Let’s talk about comedy first. All so-called comedies should have a happy ending. This is self-evident. Shakespeare's comedies all have a happy ending. But in addition, Shakespeare's comedies also have some obvious and distinctive characteristics, namely:
(1) The themes of comedies are mainly about love, friendship, and marriage, through which they express humanities the ideal of a Christian. Take "As You Like It", an important comedy of this period, as an example. It describes the pure love of two aristocratic young men and women, Orlando and Rosalind, Oliver and Celia, and also writes about the shepherd Silvis. The simple love between the shepherd girl Phoebe, the clown Touchstone and the village girl Audrey, two pairs of common young men and women, despite all kinds of hardships and twists and turns, the last four pairs of lovers got married at the same time. It is true that "lovers eventually get married". Everyone is happy. At the same time, this comedy also writes about loyal friendship: Rosalind and Celia are cousins. Celia's father Frederick, regardless of brotherhood, usurped his brother (that is, Rosalind's father). ), the Duke was driven away and forced to live in exile in the forest. However, the two cousins ??had always loved each other and would rather escape to the forest to live a hard life together than be separated. This kind of innocent friendship is also precious.
(2) Most of Shakespeare's comedies have a strong romanticism. In "A Midsummer Night's Dream" there are beautiful forests, fairy queens and fairies, and the fairy king Oberon, the king of the Nordic dwarves. , there is the legendary good elf Robin in British folklore, there are fragrant bean curds, web-weaving spiders, petite and exquisite moths, as well as wonderful music and so on. This is not a simple comedy, it is simply a beautiful fairy tale full of poetry, fascinating and fascinating! Take "The Merchant of Venice", a drama full of serious struggles, for example. The heroine Portia chooses her husband not because of "the orders of her parents or the words of a matchmaker", nor because she asks someone to introduce her husband to her, but because (dear reader, you He placed three boxes of gold, silver, and lead in his boudoir, allowing the suitors to choose. Whoever chooses the box containing Portia's portrait will be considered victorious and can marry her. What a romantic way to choose a mate!
(3) Another characteristic of Shakespeare's comedies is that each script often has one, two or even more storyline clues in addition to one main plot. The play "The Merry Wives of Windsor" has three parallel clues: one is the series of adventures and experiences of the fallen knight Falstaff; the other is the marriage of Miss Ann Page, with three men chasing her; Page's marriage caused a dispute between Caius, a French doctor, and Evans, a Welsh priest. The story of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" has more clues, including four: one is the relationship between Theseus, Duke of Athens and his fiancée Hippolyta; the other is Lysander, Hermia and Demetrius The love entanglement between four people and Helena; the third is the quarrel between the fairy king Oberon and the fairy queen Titania; the fourth is the relationship between the craftsmen headed by Bolton.
The plots of these comedies by Shakespeare are intricate and complex. Each clue is relatively independent and closely related to each other. They include real life, fairyland and fantasy, making the whole comedy ups and downs, confusing and extremely artistic. charm. The above comic storylines cannot be described in detail due to space limitations. However, it doesn't matter. Readers can read the original play based on these rough introductions and it will be very clear. In addition, some works will be specially introduced below in this book, so I will mention them here to give readers a preliminary impression. Reading Shakespeare's plays is a great artistic enjoyment. I sincerely hope that readers will not be satisfied with the simple introduction of our little book, but use this little book as a key to open the treasure house of Shakespeare's art. If you further read Shakespeare's works, you will enter a magnificent palace of art, full of dazzling beauty.
Regarding historical dramas, as mentioned before, Shakespeare *** wrote nine historical dramas during this period. Historical plays are scripts based on historical facts, while Shakespeare's historical plays are all about emperors in British history. Leaving aside the fact that "King John" (King John's reign was from 1199 to 1216) is a play of its own and is incoherent with other historical dramas due to the characters and events in the play, the other eight historical dramas just constitute two "tetralogy" , namely: "Richard II", "Henry IV" Part 1 and 2 and "Henry V". This "tetralogy" is about the "Plantagenet" family in British history. The other "tetralogy" is "Henry VI" Part I, II, Part II and "Richard III", which is related to the two major families of York and Lancaster. These two "tetralogy" wrote about the history of Britain for one hundred years from the end of the 14th century to the end of the 15th century, and wrote about major events such as royal disputes, internal turmoil, war against France, and the "War of the Red and White Roses" in Britain during this period. , and an important spirit that runs through these eight scripts is the spirit of the times shared by humanists at that time: patriotism. These historical dramas profoundly reflected the British people's desire to oppose feudal separatism, feudal tyrants, and long for national unity.
