WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

LIFE:

We know little about him. He was born in Stratford‑on‑Avon in 1564, probably ori April 23. The date of his birth being unknown, it was later fixed on April 23, incidentally, the same day of his death.

His father, John, was a burgess working mainly as a glover, and his mother, Mary Arden, was of a good country family. He was almost certainly educated at Stratford grammar school, where he probably learnt some Latin and Greek.

In November 1582, when he was only 18, he married Anne Hath, who was about 26, and six months later his first child Susan was born, followed, in 1585, by the twins, Hamnet and Judith.' Some time after their birth, apparent y to avoid being arrested for poaching` on the estate of `a Sir Thomas Lucy, Shakespeare left his family and moved to London. What he

did during his first years in the capital, we do not know. According to tradition, however, he had many jobs, working as a school master, holding theatre - goers' horses outside the playhouse, working as a callboy and later as an actor, refurbishing other writers' plays.

In 1595 he joined the Lord Chamberlain's Men, one of the most important companies of actors. Shakespeare's reputation as a dramatist grew, and his financial standing as well. He made friends with very important people, and in particular with the Earl of Southampton. He became a shareholder in the Globe Theatre, and in 1597 he bought New Place, the finest house in Stratford, to which he retired in 1611 and where he died on April 23, 1616.

PLAYS:

As copyright did not exist in Shakespeare's time, it was possible to copy Other writers without any legal consequences. Even Shakespeare seldom in­vented his plots, but borrowed them from all kinds of ancient or contempor­ary sources, for example Plutarch's Lives, Plautus's Menaechmi, the Italian works of Matteo Bandello, Giraldi Cinzio and Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, Holinshed's Chronides, Greene and Chaucer. In his hands, however, the original material was transmuted and so deeply infused with his poetry as to assume new meanings and values.

Like all actors, Shakespeare did not bother to publish his plays, which thus circulated in dubiously authorized versions, later called 'bad quartos',1 put together from shorthand notes taken in the theatre, or reconstructed from memory by one or more actors. As these quartos were obviously full of gaps and mistakes, two former actors and friends of Shakespeare, john Heminge and Henry Condell, decided in 1623 to publish a "First Folio", the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, which (35 in number) were printed for the first time in three sections as 'Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies.'

In the Folio editiort, the playsr were neither grouped chronologically nor dated. In order to assign a precise date to each play, therefore, the critics usually take three types of evidence into consideration:

Ø  internal references, i.e. passages or sentences of the plays referring to contemporary events;

Ø  external references, i.e. references to Shakespeare's plays contained in the works of other writers of the time;

Ø  literary evidence, i.e. the style, the characterization, the plot and the metrical skill of the different plays.

MACBETH tragedy)

Summary:

Macbeth and Banquo, generals of Duncan, king of Scotland, are on their way home after a victorious campaign against rebels. While going through the heath they met three witches who foretell them some events of their future: Macbeth will be Thane of Cawdor and then king of Scotland while Banquo will be the father of a dynasty of kings.

As soon as the witches disappear, the astonished Macbeth and Banquo are met by Ross and Angus, two Scottish noblemen who tell Macbeth that king Duncan, out of gratitude, has entitled him Thane of Cawdor. Incited by the sudden fulfilment of one prophecy and urged by his wife's ambition, Macbeth who has given the king hospitality in his castle, murders him during the night with his wife's help. After his hideous crime he is sized by remorse, but Lady Macbeth succeeds in reassuring him and in strengthening his thirst for power.

But not everything has gone in accordance with Macbeth's s: Duncan's sons Malcolm and Donalbain have escaped and found refuge in England.

Macbeth becomes the new king of Scotland, but there remains an obstacle in his way to absolute power: he fears that if the prophecy comes true, Banqpo's children will rule over Scotland. Thus he rapidly s to kill Banquo and his son Fleance. The execution of the crime is entrusted to two hired killers. Yet the partly fails: Banquo is murdered but Fleance manages to escape.

After the murder, Banquo's ghost haunts Macbeth who is in anguish for what he has done and for his future. He decides to question the witches again in order to know what is in store for him. The witches command him to beware of Macduff, the Thane of Fife, but to fear harm from no man born of woman. They declare that he will never be defeated until 'Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him'. Macbeth insists on learning whether Banquo's children will reign in Scotiand and, in a vision, he is shown a long succession of kings whose features reveal their descent from Banquo.

The witches have just vanished and Macbeth is informed that Macduff has joined

Malcolm in England where they are assembling an army to ht him. Macbeth orders the destruction of Macduff's family.

In the meanwhile Lady Macbeth is more and more upset and tormented with remorse. Unable to bear the memory of Duncan's awful murder and seeing her hands helplessly stained with blood, she eventually dies insane.

Macduff and Malcolm, leading the English army, finally arrive at Birnam Wood near Dunsinae and there each soldier cuts a branch to bear before him in order to conceal their actual numbers. With this stratagem they attack the castle under the astonished eyes of Macbeth, who realizes that the wood is coming against him as the prophecy foretold. As the English arm enters the castie, Macbeth comes across Macduff who is looking for him to revenge his wife's and son's deaths. They ht in a duel, but when Macduff tells Macbeth he was extracted from his mother's womb with surgical instruments Macbeth loses all his strength. The combatants leave the stage hting, but shortly after Macduff returns with Macbeth's head. The usurper being defeated, Duncan's son Malcom is restored to the throne of Scotland.

BRANO 1:

The raven

himself is a horse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements. Come, you Spirit

That tend on mortal thoughts, ùnsex me here

And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top‑full

Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,

Stop up th'access and passage to remorse

That no compunctious visitings of Nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

Th'effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murth ring ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on Nature's mischief! Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the fark,

To cry, "Hold, Hold!"

The soliloquy starts with the image of the raven. The significance of this bird in connected with bad luck and death. An onomatope in used to emphasized his presence.

In her soliloquy Lady Macbeth invokes the spirit of evil and asks for help. The language she use is rich in imagery and what she says reveals unnatural sentiments and her invocation is accompanied by a disquieting, magic, frightening and witch - liker atmosphere.

BRANO 2:

The queen, my lord, is dead.

Macbeth:

She should have died hereafter:

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,

Creeps is this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his our upon the stage,

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

After the death of his wife Macbeth expresses all his weariness.

In this passage Macbeth seems to be indifferent to his wife death. He seems to search for a significance of life but only evokes a world of meaningless repetition. Time has no sense because he rejected those values that make the meaning of life: love, friendship, service. His will has chosen evil and the consequence is chaos and abnegation of meaning. This evil choice can only led to nothingness.

During the play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth undergo a change in their personalities:

Macbeth: loyal traitor of the king ruthless murderer.

Lady Macbeth: evil creature tormented wife mad woman.