Shakespeare's career is divided into three periods. The main stages of creativity III. The main stages of creativity

The entire career of Shakespeare - the period from 1590 to 1612. usually divided into three periods:

I (optimistic) period (1590-1600)

The general character of the works of the first period can be defined as optimistic, colored by a joyful perception of life in all its diversity, a belief in the triumph of the smart and the good. During this period, Shakespeare mostly writes comedies:
・Comedy of Errors
· The Taming of the Shrew
· Two Veronets
· A dream in a summer night
· Twelfth Night

The theme of almost all of Shakespeare's comedies is love, its emergence and development, the resistance and intrigues of others, and the victory of a bright young feeling. The action of the works takes place against the backdrop of beautiful landscapes bathed in moonlight or sunlight. This is how the magical world of Shakespeare's comedies appears before us, seemingly far from fun. Shakespeare has a great ability, talented to combine the comic (the witty duels of Benedict and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Petruchio and Catharina from The Taming of the Shrew) with the lyrical and even tragic (the betrayals of Proteus in The Two Veronians, the intrigues of Shylock in Merchant of Venice). Shakespeare's characters are amazingly multifaceted, their images embody the features characteristic of people of the Renaissance: will, desire for independence, and love of life. Of particular interest are the female images of these comedies - equal to men, free, energetic, active and infinitely charming. Shakespeare's comedies are varied. Shakespeare uses various genres of comedies - a romantic comedy ("A Midsummer Night's Dream"), a comedy of characters ("The Taming of the Shrew"), a sitcom ("Comedy of Errors").

During the same period (1590-1600) Shakespeare wrote a number of historical chronicles. Each of which covers one of the periods of English history.

About the time of the struggle of the Scarlet and White Roses:

Henry VI (three parts)
Richard III

On the preceding period of struggle between the feudal barons and the absolute monarchy:

Richard II
Henry IV (two parts)
Henry V

The genre of dramatic chronicle is peculiar only to the English Renaissance. Most likely, this happened because the favorite theatrical genre of the early English Middle Ages was mysteries with secular motifs. The dramaturgy of the mature Renaissance was formed under their influence; and in the dramatic chronicles, many mystery features are preserved: a wide coverage of events, many characters, a free alternation of episodes. However, unlike the mysteries, the chronicles do not present biblical history, but the history of the state. Here, in essence, he also refers to the ideals of harmony - but the harmony of the state, which he sees in the victory of the monarchy over the medieval feudal civil strife. In the finale of the plays, good triumphs; evil, no matter how terrible and bloody was his way, overthrown. Thus, in the first period of Shakespeare's work at different levels - personal and state - the main Renaissance idea is interpreted: the achievement of harmony and humanistic ideals.

During the same period, Shakespeare wrote two tragedies:

· Romeo and Juliet

· Julius Caesar

II (tragic) period (1601-1607)

It is considered the tragic period of Shakespeare's work. Dedicated mainly to tragedy. It was during this period that the playwright reaches the pinnacle of his work:

· King Lear

Anthony and Cleopatra

There is no longer a trace of a harmonious sense of the world in them; eternal and insoluble conflicts are revealed here. Here the tragedy lies not only in the clash of the individual and society, but also in the internal contradictions in the soul of the hero. The problem is brought to a general philosophical level, and the characters remain unusually multifaceted and psychologically voluminous. At the same time, it is very important that in the great tragedies of Shakespeare there is a complete absence of a fatalistic attitude towards fate, which predetermines tragedy. The main emphasis, as before, is placed on the personality of the hero, who shapes his own destiny and the fate of those around him.

During the same period, Shakespeare wrote two comedies:

The end is the crown of business

measure for measure

III (romantic) period (1608-1612)

It is considered the romantic period of Shakespeare's work.

Works of the last period of his work:
Cymbeline
・Winter's Tale
Storm

These are poetic tales leading away from reality into the world of dreams. The complete conscious rejection of realism and retreat into romantic fantasy is naturally interpreted by Shakespeare scholars as the playwright's disappointment in humanistic ideals, the recognition of the impossibility of achieving harmony. This path - from a triumphantly jubilant faith in harmony to tired disappointment - actually went through the entire worldview of the Renaissance.

1564-1616. Around 1587 he moved to London. He worked as an assistant director in various theatrical enterprises. 1593 - entered the best London troupe, headed by James Burbage. 1599 - members of this troupe built the Globe Theater. 1593 - poems, sonnets published in 1609 belong to the same period. 1612 - moved to Stradford, leaving the theater.

There are three periods of creativity: the first, excellent. cheerfulness, comedies (belief in life prevails, good beginnings: the comedies The Taming of the Shrew (1593), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1596), Much Ado About Nothing (1598), the tragedy Romeo and Juliet" (1595).) and historical chronicles (the main theme is the feudal turmoil of the 14th-15th centuries, the war of the Scarlet and White Roses.), and "Julius Caesar" (transitional period).

1601-1608 - the second period. He writes tragedies one after another. Hamlet (1601), Othello (1604), King Lear (1605), Macbeth (1606). Socio-political problems are characteristic of the so-called "Roman" tragedies: "Julius Caesar" (1599), "Antony and Cleopatra" (1607), "Coriolanus" (1607).

The third period - tragicomedies, "The Tempest". The search for an optimistic solution to social tragedies led to the creation of romantic dramas "Cymbeline" (1610), "The Winter's Tale" (1611), "The Tempest" (1612), bearing the tinge of a kind of instructive parable

The problem of education in the novel Gargantua and Pantagruel. Image of Panurge.

Gargantua and Pantagruel

In 1532, a folk book was published about the giant Gargantua and his glorious son Pantagruel. The book had no author, woven from proverbs, sayings - a typical French book, because it was bold in its thought, a book that claimed that a person is a giant. Those. it was not a metaphor, it was said that a person is great and omnipotent. In the same year, Francois Rabelais came up with a pseudonym for himself, which was an anagram of his name - Francofribas Nazier and published under this name an appendix / continuation of the folk book about Gargantua. And in particular, about the fearless exploits of the son of Gargantua - Pantagruel. For 20 years, 5 books have been published, which are generally called "Gargantua and Pantagruel".

In the 19th century, the idea arose that the novel is a plausible reflection of life, a serious work. And in the 16th century, in the happy times of Boccaccio, Cervantes and Rabelais, the novel was not understood as a wise work. The novel was understood as a game with the reader, as the omnipotence of this person standing in the center over the world.

In the novel by Rabelais, the hero creates fantastically incredible heights, is born from his mother's ear, plucks the bells from Notre Dame Cathedral, travels the world and talks with an oracle who is supposed to give a foreshadowing in a mysterious bottle. The bottle finally pronounces the most important thing in life: to marry or not to marry, will he be a cuckold when he marries or not. When Pantagruel finds this oracle, this meeting speaks of thirsty people, taking from this life all that it can give.

Laughter is the main character of the novel. There is verisimilitude here, and allegory, and satire, and giants.

The modern novel, which began in the 16th century and has come into the 21st, begins with Rabelaisianism.

Rabelaisianism - in modern literature it is generally accepted that the novel of the new time was created by Rabelais. The novel, in which truth and fiction, the boundless freedom of man, was affirmed in the folk element of laughter, which traditionally came from the comedy of Aristophanes and was most vividly embodied in the novels of the 21st century, in which the element of laughter declares the relativity of all norms and rules and is the most important rule.

Rabelais, based on the national French tradition farce creates a special synthesis, which is now called novel of modern times.

Even in Aristophanes, the element of frivolity is in the first place; this Aristophanean philosophy of life is continued in the work of Rabelais.

Rabelaisianism - it is a philosophy coming from the vision of the world by Aristophanes - a philosophy of accepting all gifts and pleasures and a philosophy in which the intellect of a person, his heart and flesh - equally long for new joys of life.

The giants at Rabelais come from the folk tradition, but are rethought in a Renaissance way, i.e. the giant is the all-powerful man of the Renaissance, for whom sorrows, wars are only minor obstacles in his life.

One of the first wars (still in the state of Gargantua): bakers-bakers were carrying rolls and it turned out that they quarreled among themselves, fought, spoiled the bread. A war has been declared by a certain king Pekrashol, who imagines himself great in this world, imagines that he will conquer not only the state of Gargantua, but also his great wars (Captain Zhrou, Milk Sucker, Field Marshal Frufru) dream of how they will conquer the world. The war has not yet begun, but mentally King Pécrachol controls the whole world, and over this seriousness of the war, over this seriousness of claims, Rabelais laughs, realizing in a revivalist way that this claim is exaggerated. The whole great army of Pécrashol is drowning because the horse Gargantua is doing his natural needs.
This is not a satire on the war, but a statement that the war is ridiculous.

One of the main themes of the novel- an affirmation of the stupidity, absurdity of any war before the greatness of life, and the vanquished are treated in a revivalist way: not evil.

When the war is waged by Pantagruel, King Anarch fights with him, who also dreams of world domination. When Pantagruel defeats the Anarch, he does not execute him. He tries to make him a decent person - he wants to make him a seller of green sauce and marry yesterday's whore, who constantly beats him. Kings, their wars and claims to the dominion of the world are nothing before the wisdom of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Laughter - it is the laughter, and not the scourging element - becomes one of the most important.

Another major theme of the novel is caricature of Medieval treatises, teachings, sciences. Medieval scholastic science is shown in laughter from the fullness of life (at the moment where Gargantua learns to read the alphabet from two sides); scholastic science is opposed to renaissance science, which is also not seriously described, although this seems to be an ideal.

The program of revival education is proclaimed in one of the letters to his son Pantagruel Gargantua writes: “So that there is no sea, no river, no spring in the world, the fish of which you would not know. All the birds of the air, all the trees, bushes and bushes, all the herbs on the earth, all its bowels - study everything, let nothing be unknown to you. Before us is the broadest program of the thirst for knowledge. Study everything that is in the world - this is the program of the Renaissance.

A special place in the novel is occupied by the so-called. Tellem Abbey. Tellem - translates as desire. Some folk hero (not a giant, but a giant in his perception of life) brother Jean is building a new abbey. Proclaims instead of vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, that in their abbey the monks have the right to marry, be rich and free. The slogan "Do what you want" is written on the gates of the abbey. Tellem Abbey is a new revival structure of society, a brotherhood where everyone is beautiful, thirsty for knowledge and happy, regardless of whether you are a monk, a knight or a maiden.

Rabelais ideal becomes a state system in which it is beneficial for a person to be happy. This state structure is opposed by the numerous island-states that Pantagruel visits. He travels the world to find the oracle of the sacred bottle. Visits many islands with telling names (for which the book was burned): Papefig and Papeman Islands; the islands of Clergo, Cardengo, Monago, Abego, Papego.

One of the most important characters in the novel Ponurk. A thief, a lunatic, but speaks all European languages. The image of Ponurk is one of the first universal, all-encompassing image of a person in world literature, combining the greatest virtues and vices of a person not ideal, but real, life. Rabelais managed to combine Rabelaisian laughter, folk carnival elements and realism.

Bakhtin's research on the novel emphasizes, on the one hand, the typically national French element of the work and, on the other hand, the European universalism of the novel. Those. Rabelais is understood by Bakhtin as the creator of a new prose, a new novel, the traditions of which we see in Saltykov-Shchedrin, Gogol, Swift, Mark Twain, and Balzac, but most of all in the novel of the 21st century ( even the same Kundera).

The structure of the world in the Divine Comedy. Pushkin on the genius of Dante's plan.

Dante Alighieri

Born in 1265, died in 1321.

Vita nova comedia divina. Trade, banking, crafts flourished in Florence - Florence becomes the most prosperous city. The rich surrounded themselves with artists and poets who glorified them.

Dante was a Florentine, belonged to the guild of pharmacists (educated, sacred people), most likely studied law in Bologna. Dante's life is covered in darkness, not everything is known from his biography.

He loved Florence very much, he could not imagine his existence outside of Florence. He enjoyed authority as a poet, philosopher and politician. He took part in public life, was elected to the post of prior (he was one of the rulers of Florence). Party passions were in full swing in Florence - there were two parties Guelphs And gibellines. Basically, the Guelph party included wealthy people, owners of manufactories and banks. The Ghibellines are mainly the Florentine aristocracy. And between these two parties there was a merciless struggle for power. Dante himself also took part in these party feuds, which were further complicated by the fact that the Guelph party was divided into white and black Guelphs. Dante's misfortune was that his opponents won. Dante was expelled from Florence by his political opponents. We do not know exactly in what year he left Florence, but apparently it happened at the very beginning of the 14th century. By that time, Dante had already gained fame and glory, and in exile he was received with honors in various cities of Italy, but dreamed of returning to Florence. To do this, it was necessary to perform a rite of repentance. He was supposed to put on a white robe and in the afternoon with a candle go around all of Florence. Dante did not want to repent and continued to work in exile.

Dante's main work "The Divine Comedy".

"New life" - on which Dante worked in the 90s of the 13th century. NJ is the first autobiography of the poet. The new life is written both in verse and in prose, here the prose text is combined with the poetic. NZh tells about the meeting and love of Dante for Beatrice (“giving bliss”). This is a real young girl, apparently, she did not know that Dante was in love with her, because Dante's love for her is also a kind of love from afar, love is exclusively platonic, spiritual, sublime. He interprets the image of Beatrice as the earthly incarnation of the Madonna. He worships her, bows before her, admires her. Beatrice symbolizes everything that is most important in Dante's life: nobility, faith, kindness, beauty, wisdom, philosophy, heavenly bliss. A new life began with a meeting with Beatrice. The first time he saw her was when she was 9 years old. She was in a red dress (everything is filled with symbols and red is a symbol of passion). He saw her a second time in nine years, when she was eighteen and she was in a white dress (cleanliness). And the happiest moment in Dante's life, when Beatrice gave him a faint smile. When he saw her for the third time, he rushed towards her, and she pretended not to recognize him. He realized that it was proper for him to exercise restraint and not show his feelings. And alas, this was their last meeting, because soon Beatrice died and grief pierced the poet's heart and he took a vow of glorification of Beatrice, in this he saw the meaning of life.

Everything is full of some inner meaning. In addition to the fact that he sets out very prosaically here, he captures the most intense moments of his spiritual life in verse. New Life includes 25 sonnets, 3 canzones and 1 ballad.

