions: verse vs. “natural stresses” Love, death, religion, melancholy “unified sensibility” vs. modern “dissociation of sensibility” o T.S. Eliot important Essay on metahysical poets o Unified sensibility : capacity of the poet’s mind to “devour any kind of experience”, however disparate + to form a new whole; they are always forming new wholes! “metaphysical poetry”: 18th ct. brand label (Doctor Johnson) ➔ Highly intellectualized, have rather strange imagery, use frequent paradox, contain extremely complicated though + METAPHYSICAL CONCEIT (comparing sth. Intangible (abstract) to something natural (physical) John Donne - Grew up in a Catholic family → according to Jacob’s wish, he eventually was ordinated an Anglican priest - The Dean of St Paul’s: famous sermons (Predigten) - Married out of love (scandal)  → dialogue man + woman: man wants to convince her to have sex before marriage + then a complex argument starts → speaker compares their relationship to a flea => metaphysical conceit Other poems: - The Good-Morrow: POV awaking lover, describes his thoughts waking up next to partner, sensual love, spiritual love etc. o Makes use of biblical + catholic writings o Lovers faith in each other allows them to be brave, liberated o True strength of devoted love - A Valediction Forbidding Mourning o 2 points, linked forever; man needs to go, but they are always linked, so no crying good by blah pls. o Metaphysical conceit: twin compasses Conceit: “The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence” (Dr Johnson) John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet”: new topic – what used to be courtly “love” poetry is now used for religious introspection Batter my heart, three-person‘d God, for you Poem tries to come to terms with the As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; religious paradox => the more we serve That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend God, the freer we become (paradox Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. between service +freedom) As a sinner his life is partly dominated by I, like an usup’d town to another due, evil, temptation => at end of stanza he Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; asks God to imprison him + ravish his soul Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue. Stanza 2: lyrical I compares himself / his relationship to God to a town that is Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain, surrounded by an enemy army (= God → But am betroth’d unto your enemy; asked to ravish speakers soul) Divorce me, unti or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Highly sexual language + connotation (last two lines + first stanza) => act of Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, being raped, rise + stand => erection Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. Phallogocentric poetry => poetry by men for men ➔ Complex relationship: human soul – God ➔ War imagery; sexualized language ➔ Torn metre (metrical tensions) and syntax (enjambments) Louis Martz, The Poetry of Meditation: A Study in English Religious Literature of the 17th ct.  He comes from the field of comparative literature Studies religious poetry + focus on early 17th century poetry in Protestant England: shows the structural imprint of the aesthetics of the Jesuit Counter-Reormation on the Continent Ignatius of Loyola: founding father of the Jesuit movement Ignatius, Exercitia Spiritualia (1522/4) Ignatius Exercitia Spiritualia - Martz refers to early 17th ct. (Protestant!) religious poetry in England as the “poetry of meditation”, owing to the fact that many poems are structured according to Ignatius’s (Catholic!) meditational scheme, which fuses the medium of the word with that of the image (3 steps of meditation): 1. Compositio loci → trying to imagine a biblical episode as lively as possible 2. Analysis → analyse what this scene means for the meditator’s own life (on a symbolic level) 3. Colloquium → meditator addresses god and asks him to help his soul The Poetic Genre of the Emblem as an example of the fusion of word + image - An allegedly enigmatic picture (pictura) is analyzed and explained in the subsequent text (subscription) - Fashion of the Emblem Book George Herbert’s Religious Poetry Most famous representative of religious poetry (shows the imprint of the influence of the catholic world); Anglican priest The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ecajulations (1633) o Collection of poems which analyse the complex relationship human soul :: god Fuses the poetic genre of the emblem (Pictura & Subscriptio) with Ignatius’s (Catholic!) meditational scheme: o Composition loci o Analysis o Colloquium ➔ Problem! Protestants consider the Catholic (!) veneration3 of the image idolatry (cf. Luther sola scriptura!) o Rather than using pictures, Herbert arranges words in a pictorial way in order to apply Ignatius’s meditational scheme as a means of (Protestant) religious contemplation / instruction 3 Veneration ~Verehrung  The “shape” / form of the poem resembles an altar Devotional poem that depicts the speaker’s desire to make a sacrifice similar to Christ’s Describes the metaphorical process of building an altar out of one’s heart, stone by stone etc. he’s going to create an altar to God out of his own body 16 lines, one stanza, “shape” poem Extended metaphor, alliteration etc. Heart = stone that can only be shaped by God Shaped poem: if viewed sideways, each stanza resembles a set of open wings Shape reflects the poem’s central theme: those who stay close to God through religious devotion can “fly” above or find redemption from, their suffering Poem begins with allusion to the biblical fall of man Themes: suffering + redemption where the text is thinnest: Adam’s fall from paradise, Felix Culpa Mystery of Jesus’ resurrection at Easter → he flies into heaven winglike Andrew Marvel “To His Coy Mistress” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44688/to-his-coy-mistress - Metaphysical poem, written during or just before the English Interregnum - Carpe diem poem - Speaker says that if we follow the Petrarchan love model it would take ages to finally woe over a lady → need to make the best of time, seize the day => let’s make love, only way to fight death - “baroque” (→ comes from catholic culture, but is typically accounted to counter- reformatory!) tension: carpe diem – horror vacui (fear of empty spaces)  - Tempus edax rerum = time, devourer of all things / Time, that devours all things - Timeless Neoplatonic Petrarchan Love → the ephemeral (flüchtig) here and now Robert Herrick - A country parson (Pfarrer) and poet - Anacreontic (→ Anacreon) poetry: wine, women and songs o Poem written in the style of the ancient Greek poet Anacreon - “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time” o