Shakespeare’s tragedies. Shakespeare’s innovations in the genre of tragedy. The specific features of “Hamlet”.

Shakespeare brought something new to the genre of tragedy: the hero of any of his tragedies perishes by reason of some trait of character that makes him either prefer some positive ideal to life or make him betray an ideal and meet his doom. All the tragic characters of Shakespeare are shown in their development: a hero at the end of the tragedy is not the man at the beginning. The development of the character is explained by social factors that form their psychology and influence their lives. in some of the tragedies Shakespeare treats important ethical problems.

“Romeo and Juliet” was written in 1591-96 and drew its plot from Arthur Broke’s metrical version “Romeus and Juliet”. The tale had been dramatized and performed before Arthur Broke published his poem in 1562.

The basic theme of his tragedy is the struggle of humanism against heartless feudalism. It depicts the new man of the Renaissance against the feudal order, and the struggle takes the form of defience of the acquainted social traditions with the demand for freedom in love. For the first time, Shakespeare presents fate as an awful power, stronger than the deeds of men.

A young couple, of the warring houses of Montague and Capulet, fall in love with each other. The quarrel dates from pre-feudal times. The young couple struggle against their social environment, and this struggle represents that of bourgeous humanism against feudalism, the Renaissance against the Middle Ages. Juliet here is depicted as perfect a woman as could be. She chooses for her husband not Count Paris of the nobility, but Romeo of the house of Montague. She rebels not only against bourgeous common sense, made incarnate in the advice of her nurse.

In the prologue Shakespeare calls the lovers the doomed ones. The lovers themselves consider themselves to be doomed. They die, but their struggle and untimely death is not in vain. With them dies the long hereditary hatred between their families.

To make the situation clearer, Shakespeare introduces a number of secondary characters who indirectly bring into relief the classes nature of the chief actors and the conflicting class forces. The brilliant Mercutio, Romeo’s closest friend, is contrasted with guardian of family honour, Tybalt, the true feudal noble. Juliet’s suitor, Count Paris, is also a feudal lord. He woos Juliet through her father, not taking the trouble to seek her feelings. He is handsome and scrupulous, but as dull and lifeless as a wax figure.

Friar Lawrence, who assists the lovers in their struggle against the old order, is an amazing character. A clergy-man in name only, he is both scholar and philosopher, not sharing at all in the church bigotry. He is a direct follower of Saint Francis of Assissi, the most progressive person of medieval Christianity, and Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for his bold progressive opinions. he is one of Shakespeare’s most progressive characters.

Shakespeare gives us the social background against which the conflict is projected. The old men, Montague and Capulet, re sick and tired of the long family feud and apathetically let it rest, but there are always young hot-heads such as Tybalt to inflame it anew. Romeo and Juliet are the victims of this feud, but in death they are victorious as “with their death” bury their parent’s strife”. The play ends with an affirmation of the new life as the two families are reconciled over the dead bodies of the two lovers.

After Romeo’s and Juliet, who are depicted so attractively, comes the bright image of Mercutio, who is so loyal to his friend Romeo and gives his life for their true friendship.

Juliet’s nurse is the other attractive character, who does everything she can to avoid her beloved mistress.

The prince of Verona also belongs to the Renaissance. He proclaims at the end the reconciliation and says:

“A glooming peace this morning with it brings;

The sun for sorrow will not show his head

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

The play “Hamlet” was written in the time of Shakespeare’s full maturity, when he presents great problems, hard to solve, as his heroes are transformed from creators of their own fate into the victims of fate.

hamlet was written in 1601-02 and published in an imperfect from, 160s, more perfectly in 1604.

The source of the plot, which had been popular in London during the last decades of the 16^th century.

The story is told by Saxo Grammaticus in his “Historia Danica” at the beginning of the 13^th century. In the 16^th century Thomas Kyd’s Hamlet was running on the London stage, but nothing of this tragedy has come to us.

Goethe was the first to interpret Hamlet; “In a precious vase, intended for delicate flowers, an oak was planted; says Goethe, “the oak’s roots grew and the vase was cracked”.

Under Goethe’s idealistic influence, the subjective theory was created during the 19^th century. This theory claimed the basic idea in Hamlet to be the conflict between the Hamlet’s thought and his will, in which he appears as the victim of the dominance of thought over will, a martyr to reflection incapable of realistic action. This theory is, however, entirely wrong. Actually Hamlet is capable of action to the highest degree, even of heroic action, as seen by the episode of his sea journey, in which he showed great energy in dealing with the pirates.