Sonnet - 14 lines. main lyric genre in Renaissance poetry. The sonnet is the most widespread expression of thoughts and feelings. Sonnets wrote about love, about the immortality of creativity, just about life, about death. Those. a sonnet is always a poem of a philosophical nature. The sonnet most likely originated in Italy in the 12th century, possibly in Sicily. 14 lines. Consists of two quatrains and two three-verses (4+4, 3+3).

The fame of the Sonnet genre came with the poetry of Dante, he demonstrated to the world the beauty of sonnet forms.

“... Severe Dante did not despise the sonnet

Petrarch poured out the heat of love in him ... ”(c) Pushkin.

Treatise "Pir". The name is borrowed from Plato. Of course, it has an allegorical meaning - a feast of knowledge, a feast of the mind.

Treatise on Monarchy. Dante was a supporter of imperial power, he believed that spiritual power should belong to the pope, and secular power to the emperor. Separated spiritual and secular power. His sympathies were on the side of the emperor.

Traktar "About folk eloquence". This treatise is written in Latin, but Dante argues that literature must exist in Italian. Italian language - "the language of Tuscany (a region of Italy) is the barley bread of poetry." Latin was appropriate in this treatise, because. he was more scientific.

The Divine Comedy

It was created in the 14th century and Dante worked on it for about 20 years. Wrote the work "Comedia". Comedies are works that begin with dramatic events and end with a happy ending. Comedy doesn't have to be dramatic. If we define the genre of the Divine Comedy, then this poem. This is a vision of the afterlife. "BK" is a work of transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. "BK" begins with verses:

"Earthly life having passed up to half

I found myself in a dark forest

"BK" is written in stanzas, which consist of three lines. A-B-A > B-C-B > etc. It turns out a chain. Mandelstam in an essay noted that the weaving is so complex that it is impossible to single out individual lines. Compared with the Cathedral (the same slender and majestic). Pushkin said that even one plan of the BC testifies to the genius of Dante.

"The Divine Comedy" consists of three parts: "Hell", "Purgatory", "Paradise". This was the world order. The human soul seemed to go through three stages. Hell, Purgatory and Paradise consist of 33 songs. And there is one introductory song. It turns out the number 100 - for the literature of that period - a number denoting greater integrity. In the Divine Comedy, the number “3” and a multiple of three play a special role (the soul undergoes three stages; the divine trinity; 3 is a sacred number).

The Divine Comedy is the most complex work of world literature. The difficulty is that everything is full of allegorical meaning. “I found myself in a gloomy forest” - the forest is a symbol of wandering. There are three animals in this forest: a lion (pride), a she-wolf (greed), a panther (voluptuousness). These three beasts, which he met in a gloomy forest, symbolize the main human vices. But Beatrice, Dante canonizes her, declares a saint of her own poetic will, seeing Dante's wanderings in earthly life, wants to show him a different, afterlife world. Discover what awaits a person there, in another world. And he sends Virgil to meet him. Virgil is also a symbolic image - this is the earthly mind, this is a poet, this is a guide through the circles of hell. Whereas Beatrice embodies divine wisdom. Beatrice herself is in paradise.

The architecture of hell was not invented by Dante, this is how hell was imagined in the Middle Ages. Hell is divided into 9 circles;

"Limbo" - unbaptized babies, ancient poets and philosophers are deprived of heavenly bliss, but they do not suffer. There was no joy, but there was no particular suffering. They cannot go to heaven through no fault of their own.
Sweetness is punished. Surrendered to the whirlwind of passion. One of the most wonderful songs is canto five, which tells the story of Francesca da Rimini, and the love of Paolo. This is a true story that was widely known. Francesca tells this story. The Divine Comedy is distinguished by its laconic style. This story is told very briefly. The principle of Dante's poetry is "According to sin and retribution." Dante makes the lovers Francesco and Paolo in one and the second circle rotate in a whirlwind, i.e. the metaphorical expression "whirlwind of passion" takes on a literal meaning. Francesca tells how she fell in love with Paolo (her husband's brother) and how they were infatuated with each other, that they read together a chivalric romance about Lancelot and Francesca says very briefly: "That day we didn't read anymore." Their crime becomes known, the husband commits reprisals, they die. Dante punishes them in hell, severely punishes them (i.e. acts like a medieval person), but after listening to Francesca's story, he himself sympathizes with them. He is immensely sorry for the suffering Francesco and Paolo.
Gluttons are punished. Here he portrays the famous gluttons in Florence.
Miserly and spendthrifts are punished. Dante believes that spenders and misers have lost their sense of proportion - and this is one sin.
Angry and envious.
Heretics. Here he acts like a medieval poet. The crime against God, against faith and religion is one of the most terrible.
Rapists. People who committed murder, suicide; very expressive image of suicides. They turned into dry branches, and when the poet, led by Virgil, accidentally broke the branch, blood oozed out of it.
Deceivers, deceivers, tricksters. For Dante, deception is also a terrible crime.
Traitors. Traitors. The worst crime is betrayal. The traitors are Judas, who betrayed Christ, and Brutus, who betrayed Caesar, which once again reminds that Dante was a supporter of strong imperial power.

Dante is symmetrical. 9 circles of hell and he makes 7 purgatory. And the human soul ascends the steps, is freed from 7 deadly sins, sins disappear from the human body and it approaches paradise.

There is more abstraction in Paradise and Purgatory. In Hell, the images are more earthly. In Paradise, of course, Dante meets Beatrice and Dante enjoys heavenly bliss.

The Divine Comedy is translated into Russian by Lazinsky.

DZ: Draw hell.

Dante. "The Divine Comedy".

Dante lived in 1265 in Florence. The plot is from medieval “walking”. Of particular importance is the Aeneid. The afterlife is not opposed to earthly life, but, as it were, its continuation. Each image can be interpreted in different ways.

The action begins in the forest. This song is a combination of concrete and allegorical meaning. The forest is an allegory of the delusion of the human soul and chaos in the world. All subsequent images of the prologue are also allegorical. D. meets 3 animals: a panther, a lion, a she-wolf. Each of them personifies a certain kind of moral evil and def. negative social force. Panther - voluptuousness and oligarchic government. Leo - pride and violence and tyranny of a cruel ruler. The she-wolf is greed and the Roman church, which is mired in greed.

Together, they are forces that impede progress. The top of the hill to which D strives is salvation (moral elevation) and a state built on moral principles. Virgil is an allegory of the human. wisdom. The embodiment of the knowledge to which the humanists devoted themselves. Beatrice - the connection of the image with the "New Life".

1 circle. Pagans and unbaptized babies. Dante meets Homer, Horace, Ovid and Lucan there, as well as a lot of ancient mythical and real creatures: Hector, Aeneas, Cicero, Caesar, Socrates, Plato, Euclid, etc. In this circle, only sighs are heard: they are not particularly tormented.

2nd circle: Minos sits in the second circle and decides who to send to which circle. Here, excessively loving personalities, incl. Paolo, Francesca, Cleopatra, Achilles (!), Dido, etc.

3 circle: gluttons suffer under freezing rain. I won’t list names further, don’t remember anyway, but I’ll look for them in scrap. There are mostly Dante's contemporaries. In the same circle lives Cerberus.

4: misers and spenders. They collide with each other, shouting “What to save?” or “What to throw?”. Here is the Stygian swamp (regarding the water surfaces in Hell: the river Acheron encircles the 1st circle of Hell, plunging down, forms the Styx (Stygian swamp), which surrounds the city of Dita (Lucifer). Below the waters of the Styx are transformed into the flaming river Phlegeton, and he, already in the center it turns into an icy lake Cocytus, where Lucifer is frozen.)

5: in the Stygian marsh sit the angry.

6: heretics. They lie in burning tombs.

7: three belts in which rapists of various types are tormented: over people, over themselves (suicides) and over a deity. In the first belt, D. meets centaurs. In the same circle - usurers as rapists of nature.

8: 10 evil cracks where they languish: pimps and deceivers, flatterers who sold the church. positions, soothsayers, astrologers, sorceresses, bribe-takers, hypocrites, thieves, treacherous advisers (here Ulysses and Diomedes), instigators of strife (Mohammed and Bertrand de Born), counterfeiters who posed as other people, lied with a word.

9: Belts: Cain - betrayed relatives (named after Cain). Antenora - traitors of like-minded people (here - Ganelon). Tolomei - traitors to friends .. Giudecca (named Judas) - traitors to benefactors. Here Lucifer chews Judas. This is the very center of the earth. On wool L. Dante and Virgil get out on the surface of the Earth from the other side.

Hell - 9 circles. Purgatory - 7, + prepurgatory, + earthly paradise, paradise - 9 heavens. Geometrical symmetry of the Earth è symmetry in the composition: 100 songs = 1 introductory + 33 each for Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. This construction was a new phenomenon in the literature. D. relied on the medieval symbolism of the number (3 - the Trinity and its derivative 9). Building a model of Hell, D. follows Aristotle, who refers to the 1st category the sins of intemperance, to 2 - violence, to 3 - deceit. D. has 2-5 circles for the intemperate, 7 for rapists (6 I don’t know where, it’s not said, think for yourself), 8-9 for deceivers, 8 for just deceivers, 9 for traitors. Logic: the more material the sin, the more forgivable it is. Kara is always symbolic. Deception is harder than violence because it destroys the spiritual ties between people:

The origin of Greek tragedy and its structure. The role of theater in Greek society.

Greek comedy arose in the 6th century from the following 4 elements: 1) noisy and cheerful everyday scenes of a parody and caricature character (especially common among the Dorians); 2) dramatized accusatory songs among the villagers who went to the city on the holidays of Dionysus to ridicule the local inhabitants; 3) orgiastic-sacrificial cult of Dionysus; 4) songs in honor of the gods of fertility at Dionysian festivals.

There is unclear information about Megara, where, as if already at the beginning of the 6th century. there was a primitive comedy, consisting of small comic scenes. In Sicily, the so-called. mime, i.e. comic reproduction in folk scenes of everyday life.

Attic comedy uses typical masks ("boastful warrior", "learned charlatan") The object of comedy is not the mythological past, but the living modernity, current, sometimes even topical issues of political and cultural life. The comedy is primarily political and revealing. Freedom of personal mockery of individual citizens with an open naming of names. (Aristophanes - Cleon, Socrates, Euripides) "Ancient" comedy usually does not individualize its characters, but creates generalized caricature images. The plot is mostly fantastic (Aristophanes' hero makes peace for himself and his family during the Peloponnesian War).

a kind of symmetrical articulation. The chorus - 24 people fell into two, sometimes warring camps. The following can be considered typical for the "ancient" comedy. construction. In the prologue, an exposition of the play is given and a fantastic project of the hero is presented. This is followed by the parod (introduction) of the choir, a lively scene, often accompanied by a scuffle, where the actors also participate. After the agon, the goal is usually achieved (a dispute between two characters). Then - a parabasa. (The chorus says goodbye to the actors and addresses the audience directly). The second half of the comedy is characterized by scenes of a farce type, in which the beneficial consequences of the project are depicted and various aliens who violate this bliss are sent away. The choir here no longer takes part in the action and only borders the scenes with their songs. The comedy ends with a procession of the komos (choir). The typical structure allows for various deviations, options for rearranging individual parts, but the comedies of the 5th century known to us. one way or another, they gravitate towards it.

Creativity D. Defoe.

Daniel Defoe

An amazing personality who wrote in all genres, politician, publicist, creator journalism, creator of English journalism. One of those who brought William of Orange (the pamphlet "Full-fledged Englishman", which said that the English nation was born from the combination of many others and one cannot talk about the purity of English blood) to the throne. They committed a civil execution (put him up at the pillory) for writing pamphlets directed against the aristocrats of his time - he wrote the “Hymn to the Pillory” (if there are thinking people in England, then they stand at the pillory). He was a hosiery manufacturer, he first invented white stockings (he went bankrupt because it was considered indecent). He went to debtor's prison and there, in order to repay his debts, he wrote a novel about Robinson Crusoe. The novel that made his name famous.

Robinson Crusoe

1719. That children's edition of Robinson Crusoe, which we all know, is only one part of the novel about Robinson, and there is also Robinson, who returns to his island, who makes a colony and beats everything out of it, and the third volume is Robinson's notes of an old man who recalls own life. Those. what we know from children's publications is only one of three parts.

A travel novel, a novel of human upbringing by life, a parable novel.

First of all, the work of a person is glorified, a person who managed not to go crazy after so many years of loneliness. Robinson has the idea that mind rules the world. It has been preserved because reason is the strongest of all. For the first time when he entered the uninhabited land and when he left, it was an established subsistence economy, where there were even slaves (Friday). Those. a hymn to pain and reason to a person is one thing. But we are talking about something else.

That novel, which was understood in the 18th century as a philosophical novel, has now become children's fiction. Why? Those who read not so long ago and those who remember the text will remember that page 2 is dedicated to the description of the traces of a person that he saw. Description of his encounter with wild animals - 2 pages. What is the rest of the text about? All other text works. What comes to the fore is not the terrible, but the process of creativity, because it turns the weaving of the fence, the construction of the house into creativity. Labor - his work - is described so deliciously that it is understood as creativity. It's all incredibly interesting for a child. The point is that before us the first basket in the world is being woven, the first house in the world is being built. In the process of reading, the reader is also the first to weave and build.

Robinsonade

This is a hymn to the mind and a hymn to the hands. A hymn to human creativity. It is intelligence combined with creativity.

Why a novel-parable? Economists, historians, philosophers have a term "Robinsonade". What does Robinson do on the island? What stages in the development of the island does it go through? What do they remind? As for the first time, humanity is mastering fishing, farming, hunting, cattle breeding ... it goes through the stages of human development. The idea that a person alone, in extreme conditions, can repeat the history of mankind is commonly called "robinsonade". But Daniel Defoe creates a "robinsonade" and destroys it. At the same time, the author gives Robinson (from the ship) the necessary things. Those. he uses what mankind has invented before him. Those. Robinsonade is impossible, man will not be able to repeat the history of mankind.

This parable is about the fact that, on the one hand, a person is omnipotent, and on the other hand, he is just a part of all mankind, the fruits of whose labors he uses.

Man, no matter where he is, is not alone. He is alone on the island, but the items he takes from the ship are what humanity has done before him. Man is always part of humanity.