Genre of carpe diem o Same subject as To His Coy Mistress o Important in Dead poet society 1.3 Cavalier Poetry (of the Civil War) - Aristocratic set of values: honour, chivalry, loyalty to the king, sensuous / worldly love, licentious - Phallogocentric - Light-hearted, sensuous, worldly poetry - Classical influence: Anacreon, Ovid, Horace, Catullus - Cavalier poets of the Civil war o Thomas Carew o Edmund Waller o Sir John Suckling o Richard Lovelace Lovelace, “To Lucasta, Going to the Wars” Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind, ➔ Going to war is That from the nunnery more masculine Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind than trying to To warm and arms I fly. attain a woman in True, a new mistress now I chase, the Petrarchan The first foe in the field; tradition And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee (Dear) so much, Lov’d I not Honour more. Lovelace, “To Althea from Prison” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44657/to-althea-from-prison - Describes a poet’s attempts at maintaining his freedom while imprisoned in Gatehouse Prison in 1642  - Poem begins with the speaker stating that while imprisoned in his cell his love comes to him and improves his situation Verse Epic: John Milton - Paradise lost → national epos - To strengthen Cromwell’s Commonwealth, Milton writes a Puritan national epic - 17th century Prose 17th century prose: some neglected women writers - Mary Wroth, Urania (1621 prose romance) - Rachel Speght, A Mouzell for Melastomus (1617 proto-feminist) - Margaret Cavendish, Poems and Fancies(1653), The Blazing World (1666 “feminist” utopia) 17th ct. prose overrated men writers - Sir Francis Bacon, Essays, Novum Organum Scientiarum (1620) o The Advancement of Learning (1605): the theoretical framework of the modern sciences! - John Milton, “Areopagitica” (1644 religious & political pamphlet) - Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1651/2 scholarly work) - Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651 political philosophy) Francis Bacon (1561-1626) - Founding father of the empirical sciences - Cultivates the genre of the prose essay (→ Montaigne, Essais 1580/8) o Montaigne’s radical subjectivism → logical reasoning o An a-moral, sinister character: “the wisest, brightest and meanest of mankind” - Essays on all kinds of topics: truth, revenge, marriage, … - Novum Organum: an encyclopaedic elucidation of the new empirical / inductive scientific methods, followed by the scientific utopia “The New Atlantis” - The academy of Solomon’s House featured in “The New Atlantis” as a model for the Royal Society (“The Académie Anglaise” *1660) The Rise of the Newspaper & Pamphlets - The Weekly News from Italy, Germany etc. (1622 the first English newspaper) - Milton “Areopagitica” pamphlet on behalf of the liberty of the press Early Modern Drama (1580s-1642) Elizabethan, Jacobean, Caroline ➔ The most important genre in the early modern period!!! Drama (Greek: “things done / performed”) Dialogue Primary text: dialogue, what actors say Secondary text: scene descriptions etc. Mise en scène as a rewriting / re-interpretation of the written text  o Audience gets to decide / judge / interpret which point of view presented may be considered true, false, unreliable etc. 2 important critical approaches: o (con)textual criticism :: performance criticism Essential for the representation / self-fashioning of royal & aristocratic power: o Theatricality of the royal court and the early modern state apparatus “Pro-Tudor” interpretation of history in the new dramatic genre of the history play → Why is Drama important for early modern culture? 1) The royal court – where the political elite interacts before the eyes of the King or Queen – functions like a public spectacle performed on stage James I: “That a King is as one set on a scaffold, whose smallest actions and gestures, all the people gazingly doe behold” - Scaffold: o The theatrical stage in a playhouse o The place of execution (i.e. the place where James’ successor Charles will be beheaded) 2) Theatricality of early modern culture: ➔ The metaphor of the world as a stage! ➔ “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.” (-Shakespeare, As you like it) 3) Early modern representation of Power: Theatrical Self-Fashioning at - The royal court - The gallows (public executions) o People watching execution like a play o Houses and windows surrounding the gallows are similar to the galleries of a playhouse o Like actor in a playhouse, the delinquent (person to be hanged) has to climb the stairs, take a good standing place on the scaffold and make a speech to the “audience” - The playhouse The Play performed on stage Mirrors the court Negotiates political questions of the day among a mass audience Drama as an everyday experience Drama as a counter-court of the simple people Mass entertainment (popular, cheap, cf. cinema) 4) Drama was a part of “everyday” life of the early modern English population, entertainment etc Comparison: theatre today Striking cultural difference! Theatre today is a rather recent concept. The modern stage is created behind the fourth wall (curtain). In early modern performances the audience used to talk, they used to eat and drink etc. => there were open air playhouses. Nowadays we have indoor playhouses & as soon as the light goes out the audience is quiet => completely different experience. Drama in Modern England Relies on entirely different aesthetics which may be attributed to entirely different staging conditions Again: the neglected domestic heritage of the medieval catholic past Vs. contemporary drama dominated by the ancient Greek classical tradition described in Aristotle’s Poetics The domestic medieval roots of early modern English drama & the architectural design of the early modern stage Miracle Plays: the church (during important religious holidays) Mystery Plays: the medieval city Morality Plays: the medieval “theatre in the round” The first early modern playhouses Medieval England 1 Mystery plays: the local guilds stage Biblical key-scenes in wagons placed throughout the city → the spectators move from stage to stage 2 Medieval Morality Play: “Theatre in the Round”; Christian morality play :: similarity to classical amphitheatres refer to page 10 for medieval England Elizabethan, Jacobean, Caroline England :: first early modern playhouses The Backyard of Pubs as first playhouses: Inn-Yard Theatres - A self-contained place with a central entrance to make the audience pay rather than sneak in for free The First London Playhouse: The Theatre (1576) - Round / octagonal shape - Various entrances where people had to pay to be able to enter Shakespeare’s “Wooden O” (the London Globe Theatre Restored) Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre