by these pickers and stealers…

…i’m condensing this stuff coz it’s brilliant scholarship of its day, and says what i’d like to say. I’ve augmented it with the odd comma for emphasis, spaced it into to smaller readable chunks, and condensed the essence without the distracting examples.

Therefore if you is a scholar, identify the authors’ Plays or WORKS, as hit may be, and if you are a neophyte, a fledgling, a mere student, peruse, delight, and learn, taking away an argument that must confound the Conspiracy theorists:

how can you not be influenced by the fashion of the time?

(The original chapter of this e-book can be found in the pages section. The entire manuscript can be found, downloaded and verified at the Project Gutenburg). BTW it’s a long post, which will cost you approx 10-15 minutes of your precious time.

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Facts About Shakespeare, by
William Allan Nielson and Ashley Horace Thorndike

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Facts About Shakespeare

Author: William Allan Nielson
Ashley Horace Thorndike

Release Date: August 8, 2007 [EBook #22281]

Ready, steady,
JUMP…

The Morality Plays of the early 16thC symbolized life as a conflict of vices and virtues, or of the body and the soul. Allegory gradually disappeared, and the Morality ceased to exist as a definite type, though its symbolization of life; and its concern with conduct were handed along to the later drama.

Realism and satire long continued to characterize Elizabethan comedy, though for a time confined mostly to incidental scenes. Common and incidental to the time also was farce, which is found in most plays of the century whether tragic, comic, or moral in their main purpose.

The Comedy plots of Plautus and Terence offer a series of tricks in which the complications are often increased by having the trickster tricked. Certain fixed types of character play the parts of gulls or gullers, as the old parents, the young lovers, the parasite, the braggart soldier, and the clever slave.

The intrigue is forwarded by the use of disguise, mistaken identity, and most surprising coincidences; and it is accomplished by dialogue, often gross and abusive, but usually lively. This model served every nation of Western Europe. The plots of Terence also gave some encouragement to the modern fondness for adventure and sentimental love.

If by romantic we mean what is strange and removed from ordinary experience and what has the attractions of wonder, thrill, and idealization, then for the Elizabethan the world of romance was a wide one. The union of this romance with comedy on the stage began in two ways, and principally under the innovation of two writers, Lyly and Greene.

The taste for pageants, processions, and tableaux grew and flourished under the patronage of the court; and music, dancing, and spectacle were combined with dialogue in various court exhibitions and plays given by the child actors. John Lyly, writing for these choir boys, developed this type of entertainment into a distinct species of comedy.

A common formula was a selection of Classical myth or story, with pastoral elements, and occasionally an allegory of contemporary politics, which furnish the basis of plots with similar love complications.

Gods, goddesses, nymphs, fairies, and many others add to the spectacle and mingle in the love intrigue, and all rise to a graceful dialogue, which quickens to brisk repartee when the pages or servants appear. The witty page supersedes the rude buffoon of earlier plays, and everything is graceful and ingenious, slight in serious interest, but relieved by movement and song.

The second development of romantic comedy came through the dramatization of stories of love, adventure, and marvels.

Tragedy naturally lagged somewhat behind comedy as a form of popular entertainment. Marlowe brought to the popular drama true poetry and genuine passion; but it also established a new type of tragedy.

Marlowe made no effort to retain the structure, or themes of classical tragedy; on the contrary, he made his plays loosely connected series of scenes, dealing with the life and death of the hero, crowded with persons and with startling action.

In this he was conforming to the method of the dramatic narratives that pleased the theaters. But each play centers its dramatic interest on a mighty protagonist battling with his overweening desires and their inevitable disappointment.

With the spectacle and sensation, the rant and absurdity, there is also dramatic structure and tragic significance in the revelation of these protagonists, their volitional struggles, and their direful catastrophes.

Kyd was a student of Seneca. The ten plays ascribed to Seneca were the accepted models of tragedy in the Renaissance. Their presentation of the more horrible stories of Greek tragedy, their rhetorical and aphoristic style, their moralizing and their psychology, were all greatly admired.

They were believed by the Elizabethans to have been acted, and their murders and violence seemed to warrant such action on the modern stage; though the Elizabethans found less adaptable their use of the chorus, the restriction of the number of persons speaking, their long monologues, and the limitation of the action to the last phase of a story.

Kyd modeled his rhetoric on Seneca and retained a vestige of the chorus, long soliloquies, and some other traits of Senecan structure; but his main borrowing was the essential story of a crime and its punishment. He thus brought to the Elizabethan stage the classical theme of retribution.

