All the world’s a stage And all the men and women merely players. (Shakespeare, As You Like It)
University Wits: Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, George Peele, Thomas Nashe and Thomas Lodge
Miracle and mystery plays
John Heywood
The four PP
The Play of the Weather
And so in all thynges, wyth one voyce agreable, We have clerely fynyshed our foresayd parleament,
To your great welth, whyche shall be fyrme and stable, And to our honour farre inestymable.
For syns theyr powers, as ours, addyd to our owne, Who can, we say, know us as we shulde be knowne? (The Play of the Weather)
Ralph Roister Doister (about 1552) by Nicholas Udall,
Gorboduc (1561)
by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackille
-Great tragedies of Christopher Marlowe,
-the major Senecan-influenced play The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd,
-and the best reworking of a Plautus comedy in The Comedy of Errors by a new young dramatist, William Shakespeare.
The Spanish Tragedy
The political background of the play is loosely related to the victory of Spain over Portugal in 1580. Lorenzo and Bel-imperia are the children of Don Cyprian, duke of Castile (brother of the king of Spain); Hieronimo is marshal of Spain and Horatio his son. Balthazar, son of the viceroy of Portugal, has been captured in the war. He courts Bel-imperia, and Lorenzo and the king of Spain favour his suit for political reasons. Lorenzo and Balthazar discover that Bel-imperia loves Horatio; they surprise the couple by night in Hieronimo's garden and hang Horatio on a tree. Hieronimo discovers his son's body and runs mad with grief. He succeeds nevertheless in discovering the identity of the murderers, and carries out revenge by means of a play, Solyman and Perseda, in which Lorenzo and Balthazar are killed, and Bel-imperia stabs herself. Hieronimo bites out his tongue before killing himself. The whole action is watched over by Revenge and the Ghost of Andrea who was previously killed in battle by Balthazar. The play was the prototype of the English »revenge tragedy genre.
The Spanish Tragedy
No, princes, know I am Hieronimo,
The hopeless father of a hapless son, Whose tongue is tun’d to tell his latest tale, Not to excuse gross errors in the play.
I see your looks urge instance of these words,
Behold the reason urging me to this:
[Shows his dead son.]
See here my show, look on this spectacle: Here lay my hope, and here my hope hath end:
Here lay my heart, and here my heart was slain: Here lay my treasure, here my treasure lost: Here lay my bliss, and here my bliss bereft: But hope, heart, treasure, joy and bliss,
All fled, fail’d, died, yea, all decay’d with this.
New audience
New fixed theaters
New theater companies
Major dramatists except Shakespeare, Marlow, and Janson
Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Thomas Dekker, Francis Beaumont and
John Fletcher (usually in
collaboration), Thomas Heywood, Philip Massinger, John Ford
Maid's Tragedy, The, a tragedy by * Beaumont and Fletcher, generally considered one of their best works. Amintor, a gentleman of Rhodes, breaks his engagement to Aspatia at the king's request and in her stead marries Evadne, sister to his friend Melantius. On their wedding night, in a powerful confrontation, Evadne reveals that she is the king's mistress and refuses to sleep with him. Amintor initially agrees to conceal the position and present a mock marriage to the world; but later he reveals the truth to Melantius, who passionately reproaches the by now penitent Evadne, and persuades her to murder the king. Meanwhile the desolate Aspatia laments her loss in some of the finest verse in the play. Aspatia later takes action by disguising herself as her brother and provoking the reluctant Amintor to a duel. He wounds her; as she lies dying Evadne arrives, fresh from the king's murder, hoping to be pardoned by Amintor. He rejects her; she commits suicide; Aspatia reveals herself and dies; Amintor takes his own life. The last act of the play was rewritten by E. *Waller, with a happy ending in which Amintor marries Aspatia.
Knight of the Burning Pestle, The, a comedy now thought to be the unaided work of »Beaumont, but formerly generally attributed to Beaumont and Fletcher; it was probably performed 1607-8, and was printed (anonymously) 1613. The most successful of Beaumont's plays, it is a high-spirited comedy of manners, and a burlesque of knight-errantry and of such fabulous and patriotic plays as Heywood's The Four Prentices of London and The Travels of the Three English Brothers by Rowley. It has clear echoes of Don Quixote, both in attitude and incident, and satirizes the middle-class taste for such popular and improbable romances.