Why hide money on a deserted island? He lives for so many years, but every 4-5 years he buries money in a new place. This Robinson practicality is a typical feature of the 18th century.

And what kind of accounts he has with God - businesslike and practical - he writes down: He prays to God. God to him is rain. Practical English Relations. Even in spiritual relationships.

He saves Friday. There are already 2 people on a desert island, but one is Master (the first word that Friday learned), and the second is a slave. And this is also an Englishman of the 18th century. Practical, business, … and not only.

The second part tells how this great pioneer who formed a colony... how he becomes a colonizer, how he squeezes money out of his colony. But the brightest of all is in the story of the black boy, a little Arab boy who helped him escape from captivity. And when Robinson hears that the captain of the ship needs a sailor and gives good money for it, he sells the black boy to the captain of the ship (that is, the one who saved his life). If he can squeeze out a profit, he will sell. Practical, sober.

This is a novel-parable about humanity, which is beautiful. About a man who cannot live alone. The fact that "Robinsonade" is impossible. This is the glorification of man.

3. The first period of creativity - comedies and chronicles.

The division of Shakespeare's creative path as a playwright into separate periods is inevitably to a large extent conditional and approximate. So, for example, already in 1594 in "Romeo and Juliet" Shakespeare touched on a topic essentially akin to his later tragedies. Naturally, the smaller the division into periods, the more conditional it is. Therefore, we will confine ourselves to establishing three large periods: the first 1590-1601, the second 1601-1608. and the third 1608-1612.

For the first period of Shakespeare's career, the bright, cheerful colors of his comedies are especially characteristic. During these years, Shakespeare created a brilliant cycle of comedies. Suffice it to mention such plays as "The Taming of the Shrew", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Much Ado About Nothing", "As You Like It", "Twelfth Night", which are, as it were, the leitmotif of the first period, which can be called optimistic. Let the hard fate threaten lovers in the comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream" - on the day of the first of May, on the day of the folk hero Robin Hood, the cheerful forest elf "Robin the Good Small" brings their misadventures to a happy ending. In the comedy "Much Ado About Nothing" the image of the slandered Hero is almost tragic, but Don Juan is exposed, Hero's innocence triumphs. The misadventures of the exiles hiding in the Arden Forest ("As You Like It") are crowned with unclouded happiness. Although Viola's path is difficult ("Twelfth Night"), but in the end she gains the reciprocity of Orsino and her lost brother.

True, during the first period, Shakespeare also wrote "historical chronicles" full of gloomy events and covered in blood. But if we consider the "historical chronicles" as a single work on the topic, and in the order in which Shakespeare wrote them, then it turns out that they, in the end, lead to a happy outcome. In his latest "chronicle" ("Henry V"), Shakespeare depicts the triumph of the hero he sang. "Chronicles" tells how England from a country fragmented by the power of feudal lords, is transformed into a single national state.

Finally, let us note that in the "chronicles" one of the most cheerful Shakespearean images is shown in full growth - Sir John Falstaff. An image so full-blooded in its cheerfulness could hardly have been created by Shakespeare in subsequent periods. In the same way, in Romeo and Juliet, colors typical of the first period abound both in the images of the brilliant Mercutio and the amusing nurse, and in that breath of youth and spring that this play is imbued with.

Among the works of the first period, only the tragedy "Julius Caesar" stands apart. If Shakespeare had not written two comedies after this tragedy ("As You Like It" and "Twelfth Night"), then "Julius Caesar" should be considered the second period of his work.

The first of Shakespeare's early comedies is the Comedy of Errors. Shakespeare's comedies combine situations and characters. One of the merits of Shakespeare as a playwright is that he kind of exploded from the inside the ancient primitive farce and the English comedy close to it of the 16th century (works like "Ralph Royster Doyster"), replacing the "masks" with lively, realistic characters and, together while retaining the sharpness of comedic situations from this farce. In The Comedy of Errors, however, the comic of situations, that is, the external side, still prevails.

Borrowing his plot from Plautus, Shakespeare emphasized the comedic situation even more sharply by adding two more indistinguishable twins, Dromio of Syracuse and Dromio of Ephesus, to two strikingly similar brothers, Antipholus of Syracuse and Antipholus of Ephesus. "The Comedy of Errors" is a story about the amusing misunderstandings that follow from this. And yet Coleridge was wrong when he considered The Comedy of Errors only a "joke", a primitive farce. In the hustle and bustle of events, one can already discern the contours of characters, though still poorly defined. The quick-tempered, jealous Adriana and the humble Luciana are images of a comedic rather than farcical plan.

In his next comedy - "The Taming of the Shrew" - Shakespeare again returned to these images and revealed them much deeper, contrasting the direct, sharp and embittered, but not evil Katarina with the modest-looking, but essentially selfish and hypocritical Bianca. Quite in the spirit of Bianchi, Lucian thinks and feels when he is not so much indignant that Antipholus is cheating on his wife, but advises him to "act secretly" and "teach sin to seem holy."

And in the images of two identical in appearance Antiphols there is a characteristic difference. Dreamy, sad about his lost brother, Antipholus of Syracuse bears little resemblance to the stingy and grumpy Antipholus of Ephesus, a typical wealthy city dweller. But more importantly, this "joke" has serious, almost tragic motives. The very exposition of the play is tragic: the fate of a family scattered around the world.

Let us note a feature characteristic of Shakespeare's entire world outlook: a happy denouement is not a blind accident. She completes the long and active search by Egeion for her lost son (Egeion also visited Greece, explored the "limits of Asia") and the search for her lost brother by Antipholus of Syracuse, who compares himself to "a drop looking for another drop in the ocean." People must seek their own happiness - such is the leitmotif that later will sound more than once in Shakespeare.

From the stylistic point of view, The Comedy of Errors is a typical Shakespearean combination of heterogeneous genres. No wonder the hostile Green already at that time ironically called Shakespeare "jack of all trades" (Johannes Factotum). Elements of farce are interspersed with elements of a completely different order. When Antipholus of Ephesus does not recognize his father, he utters lines that belong to the best examples of Shakespeare's tragic pathos.

The comedy The Taming of the Shrew, like The Comedy of Errors, at first glance may seem like just a grotesque, light joke.

Shakespeare borrowed his plot from a play by an unknown author, which was published in 1594 under the title The Taming of a Shrew, and probably written several years earlier. "The Taming of a Shrew" is a typical pre-Shakespearean or, more precisely, pre-humanistic work, thoroughly imbued with the preaching of "house-building" obedience. Rough and stupid, but resolute Ferando "tames" the obstinate Katarina until she, finally broken, not only becomes an obedient slave of her husband, but also delivers a tedious and colorless sermon on the need for complete obedience to husbands as an edification to other wives. Shakespeare used this primitive farce as material for his comedy. He borrowed some details from Ariosto's Changelings (translated into English by Gascoigne) and perhaps from the Italian commedia dell'arte.

Comparing "The Taming of the Shrew" with its English prototype, we see, firstly, that Shakespeare transferred the scene from the fantastic "Athens" to contemporary Italy. Secondly, he transferred the action from an aristocratic environment to an environment of wealthy citizens, and under the Italian covers, English reality is clearly visible. Against the background of this bourgeois environment, the nobleman Petruchio stands out. However, he himself had long ago given up on his nobility, as well as on his old, neglected country house. He became a warrior and navigator, one of those seekers of adventure and profit, of whom so many appeared in the "morning dawn" of primitive accumulation. In his own words, he was brought from Verona to Padua by "that wind that scatters young people all over the world so that they look for luck farther than at home." Petruchio leads a one-on-one fight for luck. This brilliant young man appears in a rather dull society of old-fashioned, patriarchal townspeople. They like to sit, feast, show off their wealth (recall a kind of competition in wealth between Gremio and Tranio). Old Baptista, with serene frankness, trades in his daughter, deciding to marry Bianca to the one of the two suitors who turns out to be richer. Petruchio was bored. "Everyone sit and sit, eat and eat," he complains even during the wedding feast. Katarina languishes in this musty little world. To make her image clearer, let us recall the pre-Shakespearean farce. We don't find Bianchi there. Why did Shakespeare need it? It seems to us that in the opposition of the two sisters, the main, and, moreover, purely Shakespearean, idea is revealed. Bianca looks like a "gentle dove". The simple-hearted Lucentio calls her "a modest girl," Hortensio calls her "the patroness of heavenly harmony." As soon as she gets married, however, this humble woman "shows her claws." Not only does she not come to her husband's call, but in front of everyone she calls him a fool. Katarina, this "devil", to everyone's surprise, is a loving wife. Both are not what they seem.

Appearance and being, in the language of Shakespeare - "clothes" and "nature", not only do not correspond, but in this case are directly opposed to each other. Petruchio therefore does not at all what his prototype Ferando did: he does not "tame" his wife. Like Shakespeare, he only reveals the true "nature" of Katarina. She is stuffy in the environment in which she has to live. She is outraged that her father treats her like a thing, like a commodity. She is "obstinate" because everyone around her is mocking her. The charm of the hot, quick-tempered Katharina is in her sincerity. True, her protest takes unbridled, even wild forms. But let's not forget that we have before us people who were distinguished neither by sophistication of manners, nor by restraint of feelings. Katharina is a strong, full-blooded Renaissance person. Her character is typical for England of that time. Her protest is expressed in quirks: in what was expressed in the language of that era by the word humour. As soon as he met Katarina, Petruchio immediately figured out that her "obstinacy" was only humour. And he "conquers her, by her own whim," as the servant Peter says. Petruchio's behavior is a kind of parody of Katarina's "quirks". As Leves (Shakespeare's Women) notes, "Katarina sees in Petruchio's behavior her own character in a caricature." Not a trace remains of Katarina's "obstinacy", and at the end of the play Katarina utters a monologue, as if preaching the "house-building" law of unquestioning obedience to her husband's will. This monologue was unfairly seen as a declaration of Shakespeare himself.

It should not be forgotten for a moment that Shakespeare's characters are not mouthpieces. They speak and act on their own. The final monologue is delivered not by Shakespeare, but by Katharina. This monologue is not a sermon, but an expression of feeling. Katharina does not speak "in general" about husbands and wives, but about herself and Petruchio. "I love you" is the subtext of this monologue. "Master," "king," "lord," are only the sweetest, most enthusiastic words that Katarina found in her vocabulary. The thing is that the "devil" Katarina, and not the sensitive "humble" Bianchi, turned out to have a warm heart. Listening to Katarina's excited speech, Petruchio completely guessed this heart. "That's a girl! Come here and kiss me, Kate," he exclaims in delight. He is not only a winner, he himself is defeated by love.

The story of Petruchio is no less amazing than the story of Katarina. He arrived in Padua with the open intention of marrying a wealthy bride. But, having met with Katarina, he immediately realized that under the "clothes" of obstinacy, there is a person who is head and shoulders above the environment. He set himself the task of finding the real Katarina and resorted to various quirks to achieve his goal. The true meaning of his intentions is expressed only in allegorical allegory. He comes to the wedding in grotesque rags. It's not just a whim. He himself explains the meaning of his act: "After all, she marries me, and not my clothes." The same motif is repeated in the country house, when Petruchio robs Katharina of a new elegant dress. “The mind enriches the body,” he tells her. “And just as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, dignity shines through from under the darkest clothes ... Oh no, good Kate. You have not become worse because you are poor ornaments and miserable clothes." The victory of "nature" over "clothes" is the leitmotif of the comedy.

Borrowing the plot from the story of Felix and Philomena (this story was dramatized in England even before Shakespeare, in 1584), Shakespeare created the comedy The two Gentlemen of Verona, built on a somewhat schematic opposition. This comedy, like the sonnets, tells of the superiority of friendship over selfish passion. Before us are two friends - Valentine and Proteus. "He hunts for honor, I hunt for love," says Proteus. The cult of his own personality, immersion in his subjective world leads Proteus along the path of betrayal and lies. The desire for activity that characterizes Valentine leads him to a moral victory over his antipode.

But Valentine is not only a noble and selfless person. He protests, he flees from the surrounding society into nature, into the forest, where he becomes the leader of other such renegades. Like Robin Hood, the old hero of English folk ballads, these renegades do not touch "defenseless women and poor travelers." Thus, Valentine's protest resonates with Robin Hood motifs, i.e. thoughts, feelings, cherished dreams that have long wandered among the English people. On the other hand, Valentine is the prototype of that later gallery of "noble robbers", to which Schiller's Karl Moor belongs.

The very nature of Valentinus' opposition to Proteus is indicative. After all, this opposition is based not on the difference in natural qualities (Proteus is not at all a "villain by nature"), but on the difference in the chosen paths.

Of the other characters, we note the selfless Julia, anticipating the image of Viola from Twelfth Night, as well as Lownes with his dog Crab. One of the remarkable features of Shakespeare as a playwright is that he gave the jesters and clowns, those ridiculous buffoons of pre-Shakespearean drama, a truly human trait. "The eccentric commoner" Lownes, repeating in his friendly feeling for the ungrateful dog the main motive of the whole comedy, is not only funny, but also touching. No wonder Engels so highly appreciated this image. "Launs alone with his dog Crab is worth more than all the German comedies put together" (Marx and Engels, Soch., vol. XXIV, p. 429.) - he wrote to Marx.

The comedy Love's Labor's Lost, probably also written in 1594, like The Two Veronians, has long been the subject of unfriendly criticism. Hazlit stated bluntly that "if one had to part with one of Shakespeare's comedies, one would have to choose Love's Labour's Vain." Meanwhile, contemporaries thought differently. Burbeja on "Love's Labour's Lost" The famous tragedian, head of the Globe troupe, calls this comedy "a witty and merry play."

The reason for this difference of opinion is not difficult to explain. "Love's Labour's Lost" is in many ways a parody. There are many polemical attacks and grotesque caricatures here, which "reached" contemporaries, but remain obscure for us. Behind many of the characters are probably living contemporaries of Shakespeare. Moly is seen by some as a parody of Thomas Nash. Other researchers believe that Holofernes not only goes back to Holofernes of Rabelais, teacher of Gargantua, and therefore parodies the "learning" of medieval scholastics, but is also a caricature of Florio, teacher of Italian in the house of the Earl of Southampton (Holofernes is quite possibly an anagram of Florio ).

