Shakespeare's Career Research Articles

All The Devils Are Here: How Shake Speare Invented The Villain by Patrick Page

Reviewed by: All The Devils Are Here: How Shake Speare Invented The Villainby Patrick Page Patrick Midgley ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE: HOW SHAKE SPEARE INVENTED THE VILLAIN. Adapted from the works of William Shakespeare. Written and performed by Patrick Page. Film direction by Alan Paul. Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, D.C. 04 9, 2021. After his first monologue in All the Devils Are Here, Patrick Page—one of America's most esteemed and experienced Shakespearean actors—dropped character, looked directly at the camera and introduced not another scene, but a thesis statement. The goal of this digitally recorded, one-man performance, he explained, was more than to perform a sequence of polished speeches from Shakespeare's most notorious evildoers: Page wanted to know if and how Shakespeare's exploration of villainy made him "a more humane writer." While initially jarring, Page's easygoing personal commentary alongside soaring performances of material from Shakespeare's plays made for a captivating performance-as-researchproject that capitalized on the constraints of pandemic performance. With an equally erudite and entertaining tone, Page cataloged the motif of "villainy" across Shakespeare's career. At the same time, with brilliant performances seemingly plucked from his previous productions, Page single-handedly provided the thrill of a fully realized, in-person production. And while Page's foundational arguments and performance style are likely familiar to many Shakespearean scholars and practitioners, All the Devils Are Herenevertheless emerged as an original, captivating, and deeply informed transformation of case studies into characters. Page progressed in chronological order through Shakespeare's career, portraying his fascination with villains in three distinct eras. In the first, from Shakespeare's earliest attempts at playwriting through the plague and the subsequent sonnets (1589–94), Page presented Shakespeare as the "upstart crow," selfconsciously mimicking and responding to his contemporaries—in particular, Christopher Marlowe, whose thundering verse inspired Shakespeare to write more natural language and nuanced antagonists. This early section was dominated by Page's muscular and magnetic portrayal of Richard III. In the second era, from Henry IV, Part 1through Hamlet(1594–1604), Page suggested that Shakespeare's understanding of evil deepened as his villains began to grapple with their consciences. Here, Page focused primarily on Shylock and, surprisingly, Falstaff. Both characters, Page argued, challenged Shakespeare's earlier, easier conceptions of villainy. After concluding a scene from The Merchant of Venice(1596) in which Page played multiple roles, he claimed that while the play was written for and, at times, pandered to an openly anti-Semitic audience, Shakespeare also invited that same audience to put themselves in Shylock's shoes. Page's argument regarding Falstaff stumbled slightly. Frequently termed a villain throughout Henry IV, Falstaff, it is true, is a symbol of human vice. But he is simultaneously an embodiment of joie de vivre, something Page neglects to mention. Falstaff always defies classification, something that Page was forced to admit following his brilliant portrayal of the fat knight in Boarshead Tavern: "Perhaps it's not Falstaff we should fear," he wryly suggested, begging the familiar question of Hal's villainy. Page argued that in the third era, including Othello, Macbeth, and The Tempest(1605–11), Shakespeare crawled into the psyches of his most sociopathic and willfully evil characters: Iago and Macbeth. Here, Page's digressions lacked some of the depth of the previous sections and relied more upon contemporary comparisons than historical analyses. Before he performed a scene from Othello, for example, Page revealed that while preparing to play Iago, he read Martha Stout's 2006 book The Sociopath Next Door, which argued that 4 percent of people are unable to feel remorse. The inference that Iago classifies as such a sociopath, while edifying, still felt shallow next to what Coleridge described as Iago's "motiveless malignity." And is not a "sociopath" different from a "villain?" Nevertheless, the relative lack of new insight into Iago's psyche was not really a failure: rather, it underscored Shakespeare's perpetual elusiveness and upheld Page's talent for uncovering character through performance. It is ultimately within Page's portrayals of Iago and Macbeth, not his descriptions of them, that he finally confronted their limitless depths. Page concluded by...