It takes the form of a play-within-a-play: a grocer and his wife, members of an audience about to watch a drama called 'The London Merchant', interrupt the prologue to insist that their apprentice Rafe have a part. He therefore becomes a Grocer Errant, with a Burning Pestle portrayed on his shield, and undertakes various absurd adventures, including the release of patients held captive by a barber, Barbarossa. These are interspersed with the real plot, in which Jasper, a merchant's apprentice, woos, and after much opposition wins, his master's daughter Luce
RALPH My elder prentice Tim shall be my trusty squire, and little George my dwarf. Hence, my blue apron! Yet, in remembrance of my former trade, upon my shield shall be portrayed a Burning Pestle, and I will be called the Knight of the Burning Pestle.
WIFE Nay, I dare swear thou wilt not forget thy old trade; thouwert ever meek. RALPH Tim!
TIM Anon.
RALPH My beloved squire, and George my dwarf, I charge you that from henceforth you never call me by any other name but ‘the right courteous and valiant Knight of the Burning Pestle’; and that you never call any female by the name of a woman or wench; but ‘fair lady’, if she have her desires, if not, ‘distressed damsel’; that you call all forests and heaths ‘deserts’, and all horses ‘palfreys’.
WIFE This is very fine, faith. – Do the gentlemen like Ralph, drink you, husband? CITIZEN Aye, I warrant thee; the players would give all the shoes in their shop for him.
RALPH My beloved squire Tim, stand out. Admit this were a desert, and over it a knight-errant pricking, and I should bid you inquire of his intents, what would you say?
TIM Sir, my master sent me to know whither you are riding?
RALPH No, thus: ‘Fair sir, the right courteous and valiant Knight of the Burning Pestle commanded me to inquire upon what adventure you are bound, whether to relieve some distressed damsel, or otherwise.’
Revenger's Tragedy, The, a tragedy published anonymously in 1607, and from 1656 ascribed to Tourneur; its authorship has been disputed since 1891, with some scholars defending the traditional attribution and others championing the rival claims of *Middleton and others.
The central character is Vendice (or Vindice), intent on revenging the death of his mistress, poisoned by the lecherous old duke. The court is a centre of vice and intrigue; the duchess's youngest son is convicted of rape, she herself seduces Spurio, the duke's bastard, and her two older sons, the duke's stepsons, plot against each other and against Lussurioso, the duke's heir. Vendice, disguised as Piato, appears to attempt to procure his own sister Castiza for Lussurioso; she resists, but their mother Gratiana temporarily suc cumbs to his bribes and agrees to play the bawd. Vendice murders the duke by tricking him into kissing the poisoned skull of his mistress, and most of the remaining characters kill one another or are killed in a final masque of revengers and murderers; Vendice, who survives the bloodbath, owns up to the murder of the duke, and is promptly condemned to death with his brother and accomplice Hippolite by the duke's successor, old Antonio. He is led off to execution, content to 'die after a nest of dukes'.
LUSSURIOSO Be witnesses of a strange spectacle: Choosing for private conference that sad
room, We found the Duke my father geal’d in blood.
1ST SERVANT My Lord the Duke! – run, hie thee Nencio, Startle the court by signifying so much.
[Exit NENCIO]
VINDICE [aside] Thus much by wit a deep revenger can, When murder’s known, to be the clearest man. We’re fordest off, and with as bold an eye, Survey his body as the standers-by.
LUSSURIOSO My royal father, too basely let blood, By a malevolent slave. HIPPOLITO [aside] Hark, He calls thee slave again.
VINDICE [aside] H’ ’as lost, he may.
LUSSURIOSO Oh sight, look hither, see, his lips are gnawn With poison. VINDICE How – his lips? by th’ mass they be.
LUSSURIOSO O villain – O rogue – O slave – O rascal! HIPPOLITO [aside] O good deceit, he quits him with like terms.
Thomas Middleton
Changeling
Women Beware of Women
A Game at Chess
Changeling, The, a tragedy by Middleton and Rowley, printed 1653, but acted as early as 1622.
