89
convey this metamorphosis can
only really ever be fully appreciated
in performance, but readers will
appreciate that Bottom’s experience
of life has been overturned, and for
a brief moment he gets to feel life as
someone other than himself. This
technique is repeated in some
of Shakespeare’s other comedies
where disguise allows characters
to alter their identity: Rosalind in
As You Like It and Viola in Tw e l f t h
Night both cross-dress as young
men; and in The Comedy of Errors
two sets of twins are mistaken for
one another to great comic effect.Perils of power
Shakespeare’s history plays are
filled with duplicitous characters.
In Richard III, Richard of Gloucester
disguises his intentions to murder
his way to the throne and becomes
arguably Shakespeare’s greatest
villain. Set apart by his misshapenbody, the hunchback Richard is
forcefully charismatic from his first
soliloquy, which opens the play. He
informs the audience that he is
“determined to prove a villain,” and
proclaims that he is “subtle, false,
and treacherous.” The soliloquies,
and the symbolism of his deformity,
cast Richard as the vice figure of
the drama: audiences love to hate
him. And yet, as is the case in all
of Shakespeare’s history plays from
Richard II to Henry VI, power isRENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT
shown to be fragile. Shakespeare
notes in Henry IV Part 2, “Uneasy
lies the head that wears a crown”:
those in power are never free
from danger. This is a lesson that
Richard III learns to his surprise.
Having murdered his way to the
throne he has to continue killing
until he feels that all threats to
his crown have been wiped out.Works for the ages
The First Folio stretches to over
900 pages, contains 36 plays, and
features the best-known portrait
of Shakespeare on its title page,
but it does not include Pericles or
The Two Noble Kinsmen, which
can be found in most copies of
Shakespeare’s complete works
t o day. The Tempest, Cymbeline,
and The Winter’s Tale are often
referred to as romances in modern
editions, while Coriolanus, Julius
Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra
are sometimes spoken of today as
his “Roman plays.”
Shakespeare’s works have
burst beyond the generic confines
in which they were first published,
but it is thanks to the First Folio
that Shakespeare’s works have
survived at all. ■The enchanted Bottom the weaver,
of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, whose
head has beed replaced with that of an
ass, becomes desirable to Titania, who
is under the spell of a love potion.The authorship debate
Various conspiracy theories
have circulated since the late
18th century claiming that
William Shakespeare of
Stratford-upon-Avon was not
the author behind the works
published in the First Folio.
There is a long catalogue
of alternative candidates, and
it continues to grow. The list
includes figures such as Sir
Francis Bacon, Christopher
Marlowe, Edward de Vere, and
even Queen Elizabeth I, all of
whom died a decade beforeShakespeare’s last plays were
staged or published. How could
the Elizabethan playwright
Christopher Marlowe have
written the plays when he was
murdered in 1593? One story
goes that Christopher Marlowe
did not really die in a tavern
brawl in 1593, but went into
hiding and continued to supply
the public theaters with plays
under the pseudonym “William
Shakespeare.” The arguments
for the other contenders are
equally improbable.US_082-089_FirstFolio.indd 89 08/10/2015 13:04