The most representative of Shakespeare's historical dramas are the first and second parts of "Henry IV" and the following "Henry V".
Through these three scripts with coherent plots, the poet created the image of Henry V for us: he went from being in a daze when he was a prince to hanging out with drunkards and gangsters in restaurants and other entertainment places all day long. After being educated by his father, he gradually understood After the death of his father Henry IV, he ascended the throne, determined to change evil and do good, and finally became a wise monarch who worked hard to govern. Shakespeare described Henry V as an ideal monarch. Even so, he did not describe this monarch as a divine, flawless, extraordinary, divine man with an aura on his head. Instead, he did not avoid contradictions and wrote The various shortcomings of Prince Hal (the name Hal was given when he was the crown prince before Henry V came to the throne) made him gradually change amidst the various contradictions in real life and become a wise king. In sharp contrast to the praise of Henry V, Shakespeare severely condemned the unjust and foolish king Richard in the play "Richard II". It can be seen that Shakespeare did not praise feudal emperors in general, but clearly distinguished right from wrong and made necessary praise and criticism of historical figures based on historical facts.
2 The Second Period
If Shakespeare mainly wrote comedies and historical dramas in the first period of his creation, then he wrote tragedies in the second period of his creation. Lord. During this period, he wrote seven tragedies, four comedies and some sonnets. The number was only half of the previous period, but it was extremely important. Why? Because he became more mature in thought and art during this period, and the four most important tragedies in his life (the so-called Shakespeare's "Four Tragedies": "Hamlet", "Othello", "King Lear" and "Macbeth") were all created during this period and have become his immortal masterpieces. Shakespeare believes that tragedy must have the following three characteristics:
(1) It must end with the death of the hero. All of Shakespeare's tragedies (he wrote three tragedies in the first period, seven tragedies in the second period, and a total of ten tragedies) all end with the death of the tragic hero. This was mainly influenced by his contemporaries and forerunners, the two famous tragic poets of the English Renaissance, Thomas Caeder (1558?-1594?) and Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) , but also because people at that time had different views on tragedy than later people. During the Renaissance, humanists like Shakespeare believed that the reason why a tragedy is a tragedy must end with the protagonist's catastrophic ending, and death is a person's greatest disaster, so a tragedy must end with the death of the protagonist. end. This is not the case with modern and modern tragedies. The protagonist of the tragedy may or may not die. What is important is not only the personal experience of the tragic protagonist, but also the depth of the contradictions expressed in the tragedy, which reveals the depth of the character's thoughts and personality.
In Shakespeare's tragedies, although the protagonist dies, it is heartbreaking (only the play "Macbeth" is an exception. Macbeth's death was due to his own crime of killing a wise monarch and massacring innocent subjects. It is a heinous crime, and his death is deserved), but the ideal that the tragic hero fought for has won, making people feel that the future is bright. The death of the tragic hero gives people a sense of tragedy, rather than pure sadness, and certainly not pessimism.
For example, in the play "Hamlet", the protagonist Hamlet dies, and the Norwegian prince Fortinbras arrives with an army and declares that normal order has been restored in Denmark; in "King Lear" In "Othello", Lear is too kind, deceived and instigated by the conspirator Iago, and killed by mistake. After Othello, who married his wife, realized the terrible mistake he had made, in order to punish himself, he committed suicide with a sword. His lieutenant Cassio immediately took over to handle military and political affairs, and arrested the villain Iago, who was about to be tortured. ; In "Antony and Cleopatra", the lovers died one after another, and General Caesar, one of the three rulers of Rome, buried the two in the same tomb so that they would never be separated. In short, it makes people see that although the protagonist in the tragedy paid a heavy price and sacrificed his life, he still has a bright future, which comforts and encourages people.