Beatrice-Joanna, daughter of the governor of Ali cant, is ordered by her father to marry Alonzo de Piracquo. She falls in love with Alsemero, and in order to avoid the marriage employs the ill-favoured villain De Flores, whom she detests but who cherishes a passion for her, to murder Alonzo. To the horror of Beatrice, De Flores exacts the reward he had lusted for. Beatrice is now to marry Alsemero. To escape detection she arranges that her maid Diaphanta shall take her place on the wedding night; and to remove a dangerous witness, De Flores then kills the maid. The guilt of Beatrice and De Flores is revealed to Alsemero, and they are both brought before the governor, whereupon they take their own lives.
Women Beware Women, a tragedy by Middleton.
Set in Florence, the action involves two interwoven plots. The sub-plot is concerned with the guilty love of Hippolito for his niece Isabella. Hippolito's sister Livia acts as go-between, persuading Isabella she is no blood relation of her uncle: Isabella then consents to marry a foolish young heir as a screen for her own passion for Hippolito.
The main plot is loosely based on the life of the historical Bianca Cappello, who became the mistress, and then the consort, of Francesco de' Medici (1541- 87), second grand duke of Tuscany. In Middleton's version, she is at the opening of the play innocently but secretly married to the poor but honest young Leantio, a merchant's clerk. The duke sees her at a window and falls in love with her: in II. ii, while Livia outwits Leantio's mother at chess (a scene invoked by T. S. *Eliot in
*The Waste Land), the duke gains access to Bianca and seduces her. Thereafter both she and Leantio are plunged into the corruption of the court, and consumed by it. Bianca becomes the duke's mistress: the duke, reproved by the cardinal, his brother, for his sin, contrives the death of Leantio, who has sworn everlasting enmity to Bianca, and accepted both financial and amorous compensation for her loss. These various crimes, in the last act, meet with retribution in a wholesale massacre of the characters, through the theatrical medium of a masque accompanied by poisoned incense: Bianca destroys herself by drinking deliberately from a poisoned cup.
A Game at Chess is a comic satirical play by Thomas Middleton, first staged in August 1624 by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre. The play is notable for its political content, dramatizing a conflict between Spain and England.
The plot takes the form of a chess match, and the play includes some genuine chess moves. Instead of personal names, the characters are known as the White Knight, the Black King, and so forth. Yet the play unmistakably alludes to Anglo-Spanish diplomacy under King James I of England, especially the failed marriage negotiation between Prince Charles and the Spanish Infanta Maria Anna of Spain. The play is satirical of King James, and it was shut down after only nine days.
John Webster
The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi
The Duchess of Malfi tells the story of the spirited duchess and her love for her trustworthy steward Antonio. They marry secretly, despite the opposition of her two brothers, Ferdinand (the Duke of Calabria) and the Cardinal. Although she bears three children, she refuses to name the father. Eventually betrayed by Bosola, a spy, the duchess and her family flee but are intercepted; Antonio and the oldest child, a boy, escape. Ferdinand orders Bosola to strangle the duchess, her two younger children, and her maid and then goes mad with guilt. In typical fashion for revenge tragedy, the final act is one of carnage. All are killed except for the eldest son of the duchess and Antonio, who is named ruler of Malfi.
Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi is often regarded as the last great tragedy of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, second only to William Shakespeare’s. There is no evidence that Webster had read or seen the play that Spanish dramatist Lope de Vega had written about the duchess. Webster’s style is reliant on dense symbolic imagery. The duchess, by far the strongest character in the play, is a passionate noble woman who rejects her brothers’ demands for the sake of love. Unbroken by cruel treatment, she proclaims before her death, “I am Duchess of Malfi still.”
DUCHESS Come, violent death, Serve for mandragora to make me sleep! –Go tell my brothers, when I am laid out, They then may feed in quiet. [They strangle her]
BOSOLA Where’s the waiting-woman? Fetch her: some other strangle the children. [Enter Executioners with CARIOLA] Look you, there sleeps your mistress.
CARIOLA Oh, you are damn’d Perpetually for this! My turn is next; Is’t not so order’d?
BOSOLA Yes, and I am glad You are so well prepar’d for ’t.
CARIOLA You are deceiv’d, sir, I am not prepar’d for ’t, I will not die, I will first come to my answer; and know How I have offended.
BOSOLA Come, despatch her. –You kept her counsel, now you shall keep ours.
White Devil, The a tragedy by Webster.