Poor Painted Shadows: "Non-Shakespearean" Characterization in Shakespeare

Critics' selective reading has produced a widespread, long-lasting equation of Shakespearean characterization with naturalism, depth, complexity, interiority, and individuation. This critical consensus is worth challenging to reconsider the history and merits of alternative models of characterization that were current in early modern drama and attractive to the author most singled out as superseding them. In fact, across his career, Shakespeare amply employs "artificial" rhetoric, "shallow" characters, and speaking styles or narrative parallels that connect multiple "individuals." These characterizations undercut the character effects in which Shakespeare's literary strengths purportedly lie but nonetheless yield theatrical dividends, including appealing non-naturalistic psychologies and narratives. This essay outlines how such examples reveal the value of under-examined period representational norms often seen as "non-Shakespearean" that Shakespeare shared with his contemporaries. It notes the breadth, frequency, and utility of such characterization in Shakespeare. It then examines Shakespeare's use of Lylian characterization to de-individuate characters, connecting them through overlapping styles of thought in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Finally, it argues that Lylian techniques persist well beyond Two Gentlemen, in plays later in Shakespeare's career (As You Like It), more popular (Richard III), and universally admired for their characters' alignment through improbably similar experiences (King Lear).

Shakespeare's stage traffic: imitation, borrowing and competition in Renaissance theatre

Shakespeare's Stage Traffic: Imitation, Borrowing and Competition in Renaissance Theatre, by Janet Clare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. 305+ xi. Hardcover. $99.00Shakespeare 's Stage Traffic starts by declaring its aim to be to explore interplay of imitation, borrowing, and competition in the ambience of Shakespeare's theatre, and is particularly interested in situating Shakespeare himself firmly within such networks of traffic and exchange rather than as any kind of unique exception-in seeing Shakespeare, in fact, as an adapter. Seeing plays as fundamentally in dialogue with each other, Clare understands the production of plays as an essentially mercantile activity. Such move is part of the Zeitgeist rather than critical revolution, but Clare is wellinformed, scholarly, and sensible, and it is after all part of her point that noth- ing is ever wholly new. Clare is particularly careful about her terms, giving nuanced accounts of borrowing, authorship, source study, intertextuality and imitation, in ways which combine to offer neat guide to the protocols and preferences of much of the current landscape of literary criticism of the early modern period, especially in the form of critical editions, although her primary aim in considering such matters is to tracje] the contribution of the often neglected pre-text to the interweaving of text, context, and performance event (24).The book has eight chapters which consider range of genres and move through Shakespeare's career in roughly chronological order. The first chapter, and the Dramaturgy of the Queen's Men, offers a close intertextual study of King John and Richard` which promises to capture something of the effect of the Shakespeare histories on members of an audience with prior experience of the plays performed by the Queen's Men (30). Despite its title there is very little Marlowe in this chapter, but Clare is insightful in her discussion of Peele, and there are some suggestive details in her argument that A True Tragedy influenced Richard III. The second chapter, Deposing Kings, reads Richard II in relation to Edward II and Woodstock. Of course there are issues of dating at stake here, and Clare's strategy for bypassing them is uncharacteristically disingenuous: ?Whether Woodstock was composed and performed in the 1590s; or written in the 1590s and revised in the 1600s, before Richard II; or written and revised in the 1600s, following Richard II, is in sense incidental' (63). The third chapter relates The Shrew to A Shrew and The Comedy of Errors to the wider context of the Gesta Grayorum as whole. argues that A Shrew is independent of The Shrew, though here again Clare has to be bit gung-ho about questions of dating, declaring It is preferable surely to jettison these vexed questions of derivation and listen, instead, to the dialogue between texts (99), which comes dangerously close to that old bread-and-butter exercise of compare and contrast. …

Hamlet's dramatic arras

The suspense of Hamlet 3.4 has everything to do with what is behind the arras. Summoned to Gertrude's closet after staging The Mousetrap, Hamlet hears a noise behind the arras and, assuming it to b...

Shakespeare, Guy of Warwick, and Chines of Beef

SHAKESPEARE'S references to the late mediaeval romance hero Guy of Warwick have been ably chronicled by Velma Bourgeois Richmond in her wide-ranging study of his legend. She observes that two allusions to Guy's legend come at the start and close of Shakespeare's career. That they occur in history plays suggests that the Warwickshire poet associated Guy with history.1 First, in the opening scene of King John Philip ‘the Bastard’ speaks scornfully to and about his weedy half-brother Robert Falconbridge, who is a genuine Falconbridge, rather than being, as is Philip, a son, albeit illegitimate, of King Richard Coeur de Lion. Responding to his mother's question as to the whereabouts of his brother Robert, Philip says My brother Robert, old Sir Robert's son? Colbrand the Giant, that same mighty man? BASTARD James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave a while? GURNEY Good leave, good Philip. BASTARD Philip—sparrow! James. There's toys abroad; anon I’ll tell thee more.