burned down at the beginning of the 17th century Not in West End, but other side of Thames where entertainment district used to be The Early Modern Stage / Playhouse: completely different compared to the staging conditions we know today 1500-3000 spectators – commercial theatre for the masses and for all classes Proscenium stage (no fourth wall) surrounded by the groundlings (the audience that pays for the cheap standing places): noisy! Open air, daylight No props: everything has to be imagined and visualized by the magic of language: verbal scenery Boy actors / cross dressing Heaven: upper stage (balcony) Earth: normal stage Hell: trapdoor (→ medieval Christian drama) Tiring houses: doors through which actors enter & exit and can change behind Polygonal or round buildings Galleries, groundlings → mixed audience → The “Wooden O”: the Globe as a Microcosm / the World (Heaven, Earth & Hell) en Miniature - Hercules bearing the world on his shoulders - “totus mundus agit histrionem” all the world’s a stage Vs. Today: the 4th Wall! The Blackfriars Indoor Theatre (former Catholic Monastery) In addition to the public theatres designed for all social classes, there existed private indoor playhouses for the upper class → today: Sam Wanamaker’s Playhouse (reconstruction of an indoor theatre) In which part of London were the Playhouses to be found? secular & spiritual elite play an important role: city council is ruled by Puritan businessmen → business, law and order dominate London entertainment district: anarchic counterspace → Londoners have to cross the river Thames to be able to visit playhouses (round or octagonal playhouses with flag on top); river also separates law and order from entertainment district → at South Bank (also called South Warke) Southwark: an ill-reputed4 area for ill-reputed business → Outside the jurisdiction of the city of London ruled by the puritan magistrate (bear baiting, playhouses, brothels etc. → law and order district (Puritan businessmen etc.) – Thames – South Warke entertainment district The Puritans - Hate drama! Consider it sinful (fiction as lie) and, like the plague, “contagious” (sinful actions on stage trigger off sinful actions in real life) - 1642 the London playhouses are shut down at the beginning of Cromwell’s Puritan civil war Drama 2 English Religious Drama: from the Medieval to the Renaissance Period Miracle Plays Mystery Plays Morality Plays The Interlude as the first secular (!) dramatic genre of the early modern period Interludes (15th / 16th ct.) Secularized follow-up genre of Christian drama: church → royal court Courtly entertainment between the courses of a banquet etc. (i.e. interlude) 4 Schlechter Ruf  Ethical humanist debate: what makes a good ruler / politician? [cf. Mirror for Magistrates tradition] E.g. Heywood, The Play of the Weather (1533) A Professional Theatre Scene emerges in the 1580s!! Professional writers: starvation wages Professional theatre companies: big money among the shareholders of a playhouse: Philip Henslowe, Shakespeare In times of the plague, the companies toured the country Performances at the aristocratic court; Inns of Court; guild halls, schools, universities etc. Copyright (entered into the Stationer’s Register = book of copyright) held by the companies, not by the writers! No authorial copyright Commercial outdoor theatres: outside the jurisdiction of the city of London: an a-legal sphere: the company members needed royal or aristocratic patronage to become legal subjects Drama: no “serious literature” → no authorial prestige As a piece of popular culture, drama reflects the theatricality of early modern everyday life Dramatic debate of everyday politics etc.: the theatre as a counter-court o Subversive potential → state censorship by the Master of the Revels 1942: the Puritans close the playhouses which they consider places of sin! The Most Important Public Theatres - The Theatre (1576) - The Curtain 1577 - The Rose (1587/8 - The Swan 1595 - The Globe 1599: owned by Shakespeare’s ompany: Shakespeare as writer AND shareholder! burnt down in 1612; rebuilt 1614 The Private Theatres / Halls - Indoors theatre; Upper class audience Stage machinery (vs. no sophisticated props but expensive costumes in public theatres)  The First Blackfriars 1576-84  The Second Blackfriars 1596-1655  The Whitefriars 1608  The Phoenix 1617  Whitehall 1630 Theatre Companies Boy Companies (Lyly) Leicester’s Men (1574) Queen Elizabeth’s Men (1583) The Chamberlain’s Men (1594; Burbage & Shakespeare) → The King’s Men (1604) Early Modern Drama: Diachronic Development Interludes Pre-Elizabethan Academic Drama  The University Wits Shakespeare and his Contemporaries Post-Shakespearean (Jacobean & Caroline) Dramatists Pre-Elizabethan Academic Drama - Academic Comedy (→ Plautus & Terence): Nicholas Udall, Ralph Roister Doister (1566) - Academic Tragedy (→ Seneca): Sackville & Norton, Gorboduc, or Ferrex & Porrex (1561/2): blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter (becomes the standard metre of tragedy!) The University Wits: Professional Writers - John Lyly [cf. Elizabethan Prose]: Alexander & Campaspe (1584), Endymion (1588) - George Peele, The Old Wive’s Tale (~1590) - Robert Greene, Frier Bacon & Frier Bungay (~1590) - Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy (~1586) a “Senecan” Revenge Tragedy - Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great (2 parts, 1587/8), Doctor Faustus (performed 1590), The Jew of Malta (1591) Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (University Wits; Professional Writer) Good – bad angel fight over the soul of Faustus [→ Morality play tradition: Everyman] Faustus as an individual (vs. Morality play focus on everyman): the psychomacchia of good vs. evil is internalized (conscience) Tragedy & farce (comic relief) 1604 / 1616 version  A Wittenberg Professor: scene where Faustus (featured as a professor of the Wittenberg university = university that triggered the reformation with Martin Luther) conjures the devil  The Marlovian Overreacher o Central character as an overreacher o Hubris: larger than life, challenging the Gods o Prometheus; Icarus; Satan (→ Milton!) Doctor Faustus: The Prologue The Chorus: ancient tragedy ∞ Christian topic Fuses ancient tragedy with medieval Christian drama Tells Dr. Faustus’ life in a nutshell Prologue as example of Marlowe’s mighty line Marlowe’s “Mighty Line” The Helena-Speech Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter: -‘ –‘ –‘ –‘ –‘ Mighty Line: The Summoning Scene of Dr. Faustus  Final scene, contract expires, time speeds up (I have a week, I have a day, I have an hour…)  Youtube link: Staging Problems - The contract scene (cutting arm etc.) - The summoning of Faustus by a group of devils - Problem: no clear-cut borderline between fact and fiction (+ the actor and the role he performs) Christopher Marlowe Died young: stabbed in a pub Rumours of atheism, sodomy … Her Majesty’s secret service? → got a degree without actually attending university (he got it through a letter of the queen, because he did good services to the crown) The leading dramatist before Shakespeare… Drama 3 William Shakespeare (1564-1616) * Stratford upon Avon ∞Anne Hathaway ~1587 London The Lord Chamberlain’s Men: shareholder & principal actor 1597 New Place 1599/1613 The Globe 1608 The Blackfriars → Robert Greene, A Groatsworth of Wit (1592), warns people of a newcomer (Shakespeare) in his autobiography Shakespeare’s London career had already started in 1592 “for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapd in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and beeing the absolute Johannes Factotum, is in hiks owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a contrey” 1592 “Venus and Adonis”; 1593 “The Rape of Lucrece” o Ovidian short epics 1609 (publ.), written in the 90s: Sonnets (154 poems) 1590-1611: ~38 plays (some co-authored) 18 plays published during Shakespeare’s life: quartos (small, cheap booklets); often pirated editions 1623 the complete works in expensive folio format Folio / Quarto Format: Shakespearean Drama: Genres Histories Comedies (“happy comedies” & problem plays) Tragedies (with comic relief) Romances (based on narrative source material, comic and tragic elements) Figure 1: The Folio Edition 1623 Recommended Edition of Shakespeare’s Works → The Problem of Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: Diary entries & related documents Topical & intertextual allusions The Stationer’s Register (copyright of the printed text) Publication dates of quartos published during Shakespeare’s lifetime https://shakespeare-gesellschaft.de/ Shakespeare’s Contemporaries Ben Jonson (most important early modern dramatist next to Shakespeare): o Satirical comedies: Every Man in his Humour (1598), Volpone (1606), Bartholomew Fayre (1614) o Masques with stage-effects designed by Inigo Jones o A universal genius / intellectual: poeta doctus George Chapman John Marston Thomas Dekker Thomas Heywood Thomas Middleton Theoretical background of Early Modern Drama Major Genres: - Tragedy - Comedy - Tragicomedy & Romance - History - Masque Traditions & Influences: - Classical traition o Latin Comedy (Plautus & Terence) o Latin Tragedy (Seneca → revenge tragedy) - Vernacular tradition o Medieval Christian Drama (mystery cycles, morality plays) o Commedia dell’arte ➔ The domestic tradition: Mingling of comic and tragic elements, kings and clowns, blank verse and prose vs. The classical tradition and the neoclassical call for “purity of style” / decorum (Ben Jonson, Sir Philip Sidney as proto-neoclassicists; fully-fledged neoclassicism flourishes in 18th ct. France) The Aristotelian Unities of Drama Unity of time: the duration of th eplot is supposed to take no longer than a day  Unity of place: the plot is situated in just ONE place Unity of action: just ONE plot (no sub-plots, parallel plots etc.) ➔ The early modern English tradition does NOT follow the Aristotelian Unities General question - Is drama an “open” literary form or is it regulated by rather strict generic rules and conventions` - Are the aspects discussed in Aristotle’s Poetics to be considered as strict norms and rules (normative approach) or as a description of the theatrical scene of Aristotle’s time (descriptive approach)? Tragedy :: Comedy according to the Neoclassical concept of stylistic appropriateness: “Decorum” - Tragedy features (individualized) characters from the upper class; their deeds are heroic and they speak in verse (usually blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter) - Comedy presents lower or middle-class people; their deeds are funny and they speak in prose – these characters are fashioned as types or so-called stock-figures who represent certain clichés (the jealous lover, the horny old man, the witty servant girl, the braggar soldier) - The audience is supposed to identify with a tragic hero and to laugh at the characters from a comedy The Neoclassical “Aristotelian” Rules as a Normative approach to drama According ot Aristotle, tragedy produces pity and fear: this has a purgatory effect on the audience: this cleansing effect is called catharsis Comedy produces laughter and release from concern: comic distance, detachment – makes us relax Dramatic Debate of Everyday life politics → whereas the royal court functions as the elitist place of political / socio-cultural debate, drama negotiates politics etc. among the simple people Some samples of debate: Comedy: who has the right to chose one’s spouse? Parents? Young lovers`what are the criteria for marriage: love or money? The changing role of women in society (Shakespeare’s female characters) → A Midsummer Night’s Dream Tragedy / History: the legitimacy of kingship (lineage & descent / professional qualification?), the duties of a good ruler; can an incompetent ruler be discmissed? What about private justce if the state fails to endorse justice (i.e. to find and judge a criminal)? → Hamlet The limits of human power & knowledge? → Doctor Faustus  Tragedy (Death) vs. Comedy (Love) Tragedy begins with the rise of the main character – play reaches its climax / turning point when the protagonist makes a wrong decision which leads to his downfall and death Tragic hero: tragic flaw → fatal mistake → recognition & reconciliation → death 1) TRAGEDY Early Modern tragedy: Generic features Classical ∞ domestic heritgae Upper class protagonists Personal misjudgement: tragic flaw Fused with comic elements (lower class characters [“clown” → *colonus] → “comic relief”) Blank verse (comic elements in prose) NO unity of time, place, action Different Types of Tragedy Early prototype: Sackville & Norton, Gorboduc (1561/2) Sub-genres: → De Casibus-Tragedy Source: moralities and prose narratives about the fall of great people (→ medieval contemptus mundi): Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta → Revenge Tragedy Source: Senecan Tragedy ghosts, spooky horror & blood (cannibalism, torture), delay (feigned) madness, play within the plays Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy (1587/8) Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (1594), Hamlet Thomas Middleton, The Revenger’s Tragedy (1607) George Chapman, The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois (1610-2) → Domestic Tragedy Unruly passions vs. common wealth → “private” family life Anon. Arden of Faversham (1585-92( & A Warning for Fair Women (~1599) John Webster, Duchess of Malfi (~1612-4), The White Devil Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603) Middleton, Women Beware Women (1623) John Ford, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1633)  