Many details of this play are not clear to us, but its general idea is clear and is essential in the general concept of Shakespeare's work. A circle of young aristocrats renounces the pleasures of life in order to indulge in abstract philosophical reflections. This attempt to withdraw from the surrounding reality into "pure contemplation", which, according to Shakespeare, is selfish self-gratification, suffers a complete failure. Thought cannot replace life. The path of selfish deepening into oneself is a false path. In this sense, Love's Labour's Vain develops the theme of Proteus from The Two Veronians. Shakespeare here directs the edge of his satire also against the artificial, pompous style, so fashionable in the aristocratic court circles of that era. Biron renounces "taffeta phrases and words, twisted from silk, three-story hyperbole." He advocates simplicity of speech.

Love's Labour's Vain marks an important milestone in Shakespeare's biography. The young poet had just become famous in the circle of the Earl of Southampton as the author of two poems. On the other hand, he has already acted as a playwright "theatre for the general public." Two paths were open before him: either to write for "connoisseurs of fine art" or to submit his works to the judgment of the broad masses. Shakespeare chose the second path.

The comedy "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" occupies a special place among the works of the first period. This comedy is supposed to have been written on the occasion of the celebration of one aristocratic wedding. At first glance, we have an elegant epithalama - and nothing more. The plot itself is also insignificant. The main role in the comedy is played by the flower that Pak possesses and which is called "love from idleness." Shakespeare, the first impression is incomplete. First of all, we note that under the conditional "Athenian" costumes, the English reality surrounding Shakespeare is distinguishable. In Theseus, who boasts of his hunting dogs, it is not difficult to notice the features of an important English nobleman; the "Athenians" in love in many ways, probably, resembled those young gentlemen and ladies, such as Shakespeare could have seen at least in the house of the Earl of Southampton.Even elves quarrel, love, and jealous like men. Before us appear Oberon, Titania, Pak. As if in a children's fairy tale, human beings turn out to be a sweet pea flower, a cobweb, a moth, a mustard seed. Shakespeare's fantasy is realistic. Elves are the same people. But at the same time, Titania is no more like a noble lady of Elizabethan England than easy Pak is like a real jester of that era. Shakespeare's elves are magical creatures, although there is nothing "otherworldly" about them. They are freer than people, and at the same time they are full of interest only in people, because they belong to them: these are human dreams and dreams; without them, the characters of the play would not have reached the happy harmony that completes a long series of misadventures.

It is significant that even in this "aristocratic" comedy, Shakespeare's fantasy preferred the images of the English folk tale: the place of the conditional Cupid was taken by the cheerful and crafty Pak, well known to popular belief, he is also "Robin the Good Guy". And, finally, as if as an accompaniment to the plot, a noisy group of eccentric artisans appeared, headed by the weaver Osnova.

The atmosphere of this comedy is not so cloudless and radiant as it seems at first. The love of Lysander and Hermia cannot triumph in Athens. She is blocked by an ancient cruel law embodied in the face of old Aegeus, which gives parents power over the life and death of their children. For young people, there is only one way out: to escape from "Athens" to the bosom of nature, to the forest thicket. Only here, in a flowering forest, age-old chains are broken. Note that the action takes place on the day of the first of May, on the day when the people in the cities and villages of England celebrated the memory of their hero, Robin Hood. Not only about the "whims of love", but also about the victory of living feeling over the old Testament and cruel feudal law, the "subtext" of this comedy tells.

But why did Shakespeare need artisans? Of course, not only for comic contrast to the lyrical theme. These artisans are funny, and they are funny because they have a lot of old, already obsolete, they are typical guild masters, wholly still imbued with the Middle Ages. But at the same time they are attractive. Shakespeare loves them because they are of the people. These artisans are busy preparing for the play to be performed at Theseus' wedding. Of course, the performance is ridiculous. It is possible that Shakespeare here parodied the performance of the mysteries by the masters and apprentices of the guild workshops. Shakespeare could see mysteries on stage as a child in the provinces. But we are dealing here not only with caricature. There are also bitter motives in this laughter. The story of Pyramus and Thisbe in its plot echoes the fate of Lysander and Hermia. "In the world around me, everything does not always end so well as in my comedy," is Shakespeare's hidden remark. The spokesmen for this truth are clumsy, unskilful, but truthful artisans. It is not for nothing that Pak, speaking in the epilogue, reminds the audience of "lions roaring from hunger," of a plowman exhausted by labor, of a seriously ill man who, on this wedding night, thinks about a funeral shroud. From observations of living reality, themes were already growing, which later embodied in the stunning collisions of the great tragedies of Shakespeare.

In everyday realism, partly reminiscent of Ben Jonson's style, The Merry Wives of Windsor stand out among the comedies of the first period. Although nominally the events take place in the reign of Henry IV, we are actually facing a remote province of Shakespeare's era. Quiet town named "Windsor". It was probably more reminiscent of distant Stratford, Shakespeare's homeland. The swaggering judge Shallow, his degenerate nephew Slender, the eccentric pastor Evans, the hospitable, good-natured, but somewhat stupid Page, the jovial roadside innkeeper, are living images of this backwater. And yet it would not be accurate to call this play a "philistine comedy", since such a definition is associated with the preaching of abstract morality.

This comedy by Shakespeare has often been reduced to a simple concept: the libertine courtier, Sir John Falstaff, "descends" into the philistine milieu; however, the debauchery of the courtier is defeated by philistine virtue, etc. First of all, we note that the anger of the gossips is not an expression of an indignant moral feeling. Mrs. Ford is even flattered at first to receive a letter from Sir John. The gossips' anger only really flares up when they discover that Sir John has sent the same letters to both of them. If the gossips cruelly "play" Falstaff, then this is not due to the desire to prove the truth of abstract morality, but simply to have fun. The leitmotif of the comedy, an apology for the cheerfulness proclaimed by the Renaissance man in defiance of Puritan contempt for a woman, is the words of one of the gossips that "women can have fun without losing their honesty." These words, apparently, were so prominent in the performance of the comedy that at the end of the 17th century they became the refrain of a popular song.

Sir John Falstaff - anything but a petimeter. Unlike some critics, we have no doubt that Falstaff of Henry IV and Falstaff of The Wisps of Windsor are one and the same person. But trouble befell him. Finding himself without a penny in his pocket, he embarked on a path that was not characteristic of his nature, and for this he was severely punished. Falstaff is a glutton, a drunkard, a braggart, a deceiver. He is ready to rob people on the high road, but at the same time, there is no predatory prudent practicality in him. There is a wonderful detail in The Windsor Gossips. Pistol stole the handle of an expensive ladies' fan, and Falstaff, for swearing Pistol's innocence, received only fifteen pence ... Pistol and Nim deceive this big child at every step. Falstaff needs money to drink wine and gorge himself on roast beef, but not for savings. However, in "Windsor Gossips" he set to something else. "I'm going to make money," he says. He embarked on complex machinations: he decided to pretend to be in love in order to open the right path to wealth. For this, they put him in a basket with dirty laundry and threw him into a stinking puddle. At the end of the comedy, he himself admits his stupidity and good-naturedly calls himself a "donkey".

There are other motifs in this hilarious comedy. Ford's jealousy reaches a real depth of mental anguish. Anna Page rebels against the "domostroevsky" way of life. She marries the one her heart has chosen. And this not only brings happiness to herself, but also ennobles her beloved Fenton. He, as he himself admits, at first thought about Anna Page's money, but then, having forgotten about gold, he began to remember only the feeling.

"The Gossips of Windsor", especially the beginning of the comedy, belong to the best examples of Shakespeare's work. "There is more life and movement in the first act of "Merry wives" alone than in all German literature" (Marx and Engels, Soch., vol. XXIV, p. 429.), Engels wrote to Marx.

Borrowing his plot from Ariosto and from Bandello, Shakespeare created Much Ado About Nothing, perhaps the lightest and most uncomplicated of his comedies. And yet its atmosphere is not so cloudless. The brilliant society depicted here is struck by a hidden wormhole. Among these noble carefree people lives the villain Don Juan. Wounded by his position as an illegitimate son, he slanders, enjoying the very act of revenge. And it is especially characteristic that in this society they so easily believed Don Juan. "The matter is mainly about," says Gervinus, "what kind of people are there who make a lot of noise over trifles, and not about those trifles because of which a noise rises." The fate of the slandered Gero came close to a tragic denouement. The catastrophe would have happened if the night watch had not intervened. It is to these ridiculous clumsy eccentrics that Gero owes her salvation. So the jester in Shakespeare, despite all his eccentricity, is often the spokesman for the people's truth, the exposer of injustice. The approach of the catastrophe forced Benedict and Beatrice to change their minds, partly reminiscent of the "whimsical" images of The Taming of the Shrew. As a contemporary says, Benedict and Beatrice enjoyed, along with Falstaff and Malvolio, a special success with the audience. The approach of misfortune forced them to look deeper into life and stop their "tournament of whims". They threw aside their biting wit and sincerely confessed at last that they loved each other.

The comedy As You Like It has a distinct Robin Hood theme. Recall that the plot of the comedy, through Lodge's pompous novel, goes back to the old tale of Hamelin, which is close to the legends of Robin Hood. However, this comedy was once traditionally interpreted - both in criticism and on stage - as a festive "pastoral", as a merry walk in the forest. At the same time, they forgot that the three main characters of this comedy are exiles: the duke, whose brother took the throne, and Rosalind, who was expelled on pain of death, and Orlando, whom his older brother first kept in the barnyard, and then planned to kill. Orlando is inferior in social position to his older brother, but by nature both of them, being brothers, are equal.

The play begins with Orlando's rebellion against his brother. Orlando has to flee into a dense forest, which is called "Arden", but in which it is not difficult to recognize the Sherwood forest of English folk legends. Here live the shepherds, who, unlike the pastoral "shepherds", have their hands smeared with tar. Nature here is not conditional, pastoral, but real, where bad weather rages. But still this nature is merciful to people. As in the flowering forest of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", but without the intervention of magical forces, the chains of unfair relationships are broken and love and joy triumph. Everyone, throwing off everything artificial, superficial, accidental, becomes himself. This is not an escape from life. This is the affirmation of another, better life on other grounds, another society imbued with humanity. How do these people live in the forest? Wrestler Charles answers this at the beginning of the comedy: "They live like in the old days Robin Hood English." The duke was followed by many "merry people" - just like Robin Hood. Only the place of the brave archer was taken by the exiled duke, a humanist thinker.

The melancholic Jacques stands apart in this comedy. If for his despondency and pessimism Rosalind laughs at him, and Shakespeare deprives him of his place in a joyful finale, then in the satirical monologues of Jacques, who seeks to "cleanse the spoiled stomach of the world", those motives are already heard that soon found their further development in Shakespeare's tragedies. The very image of Jacques, thinking about the injustice of the reality surrounding him, occupies a special place in Shakespeare's work, being in some of his features, as it were, a sketch for the image of Hamlet.

The brilliant comedy cycle of the first period ends with "Twelfth Night" (Twelfth Night). The main theme of this comedy is Viola's struggle for her happiness. Her lively feeling, her heroic devotion, finally awaken the lazy soul of the cutesy Orsino. Likewise, impregnable Olivia, surrendering to her languid sadness, yields to nature and lights up with sudden love. Sir John Falstaff reappears under the name of Sir Toby Belch (literally, "burping dog"). It is remarkable that this drunken knight turns out to be an opponent of the puritan Malvolio. “Do you really think,” exclaims Sir Toby, turning to Malvolio, “that if you are virtuous, then there will be no more pies and ale in the world?” These words have become a proverb in England. The frank cheerfulness of Sir Toby and Mary, people of the Renaissance, defeats the hypocritical "holiness" of Malvolio.

There is another wonderful character in the comedy. This is Olivia's jester, Festus. It is no coincidence that Shakespeare put exquisite lyrical songs into the mouth of this jester. Festus, apparently, is an educated person, involuntarily, for lack of a better one, who chose the profession of a jester. He will wit without lifting, as if reluctantly. At the end of the comedy, he does not receive a share in the general happiness and, as he was, remains alone. In the final song, Fest sings about his ruined, drunken life, about that dull rain that has been constantly drizzling throughout his life. Thus, this merry comedy ends with a melancholic note, the very title of which speaks of its purpose: it was first performed on a masquerade Epiphany evening (on the twelfth evening after Christmas).

Along with comedies, the main works of the first period are "historical chronicles".

Even before Shakespeare, plays based on English history had gained immense popularity on the London stage. Marlowe brought this genre to a high artistic perfection in Edward II. In all these plays, the political tendency is especially pronounced.

If we consider Shakespeare's "chronicles" in the sequence in which they are written, then they form a single epic, ending with the defeat of the feudal lords by the king ("Henry IV"), victory over an external enemy and the triumph of the national hero ("Henry V"). It goes without saying that Shakespeare idealizes his hero here. The image he created bears little resemblance to the actually existing "bloody Henry V (burner of heretics)" ("Archive of Marx and Engels", vol. VII, p. 371.), as Marx calls him. Shakespeare is here a supporter of the idea of national unity and the monarch as the embodiment of this idea. Even later, during the years of rampant reaction, Shakespeare did not change his views. Ulysses ("Troilus and Cressida", 1602) in a solemn monologue (act I, 3) compares the monarch with the sun, establishing harmony among other luminaries. Violation of this harmony leads to chaos and universal destruction.

The most common metaphor or comparison in the "chronicles" is a growing tree. Indeed, the growth of England, the consolidation of the country under the rule of the monarch - the central theme of Shakespeare's "chronicles". In them, Shakespeare summed up the entire period of European history, when for England "royal power, relying on the townspeople, broke the power of the feudal nobility and founded large, essentially national monarchies, in which modern European nations and modern bourgeois society developed" (Marx and Engels, Soch., vol. XIV, p. 475.).

But, seeing in the monarch the guarantee of the national unity of the country, Shakespeare severely criticizes those monarchs whose actions contradict the image of the ideal sovereign. Such is Shakespeare's weak-willed Henry VI, with his weakness plunging the country into the horrors of internecine feudal war; such is the criminal King John (the play "King John" should also be classified as a "chronicle"), paying for the crime with a painful death, and, finally, the blood-stained villain on the throne - Richard III.