Blood revenge was established as the favorite motive of tragedy; the conflict of craft between protagonist and villain made up the action, and the speculations of the avenger gave a chance for wisdom and eloquence.

Indeed the stage for half a dozen years abounded in avenging heroes, diabolical villains, shrieking ghosts, and long soliloquies on fate, death, retribution, and kindred themes.

We have now noticed the most important developments in comedy and tragedy made by the time that Shakespeare began writing for the theaters; and he made quick use of the progress accomplished by Plautian and Lylyan comedy, by Greene’s romances, and by the tragedies of Kyd and Marlowe. There were other plays not easily classified under these names and of less service to Shakespeare.

But to the critical playgoer of 1590, few plays would have seemed either ‘right comedies’ or ‘right tragedies.’ The majority were mere dramatizations of story without close construction or selection of material, seeking merely varied and abundant action.

They drew their material from all kinds of narrative sources, Italian novelle, current pamphlets, Latin historians, or English chronicles; and, whether historical or fictitious, were usually known as Histories, i.e. stories. (see title pages for proof of this)!

The patriotic interest in English history fostered the presentation of its scenes upon the stage. The chronicles of Halle and Holinshed furnished abundant material; and embassies, processions, and pitched battles filled the stage with movement.

They recast the chronicle of a reign to fit the accepted subjects of tragedy, the downfall of a prince, the revenge for a crime, the overthrow of a tyrant, or the retribution brought upon a conspirator or usurper.

Those history plays, however, that do not follow the formulas for tragedy, are a heterogeneous group not easily classified. They usually keep to the loose chronicle method that presented a series of scenes without much regard to unity or coherence.

Farce, comedy, magic, spectacle, heroics, and everything that might have happened was permissible in these plays, and perhaps the only thing indispensable was a pitched field with opposing armies.

The early deaths of Greene and Marlowe and the retirement of Lyly, left Shakespeare the heir of their inventions. Though his plays were at first imitative, he soon surpassed his predecessors in gift of expression, in depiction of character, and in deftness of dramatic technic.

The years from 1593 to near the turn of the century are particularly lacking in records of plays or theaters; but it seems clear that the main developments of the drama were in romantic comedy and chronicle history; and it is also clear that Shakespeare was the unquestioned leader in both of these forms.

Imitations indicate that men of Shakespeare’s day realized that romantic comedy and history could not be carried farther. In fact, a certain reaction set in against these forms of drama. Near the close of the century new tendencies became manifest. Comedy tended to become more realistic and satiric.

Jonson announced his opposition to the lawless drama which had preceded whether romantic comedy or chronicle history–and proposed the creation of a new satirical comedy of manners.

He was moved partly by a desire to break from past methods, in order to bring comedy closer to classical example; and partly by a desire for realism, or a faithful presentation, analysis, and criticism of current manners.

The growth of London and the increase in luxury and immorality seem to have encouraged such a movement, and for the decade after 1598 there were many comedies of London life, mostly satiric, and nearly all realistic.

A review of the drama must, however, at least remark the importance of this development of realistic comedy, which flourished in the decade after 1598 and continued to the end. If Shakespeare did not turn to satire or realism or current social problems, he did turn away from chronicle history plays and romantic comedies.

He gave his best efforts of his maturity to tragedy. The day for mere imitation of Seneca, Kyd, or Marlowe, was past; and scholars like Jonson and Chapman as well as Shakespeare, sought in the tragedy of the public theater, an opportunity for wisdom and poetry and a criticism of life.

Yet his great plays may have seemed to his contemporaries to adopt rather than to depart from current dramatic practices.

They belong to the Elizabethan ‘tragedy of blood’; against a background of courts and battles they present the downfall of princes; they rest on improbable stories that end in fearful slaughter; they invariably set forth great crimes, compact of murder, lust, villainous intrigue, and ferocious cruelty.

Some of them follow Kyd, in recounting a story of blood vengeance presided over by ghosts, or discover the retribution due for crime in physical torments.

Nearly all follow Marlowe, in centering the tragic interest in the fate of a supernormal protagonist who is swayed by an overpowering emotion, and in elevating these human desires and passions into tremendous forces, that work their waste of devastation and ruin on character and life.

Later dramatists found greater interest in the study of villainy and intrigue. Revenge is born of depravity rather than duty, and given a setting of physical horrors and unnatural lust.

Shakespeare’s Roman tragedies also suggest comparison with contemporary plays, those either on Roman or on contemporary foreign history. These plays attempted an approach to classical structure and a thorough study and digest of classical history.