The idea of conflict between thought and action was unfamiliar to the artists of the Renaissance and particularly to Shakespeare, who couldn’t conceive of thought as separated from action. The question here arises – what prevents Hamlet from avenging his father’s murder?

Some critics claim that Hamlet’s procrastinations in the projected killing of Claudius was logically motivated. They point out Hamlet’s reluctance tokill the king while praying lest his soul should enter heaven. they do not take into consideration the social framework of the play.

Hamlet is horrified by his mother’s unfaithfulness in marrying the murderer and by the hypocrisy and debauchery of the entire court even of his beloved Ophelia, which he attributes to the world at large:

“How weary, stall, flat and unprofitable

seem to me all the uses of this world!

… tis an weeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank and grass in nature

Posses it merely”

As a humanist Hamlet never thinks of taking revenge as an act of personal justice, as had been customary under the feudalism. his father is dear to him not only as a father, but as incarnation of goodness, a great man as well as a monarch, and especially in comparison with Claudius. Hamlet views this private crime as an indication of the general corruption of the age. Under such circumstances, personal revenge is futile. The man Hamlet has to kill is a King, and in killing him Hamlet would have to take power and reign among debauchees, hypocrites and degenerates; he considers himself unable to cope with all this and to right the wrongs of the world. In addition, Hamlet being more honest than ambitious wants to be sure of the King’s guilt. For this reason he arranges the “play … to catch the conscience of the King”.

Hamlet is not entirely free from traditional idea of ancestral revenge, which existed in society, and became one of the bases pulse for it. Laertes, a feudal representative, follows it; and Fortinbras, although he does not believe in its efficiency, uses it as an excuse for political advancement. He is a true representative of primary accumulation. Hamlet, who stands between these two men, frees himself with difficulty from the feudal type and Fortinbras an opportunist. Hamlet hesitates and suffers, because he is far advanced for his time. It was a prevailing custom at the time of the Renaissance and particularly during the reign of Elizabeth to plot for power. Shakespeare had an insight into these practices, and depicts them with unusual depth, transferring the seat of action from England to Denmark. He corrupt agents of the king, Rosencrats and Guildenstern, the stupid Osric, the shrewd but foolish Polonius. A network of thought and action is displayed in a whole group of characters in Hamlet. Shakespeare depicts the family of Polonius: the father is an aristocrat who has adapted himself to primary accumulation, having become in part a bourgeois. The son and the daughter are feudal representatives who are equally practical and calculating. Ophelia, with her natural simplicity, is a positive character who is typically feudal in her blind obedience to her father, as Laertes with his rage when he revenges the death of Polonius.

Shakespeare criticizes the new class of gentry, which, without changing its feudal nature, accepts the worst habits of the bourgeoisie.

Hamlet is a pessimist because he does not see a new world that will satisfy him. Caught between the corruption of the court, the opportunism of the growing bourgeoisie, and the masses in whom he has no faith, there is only one way for him: the half-pretended madness and apathetic action by which he brings about his futile revenge before he himself perishes. His will-power is weak; but that is due, not to his nature but to the breaking- up of society.

The next tragedy, King Lear, takes us back to the earliest days of Britain. It was written in 1605-06 and published in 1608. The story was taken from Holiinshed’s Cronicles, in a play by an unknown author, The True Cronicle History of King Leir, and a few stanzos of the tenth canto of the second book of Spencer’s Fearie, Queene. The pre-Shakespearean Lear differs from Shakespeare’s in its happy ending. Lear and Cornelia at the end are rewarded. In their well – being they merge with reality, while among the positive heroes of Shakespeare’s tragedy. They rise above the society surrounding them. The scenes of the steppe during the night are omitted in the pre-Shakespearean drama. The fool, the man representing the people’s wisdom, is also missing. King Lear resembles to a certain extent King Gorboduc, who in the same manner divided his rule between his two sons, bringing forth a war and much bloodshed and misery to the people. Lear, dividing his kingdom between his two daughters, also creates a divided kingdom, an easy prey to foreign conquerors. The tragedy differs greatly from his its sources, above all by dealing with humanistic, true Shakespearean problems. While occupying the throne Lear is a tyrant, a feudal despot, surrounded with pomp and vanity, as described in the first scene. Feudal symbols and formulas are most important to him. he demands from his daughters not sincere feeling, but flattery and phrases expressing the love and devotion of a vassal. His two older daughters are moved by the same feudal ideas with the additional traits so typical of primary accumulation – perfidy, cruelty, greed and ruthlessness. Regan and Goneril mark the transition from feudalism to the bourgeois order. Cordelia as a humanist expresses the new era. When her turn comes to answer her father’s question, she says, “I love your majesty according to my bond; nor more, nor less”. Lear: “so young and so untender?”