The Cambridge companion to Shakespearean tragedy

Preface to the second edition 1. What is a Shakespearean tragedy? Colin Burrow 2. The language of tragedy Russ McDonald 3. Tragedy in Shakespeare's career David Bevington 4. Shakespearean tragedy printed and performed Michael Warren 5. Religion and Shakespearean tragedy Claire McEachern 6. Tragedy and political authority Michael Hattaway 7. Gender and family Catherine Belsey 8. The tragic subject and its passions Gail Kern Paster 9. Tragedies of revenge and ambition Robert N. Watson 10. Shakespeare's tragedies of love Catherine Bates 11. Shakespeare's classical tragedies Coppelia Kahn 12. Why think about Shakespearean tragedy today? Paul A. Kottman 13. Shakespeare's tragedies in performance Lucy Munro.

Bandello's "Timbreo and Fenicia" and The Winter's Tale

Several critics have noticed the similarities in theme, character, and setting between Much Ado About Nothing and The Winter's Tale,(1) and since novella of Timbreo and Fenicia (I, 22) has been accepted as one of the sources of Much Ado, they have intimated a link between this same novella and The Winter's Tale. Yet not until Martin Mueller's recent study has tale been clearly signaled as the imaginative tissue binding the two plays together. Focusing his analysis on the theme of the persecuted and resurrected heroine, Mueller argues that Shakespeare's contact with the Bandellian text was decisive, as it triggered an interest that was reiterated throughout the playwright's career, for Bandello's Fenicia turns tip as Hero, Desdemona, Cordelia, and Hermione.(2) He concludes that these repetitions show that Shakespeare was involved in a of imaginative and economic revision of earlier themes and that The Winter's Tale results from Shakespeare reading Greene's Pandosto with a strong sense of unfinished business in story(3) Mueller gives a general account of several of the striking parallels between the Bandello story and The Winter's Tale: the prominent image of the accused woman as statue in both, the prominence of the theme of time felt both in Hermione's aging and Fenicia's development, and the cathartic and confessional actions of the penitent Leontes and Timbreo. Yet because he is primarily interested in tracing the trajectory of Shakespeare's career, Mueller only nods to these parallels, barely spending three pages on their implications. My purpose is to show with more specificity and depth the nature of Shakespeare's return to Bandello in writing The Winter's Tale. In order to do this, I examine The Winter's Tale in comparison with its four primary source texts: Timbreo-Fenicia tale (1554), Belleforest's translation of tale (1571), Robert Greene's Pandosto (1588), and Much Ado About Nothing (1598-1600).(4) This comparison reveals that, in re-exploring the situation of Much Ado, Shakespeare draws from treatment of important themes in The Winter's Tale like rivalry, honor, repentance, regeneration, and forgiveness more often than from Belleforest's or Greene's handling of these themes. It also suggests the ways in which Shakespeare forged new ideas on these themes through a complex process of imitation and innovation. Since the Bandello tale is much less known to the general reader than the others, let me summarize it. The tale is set in Messina, Italy, in roughly the fourteenth century. Timbreo, a soldier, woos Fenicia, the daughter of Lionato, a poor nobleman tied to the court of Messina. When he finds that he cannot possess Fenicia outside of marriage, he asks for her hand. When Girondo, another soldier and Timbreo's friend, hears of their engagement, he despairs because he secretly loves Fenicia. Therefore, he devises a plot to destroy their relationship. Girondo arranges for Timbreo to witness a man disguised as Fenicia's secret lover climb through her window one night. Enraged at her supposed infidelity, Timbreo calls off the marriage and publicly accuses Fenicia of immoral behavior. Fenicia faints at the harsh accusation, revives to defend herself, but then wastes away until she dies. While her mother and aunt wash her presumably dead body, it is discovered that she is not really dead. Rather than announcing the news, Lionato has her sent off secretly to her aunt and uncle's country home where she remains until she is older and no longer recognizable. Her sister, Belfine, is sent away with her. After Fenicia's public (feigned) funeral, both Timbreo and Girondo begin to repent their separate actions. Girondo confesses his plot to Timbreo, and Timbreo forgives him. They go together to confess to Lionato and pledge their servitude toward him. Lionato accepts and asks Timbreo if he would marry a woman of his choosing, and Timbreo willfully agrees. …

At the edge of the modern, or why is Prospero Shakespeare's greatest creation?

