William Shakespeare
Spring

in

English Literature

 


Icona iDevice William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616)
Though William Shakespeare is recognized as one of literature’s greatest influences, very little is actually known about him. What we know about his life comes from register records, court records, wills, marriage certificates and his tombstone. Anecdotes and criticisms by his rivals also speak of the famous playwright and suggest that he was indeed a playwright, poet and an actor.
 He was born and raised in Stratford- upon- Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway with whom he had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men , later known as the King’s Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later.

 


Icona iDevice The works

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories . He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognized as Shakespeare's.

From 1592 to 1598, Shakespeare wrote 154 Sonnets. In 1609 Thomas Thorpe published them, without the author's permission, in quarto format.They were dedicated to a W. H., whose identity remains a mystery, although William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, is frequently suggested because Shakespeare's First Folio (1623) was also dedicated to him. The majority of the sonnets (1-126) are addressed to a young man, with whom the poet has an intense romantic relationship. The final sonnets (127-154) are addressed to a scheming woman known as the dark lady.

The Sonnet
A sonnet is a 14-line poem that rhymes in a particular pattern. In Shakespeare's sonnets, the rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg, with the final couplet used to summarize the previous 12 lines or to present a surprising ending. The rhythmic pattern of the sonnets is the iambic pentameter. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable and one unstressed syllable.
Shakespeare uses five of these in each line, which makes it a pentameter. The sonnet is a difficult art form for the poet because of its restrictions on length and meter.

Now let's focus on an amusing comedy

Love's Labour's Lost

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Title page of the first quarto (1598)

Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s, and first published in 1598.

Contents

Title

The title is normally given as Love's Labour's Lost. The use of apostrophes varies in early editions. In its first 1598 quarto publication it appears as Loues Labors Lost. In the 1623 First Folio it is Loues Labour's Lost and in the 1631 edition it is Loues Labours Lost. In the Third Folio it appears for the first time with the modern punctuation and spelling as Love's Labour's Lost.[1]

Date and text

Most modern scholars believe the play was written in 1595 or 1596, making it contemporaneous with Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream.[2] Love's Labour's Lost was first published in quarto in 1598 by the bookseller Cuthbert Burby. The title page states that the play was "Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere," which has suggested to some scholars a revision of an earlier version.[3] The play next appeared in print in the First Folio in 1623, with a later quarto in 1631.

Sources

Love's Labours Lost is, along with The Tempest, a play without any obvious sources.[4] Cymbeline also falls into this category to some extent, although that play draws strands of its narrative from some texts agreed on by modern scholars. Some possible influences can be found in the early plays of John Lyly, Robert Wilson's The Cobbler's Prophecy (c.1590) and Pierre de la Primaudaye's L'Academie française (1577).[5]

Characters

Ferdinand: King of Navarre

Princess of France

Berowne (or Biron), Longaville, and Dumaine (or Dumian): Lords, attending on the King

Boyet and Marcade (or Mercade): Lords, attending on the Princess of France

Rosaline, Maria, and Katharine: Ladies, attending on the Princess

Don Adriano de Armado: a fantastical Spaniard

Sir Nathaniel: a Curate

Holofernes: a Schoolmaster

Dull: a Constable

Costard: a Clown

Moth: Page to Armado

A Forester

Jaquenetta: a country Wench

Officers and Others, Attendants on the King and Princess

Synopsis

Facsimile of the first page of Love's Labour's Lost from the First Folio, published in 1623

The play opens with the King of Navarre and three noble companions, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, taking an oath to devote themselves to three years of study, promising not to give in to the company of women — Berowne somewhat more hesitantly than the others. Berowne reminds the king that the princess and her three ladies are coming to the kingdom and it would be suicidal for the King to agree to this law. The King denies what Berowne says, insisting that the ladies make their camp in the field outside of his court. The King and his men comically fall in love with the princess and her ladies.

The main story is assisted by many other humorous sub-plots. A rather heavy-accented Spanish swordsman, Don Adriano de Armado, tries and fails to woo a country wench, Jaquenetta, helped by Moth, his page, and rivaled by Costard, a country idiot. We are also introduced to two scholars, Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel, and we see them converse with each other in schoolboy Latin. In the final act, the comic characters perform a play to entertain the nobles, an idea conceived by Holofernes, where they represent the Nine Worthies. The four Lords — as well as the Ladies' manservant Boyet — mock the play, and Armado and Costard almost come to blows.

At the end of this 'play' within the play, there is a bitter twist in the story. News arrives that the Princess's father has died and she must leave to take the throne. The king and his nobles swear to remain faithful to their ladies, but the ladies, unconvinced that their love is that strong, claim that the men must wait a whole year and a day to prove what they say is true. This is an unusual ending for Shakespeare and Elizabethan comedy. A play mentioned by Francis Meres, Love's Labour's Won, is sometimes believed to be a sequel to this play.[6]


Questo articolo è sotto la licenzaLicenza di Documentazione Libera GNU. Esso usa materiale daarticolo"Love's Labour's Lost".
« Precedente | Prossimo »