Cordelia: “So young, my lord, and true”.

Lear is enraged by these words and disowns her. Blinded by the flattery of his subordinates and considering only his crown, royal robes and titles as sacred and solid, he couldn’t understand the true reality of the situation.

Later Lear’s delusions are dispelled. he undergoes great suffering and is regenerated. Deprived of his royal power and dignity, Lear finds himself to be “a poor infirm, weak and despised old man”. (Act III, scene 2).

At the beginning of the play Lear has a repulsive character but under the hard circumstances he goes through a moral evolution and becomes a positive one.

During the night storm in the steppes he understands much of what he hitherto did not comprehend. He begins to regard his power, life and humanity itself in a different light, and pronounces the famous monologue in which he sympathizes with the poor, who are wronged by the feudal-aristocratic system:

“Poor naked wretches whe soever you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have t’en

Too little care of this! Take physic pomp;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,

And show the heavens more just.

In “King Lear” Shakespeare depicts the evolution of his central character as complete and rounded as in no other work. Lear understands in the scene in the steppe what his jester had understood before. Also in the steppe are roaming Edgar, pretending to be mad and the blinded Gloucester, whose fate develops in parallel with that of Lear. He also, though suffering and through the treachery of his son Edmund, changes his outlook on the world. He admits that:

«I stumbled when I saw”. Now he is being but he sees the truth. Addressing his son Edgar (whom he doesn’t recognize, but gives him his purse, taking him for a poor man) he says:

“Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,

That slaves your ordinance, that will not see

Because he doth not feel your power quickly;

So distribution should undo excess,

And each man have enough …”

This is his indignation, expressed about the unjust distribution of wealth.

The active force in this tragedy is exemplified by the two daughters Goneril and Regan, and Edmund – son of Gloucester. Edmund destroys his brother through his designs on the throne. he is guided by cupidity and ambition. Shakespeare depicts him as the aristocrat who follows the worst practices of primary accumulation. These three characters, Goneril, Regan and Edmund, are the new generation that rises to replace the old one.

The progressive characters in this drama, besides Kent – who is a minor figure – and Gloucester, are Cordelia and Edgar. They also are of the young generation but are humanist in the Shakespearian sense of the world.

Cordelia is defeated, but there remains Edgar, invested with royal power by the Duke of Albany.

Macbeth deals with the problem of royal power and usurpation. It was written in 1605-06 and published in the first folio in 1623. The source of the plot in “Holinshed’s Chronicle” of Scottish History.

Macbeth is similar to Richard III, but more profoundly conceived. Like Richard and Bolingbroke, Macbeth, with his bloody usurpation, paves the way for a counter usurpation.

Macbeth, advised by witches that he is to be a king, is persuaded by his wife to kill king Duncan and seize the crown. The King, coming to Macbeth’s castle for a night, is there murdered by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Duncan’s sons fly to England and Macbeth causes himself to be a king.

Like most Shakespearean tragedies Macbeth is a tragedy of a man betrayed by his obsession. Unlike Richard and Bolingbroke Macbeth is aware from the very beginning of his action.

After the assassination and seizure of the throne, there are indications of revolt. Macbeth begins to defend his position by new murders and acts of violence, which only hasten the inevitable counteraction.

Some critics emphasize the gloominess of Macbeth. This is due to the lofty tragic pathos of the drama, one of the most profound and mature of Shakespeare’s plays.

The emphasis is correct, as it refers to the basic theme and situation. And there are characters moving on the periphery of the tragedy who are far from being gloomy.

The optimistic tone of the tragedy is felt in the action and words of Malcolm. His social relation is fully revealed in the scene in which he and Meduff sound each other before uniting against Macbeth. Malcolm, pretending he is unfit, to wear the crown of Scotland, mentions his fondness for woman and his cupidity and declares that:

“When I shall tread upon the tyrant’s head,

Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country

Shall have more vices than it had before;

More suffer, and more sundry ways than ever

By him that succeed.

… Back Macbeth

Will seem as pure as snow; and the poor state

Esteem him as a lamb, being compared

With my confineless harms”.

Macduff is very much disturbed, but is willing to overlook these vices. When, however, Malcolm announces that he has none:

“The king becoming graces

As justice, verity, temperance, stableness”.

Macduff declares that such a man is not only unfit do govern but is also unfit to live.

Lecture 7.