Early Modern Comedy Multiple plots etc: ignores Aristotelian unities, decorum etc. !! Different semantic spaces Happy end : marriage Cross-dressing : boy actors dressed up as girls who dress up as boys… The world upside down / carnivalesque inversion o Order → inversion → restoration of order o The counter-world of chaos / anarchy / carnivalesque inversion as a productive sphere (Mikhail Bakhtin) o Happy end: marriage (restoration of order) Plautus / PLautine Comedy as a Prototype o Fertility, celebreation of life, regeneration of an over-aged society o Two young lovers have to outwit a blocking character from the old generation o Fertility vs. sterility → marriage ➔ In the early modern period aristocratic weddings were accompanied by a comedy => act that is happening in reality is sort of mirrored on stage (type of play within the play) Comedy [love & marriage ] :: Tragedy [death] Structural Analogy & Inversion Different Types of Comedy: Early prototypes (farcical elements) o Nicholas Udall, Ralph Roister Doister (~1535) o Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors (1590-3) Sub-Genres o Romantic Love Comedy o Jacobean City Comedy o Satirical Comedy or “comicall satyre” (Ben Jonson) Romantic Love Comedy - Elizabethan o Lyly, Alexander and Campaspe o Peele, The Arraignment of Paris: A Pastoral (1584) o Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay - Jacobean o Francis Beaumont o John Fletcher - Caroline  o Philip Massinger o James Shirley Jacobean City Comedy - Citizens vs. aristocrats (cf. rise of the Puritan opposition) - Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1611) - John Marston, The Dutch Courtesan (~1603-5) - Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (printed 1603) - Philip Massinger, The City Madam (1632) Satirical Comedy (“Comicall Satyre”) Ben Jonson (pro-establishment, anti-Puritan dramatic satire) Classical + topical allusions Plays written for an educated audience that understands the classical allusions at work in these texts Earlier stage: Every Man out of his humour (1599) Later stage: satire blended with (city) comedy: Volpone (1605-6), The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fayre Other Dramatic Genres 1) Tragicomedy a. An ambivalent play with tragic and comic aspects b. Inspired by Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido (1589) c. Shakespeare’s Rmances: i. Pericles (~1608) ii. Cymbeline iii. The Winter’s Tale iv. The Tempest (~1611) d. Romance: a play based on narrative source material such as a prose romance! They have a happy ending i.e. marriage, but before this happy ending there is a tragic climax e.g. being on the verge of death e. Beamont & Fletcher, Philaster (1609), The Maid’s Tragedy (~1608-1611), A King and No King (1611) f. Marston, The Malcontent (1603-4) g. Middleton & Rowley, A Fair Quarrel 2) History Plays a. (pro-)Tudor interpretation of history: The Wars of the Roses b. Tudor-myth: outbreak of the medieval civil wars as a sort of “original sin” reconciled by the House of Tudor i.e. the Tudors are harbingers of peace blessed by God c. Like tragedy, focus on state affairs, battles, dynastic debate etc. d. Shakespeare: 10 History Plays i. King John ii. York Tetralogy: Henry VI (i-iii) / Richard III iii. Lancaster Tetralogy: Richard II, Henry IV (i-ii) & Henry V iv. Henry VIII  3) Masque a. Celebration of Royal Power, especially in the Jacobean and Caroline Period: the King as an all-powerful “superman” who enforces law and order on chaos and anarchy b. Deus ex machina; stage machinery, elaborate props c. The masques become multi-media spectatles designed by Inigo Jones – they foreshadow the rise of the opera d. Eg. Sir Philip Sidney, The Lady of May (1578) e. Ben Jonson, The Masque of Blackness (1605), The Masque of Queens (1609) From Elizabethan to Jacobean Drama - Elizabethan period: time of optimis, relative order, stabiltiy o Rather positive view of life, the individual and the state apparatus o This changes in the Jacobean Period!! ➔ Jacobean Era: the athmosphere becomes darker! o Spooky, dark, sinister, sadistic → the Jacobean Age as an age of collective crisis & depression o Extreme effects of horror, torture, bodily violence o States of madness, despair etc. o Misogynist o Ghosts, vaults, monasteries, italian castles (i.e. the “demonic” catholic world vs. reformed England) o Vanity of human life and worldly endeavours Jacobean Drama - Reflects crises & anxieties of the time - The Puritan challenge of the Elizabethan status quo under the stuarts - Danger of chaos & upheaval: the return of the anarchy of the civil war of roses? ➔ Puritan revolution, execution of the king The Puritan revolution 1942 Puritans close London theatres (playhouses as a place of sin) o Indicates long term shift: decline of drama as the most popular early modern genre and the rise of the novel as the most important literary genre of the 18th century o Novel as a bourgeois middle class genre deeply imbued with Puritan doctrine: divine providence! o Aristocratic → bourgois middle class society A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare (1595 / 96) 1) Unities / Decorum? (Time, Place, Action) TIME: Shakespeare’s “Double” Time Scheme One night and one and a half days THESEUS Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Hippolyta doesn’t want to get married and Draws on apace; four happy days bring in thus, time passes fast for her as she isn’t Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow looking forward to the wedding day. This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires, Theseus is looking forward to the marriage Like to a step-dame or a dowager which is why for him it feels as if time is Long withering out a young man revenue. standing still HIPPOLYTA Four days will quickly steep Illustrates the difference between the flow of themselves in night time measured by a clock and the Four nights will quickly dream away the time psychological perception of how time passes And then the moon, like to a silver bow New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night → Shakespeare’s Double Time Scheme = Of our solemnities Discrepancy between duration of the plot covering 1 ½ days and duration described in the production as 4 ½ days PLACE: 2 different places movement of main characters from city into woods and back Athens represents well-functioning state apparatus, reason, culture, law & order, no mysteries to be found within the city walls (all can be explained logically), the world of the conscious → apollinian principle ➔ Counterworld of forest: dark/night, characters are confronted with anarchy rather than law & order, they live out their lower passions and find the supressed parts of their subconscious, they hurt and nearly kill each other → the dionysiac