1、William Shakespeare,1564-1616,English renaissance: Chapter 6,William Shakespeare,Ben Johnson dedicated a poem in praise of Shakespeare: “Soul of the Age! The applause! Delight! The wonder of our stage! Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of

2、an age, but for all time!”,Birth: April, 1564， Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, about 100 miles northwest of London. According to the records of Stratfords Holy Trinity Church, he was baptized on April 26. It was customary to baptize infants within days of their birth, so the traditional birth dat

3、e of Shakespeare is April 23rd, St. Georges day, the patron saint of England. Death: April 23, 1616 ，and was buried on April 25, 1616.,Family and Education: His father, John Shakespeare, who was a general dealer in agricultural products and other commodities, was one of the chief citizens of the vil

4、lage, and during his sons childhood was chosen an alderman and shortly after mayor. But by 1577 his prosperity declined, apparently through his own shiftlessness, and for many years he was harassed with legal difficulties. William Shakespeare had acquired the rudiments of book-knowledge, consisting

5、largely of Latin, but his chief education was from Nature and experience. As his fathers troubles thickened he was very likely removed from school.,Marriage: William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway on November 27, 1582, or at least thats when the marriage certificate was issued. Shakespeare was 18

6、; Anne was 26, eight years older than him. Susanna was born around May 26, 1583; twins, Hamnet and Judith, were born around February 2, 1585.,Reasons of leaving hometown In his early manhood, apparently between 1586 and 1588, Shakespeare left Stratford to seek his fortune in London. As to the reason

7、s why he left his hometown, there are two versions, one being that he had joined in poaching raids（偷獵） on the deer-park of Sir Thomas Lucy, a neighboring country gentleman, and found it desirable to get beyond the bounds of that gentlemans authority. Another version is that Shakespeare had been fasc

8、inated by the performances of traveling dramatic companies at Stratford.,Life in England At any rate, in London he evidently soon secured mechanical employment in a theatrical company. His energy and interest have won him the opportunity to show his skill as actor and also reviser and collaborator i

9、n play-writing, then as independent author; and afterwards, he became one of the chief shareholders of the company, and enjoyed a substantial reputation both at Court and in the London dramatic circle, a yearly income equivalent to $25,000 in money of the present time.,Accomplishments: After publish

10、ing his first poem, “Venus and Adonis,” in 1593，he then wrote 154 sonnets and 37 plays, and his fame has only increased with time.,Dramatic career,Topics of his major plays : (1) Romeo and Juliet: tragic love and fate (2) The Merchant of Venice: Good over evil. Anti-Semitism. (3) Henry IV: National

11、unity. Falstaff.,(4) Julius Caesar Republicanism vs. dictatorship (5) Hamlet Revenge Good/evil. (6) Othello Diabolic character jealousy gap between appearance and reality.,(7) King Lear Filial ingratitude (8) Macbeth Ambition vs. fate. (9) Antony and Cleopatra. Passion vs. reason (10) The Tempest Re

12、conciliation; reality and illusion.,Dramatic career,I. The first period （1588-1593） period of experiment and preparation （when Shakespeare tried his hand at virtually every current kind of dramatic work.） Background： England is under the reign of Elizabeth, when feudalism reached its summit and econ

13、omy boomed, so Shakespeare is confident with humanism and his works are full of optimistic and bright color.,Representative works： Richard III a melodramatic chronicle-history play, largely imitative of Marlowe and yet showing striking power. Venus and Adonis 維納斯和阿多尼斯 The Rape of Lucrece 魯克麗絲受辱記 two

14、 long narrative poems on classical subjects， displaying great fluency in the most luxuriant and sensuous Renaissance manner,II. The Second Period （1594-1601） Period of chronicle-history plays and happy comedies. 1. The chronicle-history plays begin (probably) with the subtile and fascinating, though

15、 not yet absolutely masterful study of contrasting characters in Richard II; continue through the two parts of Henry IV, where the realistic comedy action of Falstaff and his group makes history familiarly vivid; and end with the epic glorification of a typical English hero-king in Henry V.,2. The c

16、omedies include the charmingly fantastic Midsummer Nights Dream仲夏夜之夢; The Merchant of Venice； where a story of tragic sternness is strikingly contrasted with the most poetical idealizing romance and yet is harmoniously blended into it; Much Ado About Nothing無事生非， a magnificent example of high comedy

17、 of character and wit,As You Like It皆大歡喜, the supreme delightful achievement of Elizabethan and all English pastoral romance; and Twelfth Night第十二夜, where again charming romantic sentiment is made believable by combination with a story of comic realism. The Merry Wives of Winsor 溫莎的風(fēng)流娘們 Even in the

18、one, unique, tragedy of the period, Romeo and Juliet羅密歐與朱麗葉, the main impression is not that of the predestined tragedy, but that of ideal youthful love, too gloriously radiant to be viewed with sorrow even in its fatal outcome.,Summary Historical dramas of this period centers on supporting the King

19、s power, praising the enlightened depot, and condemning tyrant. Comedies revolves the themes about love, friendship and marriage. The heroes and heroines have humanistic wisdom and virtue, who always struggle for their happiness and satirize the degeneration of old ideas and things.,III.The third pe

20、riod （1601-1609） Period of great tragedies and cynical plays Background; The political regime transferred from Elizabeth to James, which intensified social conflicts and exposed many social evils, leading to the great collision of humanism and social reality. And Shakespeare felt it was hard to real

21、ize his humanism dream and began to criticize social darkness.,Representative works 3. dark comedies 終成眷屬 Alls Well That Ends Well 一報(bào)還一報(bào) Measure for Measure 特洛伊羅斯與克瑞西達(dá) Troilus and Cressida （comedies，yet shrouded by dishonesty and deception）,4.Romantic historic dramas: Julius Caesar 尤利烏斯凱撒 presents t