It should be noted, however, that Shakespeare's villainous kings are usually usurpers of the throne (Richard III, later Claudius in Hamlet and Macbeth). In relation to little Arthur, King John is also a usurper. The weak will of Henry VI is partly due to the precariousness of his rights to the crown. "My rights are shaky," he says. It is curious that Shakespeare does not question the rights to the crown of the idealized Henry V, although his father, Henry IV, is experiencing a heavy burden of the crown taken from Richard II.

Shakespeare defends the legitimate right of succession to the throne. This position is quite understandable. The usurpation of the throne threatened the beginning of a struggle for the crown, the beginning of internecine bloodshed - "civil slaughter", as King Henry IV says, threatened the resurrected ghost of the wars of the Scarlet and White Roses, the memory of which in Shakespeare's day was still fresh in oral tradition.

The "chronicle" about King Richard II stands apart. This is a "legitimate" monarch. His guilt is not in the usurpation of the throne, but in reckless autocracy, in turning his crown and his dignity into a fetish. True, Shakespeare condemns not so much the monarch himself as his entourage. The gardener, who personifies the voice of the people in this play, calls the royal favorites "tares" and considers Richard's main mistake that he did not cut the lushly overgrown branches of the garden. And yet, it was the "chronicle" about Richard II that sounded in those days as an anti-government play (the scene of Richard's abdication was even banned by the censors).

It is possible that it was Shakespeare's "Richard II" that the Earl of Essex and his friends used as a weapon of agitation on the eve of the uprising against Queen Elizabeth. Indeed, there are many arrows hidden in the play directed against the government of the queen, in particular against the policy of monopolies. "It's a shame to rent the whole country ... You are the landowner of England, not its king," says the old Duke of Lancaster to Richard.

One of the main questions that critics and researchers of the "chronicles" have thought about is the question of their historicity. There is a widespread opinion according to which Shakespeare allegedly deliberately did not take into account history, deliberately preferring poetic fiction to facts. This statement requires significant reservations and clarifications.

"Chronicles" were for the audience of the theater a description of absolutely reliable events. If, for example, in "King Lear" Shakespeare radically changed the course of events, replacing the happy ending of the legendary legend with a tragic one, he would never have allowed himself such "liberties" in the "chronicles". It is significant that Shakespeare, in the words of the chorus at the beginning of the last act of "Henry V", asks the audience to forgive him that he is not able to depict "huge and proper life" by stage means.

"Chronicles" seemed to the audience a resurrected history. “How glad the brave Talbot, the storm of the French, would rejoice if he knew that, having lain for two hundred years in the grave, he would again win victories on the stage,” Thomas Nash wrote in 1592, “... it seems to the audience that they see him himself, drenched in the blood of fresh wounds, in the tragic actor portraying him.

The reason that Shakespeare's "chronicles" diverge from reality must be sought in those sources that served Shakespeare as material: in the chronicles of Golinshed, in pre-Shakespearean historical dramas, in oral legend. There have been kings on the English throne worse than Richard III. But tradition, and after it the theatrical "chronicle" about this king that existed before Shakespeare, portrayed him as an exceptional villain. Shakespeare proceeded from this gloomy, semi-legendary image. He did not invent, he only speculated, in accordance with the general pattern that he was able to extract from his poor material.

However, it is precisely in this "conjecture" that the whole force of Shakespeare's artistic genius is revealed. If you can find features of conjecture even in the most "historical" images of the "chronicles" (Prince Harry, for example), then in the creation of other images, such as, for example, Sir John Falstaff, free artistic imagination played a major role. "Henry IV" is the most significant and perfect of Shakespeare's "chronicles", perhaps precisely because this play harmoniously combines historical truth, as its author understood, and artistic fantasy (Prince Harry and Falstaff). Shakespeare's "Chronicles" are of exceptional interest even today for the practical and theoretical aesthetics of the historical drama, the historical genre in general.

Shakespeare is an opponent of the reactionary feudal lords fighting against the king. It shows the historical doom of their struggle. They do not die because of a lack of personal prowess and courage. Percy "Hot Spur" (Hotspur) is a fearless knight. Desperately brave and his ally Douglas. They are dying because they act in isolation, because each is playing an independent political game.

If rebellious feudal lords are doomed, then, according to Shakespeare, criminal kings are doomed in the same way. Men like Richard III carry within themselves the seeds of their destruction. The image of Richard is gloomy not only because he is criminal, but also because he is intelligent and aware of his criminality, as well as his ugliness. He knows that there is a conscience, but he prefers force. "Let our strong hands be our conscience, our swords the law!" - he exclaims before the battle, referring to his military leaders. In the kings of Shakespeare's "chronicles" under royal robes, we see living people of the reality surrounding Shakespeare. In Richard's rapacious selfishness, in his hypocrisy, so hated by Shakespeare, we recognize the "Machiavellian," as they used to say in England, one of those predators that the epoch of primitive accumulation produced in such abundance. Iago, and Claudius, and Goneril and Regan belong to the same breed.

But in Richard there are features that distinguish him, for example, from Claudius, who dies a coward, forgetting about Gertrude and plaintively begging those around him to save him. Richard's death is almost heroic. "Thousands of great hearts are in my chest. Forward our banners. Destroy the enemies!" he exclaims before the last battle. Indomitable passions boil in Richard's chest. He is in many ways reminiscent of Marlowe's outrageous heroes.

Shakespeare contrasts Henry V with the criminal Richard as the "ideal" monarch. "Chorus", speaking for the author, friendly and affectionately calls Heinrich by the diminutive name "Harry". At first, Heinrich is an "idle reveler." But, if he is debauched in his youth, he is deprived of what Shakespeare hated most of all - hypocrisy. At the same time, he is the bearer of true knightly honor, as Shakespeare understood it. Shakespeare contrasts this true honor with the selfish honor embodied in the image of Percy. Percy is ready to get honor at least "from the moon or from the depths of the sea." But he longs for glory "without a rival", personal glory for himself. This personal glory is not needed by Prince Harry, who, having defeated Percy in single combat, with a light heart concedes the glory of this victory to Falstaff. Having become king, he seeks glory in battles not for himself, but for his entire army. Under the walls of Harfleur, addressing the soldiers, among whom there are many simple yeomen ("Henry V", III, 1), he calls them all "friends". In his wonderful monologue on St. Crispian ("Henry V", IV, 3) Henry speaks not about his own, but about "our glory", that is, about the glory of all those who fight: "Today, the one who will shed blood with me will be my brother. And no matter how low his origin may be, this day will make him noble." Shakespeare emphasizes Henry's democratic character. "If you could recognize me, you would find that I am a simple king," he says to his bride, a French princess, "you would think that I sold the farm to buy the crown." In Henry's eyes, the king is just as human as other people. “Is the king not the same person as I am?” Heinrich says to the soldiers disguised as a simple warrior; “violet is fragrant to him, like me; the forces of nature act on him, like on me; all his feelings are ordinary, human; discard the ceremonial and the naked king will be only a man." Hungry, exhausted by the campaign, Henry's soldiers go into battle against the dandy knightly French army. On the eve of the battle, the French commanders show off their horses and armor. Meanwhile, Heinrich, disguised, walks around the camp at night and talks with the soldiers. The victory goes to the British. In this victory, an important role is played by the courage and enterprise of Henry himself. "We are in great danger," he says before the battle, "and therefore our courage should be all the greater ... A bad neighbor makes you get out of bed early."

The "Chronicle" of King Henry V belongs to those plays which, as contemporaries testify, made a deep impression on the audience of the Shakespearean theater. “What English breasts,” writes Thomas Gaywood in his “Apology of Actors” (1612), “does not sympathize with the courage of an Englishman when it is depicted in one of our historical dramas! .. What a coward will not be ashamed of his cowardice when he sees a brave compatriot !"

The patriotic theme finds a vivid expression in Shakespeare's "chronicles", with particular fullness - in the monologues of Henry V. Shakespeare will forever remain true to this theme. Even in the most pessimistic of his heroes, Timon of Athens, one feeling still remains alive: "I love my homeland," he says.

A remarkable feature of Shakespeare's "chronicles" is that it is not only individuals who act in them. Unlike, for example, Marlowe, in whom Tamerlane acts, and only Tamerlane, and "an army countless as the sand of the sea" is only a pale appendage to the titanic figure of the winner - in Shakespeare, the French are defeated not only by Henry himself, but also by all English army.

In the "chronicles" we are struck by the versatility of Shakespeare's genius, the breadth of coverage of reality. Shakespeare himself called life "huge" in "Henry V". It was on the basis of the "chronicles" that his ability for a diverse depiction of reality grew and matured. Before us are royal palaces, taverns, knights from the high road, battles that decide the fate of the state, genre scenes, like the collection of two cab drivers leaving a provincial hotel before dawn ("Henry IV", part I).

At the same time, the combination of the tragic and the comic, so typical of Shakespeare, expressed in comedies, finds its full development in the "chronicles" for the first time. So, for example, in the second part of "Henry IV" we find both the tragic grief of old Northumberland for his dead son, and the merry scene in the garden of Judge Shallow, and the carefree jokes of Falstaff. Along with the solemn events that the "fiery muse" sings of, colorful images of the "Falstaffian background" pass before us. Near the magnificent royal banners, tattered recruits recruited by Falstaff flutter, among the bright knightly coats of arms the drunken rage of Sir John himself smiles.

Sir John Falstaff is one of the brightest figures in Shakespeare's chronicles. He has been compared more than once with Don Quixote. The decay of feudal ties and the death of chivalry gave Cervantes the material for creating the "Knight of the Sad Image". Shakespeare created a magnificent picture in the spirit of the Flemings. In The Gossips of Windsor, Falstaff is called the "Flemish knight" (indeed, he primarily resembles the images of Rubens). Falstaff is not only a fragment of a crumbling building; it embodied the "rejoicing of the flesh" so characteristic of the Renaissance, a lively protest both against the ascetic ideals of the Middle Ages and against the sanctimonious self-restraint of the Puritans. One of the old commentators called Falstaff "the resurrected Bacchus." The latest research has shown that some of Falstaff's lines are taken from a song attributed to John Lily and entitled "Hymn to Bacchus" (Song to Bacchus).

Falstaff is a "declassed knight" and, like Shakespeare's jester, is not bound hand and foot by the relations of the society surrounding him: if he is a slave to his stomach, then he is not a slave to gold. And that is why he is charming in the eyes of Shakespeare. His death is almost poetic. In "Henry V" the tavern owner tells how Falstaff, in his dying delirium, "played with flowers, smiled at the tips of his fingers, and chatted something about green fields."

According to the genealogy of theatrical images, Falstaff goes back, perhaps, to the "Old Sin", a figure of late morality. This "Sin", which embodied many vices, at the end of the performance killed the devil, thus triumphing over the afterlife retribution. So Sir John is the affirmation of earthly life, triumphant flesh, escaping from the thousand-year shackles of the Middle Ages. But there is another side to Falstaff. “What strikingly characteristic images this epoch of the disintegration of feudal ties gives in the person of wandering beggar kings, begging landsknechts and all sorts of adventurers are truly a Falstaff background ...” (Marx and Engels, Soch., vol. XXV, p. 250-261.) - Engels wrote in a letter to Lassalle about his tragedy Franz von Sickingen. Falstaff is a ruined knight who robs on the high road and engages in poaching. Although he sometimes likes to show off his nobility, the ideals of chivalry have long lost all meaning for him. Honor for him is an empty word. At the same time, he does not hide his contempt for the reality surrounding him, for "these mercantile times." And in this world alien to him, he is sometimes overwhelmed by longing. "I'm melancholy like an old cat or a bear on a leash," he says.

By the first period of Shakespeare's work, in addition to comedies; and "Chronicles", also belong to "Romeo and Juliet" and "The Merchant of Venice". Julius Caesar stands on the verge of the first and second periods.

In "Romeo and Juliet" Shakespeare used the plot and a number of details from the poem of the same name by Arthur Brooke. In this tragedy For the first time in Shakespeare, the formidable power of fate appears. Against a poetic background, among plane trees and flowering pomegranate trees, under the "blessed" sky of Italy, two young people fell in love. But their path to happiness was blocked by the mutual enmity of those noble families to which they were destined to belong. According to the figurative expression of the prologue, they were "overturned" by this enmity. So in Marlo's play The Jew of Malta, the daughter of Barrabas and the young Spaniard, her lover, are victims of the hatred and enmity reigning around them. But if Marlo speaks of the destructive power of gold and creates the image of a "Machiavellian", a predator of primitive accumulation, Shakespeare draws an old feudal civil strife. And yet it would, of course, be wrong to reduce the content of the work to a critique of the patriarchal despotism of the feudal family. The meaning of this tragedy, of course, is much broader. Juliet not only "disobeyed" her parents. She preferred the "profitable" groom, the brilliant Paris, the destitute exile Romeo. She rebelled not only against the "tradition" of her family, but also against the bourgeois practical "common sense" embodied in the nurse's advice.

The words of the naturalist and scientist, humanist in a monastic cassock, Fra Lorenzo, can serve as an epigraph to the play. One and the same flower, he says, contains both poison and healing power; it all depends on the application. So love that promised happiness leads to death in the circumstances described by Shakespeare, joy turns into tears. The lovers turn out to be powerless before fate, just as the learning of Fra Lorenzo is powerless before it. This is not a mystical fate, but fate, as the personification of the circumstances surrounding a person, from which he cannot arbitrarily escape. Romeo and Juliet perish in the "cruel world" surrounding them, just as Hamlet, Othello, Desdemona perish in it.

Already in the prologue, Shakespeare calls Romeo and Juliet "doomed". Having entered into an unequal struggle with others, the lovers themselves are aware of their doom. "I am a jester in the hands of fate!" Romeo exclaims in despair. A consciousness of inevitable catastrophe gravitates over the lovers, reflected in the premonition of death that haunts them (the scene of their last separation). And yet the death of Romeo and Juliet is not meaningless and fruitless. It leads to the reconciliation of the warring clans. A golden monument is erected over the grave of the dead. Shakespeare, as it were, indicates to the audience that the memory of them will be preserved, as if taking the audience into the future. This is the life-affirming motive of "a story sadder than which there is in the world."

