A very complete summary of Shakespeare's course, taught by Frank Albers. The summary contains all lecture notes as well as the information in the book. The summary was made in the year 2023.
5.2. Class on Romeo and Juliet ...................................................................................................... 38
5.2.1 Date ......................................................................................................................................... 38
5.2.3 Story ......................................................................................................................................... 39
5.2.3.1 Persons of the play .............................................................................................................. 39
,Shakespeare 2023
Frank Albers
8.2.2. Shakespeare’s two tetralogies ........................................................................................ 50
8.2.3. Richard II – The Peasants’ Revolt ..................................................................................... 51
8.3. The play ..................................................................................................................................... 51
8.3.1 Persons of the play ................................................................................................................. 51
13.3. Story ........................................................................................................................................ 84
13.3.1 Persons of the play ............................................................................................................... 84
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,Shakespeare 2023
Frank Albers
13.4. Themes ................................................................................................................................... 85
13.4.1. The ‘Moor’ ...................................................................................................................... 85
13.4.2. Venice versus Cyprus .................................................................................................... 85
1. Introduction
1.1. Stephen Greenblatt – General Introduction
1.1.1. “He was not of an age, but for all time”
- Shakespeare’s genius was recognized almost immediately (not years after his death, or
only by natives etc)
- “He was not of an age, but for all time” – Ben Jonson
o Shakespeare belongs to world culture
o Great creating creature
- Shakespeare = artist to fully express the human condition – turn to his work for questions
about live.
- Peculiar historical circumstances and specific conventions.
- Make him more likable (or his works at least)
o Texts with glosses and notes
o Explanatory introductions (historical events)
o Hollywood and sound staged of the BBC
1.1.2. Shakespeare’s World
1.1.2.1. Life and Death
- Life expectancy under thirty years in early modern England (seventy today)
- Infant mortality rates were extraordinarily high
o In the poorer parts of London, only about half of the children survived until the age
of 15. Children of aristocrats fared only a little better
o Frequency of death hardened people to loss or made it routine, people got used
to it (we cannot assume this!)
- Healthcare as we know today was non-existent
- Bubonic plague was the worst shock early modern England knew
o Repeatedly ravaged England, until the third quarter of the seventeenth century
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,Shakespeare 2023
Frank Albers
o Physicians prescribed amulets, preservatives, and sweet-smelling substances (on
the theory that the plague was carried by noxious vapors)
o In the plague-ridden year of 1564, the year of Shakespeare’s birth, some 254 people
died in his native Stratford-upon-Avon, out of a total population of 800. The year
before, some 20,000 Londoners are thought to have died; in 1593, almost 15,000; in
1603, 36,000, or over a sixth of the city’s inhabitants
o Severe social effects: looting, violence, despair, poverty, unemployment, food
shortages
o London plague regulations of 1583
§ infected and their households should be locked in their homes for a month
§ streets should be kept clean
§ vagrants expelled
§ funerals and plays restricted and banned
§ religion was still allowed à God would help them?
o Effect on Shakespeare’s profession
§ Cities kept records of the weekly number of plague deaths
§ Theatres temporarily closed
§ to prevent contagion but also to avoid making an angry God still angrier
with the spectacle of idleness
o while restricting public assemblies may in fact have slowed the epidemic, other
policies, such as killing the cats and dogs may have made things worse, since the
disease was spread not by these animals but by the fleas that bred on the black
rats that infested the poorer neighbourhoods. Also the playing theatre companies
driven out of London by the closing of the theatres m ay have carried
plague to the provincial towns.
- Food shortage
o A few successive bad harvests in the mid-1590s
o Starvation
o Inflation, low wages, rent increases
§ Many people very little cushion against disaster
1.1.2.2. Wealth
- Despite rampant disease, the population of England in Shakespeare’s lifetime grew
steadily, from approximately 3,060,000 in 1564 to 4,060,000 in 1600 and 4,510,000 in 1616
- Deathrate twice what it is today, birthrate thrice the current figure
- London: largest and fastest-growing in all of Europe
- Wages in London tended to be around 50% higher than in the rest of the country
- 1/8 of English people lived in London at some point in their lives
- The economic viability of Shakespeare’s profession was closely linked to this extraordinary
demographic boom: between 1567 and 1642, theater historians have estimated, the
London playhouses were paid anywhere between 50 and 75 million visits
o There was money to spend
- Peace and prosperity after dynastic wars of the fifteenth century
o Textile industry – woolen cloth more than ¾ of England’s export
o In the latter half of the century, London, which handled more than 85 percent of all
exports, regularly shipped abroad more than 100,000 woolen cloths a year, at a
value of at least £750,000. This figure does not include the increasingly important
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, Shakespeare 2023
Frank Albers
and profitable trade in so-called New Draperies, including textiles that went by such
exotic names as bombazines, callamancoes, damazellas, damizes, mockadoes,
and virgenatoes.
1.1.2.3. Imports, Patents, and Monopolies
- Late 16th century: importing substantial quantities of silks, satins, velvets, embroidery, gold
and silver lace
o Satisfy the elite and those who aspired to dress like the elite
- Sumptuary laws: conservative attempt to protect the existing social order from upstarts
- One of the principal English imports was wine
- Also: canvas, linen, fish, olive oil, sugar, molasses, dates, oranges and lemons, figs, raisins,
almonds, capers, indigo, ostrich feathers, and that increasingly popular drug tobacco.
- Joint stock companies to import goods for the burgeoning English market
- English privateers “imported” American products
o 1592 Sir Walter Ralegh: captured a huge Portuguese carrack Madre de Dios à
Dartmouth
o Queen privately invested 1,800 pounds and received about 80,000 pounds
- War with Spain 1586-1604: privateers annually amounted to 10-15 % of the total value of
English imports
o ! BUT ! not enough, worry for the nation’s natural wealth
o Discourse of the Commonweal (1549) – Sir Thomas Smith
§ Against import of mirrors, paper, laces, gloves etc.
o An Essay on the State of England in Relation to Its Trade (1695) – John Cary
§ More than a century later, same concern
§ Expand productive domestic product
§ Actors were not regarded as productive contribution to the national wealth
- The government attempted to stem the flow of gold overseas by establishing a patent
system initially designed to encourage skilled foreigners to settle in England by granting
them exclusive rights to produce particular wares by a patented method
o 17th century: men and women in variety of new industries
o ! BUT ! enrichment of the few
o issue of monopolies provoked bitter criticism and parliamentary debate for
decades
§ 1601: Elizabeth had to revoke some of the most hated monopolies
§ James 1: whole system revoked
1.1.2.4. Haves and Have-Nots
- Sir Thomas Smith wrote a description of England and saw the commonwealth as divided
into four sorts of people
o Gentlemen
§ Monarch – nobles – knights – simple gentlemen
§ Simple gentlemen: those who studieth, could live idly and without manual
labour
o Citizens
§ positions of importance and responsibility in their cities
o Yeomen artificers
§ farmers with land and a measure of economic independence
o laborers
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