(2) The protagonist of the tragedy must be a noble. This view is obviously wrong. This is due to the class and era limitations of Shakespeare and Renaissance humanists, as well as the influence of ancient Greek and Roman tragedies. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, there were many plagues and diseases, and the people were extremely poor. Coupled with frequent wars, the lives of working people were worthless. For example, in the years starting from 1349, the so-called "Black Death" (or plague) occurred across Western Europe. In England alone, the death toll reached two-fifths of the total inhabitants. Under such circumstances, who cares about the lives of ordinary working people?
There is also the influence of traditional concepts starting from the three great tragedians of ancient Greece, through the theoretical summary of the famous Greek literary and art theory master Aristotle (384-322 BC), and all the way to ancient Roman tragedy. , people have always believed that only the disasters that befell emperors and noble men and women can be written as tragedies, and the disasters of working people cannot be the subject of tragedy. This class prejudice and the limitations of the times make Shakespeare's tragic heroes all emperors, queens or other noble men and women.
(3) The actions of tragic characters must come from their own will and heart, that is, the tragic ending of tragic characters cannot be attributed to objective reasons, but should be their own responsibility ("Romeo and Juliet" may is an exception, which will be discussed separately below). Macbeth committed regicide and murdered the wise monarch, not because of Lady Macbeth's urging, nor because he met three witches in the wilderness who predicted that he would become the King of Scotland, but because of his own personal ambition. The Athenian Timon, who had a great fortune but later became so poor that he had no food or clothing, was mainly responsible for no one else but himself, because he was too generous and hospitable and spent extravagantly, unaware of how sinister some people in the world he lived in were. The above three points are the main characteristics of Shakespeare's tragedy.
3 The third period
This is the third and final period of Shakespeare's creation. During this period, the poet *** wrote four plays, namely "Cymbeline", "Winter's Tale", "The Tempest", three comedies and a historical drama "Henry VIII". The latter was co-written with the famous playwright John Fletcher (1579-1625), but was mainly written by Shakespeare. Regardless of the latter historical drama, the three comedies are all legendary dramas, that is, the works deal with comic characters and their encounters in a fairy tale or legendary way. The realism component of these works has been greatly weakened, and the criticism of society has also been weakened. Sharp social contradictions are often solved by unrealistic methods.
Take the play "The Tempest" as an example. This play tells the story of Prospero, Duke of Milan, who was usurped by his brother and ran away to sea with his three-year-old daughter Miranda, living on an island. The Duke knows magic and uses magic to rescue the elves who were imprisoned by a witch on the island for his own use. In addition, he also used the ugly monster Caliban, the only resident of the island who was raised by a witch. Twelve years later, the usurper Antonio, his co-conspirator King Alonzo of Naples, and Prince Ferdinand, the son of Alonzo, and many others went out to sea in a ship. Prospero used magic to sink the ship, and the whole ship came to the island. . After this, Alonzo's brother Sebastian conspired with Antonio to kill King Alonzo of Naples and his loyal minister Gonzalo. On the other hand, Caliban, Stephano and the jester Trinculo are also planning to take over the island after killing Prospero.
While these two murder plots were secretly going on, Miranda and Ferdinand, a pair of young men and women, fell in love with each other at first sight. After Prospero learned that Caliban and others were planning to kill him, he immediately sent the elf Ariel to punish them. Finally, Prospero publicly disclosed his past identity as a duke, asked his brother Antonio to return the land to him, and warned Sebastian and others not to engage in conspiracy. At this point, all conflicts were resolved immediately, and people were ready to set sail the next day and return to Naples and Milan respectively. The younger brother usurping the elder brother's position as written in "The Tempest", or the younger brother preparing to kill his own brother, all have certain practical significance, but the solution to the conflict is unrealistic.
In Shakespeare's time, it was not uncommon in British history for brothers to kill each other in order to compete for the throne and title. However, in "The Tempest", this life-and-death conflict is instantly resolved by kindness and forgiveness, and its persuasiveness is very small. Despite this, "The Tempest" is still Shakespeare's first-rate work in terms of rich fantasy, twists and turns of the story, vivid characters, full of romantic interest and even poetic artistic techniques.