At the end of the tragedy, we hear about the crowd running screaming to look at the dead. This is the same crowd of people who during the whole tragedy hated the strife of the Capulets and Montagues and now ardently sympathizes with the lovers. Their bright images turn into a legend. Against the backdrop of a crowd of people, a sad story acquires a heroic sound.

Shakespeare showed the images of his heroes in living development. Juliet from a girl - "ladybug" her nurse calls her - grows into a heroine, Romeo - from a dreamy young man, languidly sighing about Rosaline, into a courageous, fearless person. At the end of the tragedy, he calls Paris, who may be older than him by years, "young man", and himself - "husband". Juliet, who has fallen in love, looks at life with different eyes. She comprehends the truth, which goes against all the traditions of her upbringing. “What is a Montague?” she says; “it is not an arm, not a leg, not a face, not any other part that makes up a person. Oh, call yourself by another name! What is in a name? What we call a rose would smell so sweet tenderly, if it had a different name." Turning to philosophy contemporary to Shakespeare, we find the same thought in Francis Bacon, the founder of English materialism. We also note that Shakespeare here also rejects the dogma created by the centuries of feudalism - the belief in the real meaning of a noble family name. "You are yourself, not Montagues," Juliet thinks of her lover. Shakespeare endowed Juliet not only with purity and heroic dedication, not only with a warm heart, but also with a mind, bold and insightful.

Remarkable in this tragedy are the characters of the "second plan". Brilliant, witty Mercutio is a true bearer of the cheerfulness of the Renaissance. In everything he is opposed to the "fiery Tybalt", the direct culprit of misfortunes, whose image is deeply rooted in the dark feudal past. Critics dubbed the nurse, not without reason, "Falstaff in a skirt."

In Shakespeare's time, Romeo and Juliet seemed to be a great success with readers. The following fact speaks of its popularity among students. During the 17th century, a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio was chained to a bookshelf in the reading room of the Oxford University Library. This book, as can be seen from its pages, was widely read at that time. The pages of the text of "Romeo and Juliet" are most rubbed by the students' fingers, in particular - the scenes of a night meeting in the Capulet's garden.

In The Merchant of Venice, the title does not quite match the content. After all, the "merchant of Venice" means Antonio. Meanwhile, the most complete image in the play is, of course, Shylock.

The versatility of the image of Shylock was noted even by Pushkin, opposing it to Moliere's Miserly painted in one color. There is no doubt that in the image of Shylock, devoutly reading the Bible and at the same time putting gold coins into a bag, Shakespeare portrayed some of the characteristic features of a Puritan usurer. Shylock turned to us with his dark side. In his greed, he is merciless. He appears before us as the embodiment of predatory practicality. “Private interest is practical,” wrote Marx, “and there is nothing more practical in the world than to destroy one’s enemy! “Who does not seek to destroy the object of his hatred?” says Shylock” (Marx and Engels, Soch., vol. I, p. 219.).

But, on the other hand, the positive features of Shylock are his selfless love for his daughter, as well as the courage of his thoughts. Let us recall his impassioned words that the Jew is the same person as other people. "Does the Jew not have eyes? Does not the Jew have hands, organs of the body and its parts, sensations, feelings, passions? He feeds on the same food, is wounded by the same weapons, the same summer makes the same winter freeze, just like a Christian. In these ardent words one can hear the voice of the author himself.

Shylock is a tragic figure. As a Jew, he is despised and persecuted, and persecution gives rise to a thirst for revenge in him. Persecution has perverted this mighty nature. “When you poison us, don’t we die?” says Shylock. “And if you insult us, why shouldn’t we take revenge? you teach me, I will apply to the case - and I will surpass my teachers.

Of exceptional interest is the history of stage incarnations of this image. The eighteenth-century English scene knew Shylock exclusively as a grim villain. A real revolution in the interpretation of this image was made by the great English tragedian Edmund Kean, who played the role of Shylock in 1814. “He wins the sympathy of those thinking spectators,” wrote Hazlit, “who understand that the revenge of a Jew is no worse than the insults inflicted by Christians.”

Shylock's weapon of revenge is gold. But, having resorted to this dangerous weapon, he himself becomes its slave. Shakespeare draws in this drama not a naturally greedy predator, but the corrupting, disfiguring power of gold. "Luxury gold, Midas tough food, I don't want you," Bassanio says. Shakespeare here for the first time emphasized the power of gold, capable, as they say in Romeo and Juliet, "to seduce even the saints." We will find a full development of this theme in "Timon of Athens" (1607).

Shylock's other weapon is "law". But precisely because this "law" is capable of serving as a weapon of personal revenge, it is devoid of - to use Shakespeare's favorite word - "nature" and is an emasculated dead letter. To destroy the intricacies of such a "law" does not require the arguments of a learned jurist; enough common sense of a young girl. The court scene is a satire directed against formal law. Revealing the corrupting essence of gold and the lies of the "law" turned into a weapon of personal interests, Shakespeare saw in the society around him the power of that "seeming truth, in which, as Bassanio says, our cunning time is clothed in order to trap the wisest people." The whole world, according to Bassanio, is "deceived by decoration": in the courts, the plaintiff's "beautiful voice" hides evil; vice is covered by virtue; cowards wear the "beard of Hercules"; beauty is "bought by weight"; everything around is just "the gilded shore of the dangerous sea." Amid this chaos of lies, only love and music are harmonious, the apotheosis of which this drama is crowned.

The tragedy of Julius Caesar in many ways set the stage for Hamlet. As in Hamlet and later in Macbeth, this "Roman tragedy" takes place against a dark and sinister background. We hear of "fiery warriors fighting in the clouds," of the bloody rain that falls on the Capitol. Here, in the images of mysterious omens, that painful feeling that more than Shakespeare experienced in those years was clothed. The country was flooded with poor, homeless people. The impoverishment of the broad masses continued. The epoch became ever darker, the history of which "is inscribed in the annals of mankind with the flaming tongue of sword and fire" (Marx and Engels, Soch., vol. XVII, p. 783.). The queen's government vainly tried by hook or by crook to replenish the empty treasury.

In numerous pamphlets published in those years, for the first time and as if from afar, the peals of a revolutionary thunderstorm are heard. The further the danger from outside - the invasion of the "Great Armada" (1588) - receded into the past, the more criticism directed against the government was unleashed among the bourgeoisie and part of the nobility. The year 1601 was approaching, when Parliament for the first time sharply disagreed with the government on the question of monopolies. Conspiracies were brewing near the throne, in one of which, headed by the Earl of Essex, Shakespeare's "patron", the Earl of Southampton, took part.

The heavy stormy atmosphere of these years was also reflected in the dramaturgy. Chapman wrote the gloomy tragedy Bussy d'Ambois. With his bloody dramas, John Marston appeared around the same years. In his play The Malcontent (1601), we see a man - a victim of injustice - bitterly condemning reigning around vice and crying out for vengeance.In this atmosphere were born both "Hamlet" and "Julius Caesar".

How did Shakespeare feel about Essex's rebellion? In any case, he did not take any part in it. We do not hear of any persecution of Shakespeare by the Privy Council.

Shakespeare's negative attitude towards the paths taken by Essex and his friends is evidenced, in our opinion, by Julius Caesar. In terms of interpreting historical events, Shakespeare largely adheres to Plutarch's concept. Although "Julius Caesar" is not a republican play, there is no doubt that Shakespeare portrayed Caesar in an unattractive light. This is a decrepit lion that has lost its teeth. Shakespeare, as some researchers believe, was also influenced by Montaigne's words: "Good does not necessarily replace evil that has been destroyed. Even worse evil can follow, as was proved by the murderers of Caesar, who plunged the state into great disorder."

If Shakespeare's Caesar is unattractive, so are the conspirators, with the exception of Brutus. Even Antony recognizes his incorruptible honesty: "It was a man." And yet the dagger strike proved to be a fatal mistake. Caesar fell, but his shadow pursued Brutus and won at Philippi. "O Julius Caesar!" exclaims the defeated Brutus, "You are still powerful! Your ghost roams around and turns our swords against us." The dagger strike was fruitless. History has condemned him. The fate of Brutus and the other conspirators is essentially decided by the people who did not follow them.

The image of the crowd in "Julius Caesar", as well as in "Coriolanus", caused conflicting opinions among commentators. It seems to us that this image has various aspects in Shakespeare himself. He gave Shakespeare abundant material for characteristic genre scenes. Before us, of course, is not the plebs of ancient Rome, but the townspeople of Shakespeare's London, before us is the mass of the people, which Shakespeare observed in London at the turn of the two centuries, in the dark years of the advancing reaction, a mass in which dull discontent roams, but, together with meanwhile, the mass is unorganized, spontaneous, devoid of worthy leaders. This crowd becomes the victim of the insidious eloquence of Mark Antony in "Julius Caesar", in "Coriolanus" - the selfish petty intrigues of the tribunes.

It is easy to notice even in Shakespeare that attitude towards the crowd, which was generally characteristic of people of the Renaissance. To do this, it is enough to recall those epithets that Shakespeare applied in his works to the word crowd - "noisy", "fickle", "rude", "crazy", "barbaric", "dissenting", "wavering", etc. In all this, Shakespeare was the first of the English playwrights to show the mob as a real political force.

III. The main stages of creativity.

Shakespeare's creative path is divided into three stages. From the first chronicles, early comedies and poems to Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar (1590-1599); then from "Hamlet" to "Timon of Athens" (1600--1608) - a tragic time, covering the heights of Shakespearean drama, and, finally, the late period - before leaving (1609--1613), fabulous or romantic dramas, among them parting words - "The Tempest", and the last, somewhat lonely chronicle "Henry YIII", written, as some researchers believe, not by Shakespeare alone. There are also more fractional divisions. They capture additional shades without changing the general line of Shakespeare's creativity.

In the first stage experiments, Shakespeare turned to the past of England, relatively recent for those times. At first Shakespeare followed history, then, however, he moved back, turned to earlier times, representing the troubles of the Hundred Years War.

If we break the order of appearance of Shakespearean chronicles and arrange them in accordance with the historical sequence: “King John” (1596), “Richard II” (1595), “Henry IV” (part 1-I, 1597- 1598), "Henry V" (1598), "Henry VI" (part G-III, 1590-1592), "Richard III" (1592), "Henry VIII" (1613), then from the time of King John the Landless before the reign of Henry VIII, the father of Queen Elizabeth, in other words, close to the Shakespeare era, a picture of the rise of England, the growth of its state solidity and greatness, will unfold.

Feudal feuds, the enmity of the Scarlet and White Roses, the famous battle of Azincourt, the wars in France, the uprising of Jack Keda, the battle of Bosworth are important milestones in Russian history and, of course, the largest figures - kings, nobles, commanders, folk heroes: Joan of Arc or Jack Caed - all this is captured in live movement by Shakespeare's chronicles.

Shakespeare dealt with historical facts freely. He took as the basis of the plays not so much the facts as the prevailing idea of these facts, of historical events and figures. Shakespeare was true to history in that. He is accurate when it comes to the trends of the time, about where and how English history was moving at that time. Shakespeare achieves special truth and expressiveness in the types of the past, in the depiction of the characters of the past. This is not a restoration, but in fact - types of the past, preserved, however, from bygone centuries to the Shakespeare era. In line with the era driven by the idea of historical time, when the old world was revived and the New Time was realized against its background, just as the New World was opened across the ocean, Shakespeare embodied in historical plots and situations, and especially in characters, the nature of bygone times. This is artistic historicism. Time at Shakespeare serves as an answer to major historical and social questions. In Shakespeare's chronicles, the opposition feudal lords are told that it is not the will of the king that abolishes them, but time. And they themselves, resisting the centralizing power, are aware that they are trying to stop history.

Shakespeare swept the whole country, the whole nation, the people in the historical movement. Shakespeare's gaze had an enormous extension in space and time. Shakespeare summed up the thousand-year results in his chronicles, observing and showing the formation of English statehood. Shakespearean power is manifested in the ability to convey both "time" as an era that forms "contemporaries" and the scale of historical times.

At the very beginning of the chronicle "Henry IV" it is said that the English must fulfill a duty that has weighed on them for fourteen centuries. Then the king announces that "twelve to twelve months have elapsed" since they decided to fulfill this duty. Finally, he moves on to the decisions of the Council of State adopted "yesterday". Thus, in a living and immediate connection, as something close and tangible, history is comprehended. The characters, and with them Shakespeare and his spectators, felt like participants in a process that stretched out for almost fifteen hundred years: the centuries are experienced as real as what happened “yesterday”.

In Shakespeare's very first chronicle, the image of a patriarchal life, a peaceful and unpretentious existence, opposes the "court vanity", appears as an alluring, welcome refuge from the elements of bloody ambitions that have played out, a desirable but unattainable refuge. The feeling of the historical course of time is found in the turns of events and personal destinies, it is found at the very beginning of the playwright's creative path. And right there, the need for balance manifests itself in a living form, and one can catch its social prototype and real ground.

A series of comedies interspersed with the cycle of chronicles in Shakespeare's work - all ten of Shakespeare's "merry comedies" were created in the first period of his dramatic activity. The contrast in the social, moral and emotional atmosphere of these groups of works is obvious: "bloody days" in chronicles and "merry days" in comedies - "Comedy of Errors" (1592), "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1595), Much Ado About Nothing (1598), As You Like It (1599).

Shakespeare's chronicles and comedies are independent areas of dramatic creativity, taking into account the different tasks of the theatrical spectacle and the peculiarities of the genres, but not isolated, but interconnected. "Funny Comedies" correlate with chronicles saturated with drama, but not because they are able to serve as a comic relief of dramatic tension and not in the function of a commentary that arouses a good state of mind.

Early tragedies contain motifs that predict the tragedy of Hamlet and King Lear. The active participation of brother Lorenzo in the fate of Romeo and Juliet, prompted and sanctified by Renaissance humanism, ends not with the triumph of his humane intention, but with the death of the heroes. Circumstances are stronger than inspired efforts and good intentions. The confluence of events that prevented their fulfillment does not mitigate the tragedy of the situation, does not free the active humanist from a sense of personal guilt, and points to the tragic discrepancy between the ideal ideas of humanists and self-willed reality.

Among Shakespeare's plays, four "ancient" dramas make up a special group - Julius Caesar (1599), Antony and Cleopatra (1606), Coriolanus (1607), Timon of Athens (1608).

