Shakespeare's late romances
Shakespeare's plays cannot be precisely dated, but it is generally agreed that these comedies followed a series of tragedies including Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.
Shakespeare wrote tragedies because their productions were financially successful, but he returned to comedy towards the end of his career, mixing it with tragic and mystical elements.
Shakespeare's late romances were also influenced by the development of tragicomedy and the extreme elaboration of the courtly masque as staged by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones.
The romances call for spectacular effects to be shown onstage, including storms at sea, opulent interior and exterior scenery, dream settings and the illusion of time passing.
[6] In the First Folio of 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, its editors, listed The Tempest and The Winter's Tale as comedies, and Cymbeline as a tragedy.
[10] The final plays share some common traits: Shakespeare's romances were also influenced by two major developments in theatre in the early years of the seventeenth century.
[n 2] Key scenes in the late romances are closely related to court masques: They embrace the visual magnificence but also the shallowness of such a display.
[21] The scholar Catherine Alexander has suggested that the plays were not specifically autobiographical in respect of Shakespeare's advancing old age, but reflected the fact that the actors themselves were older.
[30] This scene has allowed for different stagings, from William Charles Macready in 1842 at Covent Garden featuring a huge sea vessel, fully rigged and manned, to Robert Falls's production at the Goodman Theatre in 1987, where the scene was set on a cruiseship, with tourist passengers in deck chairs or playing shuffleboard until disaster struck.
Sir Edmund Chambers suggested that he suffered a breakdown while writing Timon of Athens, and the romances reflect a kind of psychological convalescence.
[3] Raphael Lyne comments that it is impossible to show that Shakespeare managed his career to this extent, and there is no pressing need to consider these works as anything other than coincidentally "late".
[citation needed] A film version of Cymbeline was released in 2014, starring Milla Jovovich, Ethan Hawke, Penn Badgley, John Leguizamo and Ed Harris.
[34] Later adaptations include, Yellow Sky (1948) – set in the wild west, with Gregory Peck and Anne Baxter; Forbidden Planet (1956) – a science fiction classic set in outer space; Derek Jarman's 1979 version relocated to a crumbling mansion off the Scottish coast;[34] Tempest (1982) – set on a Greek isle, with John Cassavetes, Molly Ringwald, Gena Rowlands and Susan Sarandon; Prospero's Books (1991) starring John Gielgud – which is not so much an adaptation as a reading of the play, combining film, dance, opera, and animation;[34] and a 2010 version with Prospero recast as Prospera, played by Helen Mirren.