The plots in three of Shakespeare's plays are launched by the same device: the protagonist mistakenly believes that his beloved has betrayed him. One of these plays is a comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, one a tragedy, Othello, and one a romance, The Winter's Tale. Shakespeare thus considered this one problematic situation, which has to do with a male difficulty in accepting one's beloved as both a sexual and a nurturing person, at three times in his life and produced different kinds of plays. By looking at his career through modern studies of adult development, we can see that the shift from one genre to another follows the reorganization of Shakespeare's psyche. The ultimate fruit of that development is Shakespeare's final play, The Tempest, whose protagonist, Prospero, has managed to integrate those aspects of himself which had been in conflict in earlier plays. If we then place Shakespeare's career in a broader psycho-historical context we can see how he helped make the modern nuclear family psychologically possible.

An Allusion to "India" And Pearls

This allusion has importance beyond the fact that it adds to the accumulation of evidence on the side of the Quarto reading. First, Albions England was a best-selling book, first published in 1586, in four volumes, and followed by five subsequent editions, each one augmented, before it reached its last edition in 1612, which contained thirteen books and a prose epitome. A Continuance of Albions England, containing Books 14-16, was published separately in 1606. This publishing history coincides with Shakespeare's career and, for the most part, precedes the date of Othello's composition. Only a very few texts linking the play's specific gem (the pearl) with an Indian unaware of its value are earlier than Othello,2 and no text contemporary with Shakespeare and appealing to a popular audience has before been cited.3 The popularity of Albions England, as well as its rather middle-brow appeal, strongly suggests that the idea of Indians not valuing pearls was a commonly accepted notion. Second, Warner mentions, not Indians, but India. Since this preface was printed six times in thirty years, the likelihood that it contained a misreading or a mistake in spelling, a confusion with Judea, is very small. By noting that pearls are not valued in India, in other words, Warner effectively places the burden of proof on those who would maintain that the country of Judea could have been associated with pearls in exactly the same way.

History and the Histories in Julius Qaesar

ULlUS CAESAR, a play remarkable for an infinite variety of interpretation, was turning point of Shakespeare's career. As much as it points ahead to great tragedies, Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, so much does it draw upon cycle of history plays that Shakespeare had recently completed. The legacy of these histories is illuminated if we can imagine Julius Caesar as whole drama of tetralogy telescoped into one play: Rome, like Shakespeare's England during reigns of Richard II and Henry IV, is a study of continuous disintegration and inevitable progress of power-what Warwick describes to Henry IV as the necessary form of things that allowed Richard to prophesy, or guess, what was to come:

"Food for Powder"--"Food for Worms"

N an age accustomed to and thunder on and off stage, Shakespeare's instinctive revulsion from senseless shedding of is striking and novel. The agonizing cry of Marlowe's Faustus at moment of his damnation, See, see where Christ's streams in firmament! impresses finally with its theatricality rather than with its sensitivity to blood-letting. But Shakespeare's Portia, in a similar vein of melodrama, sets countercurrent to age's insensibility in her warning against shedding of one drop of Christian blood (IV. i. 3I0). From very beginning of Shakespeare's career, this phrase, the effusion of Christian blood, runs like a thread through English history plays, in which, over a long period of time, he turned again and again to tragical cost of war. In Henry VI, his earliest history, good Duke of Gloucester proposes a peace between England and France as only means to stop effusion of our Christian blood (i Henry VI V. i. 8-9), and in Henry V, with which he completed series, French King echoes same sentiment (III. vi. I39-I40). Indeed, business of does not come to a climax until almost unendurable pageant of Macbeth's futile and bloody murders. In none of Shakespeare's historical plays is this humane temper more in evidence than in i Henry IV, where it is thrown into high light through deft use of a potent image. In last decade study of Shakespeare's imagery has been occasion for a good deal of speculation on Shakespeare's life, character, and environment, extending from his observation of direction of flow of water under Clopton bridge to his disgust of fawning spaniels at rich men's tables. As to dubiousness of these speculations, nothing more need be said here than has already been said in Rosemund Tuve's recently published Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery. It is rather to be remarked that, with all this new interest in subject, so little attention should have been paid to what on its face would seem to be a more pertinent field of inquiry, Shakespeare's use of imagery in conformity to special capacities of artistic medium in which he was writing. The prefaces of Granville-Barker have shown how sensitive Shakespeare was to dramatic effects possible on stage on which his plays were produced. It is inconceivable that poet should not have perceived possibilities of poetic imagery so projected. That Shakespeare did think of imagery functionally is a wholly reasonable hypothesis against which evidence in i Henry IV may be tested with profit. But first critics must be dealt with, who, while they will begrudgingly

A Prose Period in Shakespeare's Career?

A Prose Period in Shakespeare's Career?