Shakespeare's plays
These plays, generally celebrating piety, use personified moral attributes to urge or instruct the protagonist to choose the virtuous life over Evil.
These plays, usually performed in Latin, adhered to classical ideas of unity and decorum, but they were also more static, valuing lengthy speeches over physical action.
Shakespeare would have learned this theory at grammar school, where Plautus and especially Terence were key parts of the curriculum[2] and were taught in editions with lengthy theoretical introductions.
[3] Archaeological excavations on the foundations of the Rose and the Globe in the late twentieth century[4] suggested that all London English Renaissance theatres were built around similar general plans.
Usually polygonal in plan to give an overall rounded effect, three levels of inward-facing galleries overlooked the open center into which jutted the stage—essentially a platform surrounded on three sides by the audience, only the rear being restricted for the entrances and exits of the actors and seating for the musicians.
Usually built of timber, lath and plaster and with thatched roofs, the early theatres were vulnerable to fire, and gradually were replaced (when necessary) with stronger structures.
By the late 16th century, the popularity of morality and academic plays waned as the English Renaissance took hold, and playwrights like Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe revolutionised theatre.
Inspired by this new style, Shakespeare continued these artistic strategies,[6] creating plays that not only resonated on an emotional level with audiences but also explored and debated the basic elements of what it means to be human.
What Marlowe and Kyd did for tragedy, John Lyly and George Peele, among others, did for comedy: they offered models of witty dialogue, romantic action, and exotic, often pastoral location that formed the basis of Shakespeare's comedic mode throughout his career.
[7] Shakespeare's Elizabethan tragedies (including the history plays with tragic designs, such as Richard II) demonstrate his relative independence from classical models.
He takes from Aristotle and Horace the notion of decorum; with few exceptions, he focuses on high-born characters and national affairs as the subject of tragedy.
At the end of the decade, he seems to have attempted to capitalise on the new fashion for tragicomedy,[12] even collaborating with John Fletcher, the writer who had popularised the genre in England.
As a sharer in both the Globe and in the King's Men, Shakespeare never wrote for the boys' companies; however, his early Jacobean work is markedly influenced by the techniques of the new, satiric dramatists.
From the evidence of the title-page to The Two Noble Kinsmen and from textual analysis it is believed by some editors that Shakespeare ended his career in collaboration with Fletcher, who succeeded him as house playwright for the King's Men.
[16] These last plays resemble Fletcher's tragicomedies in their attempt to find a comedic mode capable of dramatising more serious events than had his earlier comedies.
In some of his early works (like Romeo and Juliet), he even added punctuation at the end of these iambic pentameter lines to make the rhythm even stronger.
Although a large amount of his comical talent is evident in his comedies, some of the most entertaining scenes and characters are found in tragedies such as Hamlet and histories such as Henry IV, Part 1.
[25] In his book Shakespeare and the History of Soliloquies, James Hirsh defines the convention of a Shakespearean soliloquy in early modern drama.
Furthermore, Hirsh points out that Shakespearean soliloquies and "asides" are audible in the fiction of the play, bound to be overheard by any other character in the scene unless certain elements confirm that the speech is protected.
His dependence on earlier sources was a natural consequence of the speed at which playwrights of his era wrote; in addition, plays based on already popular stories appear to have been seen as more likely to draw large crowds.
Some of the following attributions, such as for The Two Noble Kinsmen, have well-attested contemporary documentation; others, such as for Titus Andronicus, remain more controversial and are dependent on linguistic analysis by modern scholars.
Textual corruptions also stemming from printers' errors, misreadings by compositors, or simply wrongly scanned lines from the source material litter the Quartos and the First Folio.
After the English Restoration, Shakespeare's plays were performed in playhouses with elaborate scenery and staged with music, dancing, thunder, lightning, wave machines, and fireworks.
In the early twentieth century, Harley Granville-Barker directed quarto and folio texts with few cuts,[39][38] while Edward Gordon Craig and others called for abstract staging.
[40] In 1642 England's Parliament banned plays, including Shakespeare's, accusing the theatre of promoting "lascivious mirth and levity."
[41] In August 2023, restrictions were placed on the teaching of Shakespearean plays and literature, in their textual completeness, by school-district officials in Hillsborough County, Florida, in order to comply with state law.