The duke of Brachiano, husband of Isabella, the sister of Francisco, duke of Florence, is weary of her and in love with Vittoria, wife of Camillo. The Machiavellian Flamineo, Vittoria's brother, helps Brachiano to seduce her, and contrives (at her suggestion, delivered indirectly in a dream) the death of Camillo: Brachiano causes Isabella to be poisoned. Vittoria is tried for adultery and murder in the celebrated central arraignment scene, and defends herself with great spirit. She is sentenced to confinement in 'a house of penitent whores', whence she is carried off by Brachiano, who marries her. Flamineo quarrels with his younger brother, the virtuous Marcello, and kills him; he dies in the arms of their mother Cornelia, who later, driven out of her wits by grief, sings the dirge 'Call for the robin redbreast, and the wren', a scene which elicits from Flamineo a speech of remorse. ('I have a strange thing in me to the which cannot give a name, without it be I Compassion.') Meanwhile Francisco, at the prompting of Isabella's ghost, avenges her death by poisoning Brachiano, and Vittoria and Flamineo, both of whom die Stoic deaths, are murdered by his dependents.
All the world’s a stage And all the men and women merely players. (Shakespeare, As You Like It)
Christopher Marlow
Education
Espionage
Language
Christopher Marlow
Tamburlaine
Dido, Queen of Carthage
The Jew of Malta
Edward II
Dr. Faustus
Overreachers
Dido, Queen of Carthage
Dido, Queen of Carthage (full title: The Tragedie of Dido Queene of Carthage) is a short play written by the English playwright Christopher Marlowe, with possible contributions by Thomas Nashe. It was probably written between 1587 and 1593, and was first published in 1594. The story focuses on the classical figure of Dido, the Queen of Carthage. It tells an intense dramatic tale of Dido and her fanatical love for Aeneas (induced by Cupid), Aeneas' betrayal of her and her eventual suicide on his departure for Italy. The playwrights relied on Books 1, 2, and 4 of Virgil's Aeneid as primary source.
The Jew of Malta
The Jew of Malta, five-act tragedy in blank verse by Christopher Marlowe,
produced about 1590 and published in 1633.
In order to raise tribute demanded by the Turks, the Christian governor of Malta seizes half the property of all Jews living on Malta. When Barabas, a wealthy Jewish merchant, protests, his entire estate is confiscated. Seeking revenge on his enemies, Barabas plots their destruction, but in the end he is betrayed and dies the death he had planned for his enemies.
Edward II
The play follows the tragic hero Edward II as the English nobility challenge his rule as king because of his relationship with Piers Gaveston Edward II's confidant, court favorite, and lover.
In Edward II, Marlowe shows a man developing an appetite for power and increasingly corrupted as power comes to him. In each instance the dramatist shares in the excitement of the pursuit of glory.
Zenocrate, were Egypt Jove’s own land,
Yet would I with my sword make Jove to stoop. I will confute those blind geographers
That make a triple region in the world, Excluding regions which I mean to trace, And with this pen reduce them to a map, Calling the provinces, cities, and towns, After my name and thine, Zenocrate: Here at Damascus will I make the point That shall begin the perpendicular. . . . (Tamburlaine the Great, Part One)
Thus, loving neither, will I live with both, Making a profit of my policy;
And he from whom my most advantage comes, Shall be my friend.
