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William Shakespeare - An Analysis
(English Literature for BS English, M
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This echoes the fact that ‘the Bard’ is often considered to be one of England’s
greatest authors
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In addition, his hometown of Stratford has
become one of England’s premier tourist attractions
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In fact, some critics have suggested that
this is one reason for his continuing successor for the ‘cult’ of ‘The Bard’: if
the man himself is a myth then he can be permanently recreated for many
generations
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Shakespeare was born in 1564, probably on April 23rd
as he was baptized on the 26th
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He
received a good education at the local grammar school, the Kings New
School, where boys were taught Latin grammar and classical texts (he later
used Latin sources for the plots of some of his plays, for example, Titus
Andronicus refers to Ovid’s tales Metamorphoses)
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Between 1585 and 1592 there are few
records to indicate where Shakespeare was living and under what
occupation, though a number of different stories suggest he was already in
London, or had fled accused of poaching, or was, in fact, himself a teacher:
“He had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country” wrote John
Aubrey
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When Shakespeare’s plays were originally published all together in the
First Folio of 1623, they were collected for the first time and were divided into
comedies, tragedies, and histories
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We can identify certain patterns based on genre
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Hamlet’s death
in Hamlet disrupts the royal line but succeeds in first purging the state of the
corruption, the “something rotten”, that affects the country
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It is true that there is often
a comic subplot in the plays to provide a light relief, but the main plot follows
a tragic flaw in character to a tragic conclusion usually of multiple deaths
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Confusion and misinterpretations are resolved not in duels or
deaths but in reconciliation and the restoration of characters to their proper
social roles
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i)
Although “wrack” suggests the potential for catastrophe, it has found its
proper romantic conclusion, and the love plot is untangled
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Social reconciliation usually takes this
form in Shakespeare’s comedies as lovers are united in marriage, usually in
groups of two or three pairs whose plots are followed together throughout
the play
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The

ability to resolve complex plots in such a way is one of the features that make
Shakespeare such a great dramatist
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In the complex reversals of affection in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of
Shakespeare’s most popular romantic comedies, the proper order of the
lovers is disrupted and then restored by Oberon and his servant Puck:
“When they next awake, all this derision,
Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision” (III
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370-1)
A popular theme running throughout the plays is disguise and the
complication of identity which in the case of gender roles enables
Shakespeare to further entangle the male-female tensions which are at the
center of marriage plots
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In the Twelfth Night this then creates comic
confusion (and sometimes pain) in a typical love triangle:
“My master loves her dearly,
And I (poor monster) fond as much on him,
And she (mistaken) seems to dote on me” (II
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It is only
when she is restored to her female role that the plot can be properly
concluded
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Also, the passionate language that Shakespeare is sometimes so flowery
that it enables him to generate comedy from expressions of passion: “O
when mine eyes did see Olivia first, / Me thought she purged the air of

pestilence” (I
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Unlike in tragedy, when Gertrude “protests too much” in
Hamlet and is then horribly implicated in the crimes which have so upset her
son, this kind of exaggeration in comedies creates the effect of laughter
because the audience realize that they have more knowledge than the
characters in the play
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One of the
reasons often given for Shakespeare’s enduring popularity is his “universal”
appeal: his stories cross many genres and different places and periods in
history and thus they always seem relevant to a particular society at a
particular moment in time, or can be adapted to seem relevant (and they
have been adapted into many languages around the world)
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But it remains a tragic and
affecting story
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In As You Like It he wrote the following
famous lines,

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts” (II
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He
suggests that anybody could play a different part, or any part, so we could
all recognize ourselves in a Shakespeare play
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It was common in
Shakespeare’s time for the actors in each company to play many different
roles, sometimes within the same plays and sometimes across several plays
that were being performed in the same week
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Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more
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” (V
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This is perhaps wishful
thinking on the part of Macbeth who would like to imagine that his actions
were only “performed” and that they “signified nothing”, as he is now
consumed by guilt for the murder of Duncan
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Also, it is notable that the theatre in which Shakespeare spent the longest
years working was called The Globe, drawing attention again to the round
stage as representing the universe
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From Lady Macbeth
saying “what’s done is done” in Macbeth to Juliet parting from Romeo in
“such sweet sorrow,” these phrases have become part of our vocabulary so
that often their use is unconscious
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By the time Shakespeare died in 1616 he had written a remarkable
quantity of plays and enjoyed a successful career as both playwright and
actor
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Today the popularity of
Shakespeare appears to be as high as ever, as people all over the world
continue to read the plays and recognize the universal value of the ‘great
Bard’

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