principle Semantic Spaces (Lotman) The crossing of a semantic borderline: Athens (day) → Forest (night) → Athens (day) Order chaos /anarchy order ➔ The nightly counter-world as a o Test of the stability of the young lovers’ relationship o Test of personal identity o Encounter with one’s supppressed desires, fantasies etc.: the “animal within” PLOT: several interrelated plots - The four young lovers o Hermia ❤ Lysander o Helena ❤ Demetrius ▪ He first loves Hermia, in the end, he marries Helena! - Theseus (duke of Athens) & Hippolyta (his future wife) - Oberon & Titania [Bottom & Titania] => king & queen of counterworld - The play within the play: Pyramus & Thisbe scene taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses Decorum Upper class: (mostly) blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) → e.g. opening lines Lower class: prose → e.g. the mechanicals (figure right) Comedy (Plautus) This strucure of the play, where the characters move between two places, can be seen as an example of the comedy pattern developed by platus: - The stubborn old father as a blocking figure vs. the young lovers - Old vs. young generation :: sterility vs. fertility - Death or monastery :: sterility - Absurd: Hermia’s boyfriend is as wealthy an upper class man as the candidate favored by the father Love as a common problem The two couples of young lovers (stereotypical, deliberately interchangeable) The middle-aged Duke and his (forced!) marriage with Hippolyta (the Queen of Amazons) THESEUS: Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword, And won thy love, doing thee injuries; But I will wed thee in another key, With pomp, with triumph and with revelling. The domestic quarrel of the King and Queen of the faerie world Pyramus & Thisbe: love with a tragic end How is the love problem solved? ➔ Puck / Robin Goodfellow as a Trickster An archetypal / mythological go-between figure that mediates between the world of the humans and the supernatural  Disrupts the usual order of things Slightly malicious, but positive effect An agent of change within an otherwise static community (i.e. the agent that fosters the Plautine / comedic movement from sterility to fertility) Fairy PUCK Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Thou speak’st aright; Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite I am that merry wanderer of the night Call’d Robin Goodfellow: are not you he I jest to Oberon and make him smile That frights the maidens of the villager; When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern Neighing in likeness of a filly foal; And bootless make the breathless housewife churn; And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl, And sometime make the drink to bear no arm; In very likeness of a roasted crab, Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? And when she drinks, against her lips I bob Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck, And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale. You do their work, and they shall have good luck; The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale. Are not you he? Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me; Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, → Character is introduced by fairy And “tailor” cries, and falls into a cough; And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh, → now we have rhyme, so we can see that the fairy And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear belongs to the counterworld of magic & supernatural A merrier hour was never wasted there. → Puck introduces himself The Parallel Plots as a Sophisticated Mirror Technique / Complex Structure Apart from the dichotomy upper class – verse lower class – prose, Shakespeare’s play does not in the least pay attention to: The three unities of time, place and plot The call for stylistic and generic appropriateness / purity (decorum) The Elizabethan World Picture The Great Chain of Being: the whole cosmic order is connected with each other via analogy and correspondence ➔ The human and the superhuman world ➔ The macrocosm (the world) and the microcosm (man as a little world in itself) The multiple mirror technique in A Midsummer Night’s Dream reflects / elucidates this background Man: torn between the spiritual sphere of the heaven (made in God’s image) And The animal world of unruly bodily passions (cf. the post-Edenic Fall of Mankind) Elizabethan World Picture: A fluid (binary oppositions) connection between: o Humans and gods o The natural and the supernatural world o Men and women o Matter and spirit / body and soul o Animals and humans ➔ Bottom’s change from a man into an animal ➔ Gender crossing (to be looked at later on) It is owing to the Elizabethan cosmology that Ovid’s Metamorphoses rewritten by Shakespeare were extremely popular Ovid’s description of humans changing into animals or plants are not entirely fictitious if seen from the vantage point of the Great Chain of Being The Mirror Technique has an additional advantage: Role-Doubling on Stage!  To save the money to be paid to additional actors, Shakespeare doubled some of the roles (the roles of those characters who do not appear on stage together) o Hippolyta – Titania o Theseus – Oberon  Apart from economic reasons, this doubling stresses the already noted analogy: rulers of the human – rulers of the superhuman sphere (→ Elizabethan World Picture) Archetypal Dimension 1. Fertility To flee death or a sterile monastic life, Hermia escapes into the (fertile) forest The woods: a dionysiac, bacchantic sphere → Fertility god Dionysus Mentioning of the “Rites of May” & Maypoles: o Ritual called “going a-Maying” → at the beginning of May (=beginning of fertile period) we erect May-poles (representing erection of the phallus) Bottom’s Metamorphosis into an Ass An intertextual allusion to Apuleius, The Golden Ass, also known under the pseudo-Ovidian title Metamorphoses (2nd ct. A.D.) The main character is transformed into an ass and a woman spends a sodomite night with him… o Titania’s dodomite / unnatural love is juxtaposed with a tale of absolute chastity o Shakespeare’s play reflects & juxtaposes all facets of love, passion and sex imaginable! o Another example of the already mentioned mirror technique of analogy and correspondance Let us now take a look at a tale of chastity told by Oberon (who manipulates his wife to fall in sodomite love with Bottom transformed into an ass) Juice of magic flower: when it drops into human eye, this person falls in love with the first living thing it sees Oberon’s plan is to humiliate & take revenge on his wife, making her fall in love with the Ass (echoing the plot from “The Golden Ass”) Fair vestal throned by the west = Roman goddess that takes the vow of lifelong virginity (reference to Queen Elizabeth / Virgin