This is the life we Jews are us’d to lead; And reason too, for Christians do the like. (The Jew of Malta)
Life
William Shekespeare
Education
Style
Works
Early plays from 1589 to 1593
KING HENRY VI, PART ONE
KING HENRY VI, PART TWO
KING HENRY VI, PART THREE
TITUS ANDRONICUS
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
KING RICHARD III
Plays from 1593 to 1598
KING JOHN
LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST
ROMEO AND JULIET
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
KING RICHARD II
KING HENRY IV, PART ONE
KING HENRY IV, PART TWO
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
Romeo and Juliet
The Montagues and Capulets, the two chief families of Verona, are bitter enemies; Escalus, the prince, threatens anyone who disturbs the peace with death. Romeo, son of old Lord Montague, is in love with Lord Capulet's niece Rosaline. But at a feast given by Capulet, which Romeo attends disguised by a mask, he sees and falls in love with Juliet, Capulet's daughter, and she with him. After the feast he overhears, under her window, Juliet's confession of her love for him, and wins her consent to a secret marriage. With the help of Friar Laurence, they are wedded next day. Mercutio, a friend of Romeo, meets Tybalt, of the Capulet family, who is infuriated by his discovery of Romeo's presence at the feast, and they quarrel. Romeo comes on the scene, and attempts to reason with Tybalt, but Tybalt and Mercutio fight, and Mercutio falls. Then Romeo draws and Tybalt is killed. The prince, Montague, and Capulet come up, and Romeo is sentenced to banishment. Early next day, after spending the night with Juliet, he leaves Verona for Mantua, counselled by the friar, who intends to reveal Romeo's marriage at an opportune moment. Capulet proposes to marry Juliet to Count Paris, and when she seeks excuses to avoid this, peremptorily insists. Juliet consults the friar, who bids her consent to the match, but on the night before the wedding drink a potion which will render her apparently lifeless for 42 hours. He will warn Romeo, who will rescue her from the vault on her awakening and carry her to Mantua. The friar's message to Romeo miscarries, and Romeo hears that Juliet is dead. Buying poison, he comes to the vault to have a last sight of Juliet. He chances upon Count Paris outside the vault; they fight and Paris is killed. Then Romeo, after a last kiss on Juliet's lips, drinks the poison and dies. Juliet awakes and finds Romeo dead by her side, and the cup still in his hand. Guessing what has
happened, she stabs herself and dies.
Plays from 1598, with likely dates of composition
1598 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
• | 1599 | KING HENRY V |
• | 1599 | JULIUS CAESAR |
• | 1600 | AS YOU LIKE IT |
• | 1600 | HAMLET |
• | 1601 | TWELFTH NIGHT |
• | 1602 | TROILUS AND CRESSIDA |
• | 1603 | ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL |
• | 1604 | MEASURE FOR MEASURE |
• | 1604 | OTHELLO |
• | 1605 | KING LEAR |
• | 1606 | MACBETH |
• | 1607 | ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA |
• | 1607 | TIMON OF ATHENS |
• | 1608 | CORIOLANUS |
Hamlet
Old Hamlet, king of Denmark, is recently dead, and his brother Claudius has assumed the throne and married his widow Gertrude. Young Hamlet, returning from university at Wittenberg, learns from the ghost of his father that Claudius murdered him by pouring poison into his ear, and is commanded to avenge the murder without injuring Gertrude. Hamlet warns his friend Horatio and the guard Marcellus (who have also seen the apparition) that he intends to feign madness, and swears them to secrecy. Immediately after his famous speech of deliberation beginning 'To be, or not to be' (ill. i) he repudiates Ophelia, whom he has loved, while spied on by Claudius and by Ophelia's father Polonius. He welcomes a troupe of visiting players, and arranges a performance of a play ('the Mouse-trap') about fratricide, which Claudius breaks off, in apparently guilty and fearful fury, when the player Lucianus appears to murder his uncle by pouring poison into his ear. Hamlet refrains from killing Claudius while he is at prayer, but stabs through the arras in his mother's bedroom, killing the old counsellor Polonius, before reprimanding his mother for her affection for Claudius. Claudius sends Hamlet to England with sealed orders that he should be killed on arrival. Hamlet outwits him, however, returning to Denmark, having arranged the deaths of his old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who were his uncle's agents. During Hamlet's absence Ophelia has gone mad with grief from Hamlet's rejection of her and her father's death, and is found drowned. Her brother Laertes, having returned from France, determines to avenge his sister's death. Hamlet and Laertes meet in the graveyard where Ophelia is to be buried, and fight in her grave. Claudius arranges a fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes, giving the latter a poisoned foil; an exchange of weapons results in the deaths of both combatants, not
before Gertrude has drunk a poisoned cup intended for her son, and the dying Hamlet has
To be or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep –
No more. And by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to; ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep –
To sleep, perchance to dream – aye, there’s the rub: For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause. There’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the poor man’s contumely, The pangs of disprized love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,
Macbeth
Macbeth and Banquo, generals of Duncan, king of Scotland, returning from a victorious campaign against rebels, encounter three weird sisters, or witches, upon a heath, who prophesy that Macbeth shall be thane of Cawdor, and king hereafter, and that Banquo shall beget kings though he be none. Immediately afterwards comes the news that the king has created Macbeth thane of Cawdor. Stimulated by the prophecy, and spurred on by Lady Macbeth, Macbeth murders Duncan, who is on a visit to his castle. Duncan's sons Malcolm and Donalbain escape, and Macbeth assumes the crown. To defeat the prophecy of the witches regarding Banquo, he orders the murder of Banquo and his son Fleance, but the latter escapes. Haunted by the ghost of Banquo, Macbeth consults the weird sisters, and is told to beware of Macduff, the thane of Fife; that none born of woman has power to harm Macbeth; and that he never will be vanquished till Birnam Wood shall come to Dunsinane. Learning that Macduff has joined Malcolm, who is gathering an army in England, he surprises the castle of Macduff and causes Lady Macduff and her children to be slaughtered. Lady Macbeth goes mad and dies. The army of Malcolm and Macduff attacks Macbeth; passing through Birnam Wood every man cuts a bough and under these 'leavy screens' marches on Dunsinane. Macduff, who was 'from his mother's womb I Untimely ripp'd', kills Macbeth. Malcolm is hailed king of Scotland.