Julius Caesar is a play from the turn of the century, a transitional phenomenon in Shakespeare's work. It follows nine chronicles from English history, an unfinished cycle of national chronicles, expanding the historical horizon of Shakespearean drama. It precedes the great tragedies and is a "tragedy-chronicle", a mixed and transitional genre. It focuses on the political history of a critical era and the tragic fate of its great figures, exposing the objective basis of the movement of historical time, the inflexibility of the historical process and the real consequences of subjective aspirations and will.

As in his other plays, deploying the action in foreign countries and in other times, Shakespeare also depicts contemporary England. However, Ancient Rome in "Julius Caesar" is not a pseudonym for London, it retains both national and historical features. in "Julius Caesar" the political and civil climate and the characters of the politicians of ancient Rome are obvious. In "Julius Caesar" the action is connected with the city, with city problems, and this drama is actually "urban", from the velvety lawns under the "green tree" the action is transferred once and for all to the city stone. The same urban atmosphere in "Coriolanus", and in the actual British tragedy "King Lear" the same "stone" cruelty is manifested in the state of mind of the characters.

Shakespeare conveys a specific and paradoxical state: when all-round progress, expansion of horizons shorten the Universe in the human mind, the world becomes narrow and small. The city crowd in "Julius Caesar" appears as a formidable force, such a force of historical movement, which was not in the chronicles of the history of England. Shakespeare deeply sympathizes with the urban poor, especially if she is at the mercy of clever demagogues, as in the tragedy Coriolanus, he does justice to the demands of the urban masses, is ready to understand her extreme despair and bitterness when she is determined to go to a riot.

And outside of ancient dramas, Shakespeare's tragedy, like everything inherent in Shakespeare, is distinguished by its scale. The modern approach based on historicism sees tragedy in Shakespeare's plays in the development of large processes that reveal themselves through characters and their struggle. Shakespearean tragedies.

At the decisive stage of his work, Shakespeare rose to the tragedy that accompanied the Renaissance.

Each of Shakespeare's tragedies is a tragedy of "its time", which arose from the contradictions of the main course of history in the Renaissance. The discovery of the New World and the loss of illusions about some promised lands

It is important to point out that Shakespeare's contemporary pointed out that Hamlets had become “full, full” ten years before the appearance of Shakespeare's tragedy: the type perpetuated by Shakespeare was being formed. The exclusivity, "loneliness" of Hamlet, therefore, is conditional. Hamlet himself does not quite understand what is "remembered" in him. Hence - the "mysteriousness" of his condition, his remarks, paradoxes.

New beliefs in the minds of Hamlet and all other tragic heroes of Shakespeare exist not in a "pure form", but in various connections and interweaving with traditional beliefs. The heroic characters in Shakespeare's tragedies are a complex alloy created by the influence of various forces - a semi-patriarchal environment and its collapse, transitional times with its stormy fermentation, causing spiritual upsurge, and bourgeois development, which also served as the basis for changes, and the cause of the crisis.

In King Lear (1605) the material of the tragedy is a tangle of historical layers. People in it are afraid of witches - and they are not afraid of absolutely anything in the world, they still believe in the stars - and do not believe in anything at all. Man feels himself to be both a two-legged animal and the master of his own destiny. The time is ripe, the conflicts have been determined.” And this is not only a conflict between two generations, it is the collapse of centuries-old eras. The scale of what is happening: history is not in the sense - the distant past, similar to the present, but history itself as a process: one thing goes away, another comes.

A dispute with his daughter over a retinue - the king wants to leave behind him a retinue as a shell where his world would be preserved, reduced, but still the same world. The world of Lear's valor is the world of rough valor, bestial youth.

Shakespeare shows how tenaciously people cling to "their time" and how they are carried along with it. Time is embodied in people The key words of this tragedy are root, blood, seed, kind and especially nature. These words, in which time and place are intertwined - history, are saturated with Shakespeare's text. Behind the words - concepts, behind the concepts - a look at things, a way of life, the very one that has become dilapidated and is cracking at the seams under the pressure of change.

The differentiation of people in tragedy occurs according to how they understand nature, in what they seek it - in themselves or above themselves. No matter how great Lear's arrogance, he still considers himself only a particle of nature, meanwhile Edmund is much more daring in his pride, but he also sees in himself the focus of nature.

Shakespeare, who painted antiquity, patriarchy is so interested that he was even suspected of an “aristocratic” predilection for the past, in King Lear he almost does not reveal this predilection. Rather, on the contrary, with sharp strokes it makes it clear that the old time has completely grown old and outlived its own. The past is leaving. Shakespeare shows this clearly and succinctly. But he follows the advent of new times in detail and from different angles. Shakespeare creates the ultimate tragic tension or even a tragic balance of power.

It is impossible to deduce from Shakespeare some kind of one-line "idea", but Shakespeare has his own special wisdom. He expresses it in "King Lear" briefly, in essence in one phrase: "Maturity is everything."

Shakespeare is busy with the analysis of both man and society - separately, in indirect and direct connections. He analyzes the sensual and spiritual nature of man, the interaction and struggle of feelings, mental states in their movement and transitions, the development of affects, their mobilizing and destructive power. He focuses his analysis on the critical states of consciousness, on the causes of the spiritual crisis, the causes of external and internal, subjective and objective, superficial and deep. It reveals the incentives and logic of human behavior in its direct and indirect ties with society. Such inclusiveness, psychological and social insight, accuracy and richness of analysis are characteristic of the English literature of the Renaissance only to Shakespeare, his tragedies - the pinnacle of not only English, but of all European Renaissance literature.

In Othello (1604) it is not naked, on the contrary, the dependence of the tragic consciousness of the hero and his death on the social environment is, as it were, emphasized. Othello has risen with his own efforts, but with his own hands he is ruining his valor, glory, love and life, ruining not only himself, but also Desdemona - the embodiment of the Renaissance ideal of femininity, sublime, spiritualized and really earthly. This is the peculiarity of the character of the protagonist and the plot of the tragedy. For the time being, the aspirations of Othello and Iago did not collide, but the moment came - and the collision became inevitable. This is not a clash of the new with the old - both Othello and Iago do not exist in themselves, of course in different proportions and in different forms, and the features of the old, both are raised by the Renaissance, but each in his own way: one - expresses his ideas and partly applies them to broad life practice, the other uses the Renaissance norms with energy and immoralism, unleashed in the course of the offensive of the new on the transcendental ethics of the Middle Ages.

Iago freed himself not only from prejudices, he overcame all sorts of internal obstacles. Amazing flexibility of character is achieved in him by complete disregard for social norms. This is not the freedom of the mind when a person, understanding the relativity of moral institutions, is aware of their historical meaning, and if he takes on the responsibility of being a judge of his actions, then he relies on reason without abusing it. For Iago, freedom is the freedom of arbitrariness, pursuing personal gain.

Integrity, spontaneity and nobility of character is the fundamental feature of Othello, it is singled out by Shakespeare as distinctive for a person, corresponding to the humanistic ideal. The question of the significance of supernatural forces in Shakespeare's drama, in the development of its plots and characters, in the concept of the tragic continues to occupy Shakespeare scholars, especially in connection with the problem of the realism of Shakespeare's work.

In Shakespeare's last tragedy, Timon of Athens (1608), on the contrary, the connection between the hero's tragedy and the moral state of the social environment, and the moral crisis with the influence of material social forces, is emphasized. If the transition from the first to the second period seems abrupt, but understandably natural, then Shakespeare of the last period looks unrecognizable. The transition here is not even as contrasting as the difference between the optimism of chronicles, comedies, on the one hand, and the gloominess of tragedies, on the other. At the last stage, Shakespeare becomes, as it were, a completely different playwright, although he continues to develop the same themes. The development of the same motives, but in a completely different way, emphasizes the principle of change. The general impression of Shakespeare's last plays, shared by many critics, is that these are Shakespearean situations depicted, it seems, not by Shakespeare, but by a playwright of another school, although there is no doubt about Shakespeare's authorship: the plays entered Shakespeare's " canon”, and “The Tempest”, which entered the Shakespearean path, opens the collection of 1623. Shakespeare himself has changed significantly, and not only within the boundaries of his own evolution, but also against the backdrop of a completely different literary era.

This is Shakespeare - an older contemporary of Donne and Webster, a young and fundamentally new generation in literature. A generation that recognized its debt to Shakespeare's time, to Shakespeare, and which at the same time definitely referred Shakespeare to the past. Shakespeare, for his part, makes an attempt to move in step with the new stage. A characteristic feature of Shakespeare's later works was the ever-growing "anatomization" of the human psyche, human relationships. In Shakespeare's plays, the number of references to Russia and Russians grows in proportion to the increase in relations between England and Russia, relations put on a state basis precisely in Shakespeare's time.

The Tempest seems to return to a more traditional Shakespearean setting, to the circle of typical Shakespearean characters, and at the same time contains a distinct “farewell” motif. According to the plot, the play was a direct response to the event that was the topic of the day, when a large English expedition crashed off the coast of America, near Bermuda, which Shakespeare made the setting for The Tempest.

CONCLUSION

Paramount in importance and power among the giants brought forward by the Renaissance, Shakespeare has a number of features in comparison with them. Shakespeare was not distinguished by the outward versatility so characteristic of the figures of the Renaissance, including poets close to him. On the path of Shakespeare, there were no significant deviations from literary and theatrical activity, within which Shakespeare also kept the same channel, primarily and mainly dramaturgy.

Shakespeare is associated with a new stage in a comprehensive knowledge of reality and its ideological and aesthetic assessment, a merciless assessment of the emerging bourgeois society and absolutist arbitrariness, as well as a sober judgment about the humanism of the Renaissance, about its greatness and tragedy. It was in this that Shakespeare's realism was expressed as a view imbued with historicism, sometimes spontaneous, and sometimes deeply conscious.

Shakespeare is the highest expression of English Renaissance literature, moreover, of all English literature: there is no equal to him in creative greatness, significance and viability of his legacy in the literary history of England. A national genius, Shakespeare belongs to the geniuses of European and world literature, to a small number of writers who have had and are exerting an intense influence on the development of many national literatures and on the entire spiritual culture of the world.

Shakespeare's view of things is extraordinarily real. Everything is grasped by them, everything is given a real price. In this feeling, in this reality and sobriety of perception and transmission of reality, the essence and basis of his realism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. Drach G.V. Culturology: Proc. allowance for university students. - Rostov n / a: Phoenix, 2005. - 608 p.

2. Drach G.V. Lecture notes.- Rostov n / a: Phoenix, 2003.-87 p.

3. Markova A.N. Culturology: Proc. manual for universities.- M.: UNITI-DANA, 2005.- 319 p.

4. Gurevich P.S. Culturology: Proc. allowance.- M.: Gardariki, 2002 -288 p.

5. Bagdasaryan N.G. Culturology. Textbook for students of technical universities. M .: Higher. School, 2003.-680 p.

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During the same period (1590-1600) Shakespeare wrote a number of historical chronicles. Each of which covers one of the periods of English history.

About the time of the struggle of the Scarlet and White Roses:

Henry VI (three parts)

On the preceding period of struggle between the feudal barons and the absolute monarchy:

Henry IV (two parts)

During the same period, Shakespeare wrote two tragedies:

II (tragic) period (1601-1607)

It is considered the tragic period of Shakespeare's work. Dedicated mainly to tragedy. It was during this period that the playwright reaches the pinnacle of his work:

During the same period, Shakespeare wrote two comedies:

III (romantic) period (1608-1612)

It is considered the romantic period of Shakespeare's work.

Works of the last period of his work:

Shakespeare's Globe Theater

The incomparable world popularity of Shakespeare's plays was facilitated by the playwright's excellent knowledge of the theater "from the inside". Almost all of Shakespeare's London life was somehow connected with the theater, and from 1599 - with the Globe Theater, which was one of the most important centers of cultural life in England. It was here that the troupe of R. Burbage "Servants of the Lord Chamberlain" moved to the newly built building, just at the time when Shakespeare became one of the shareholders of the troupe. Shakespeare played on the stage until about 1603 - in any case, after this time there is no mention of his participation in performances. Apparently, Shakespeare was not very popular as an actor - there is evidence that he played minor and episodic roles. Nevertheless, the stage school was completed - work on the stage undoubtedly helped Shakespeare better understand the mechanisms of interaction between the actor and the audience and the secrets of audience success. Audience success was very important for Shakespeare, both as a theater shareholder and as a playwright - and after 1603 he remained closely associated with the Globe, on the stage of which almost all the plays he wrote were staged. The design of the Globe hall predetermined the combination of spectators of various social and property strata at one performance, while the theater could accommodate at least 1,500 spectators. The playwright and actors faced the most difficult task of keeping the attention of a heterogeneous audience. Shakespeare's plays responded to this task to the maximum extent, enjoying success with audiences of all categories.

The mobile architectonics of Shakespeare's plays was largely determined by the peculiarities of the theatrical technique of the 16th century. - an open stage without a curtain, a minimum of props, an extreme convention of stage design. This forced to focus on the actor and his stage skills. Each role in Shakespeare's plays (often written for a specific actor) is psychologically voluminous and provides great opportunities for its stage interpretation; the lexical structure of speech changes not only from play to play and from character to character, but also transforms depending on internal development and stage circumstances (Hamlet, Othello, Richard III, etc.). No wonder many world-famous actors shone in the roles of Shakespeare's repertoire.

The glorious history of Shakespeare's Globe Theater began in 1599, when in London, which was distinguished by a great love for theatrical art, buildings of public public theaters were built one after another. During the construction of the Globe, building materials were used that were left over from the dismantled building of the very first public London theater (it was called the Theatre). The owners of the building, the Burbages' troupe of famous English actors, had their land lease expired; so they decided to rebuild the theater in a new place. The leading playwright of the troupe, William Shakespeare, who by 1599 became one of the shareholders of Burbage's The Lord Chamberlain's Servants, was undoubtedly involved in this decision.

Theaters for the general public were built in London mainly outside the City, i.e. - outside the jurisdiction of the City of London. This was explained by the puritanical spirit of the city authorities, who were hostile to the theater in general. The Globe was a typical building of a public theater of the early 17th century: an oval room in the form of a Roman amphitheater, enclosed by a high wall, without a roof. The theater got its name from the statue of Atlas that adorned its entrance, supporting the globe. This globe (“globe”) was surrounded by a ribbon with the famous inscription: “The whole world is acting” (lat. Totus mundus agit histrionem; better known translation: “The whole world is a theater”).