Queen) → a highly ambivalent text passage: the “vestal throned in the west” is so chaste that she quenches Cupid’s fiery arrow of passionate love an allusion to Queen Elizabeth I known as the “Virgin Queen” and the “Faerie Queene” 1) a compliment to Elizabeth: the chaste “vestal throned in the West” vs 2) a misogynist assault: Titania alias Elizabeth, the Pasiphae-like Queen of Faeries - A shrewish wife who refuses to have sex with Oberon and who has secret unnatural sex with a phallic animal; - Female lust as unnatural, insatiable, animal-kind of lust - Women represent the unruly passions of the material body; men represent spirit 3) the public image of th eVirgin Queen who refuses to marry and succumd to the patriarchal rule of a husband vs. secret affairs with her courtiers A Highly Ambivalent Play Life, death, sex, violence The subconsious Not an innocent faerie-tale-like play (cf. Max Reinhardt’s film adaptation from 1935) The cliché: cute story with fairies etc. More recent stagings tend to stress the sexual ambivalence Crisis in Patriarchal society Gender trouble! Allusion to the Queen (virginity as a political prose?) ➔ Problem of a female ruler; Elizabeth’s refusal to marry ➔ A childless woman as an “unnatural woman”?  Cross-dressing in Elizabethan Drama ➔ Female roles played by adolescent men (before their beards start growing and their voice is getting deeper) Early modern world picture: Gender - Patriarchal society: masculinity as norm - One-sex model: women (like children) as imperfect men (they live in a pre-masculine stage): o If they show weakness, men can become more effeminate o If they are intelligent, women can become more masculine o Gender-Crossing & Metamorphosis as a part of the Elizabethan world picture (→ popularity of Ovid’s Metamorphoses) Vs. Shakespeare’s Men Male blindness and arrogance: the father, the Duke, the young aristocrats Demetrius & Lysander Oberon’s sodomite revenge!!! Wants to break his wife’s will Demetrius’ Lysander’s sexually induced violence in the woods Play within the play Mechanicals (Shakespeare’s class; cf. the role of the guilds in the mystery plays) Want to get royal patronage (like the real-world actors in Shakespeare’s time) An example of how not to act: they fail to create theatrical illusion Arrogant upper-class men who are slandering their inferiors / subjects Vs. the aristocratic women who acknowledge the good will of the mechanicals who perform the play as a wedding gift to their superiors Metadrama Play within the play as an ironic “mirror up to nature” Although the lovers watch what has nearly happened to them in the woods (confusion, violence, death) they remain ignorant as far as this insight is concerned The men remain more blind than the women cf. Theseus the ruler of “rational” Athens  bottom is reformed to his human state, but he remembers his encounters as an ass (he can’t really put the experience into words though) the simple craftsman and amateur actor Bottom as one of the few characters who realizes the magic of poetry and drama he remembers part of the magic involved with his nightly encounter with the Fairie Queen Does the audience of the play proper remain as blind as the audience of the play within? Metadrama also includes the audience watching the play and the play within the paly => mirror technique Do we learn something about ourselves? Are we in a similar position as Bottom? Manipulated “Happy” End The spell of the flower remains working on Demetrius The good work of the trickster figure done on behalf of the king of the superhuman world The super-humans bless the world of humans Puck: epilogue End: Marriage blessing Comedies were often performed to pass away the time between the marriage an the consummation of the wedding night Another meta-dramatic layer: a lesson to be taught to the bridal couple Shakespearean drama as white magic (secularized function of the suppressed catholic rituals) Puck as a chorus-figure; mediates between fact & fiction / illusion & reality Shakespeare’s Hamlet Composed 1600/01 Taken into Stationer’s Register in 1602 Different editions o 1603: very short, Quarto edition (long considered a bad text, but this opinion has changed) => performance text o 1604/5: quarto 2, twice as long as quarto 1, Hamlet as a text to be read as a book?  o 1623: Folio edition Source Material Saxo-Grammaticus, Historia Danica (12th ct.): “Prince Amleth”: Amleth kills his uncle without any scruples, restores the order & becomes king Francois Belleforest, Histoires Tragiques (1570): Hamlet dies after the accomplishment of revenge Thomas Kyd (?), Ur-Hamlet (~1589): a play now lost [→ Der bestrafte Brudermord 1710] [Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy (1587)] Hamlet as a revenge tragedy Generic features Appearance of ghosts Play within the play / meta-drama The revenger’s feigned madness Deferral of revenge up to the very end of the play The ethical problem of private justice Ethical Debate: Whether under circumstances it is legitimate to see revenge as a private kind of justice Biblical tradition: The Old Testament: “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” vs. The New Testament: “love thy neighbour”, call for mutual forgiveness The classical tradition: Seneca, the Stoic philosopher and tragedian: unruly passions → self-control Hamlet’s Ethical Dilemma Ghost: Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. (I.5.25) […] Taint not thy mind (I.5.85) → on the one hand, the ghost asks for revenge, and on the other hand, he asks Hamlet not to burden his conscience, and not to claim revenge The Challenged Family Triad 1. Prince Hamlet (son) 2. Queen Gertrude (mother) 3. King Hamlet Sr. (father) → Claudius (the King’s brother) My father’s brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules. Within a month, Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. O most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! (1.2) Why Incest?  Husband and wife are one flesh! As soon as a couple is married, they become one and the same flesh, meaning that Gertrude and Hamlet Senior become one.   