LADY MACBETH ‘They met me in the day of success: and I have
learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in
the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who all-hailed me ‘Thane of Cawdor;’ by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with ‘Hail, king that shalt be!’ This have I thought good to deliver
thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell.’
Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great; Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly, That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win: thou’ldst have, great Glamis, That which cries ‘Thus thou must do, if thou have it;
And that which rather thou dost fear to do
Than wishest should be undone.’ Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear; And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round, Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem To have thee crown’d withal.
Messenger The king comes here to-night. LADY MACBETH Thou’rt mad to say it: Is not thy master with him? who, were’t so, Would have inform’d for preparation.
Messenger So please you, it is true: our thane is coming: One of my fellows had the speed of him,
Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more Than would make up his message.
LADY MACBETH Give him tending; He brings great news.
Exit Messenger
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
Twelfth Night
Sebastian and Viola, twin brother and sister and closely resembling one another, are separated in
a shipwreck off the coast of Illyria. Viola, brought to shore in a boat, disguises herself as a youth, Cesario, and takes service as page with Duke Orsino, who is in love with the lady Olivia. She rejects the duke's suit and will not meet him. Orsino makes a confidant of Cesario and sends her to press his suit on Olivia, much to the distress of Cesario, who has fallen in love with Orsino. Olivia in turn falls in love with Cesario. Sebastian and Antonio, captain of the ship that had rescued Sebas tian, now arrive in Illyria. Cesario, challenged to a duel by Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a rejected suitor of Olivia, is rescued from her predicament by Antonio, who takes her for Sebastian. Antonio, being arrested at that moment for an old offence, claims from Cesario a purse that he had entrusted to Sebastian, is denied it, and hauled off to prison. Olivia coming upon the true Sebastian, takes him for Cesario, invites him to her house, and marries him out of hand. Orsino comes to visit Olivia. Antonio, brought before him, claims Cesario as the youth he has rescued from the sea; while Olivia claims Cesario as her husband. The duke, deeply wounded, is bidding farewell to Olivia and the 'dissembling cub' Cesario, when the arrival of the true Sebastian clears up the confusion. The duke, having lost Olivia, and becoming conscious of the love that Viola has betrayed, turns his affection to her, and they are married.
Much of the play's comedy comes from the sub-plot dealing with the members of Olivia's household: Sir Toby Belch, her uncle, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, his friend, Malvolio, her pompous steward, Maria, her waiting-gentlewoman, and her clown Feste. Exasperated by Malvolio's officiousness, the other members of the household make him believe that Olivia is in love with him and that he must return her affection. In courting her he behaves so outrageously that he is imprisoned as a madman. Olivia has him released and the joke against him is explained, but he is
not amused by it, threatening, 'I'll be reveng'd on the whole pack of you.'
