Shakespeare's characters, in particular, are not completely psychological like Ibsen or Bernard Shaw. They are transparent; They have no inner life. In fact, some works are allegorical or symbolic, such as Shylock or Portia in the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice. At the same time, they are figures who reflect outstanding observations on human behavior and have symbolic functions.
We face a special difficulty in understanding this point, because drama should be watched on the stage in an ideal state.
However, what we see on the stage reflects the interpretation of directors and actors, as well as the interpretation of the author. In many cases, the intentions of directors and actors have little similarity with the historical significance of the text.
For example, when olivier filmed his excellent Hamlet, he deleted Fortinbras, because Fortinbras played an important symbolic role in restoring order at the end of the play. He said that the play is about a man who can't make up his mind, which is very penetrating; But it ignores the medical cause, depression, which we now call the medical diagnosis of clinical depression in the Renaissance.
Besides, Shakespeare must have been either frightened by Freud or laughed at by him-just like criticizing "their own free agents". When we try to understand the original meaning of drama, we must remember this difference-text and presentation.
The first thing to note is that Shakespeare is not a modern writer, but miraculously appeared in the English Renaissance. He is a writer of the Renaissance, and his plays reflect the ideas and concepts of the Renaissance. He is indeed a very great writer, but he is not ahead of his time, nor is he the greatest of all writers. Even T. S. Eliot's exaggeration puts him on a par with Dante. This is the first thing to understand; His plays must be understood as Renaissance literature, just like Milton or Spencer.
Shakespeare wrote at least four different types of plays-historical plays, comedies, tragedies and romantic plays-and some plays are difficult to classify, such as Troy Burroughs and Cressida. Troy Burroughs actually provides us with a useful clue to help us understand the second important point of Shakespeare's plays, which Dryden first described and praised in his dramatic poetry prose-his use of mixed genres.
In some comedies, there is a threat of death: nothingness and the secondary plot of nothingness predict the fate of Othello and Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Malfurion left angrily on the twelfth night. Richard II can also be interpreted as a tragedy. Henry V contains exquisite comedy scenes of Catherine, the French princess and Henry. There is a comedy of drunken porters in Macbeth. Romantic novels combine comedy and tragedy.
Romeo and Juliet is a disturbing mixture of romantic comedy and tragedy, but it is not a complete success. In my opinion, mixed genre is the most important literary heritage in Shakespeare's works.
The third factor, I think, is often underestimated-especially if we follow Bloom's view that the most important thing in drama is the characters-which is one of the important reasons why drama can still occupy the stage. In his romantic novels, Northrup Frye pointed out that Shakespeare's exquisite skills diversified the structure of his appraisal scene, which reached its climax in cymbeline's amazing last scene. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a miracle of architecture. So is the mousetrap in Hamlet.
Finally, the language. Shakespeare defined poetry and drama in English; His phrases entered the language with well-known power. He is one of the four major tasks that have an impact on modern English (there are also authorized versions of Bible, Book of Common Prayer and Paradise Lost). We should not forget that he is a great poet and a playwright. People really want to extract paragraphs from his plays and use them as independent "poems" for students with inattention to read, but by doing so, we weaken their meaning. The speeches of human beings in the seven eras in "All Happy" are mainly for dramatic purposes; It is not an independent philosophical emotion.
In my opinion, these are the four elements of drama.