The stage adjoined the back of the building; above its deep part rose the upper stage platform, the so-called. "gallery"; even higher was the "house" - a building with one or two windows. Thus, there were four scenes of action in the theater: the proscenium, deeply protruding into the hall and surrounded by the audience on three sides, on which the main part of the action was played out; the deep part of the stage under the gallery, where interior scenes were played; a gallery that was used to depict a fortress wall or a balcony (the ghost of Hamlet's father appeared here or the famous scene on the balcony in Romeo and Juliet was going on); and a "house", in the windows of which actors could also appear. This made it possible to build a dynamic spectacle, already laying in the dramaturgy a variety of scenes and changing the points of the audience's attention, which helped to maintain interest in what was happening on the set. This was extremely important: we must not forget that the attention of the auditorium was not supported by any auxiliary means - the performances went on in daylight, without a curtain, to the continuous hum of the audience, animatedly exchanging impressions in full voice.

The auditorium of the "Globe" accommodated, according to various sources, from 1200 to 3000 spectators. It is impossible to establish the exact capacity of the hall - there were no seats for the bulk of commoners; they crowded into the stalls, standing on the earthen floor. Privileged spectators were located with some conveniences: on the inside of the wall there were lodges for the aristocracy, above them there was a gallery for the wealthy. The richest and noblest sat on the sides of the stage, on portable three-legged stools. There were no additional facilities for spectators (including toilets); physiological needs, if necessary, were easily coped with, during the performance - right in the auditorium. Therefore, the absence of a roof could be regarded more as a blessing than as a drawback - the influx of fresh air did not allow devoted fans of theatrical art to suffocate.

However, such simplicity of morals fully met the then rules of etiquette, and the Globe Theater very soon became one of the main cultural centers of England: all the plays of William Shakespeare and other outstanding playwrights of the Renaissance were staged on its stage.

However, in 1613, during the premiere of Shakespeare's Henry VIII, a fire broke out in the theater: a spark from a stage cannon shot hit the thatched roof above the deep part of the stage. Historical evidence claims that there were no casualties in the fire, but the building burned to the ground. The end of the "first Globe" symbolically marked the change of literary and theatrical eras: around this time, William Shakespeare stopped writing plays.

Letter about the fire in the "Globe"

“And now I will amuse you with a story of what happened this week at Bankside. His Majesty’s actors were playing a new play called “All is True” (Henry VIII), representing the highlights of the reign of Henry VIII. The production was staged with extraordinary pomp, and even the covering on the stage was amazingly beautiful.The knights of the orders of George and the Garter, the guards in embroidered uniforms, etc., were more than enough to make the greatness recognizable, if not ridiculous.So, King Henry arranges a mask in the house of Cardinal Wolsey: he appears on the stage , several salutatory shots are heard. One of the bullets, apparently, got stuck in the scenery - and then everything happened. At first, only a small haze was visible, to which the audience, fascinated by what was happening on the stage, did not pay any attention; but through which In a fraction of a second, the fire spread to the roof and began to spread rapidly, destroying the entire building to the ground in less than an hour.Yes, those were disastrous moments for this solid building, where only wood, straw and a few rags were burned. True, one of the men's trousers caught fire, and he could easily have been roasted, but he (thank heaven!) guessed in time to put out the flame with ale from a bottle.

Sir Henry Wotton

Soon the building was rebuilt, already from stone; the thatched ceiling above the deep part of the stage was replaced with a tiled one. Burbage's troupe continued to play in the "Second Globe" until 1642, when a decree was issued by the Puritan Parliament and Lord Protector Cromwell to close all theaters and prohibit any theatrical entertainment. In 1644, the empty “second Globe” was rebuilt into a rental building. The history of the theater was interrupted for more than three centuries.

The idea of the modern reconstruction of the Globe Theater belongs, oddly enough, not to the British, but to the American actor, director and producer Sam Wanamaker. He came to London for the first time in 1949, and for about twenty years, together with his like-minded people, bit by bit collected materials about the theaters of the Elizabethan era. By 1970, Wanamaker had established the Shakespeare Globe Trust, designed to renovate the lost theatre, create an educational center and permanent exhibition. Work on this project continued for more than 25 years; Wanamaker himself died in 1993, nearly four years before the remodeled Globe opened. The landmark for the reconstruction of the theater was the excavated fragments of the foundation of the old Globe, as well as the nearby Rose Theater, where Shakespeare's plays were staged in the "pre-Globus" times. The new building was built from "green" oak wood, processed in accordance with the traditions of the 16th century. and is located almost in the same place as before - the new one is 300 meters away from the old Globus. Careful reconstruction of the exterior is combined with modern technical equipment of the building.

The new Globe was opened in 1997 under the name Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Since, according to historical realities, the new building was built without a roof, performances are held only in spring and summer. However, tours in the oldest London theater "Globe" are held daily. Already in this century, next to the restored Globe, a theme park-museum dedicated to Shakespeare was opened. There is the world's largest exhibition dedicated to the great playwright; various thematic entertainment events are organized for visitors: here you can try to write a sonnet yourself; watch a sword fight, and even take part in a production of a Shakespearean play.

The Language and Stage Means of Shakespeare

In general, the language of Shakespeare's dramatic works is unusually rich: according to the studies of philologists and literary critics, his dictionary contains more than 15,000 words. The speech of the characters is replete with all sorts of tropes - metaphors, allegories, paraphrases, etc. The playwright used many forms of 16th-century lyric poetry in his plays. - sonnet, canzone, alba, epithalamus, etc. White verse, with which his plays are mainly written, is distinguished by flexibility and naturalness. This is the reason for the great attraction of Shakespeare's work for translators. In particular, in Russia, many masters of literary text turned to translations of Shakespeare's plays - from N. Karamzin to A. Radlova, V. Nabokov, B. Pasternak, M. Donskoy and others.

The minimalism of the stage means of the Renaissance allowed Shakespeare's dramaturgy to organically merge into a new stage in the development of world theater dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. - director's theater, focused not on individual acting work, but on the overall conceptual solution of the performance. It is impossible to enumerate even the general principles of all Shakespeare's numerous productions - from a detailed everyday interpretation to an extremely conventionally symbolic one; from farce-comedy to elegiac-philosophical or mystery-tragedy. It is curious that Shakespeare's plays are still oriented to viewers of almost any level - from aesthetic intellectuals to undemanding audiences. This, along with complex philosophical problems, is facilitated by intricate intrigue, and a kaleidoscope of various stage episodes, alternating pathetic scenes with comedic ones, and the inclusion of fights, musical numbers, etc. in the main action.

Shakespeare's dramatic works became the basis for many performances of the musical theater (the operas Othello, Falstaff (based on the Merry Wives of Windsor) and Macbeth by D. Verdi; the ballet Romeo and Juliet by S. Prokofiev and many others).

Shakespeare's departure

Around 1610 Shakespeare left London and returned to Stratford-upon-Avon. Until 1612, he did not lose touch with the theater: in 1611 the Winter Tale was written, in 1612 - the last dramatic work, The Tempest. The last years of his life he moved away from literary activity, and lived quietly and imperceptibly with his family. This was probably due to a serious illness - this is indicated by the surviving will of Shakespeare, drawn up clearly hastily on March 15, 1616 and signed in a changed handwriting. April 23, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon died the most famous playwright of all times and peoples.

The influence of Shakespeare on world literature

The influence of the images created by William Shakespeare on world literature and culture cannot be overestimated. Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet - these names have long become common nouns. They are used not only in works of art, but also in ordinary speech as a designation of any human type. For us, Othello is a jealous man, Lear is a parent, destitute of heirs, whom he himself has favored, Macbeth is a usurper of power, and Hamlet is a person who is torn apart by internal contradictions.

Shakespeare's images also had a huge impact on Russian literature of the 19th century. The plays of the English playwright were addressed by I.S. Turgenev, F.M. Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov and other writers. In the 20th century, interest in the inner world of man increased, and the motives and heroes of Shakespeare's works again excited poets. We find them in M. Tsvetaeva, B. Pasternak, V. Vysotsky.

In the era of classicism and the Enlightenment, Shakespeare was recognized for his ability to follow "nature", but was condemned for not knowing the "rules": Voltaire called him a "brilliant barbarian". English Enlightenment criticism appreciated Shakespeare's life-like truthfulness. In Germany, Shakespeare was raised to an unattainable height by I. Herder and Goethe (Goethe's sketch "Shakespeare and He Has No End", 1813-1816). In the period of romanticism, the understanding of Shakespeare's work was deepened by G. Hegel, S. T. Coleridge, Stendhal, V. Hugo.

In Russia, Shakespeare was first mentioned in 1748 by A.P. Sumarokov, however, even in the 2nd half of the 18th century, Shakespeare was still little known in Russia. Shakespeare became a fact of Russian culture in the first half of the 19th century: writers associated with the Decembrist movement turned to him (V. K. Kuchelbeker, K. F. Ryleev, A. S. Griboedov, A. A. Bestuzhev, etc.) , A. S. Pushkin, who saw the main advantages of Shakespeare in his objectivity, the truth of characters and the "correct depiction of time" and developed Shakespeare's traditions in the tragedy "Boris Godunov". In the struggle for the realism of Russian literature, V. G. Belinsky also relies on Shakespeare. The importance of Shakespeare especially increased in the 30-50s of the 19th century. Projecting Shakespearean images onto the present, A. I. Herzen, I. A. Goncharov and others helped to comprehend the tragedy of time more deeply. A notable event was the production of "Hamlet" translated by N. A. Polevoy (1837) with P. S. Mochalov (Moscow) and V. A. Karatygin (Petersburg) in the title role. In the tragedy of Hamlet, V. G. Belinsky and other progressive people of the era saw the tragedy of their generation. The image of Hamlet attracts the attention of I. S. Turgenev, who saw in him the features of "superfluous people" (Art. "Hamlet and Don Quixote", 1860), F. M. Dostoevsky.

In parallel with the comprehension of Shakespeare's work in Russia, acquaintance with the works of Shakespeare itself deepened and expanded. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, mainly French adaptations of Shakespeare were translated. Translations of the 1st half of the 19th century sinned either with literalism ("Hamlet" in the translation by M. Vronchenko, 1828), or with excessive liberty ("Hamlet" in Polevoy's translation). In 1840-1860, translations by A. V. Druzhinin, A. A. Grigoriev, P. I. Weinberg and others discovered attempts at a scientific approach to solving problems of literary translation (the principle of linguistic adequacy, etc.). In 1865-1868, under the editorship of N.V. Gerbel, the first "Complete collection of dramatic works of Shakespeare translated by Russian writers" was published. In 1902-1904, under the editorship of S. A. Vengerov, the second pre-revolutionary Complete Works of Shakespeare was published.

The traditions of advanced Russian thought were continued and developed by Soviet Shakespeare studies on the basis of deep generalizations made by K. Marx and F. Engels. In the early 1920s, A.V. Lunacharsky read lectures on Shakespeare. The art criticism aspect of the study of Shakespeare's heritage is brought to the fore (V. K. Muller, I. A. Aksyonov). Historical and literary monographs (A. A. Smirnov) and individual problematic works (M. M. Morozov) appeared. A significant contribution to the modern science of Shakespeare is the work of A. A. Anikst, N. Ya. Berkovsky, the monograph of L. E. Pinsky. Film directors G. M. Kozintsev, S. I. Yutkevich comprehend the nature of Shakespeare's work in a peculiar way.

Criticizing allegories and magnificent metaphors, hyperbole and unusual comparisons, "horrors and buffoonery, reasoning and effects" - the characteristic features of the style of Shakespeare's plays, Tolstoy took them as signs of exceptional art, serving the needs of the "upper class" of society. Tolstoy, at the same time, points to many of the merits of the plays of the great playwright: his remarkable "ability to stage scenes in which the movement of feelings is expressed", the extraordinary stage presence of his plays, their genuine theatricality. The article on Shakespeare contains Tolstoy's profound judgments about the dramatic conflict, characters, the development of the action, the language of the characters, the technique of constructing the drama, etc.

He said: “So I allowed myself to blame Shakespeare. But after all, every person acts with him; and it is always clear why he does it this way. He had pillars with the inscription: moonlight, home. on the essence of the drama, and now quite the opposite." Tolstoy, who "denied" Shakespeare, placed him above the playwrights - his contemporaries, who created inactive plays of "moods", "riddles", "symbols".

Recognizing that under the influence of Shakespeare, the entire world dramaturgy developed, which has no "religious basis", Tolstoy attributed his "theatrical plays" to it, noting that they were written "accidentally". Thus, the critic V. V. Stasov, who enthusiastically greeted the appearance of his folk drama The Power of Darkness, found that it was written with Shakespearean power.

In 1928, based on her impressions of reading Shakespeare's "Hamlet", M. I. Tsvetaeva wrote three poems: "Ophelia to Hamlet", "Ophelia in Defense of the Queen" and "Hamlet's Dialogue with Conscience".

In all three poems by Marina Tsvetaeva, one can single out a single motive that prevails over others: the motive of passion. Moreover, Ophelia, who in Shakespeare appears as a model of virtue, purity and innocence, acts as the bearer of the ideas of a "hot heart". She becomes an ardent protector of Queen Gertrude and is even identified with passion.

Since the mid-30s of the 19th century, Shakespeare has occupied a large place in the repertoire of the Russian theater. P. S. Mochalov (Richard III, Othello, Lear, Hamlet), V. A. Karatygin (Hamlet, Lear) are famous performers of Shakespeare's roles. In the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries, the Moscow Maly Theater created its own school of their theatrical embodiment - a combination of stage realism with elements of romance, which put forward such outstanding interpreters of Shakespeare as G. Fedotova, A. Lensky, A. Yuzhin, M. Yermolova . At the beginning of the 20th century, the Moscow Art Theater turned to the Shakespearean repertoire (Julius Caesar, 1903, staged by Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko with the participation of K. S. Stanislavsky; Hamlet, 1911, staged by G. Craig; Caesar and Hamlet - V. I. Kachalov

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