‘Late’ plays
1608 PERICLES
1610 CYMBELINE
1611 THE WINTER’S TALE
1611 THE TEMPEST
1613 KING HENRY VIII
Winter’s Tale
Leontes, king of Sicily, and Hermione, his virtuous wife, are visited by Leontes's
childhood friend Polix enes, king of Bohemia. Leontes presently convinces himself that Hermione and Polixenes are lovers, attempts to procure the death of the latter by poison, and on his escape imprisons Hermione, who in prison gives birth to a daughter. Paulina, wife of Antigonus, a Sicilian lord, tries to move the king's compassion by bringing the baby to him, but in vain. He orders Antigonus to leave the child on a desert shore to perish. He disregards a Delphian oracle declaring Hermione innocent. He soon learns that his son Mamillius has died of sorrow for Hermione's treatment, and shortly after that Hermione herself is dead, and is filled with remorse. Meanwhile Antigonus leaves the baby girl, Perdita, on the shore of Bohemia, and is himself killed by a bear. Perdita is found and brought up by a shepherd. Sixteen years pass. When she grows up, Florizel, son of King Polixenes, falls in love with her, and his love is returned. This is discovered by Polixenes, to avoid whose anger Florizel, Perdita, and the old shepherd flee from Bohemia to the court of Leontes, where the identity of Perdita is discovered, to Leontes's great joy, and the revival of his grief for the loss of Hermione. Paulina offers to show him a statue that perfectly resembles Hermione, and when the king's grief is intensified by the sight of this, the statue comes to life and reveals itself as the living Hermione, whose death Paulina had falsely reported in order to save her life. Polixenes is reconciled to the marriage of his son with Perdita, on finding that the shepherd-girl is really the daughter of his former friend Leontes.
The Tempest
Prospero, duke of Milan, ousted from his throne by his brother Antonio, and turned adrift on the
sea with his child Miranda, has been cast upon a lonely island. This had been the place of banishment of the witch Sycorax. Prospero, by his knowledge of magic, has released various spirits (including Ariel) formerly imprisoned by the witch, and these now obey his orders. He also keeps in service the witch's son Caliban, a misshapen monster, formerly the sole inhabitant of the island. Prospero and Miranda have lived thus for 12 years. When the play begins a ship carrying the usurper, his confederate Alonso, king of Naples, his brother Sebastian and son Ferdinand, is by the art of Prospero wrecked on the island. The passengers are saved, but Ferdinand is thought by the rest to be drowned, and he thinks this is their fate. According to Prospero's plan Ferdinand and Miranda are thrown together, fall in love, and plight their troths. Prospero appears to distrust Ferdinand and sets him to carrying logs. On another part of the island Sebastian and Antonio plot to kill Alonso and Gonzalo, 'an honest old Councellor' who had helped Prospero in his banish ment. Caliban offers his services to Stephano, a drunken butler, and Trinculo, a jester, and persuades them to try to murder Prospero. As their conspiracy nears him, Prospero breaks off the masque of Iris, Juno, and Ceres, which Ariel has presented to Ferdinand and Miranda. Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo are driven off and Ariel brings the king and his courtiers to Prospero's cell. There he greets 'My true preserver' Gonzalo, forgives his brother Antonio, on the condi tion that he restores his dukedom to him, and reunites Alonso with his son Ferdinand, who is discovered playing chess with Miranda. While Alonso repents for what he has done, Antonio and Sebastian do not speak directly to Prospero, but exchange ironical and cynical comments with each other. The boatswain and master of the ship appear to say that it has been magically repaired and that the crew is safe. Before all embark for Italy Prospero frees Ariel from his service, renounces his magic, and leaves Caliban once more alone on the island.
O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer.
(Miranda, Act 1 Scene 2)
My library was dukedom large enough. (Prospero, Act 1 Scene 2)
Ferdinand,
With hair up-staring – then like reeds, not hair –Was the first man that leaped; cried ‘Hell is empty And all the devils are here.’
(Ariel, Act 1 Scene 2)
For I am all the subjects that you have, Which first was mine own king. (Caliban, Act 1 Scene 2)
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. (Trinculo, Act 2 Scene 2)
Hast thou not dropped from heaven?
(Caliban, Act 2 Scene 2)
I am your wife, if you will marry me:
If not, I'll die your maid: to be your fellow You may deny me, but I'll be your servant, Whether you will or no.
(Miranda, Act 3 Scene 1)
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on: and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
(Prospero, Act 4 Scene 1)
Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie:
There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. (Ariel, Act 5 Scene 1)
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't.