22、he material failure of an unpractical idealist (Brutus); Coriolanus科里奧拉努斯； Antony and Cleopatra 安東尼和克莉奧佩特拉, which magnificently portrays the emptiness of a sensual passion against the background of a decaying civilization,5. tragedies： Hamlet the struggle of a perplexed and divided soul（Hamlet，Polon

23、ius，Ophelia，Laertes）; Othello the ruin of a noble life by an evil one through the terrible power of jealousy (Othello, Desdemona, Iago, Emilia, Cassio); King Lear unnatural ingratitude working its hateful will and yet thwarted at the end by its own excess and by faithful love（Goneril，Regan，Cordelia）

24、,Macbeth the destruction of a large nature by material ambition. Without doubt this is the greatest continuous group of plays ever wrought out by a human mind（Macbeth，Duncan，witches） Timon of Athens雅典的泰門,Summary In these plays as a group Shakespeare sets himself to grapple with the deepest and darke

25、st problems of human character and life; but it is only very uncertain inference that he was himself passing at this time through a period of bitterness and disillusion.,IV. The fourth period （1610-1613） period of compromise and illusion Background：He found it was impossible to achieve humanism in r

26、eal life，so he began to write about dreamlike world and miracles，using supernatural power to solve the conflicts between dreams and reality.,Representative works； Cymbeline辛白林, The Winters Tale冬天的故事 The Tempest暴風(fēng)雨 Summary It suggests that men do best to forget what is painful and center their attent

27、ion on the pleasing and encouraging things in a world where there is at least an inexhaustible store of beauty and goodness and delight.,Non-dramatic poetry,(1) Venus and Adonis; The Rape of Lucrece. (2) Sonnets:,Shakespeares Sonnets:,a. theme: fair, true, kind. b. two major parts: a handsome young

28、man of noble birth; a lady in dark complexion. c. the form: three quatrains（四行詩） and a couplet（對句）. Written in rhymed iambic pentameter（抑揚(yáng)格五音步） d. the rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg.,The English or Shakespearean sonnet, made of three quatrains(四行詩) rhyming abab cdcd efef and a closing rhymed her

29、oic couplet. The Spenserian sonnet is a variation developed by Edmund Spenser in which the quatrains are linked by their rhyme scheme（押韻格式）: abab bcbc cdcd ee.,Sonnet 116by: William ShakespeareLet me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration

30、finds,Or bends with the remover to remove:O no! it is an ever-fixed markThat looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark,Whose worths unknown, although his height be taken.Loves not Times fool, though rosy lips and cheeksWithin his bending sickles compass come:Love a

31、lters not with his brief hours and weeks,But bears it out even to the edge of doom.If this be error and upon me proved,I never writ, nor no man ever loved.,我絕不承認(rèn)兩顆真心的結(jié)合會有任何障礙；愛算不得真愛，若是一看見人家改變便轉(zhuǎn)舵，或者一看見人家轉(zhuǎn)彎便離開。哦，決不！愛是亙古長明的塔燈，它定睛望著風(fēng)暴卻兀不為動；愛又是指引迷舟的一顆恒星，你可量它多高，它所值卻無窮。愛不受時(shí)光的播弄，盡管紅顏和皓齒難免遭受時(shí)光的毒手；愛并不因瞬息的改變而改

32、變，它巍然矗立直到末日的盡頭。我這話若說錯(cuò)，并被證明不確，就算我沒寫詩，也沒人真愛過。,Significance of Shakespeares works,Shakespeares greatness rests on supreme achievement in all phases of the work of a poetic dramatist. The surpassing charm of his rendering of the romantic beauty and joy of life and the profundity of his presentation of i

33、ts tragic side . Equally sure and comprehensive is his portrayal of characters. With the certainty of absolute mastery he causes men and women to live for us, a vast representative group, in all the actual variety of age and station, perfectly realized in all the subtile diversities and inconsistenc

34、ies of protean（多變的） human nature.,Not less notable than his strong men are his delightful young heroines, romantic Elizabethan heroines, to be sure, with an unconventionality, many of them, which does not belong to such women in the more restricted world of reality, but pure embodiments of the fines

35、t womanly delicacy, keenness, and vivacity. Shakespeare, it is true, was a practical dramatist. His background characters are often present in the plays not in order to be entirely real but in order to furnish amusement; and even in the case of the chief ones, just as in the treatment of incidents,

36、he is always perfectly ready to sacrifice literal truth to dramatic effect. But these things are only the corollaries of all successful playwriting and of all art.,For his form he perfected Marlowes blank verse, developing it to the farthest possible limits of fluency, variety, and melody; though he

37、 retained the riming couplet for occasional use and frequently made use also of prose in realistic or commonplace scenes. As regards the spirit of poetry, it is like a storehouse of the most delightful and the greatest ideas phrased with the utmost power of condensed expression and figurative beauty

38、. In dramatic structure his greatness is on the whole less conspicuous. Writing for success on the Elizabethan stage, he seldom attempted to reduce its romantic licenses to the perfection of an absolute standard.,Summary,1.Shakespeare is one of the founders of realism in world literature. Living in

39、the historical period of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, he faithfully and vividly reflects, through a host of typical characters in his plays, the major social contradictions of his time. 2.His dramatic creation often uses the method of adoption. He borrowed many plots from Roman, Ital

40、ian and contemporary authors, but he made all the characters belong to Shakespeares own time, and so his dramas becomes a monument of the English Renaissance.,3.Shakespeares long experience with the stage and intimate knowledge of dramatic art thus acquired make him a master hand for play-writing. Under his hand drama becomes very elastic. The action develops very freely, without being hindered by th