After Hamlet Senior’s death, Gertrude marries his (and in a way also her) brother, which is why they speak of incest […] The funeral baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. (I. 1., 179-80) Ernest Jones. Hamlet and the Oedipus Complex Strictly speaking anachronistic because the psychological system at the time of Shakespeare was completely different Oedipus complex: relationship between Hamlet and his mother (in the play she is even represented by a young attractive woman) → Freudian Reading Ernest Jones: argues that Hamlet’s misogyny stems from Oedipal feelings towards his mother Gertrude The Four Bodily Humours: Hamlet as a Melancholic Mixture of the humours as the determinants of certain character types Hamlet: surplus of black bile → melancholy was considered a scholars’ disease (only intellectuals suffered from it; it was very popular) Today, melancholy would be considered a type of depression Hamlet and Religion The Ghost as a “Poor Soul” from Catholic Purgatory Ghost: I am thy father’s spirit, Doomed for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confined to fast in fires Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away. […] (I.5.9-13) vs. The protestant notion of ghosts as “satanic” agents of evil Hamlet as a protestant (→ University of Wittenberg: Hotspot of reformation movement) The Puritan concept of providence and conscience (you have to cope with guilt of your deeds) Hamlet and Meta-Darma: “The Mousetrap” Hamlet: […] hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature (III.1.22) […] The play’s the king Wherein I’ll catch the conscience the King. (II.2.606-7)  Hamlet organizes a play to find out if Ghost s telling the truth, and Claudius really killed his father or if the Ghost is a prophet of Satan  Shows a villain killing a king (in the play within the play, the nephew [not the king’s brother!] kills the king … (cf. observed observation!!!) → Claudius’ rection shows that it is true Hamlet and the Early modern discovery of perspective  Observed observation (King observes his court, and the courtiers observe the king; in the play: king and courtiers are again observed by audience)   Hamlet wants to keep the knowledge of Claudius killing his father to himself (which is why in the play within the play, the nephew (not the King’s brother) kills the King) Hamlet and the early modern court - Life was lived in public, and everyone observed and was observed → Hamlet is constantly being observed ➔ Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas 1656 (perspective in paintings) reflection in the mirror at the back of the room: mirror reflects what is to be seen on canvas; mirror functions as a medium to make visible what usually cannot be seen and play in the play works in the same way (cf. Hamlet’s quote: holding the mirror up to nature) Ophelia: O what a noble mind is here o’erthrown! The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword, Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mould of form, The observed of all observers, quite, quite down! ➔ Ophelia comments on the situation at the court, on the observed observation ➔ Hamlet characterized as a Christian humanist gentleman politician o Ideal courtier: scholar + soldier; cf. Baldassare Castiglione, Il Cortegiano (1528) & English translation by Sir Thomas Hoby, The Courtyer (1561) o Contrast to Christian Humanism => Machiavelli, Il Principe (sees politics as dirty business, n which you have to act without morals) ➔ Claudius as a Machiavel o A usurper, scheming murderer and a diplomat… o Uses poison: typical Machiavellian way of killing, because it is acting like a coward ➔ Polonius: a parody of the paradigmatic court Machiavel o Polonius: father of Ophelia & Laertes; calculating, … o Speaks without actually saying anything, because he just repeats what others say, he never states his opinion Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By th’ mass, and ‘tis: like a camel, indeed. Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel. Polonius: It is backed like a weasel. Hamlet: Or like a whale. Polonius: Very like a whale (3.2.364-70) Hamlet’s Ethical Problem with revenge Revenge: restoration of justice vs. sin / homicide → constant doubt & deferral / delay  To be able to act, Hamlet’s performance of revenge must be unpremeditated / spontaneous  Has to act before he can think  Hamlet’s fatal mistake: If there is a man in his mother’s most private room, it must be Claudius → mistakes the eavesdropping Polonius hidden behind the curtain for Claudius Hamlet’s Religious problem with revenge Heaven, Hell, Purgatory vs. The Puritan concept of providence & conscience Famous “to be or not to be” monologue/passage Conscience makes us unable to act, it has a paralyzing effect (conscience / consciousness?) Puritan Providence vs. Machiavellian Manipulation of Fate The Pirates, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern vs. HAMLET […] We defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come – the readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is ‘t to leave betimes? Let be.  Machiavellian Murder. Claudius sends letter to English king asking him to execute Hamlet; Hamlet is sent to sea with Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, but he then finds the letter and starts planning his surprise / secret return etc. => his Machiavellian side Quote :: his puritan side The more sinister Hamlet Wants to murder Claudius’ body and soul Hamlet’s Mephistophelian disposition … Hamlet didn’t want Claudius’ soul to go to heaven, because Claudius sent Hamlet Senior to Purgatory. He wants Claudius to die in the state of unconfessed sins (e.g. drunk) Mirror Technique: Three Revenge Plots 1. Hamlet: revenge on Claudius (→ Hamlet Senior) 2. Laertes: revenge on Hamlet (→ Polonius, Ophelia) 3. Fortinbras: Military Revenge (→ Fortinbras Senior) Ophelia: Victimized by Hamlet AND Polonius Polonius prepares an eavesdropping scene: together with Gertrude he hides behind a curtain to see whether Hamlet confesses his love to Ophelia He abuses his daughter Ophelia to spy on Hamlet by way of intrigue Hamlet must have seen the arrangement of the eavesdropping scene by way of observed observation He mistakes the only person who truly loves him and always says the truth for a Machiavellian informer and breaks up with her… o “Go thee to a nunnery.” (he basically calls her a bitch) As a result, Ophelia drowns herself (scene that has become very popular in popular culture) → Hamlet as a phallogocentric play “Alas, poor Yorick” (V.1.180) Hamlet realizes the meaninglessness of life → gravediggers find a skull that used to belong to Yorick Hamlet is now ready for the final step (Claudius wants to kill Hamlet in a fencing match) The END Hamlet dies, but fulfilled his revenge → “the rest is silence” HAMLET O, I die, Horatio; The potent poison quite o’er-crows my spirit: I cannot live to hear the news from England; But I do prophesy the election lights On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice; So tell him, with the occurents, more and less, Which have solicited. The rest is silence. Dies  Hamlet as a never-ending story HAMLET [to Horatio] As thou’rt a man, Give me the cup: let go; by heaven, I’ll have’t. O good Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me! If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. ➔ Whenever Horatio tells the story, it will end with Hamlet asking to tell his story, so the story will be told over and over again ➔ Mobius Strip (illustrates a never-ending story)