A History of English Literature

Contents

William Shakespeare 108
Shakespeare’s life 108
The plays preserved 111
Luck and fame 112
The drama 112
The commercial theatre 112
Predecessors 114
Christopher Marlowe 114
The order of the plays 116
Histories 117
Richard II 118
Henry IV 119
Henry V 120
Comedy 121
A Midsummer Night’s
Dream 122
Twelfth Night 125
The poems 126
Tr agedy 128
Hamlet 129
King Lear 130
Macbe th 132
Late Romances 133
The Te mpest 134
Conclusion 136
Shakespeare’s
achievement 136
His supposed point of
view 136
Ben Jonson 136
The Alchemist 138
Volpone 138

Further reading 138

108

Overview

Shakespeare’s family, early marriage, obscurity. First mentioned as a London

player and playwright at the age of 28, he came in on the crest of a wave of

new poetic drama. Kyd and Marlowe died, leaving the stage to him.

He averaged two plays a year for twenty years: first comedy and history (a form

he perfected), then tragedy, and finally romance. Half of his plays survive only

in the First Folio, introduced by his successor, Jonson.

nWilliam Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s life

William Shakespeare was born in 1564 at Stratford, a market town on the river

Avon in Warwickshire. He was the eldest son and the third of eight children of John

Shakespeare, a glover, and Mary Arden, a landowner’s daughter. In 1568 John was

bailiff (mayor) of Stratford.

Education at Stratford school was based on Latin grammar, rhetoric and compo-

sition; to speak English was forbidden in the upper forms. At church, Holy Trinity,

which William attended by law with his father, he would also have learned much. At

home there were three brothers and two sisters (three other sisters died as children),

and around the home there were river-meadows, orchards and parks. He saw the

public life of the town, too, although his father’s part in this declined. Strolling play-

ers visited Stratford, and at nearby Coventry there was every June a performance of

the cycle of Mystery plays on the feast of Corpus Christi (see p. 66).

William’s parents, like their Warwickshire contemporaries, were brought up as

Catholics. It used to be taught that the English Reformation arose for reasons of

co nscience but historians now see it as having been imposed from above for reasons

of state (see p. 81). The poet’s mother, Mary Arden, came from a noted Catholic

family; a cousin was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1583. John was the Council’s

chief officer when William went to school, but when William left school, John had

not attended Stratford’s Common Council for three years. He was reported to the

authorities as a ‘recusant’ (from Latin recusare, to refuse): one who refused to attend

Shakespeare and the

Drama

4

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