(Miranda, Act 5 Scene 1)
As you from crimes would pardoned be, Let your indulgence set me free. (Prospero, Epilogue)
Ben Janson
Life
Influence
Comedy of Humors
Christopher Marlow
Everyman in His Humor
Everyman Out of His Humor
Sejanus His Fall
Eastward Ho
Volpone
Alchemsit
Sejanus His Fall
A Roman tragedy by Jonson, performed by the King's Men 1603, with Shakespeare and Burbage in the cast, printed 1605.
Based mainly on Tacitus, the play deals with the rise of Sejanus during the reign of Tiberius, his destruction of the family of Germanicus, and his poisoning of Tiberius' son Drusus. Suspecting the scope of his favourite's ambition, Tiberius leaves Rome, setting his agent Macro to spy on him. Tiberius denounces Sejanus in a letter to the senate, which condemns him to death, and the mob, stirred up by Macro, tears him to pieces.
MAMMON The whole nest are fled! LOVEWIT What sort of birds were they? MAMM]ON A kind of choughs,
Or thievish daws, sir, that have pick’d my purse
Of eight score and ten pounds, within these five weeks, Beside my first materials; and my goods
That lie i’ the cellar; which I am glad they ha’ left; I may have home yet.
Eastward Hoe
Eastward Hoe, a comedy by G. *Chapman, *Jonson, and J. *Marston, printed 1605, having been previously performed by the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars. A passage derogatory to the Scots (ill. iii. 40-7) gave offence at court, and Chapman and Jonson were imprisoned, but released on the inter cession of powerful friends. The play is particularly interesting for the light it throws on London life of the time. Like Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday, it gives a sympathetic picture of a tradesman.
The plot contrasts the careers of the virtuous and idle apprentices, Golding and Quicksilver, of the goldsmith Touchstone; and the fates of his two daughters, the modest Mildred, who marries the industrious Golding, and the immodest Gertrude who, in order to ride in her own coach, marries the penniless adventurer Sir Petronel Flash. Golding soon rises to the dignity of a deputy alderman, while Sir Petronel, having sent off his lady in a coach to an imaginary castle of his and filched her dowry, sets off for Virginia, accompanied by the prodigal Quicksilver, who has robbed his master. They are wrecked on the Isle of Dogs, and brought up before Golding, the deputy alderman. After some days in prison, where their mortifications lead them to repent, they are released at Golding's intercession.
Sejanus His Fall
A Roman tragedy by Jonson, performed by the King's Men 1603, with Shakespeare and Burbage in the cast, printed 1605.
Based mainly on Tacitus, the play deals with the rise of Sejanus during the reign of Tiberius, his destruction of the family of Germanicus, and his poisoning of Tiberius' son Drusus. Suspecting the scope of his favourite's ambition, Tiberius leaves Rome, setting his agent Macro to spy on him. Tiberius denounces Sejanus in a letter to the senate, which condemns him to death, and the mob, stirred up by Macro, tears him to pieces.
MAMMON The whole nest are fled! LOVEWIT What sort of birds were they? MAMM]ON A kind of choughs,
Or thievish daws, sir, that have pick’d my purse
Of eight score and ten pounds, within these five weeks, Beside my first materials; and my goods
That lie i’ the cellar; which I am glad they ha’ left; I may have home yet.
The Alchemist
The play concerns the turmoil of deception that ensues when Lovewit leaves his London house in the care of his scheming servant, Face. With the aid of a fraudulent alchemist named Subtle and his companion, Dol Common, Face sets about dispensing spurious charms and services to a steady stream of dupes. These include the intemperate knight Sir Epicure Mammon, the pretentious Puritans Ananias and Tribulation Wholesome, the ambitious tobacconist Abel Drugger, the gamester law clerk Dapper, and the parvenu Kastril with his widowed sister, Pliant. The shrewd gambler Surly nearly exposes the sham by posing as a Spanish don seeking the hand of Pliant, but the gullible parties reject his accusations. When Lovewit reappears without warning, Subtle and Dol flee the scene, leaving Face to make peace by arranging the marriage of his master to the beautiful and wealthy Dame Pliant.
MAMMON The whole nest are fled! LOVEWIT What sort of birds were they? MAMMON A kind of choughs,
Or thievish daws, sir, that have pick’d my purse
Of eight score and ten pounds, within these five weeks, Beside my first materials; and my goods
That lie i’ the cellar; which I am glad they ha’ left;
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