This effort to make tragedy a serious and authoritative interpretation of history. Shakespeare sought historical backgrounds for his characters and found a fascination in the interpretation of the motives of the great protagonists of the world of antiquity.

It is worthy of note, however, that he seems to have taken no interest in another class of subjects much favored by his contemporaries. Contemporary crimes treated with an excess of realism and didactic conclusions are common in drama.

About 1607 a new departure appeared in the work of the dramatic collaborators, Beaumont and Fletcher. After some experiments, they won, in their tragi-comedies. and in these plays established a new kind of dramatic romance.

The realistic comedies of Jonson and Middleton, which, along with the great tragedies of Shakespeare, crowd the stage history of the preceding ten years, had offered nothing similar to these romances, which joined tragic and idyllic material in scenes of brilliant theatrical effectiveness, abounding in transitions from suspense to surprise, and culminating in telling denouements.

This new realm of romance is an artificial one, contrasting pure love with horrid entanglements of lust, and ever bringing love in conflict with duty, friendship, or the code of honor.

In its intriguing courts, or in nearby forests where the idyls are placed, love of one kind or another is the ruling and vehement passion, riding high-handed over tottering thrones, rebellious subjects, usurping tyrants, and checked, if checked at all, only by the unexampled force of honor.

Romance, in short, depends on situation, on the artificial but skilful juxtaposition of emotions and persons, and on the new technic that sacrifices consistency of characterization for surprise.

Characterization tends to become typical, and motives tend to be based on fixed conventions, such as the code of honor might dictate to a seventeenth-century gentleman;

but the lack of individuality in character is counterbalanced by the vividness with which the lovers, tyrants, faithful friends, evil women, and sentimental heroines are presented, and by the fluent and lucid style which varies to any emotional requirement and rises to the demands of the most sensational situations.

Shakespeare was adopting the methods and materials of the new romance. At all events, he turned from tragedy to romance, and produced tragi-comedies that, like Beaumont and Fletcher’s, rely on a contrast of tragic and idyllic and on surprising plots and idealized heroines.

There is ample evidence that the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher won a great popular renown, surpassing for a time those of Shakespeare and all others.

Beaumont did not live long after he ceased to write for the stage, dying at thirty, in the same year as Shakespeare. Jonson had given up dramatic writing for the time, and Fletcher was left the chief writer for Shakespeare’s old company and the undoubted leader of the theater.

Including the plays written in collaboration with Beaumont, Shakespeare, and later with Massinger, he left some sixty dramas of many kinds, varying from farcical comedy of manners to the most extreme tragedy.

The comedies of manners present the affairs of women, and spice their lively conversation and surprising situations with a wit that often reminds one of the Restoration.

The tragi-comedies, which display the qualities already noted as belonging to the romances, have the technical advantage that the disentanglement of their rapid plots and sub-plots is left hanging in the balance until the very end.

The happy ending to tragic entanglements won a favor it has never lost on the English stage, and tragi-comedy of the Fletcherian type continued the most popular form of the drama until Dryden.

Shakespeare’s influence is widespread, but appears incidentally in particular scene, situation, character, or phrase, rather than as affecting the main course and fashions of the drama.

After the publication of his plays in 1623, this incidental influence increased, and is distinctly noticeable in the plays of Ford and Shirley. This most hasty review of the Elizabethan drama must suggest how constantly Shakespeare responded to its prevailing conditions.

There are, of course, great variations in the signs which different plays offer of contemporary influence and peculiarity. So it is with most of his fellow dramatists. Shakespeare’s relations to the contemporary drama were manifestly constant and immediate.

If it was rarely a question with him what the ancients had written, it was always a question what was being acted and what was successful at the moment. His own growth in dramatic power goes step by step with the rapid and varied development of the drama, and the measure for comparison must be, not by decades, but by years or months.

A study of the Elizabethan drama may help to excuse some of the faults and limitations of Shakespeare, but it also enforces his merits. Both faults and merits are often to be understood in the efforts of lesser men to do what he did.

We admire his triumphs the more as we consider their failures. Yet they often had admirable success, and their triumphs as well as his are due in part to the dramatic conditions which gave the freest opportunity for individual initiative in language, verse, story, and construction.

Noble bursts of poetry, richness and variety of life, an intense interest in human nature, comic or tragic–these are the great merits of that drama. That in a superlative degree they are also the characteristics of Shakespeare is not due solely to his exceptional genius, but to the fact that his genius worked in a favorable
environment.