It’s true that we know little, but it’s more than normal. What documentation would there be?
Court records? For what? Civil trials? Driver’s license? Auto insurance? Ticket stubs from his plays? People didn’t keep very much in the way of records - some of his have survived, like his will, and there are some records of performances of his plays. Others have not. It’s been 400 years.
People didn’t HAVE files. It’s remarkable we even have any of his plays. We probably wouldn’t if his contemporaries hadn’t decided to make the Folios as a gesture of respect. Plays didn’t appear in text form back then - many of the earlier versions that survive (the Quartos) were just recollections by the actors, or by people in the audience.
In fact, it was standard practice for NONE of the actors to get the whole script at this period - which was supposed to prevent copying, I think. Ironic, that. They only got their own lines and their cues, so nobody had the entire thing.
You also have to keep in mind that today, theatre is high art. Back then, it was the lowest thing going. It was considered immoral, heretical, every damn thing. (These days, people only say that about the actors. ;)) Nobody thought of it as something worth documenting and copying. There were no journalists and publicists to interview the author.
And sure as hell nobody thought “oh, they might want to know about this in the distant future, so we’d better preserve some records and things.”
Ah, meant to answer that. Thanks, Chronos. One, he does it beautifully, two, some great poetry in there and some of Shakespeare’s most memorable thoughts. Three, as always, lots of room for interpretation and analysis.
For example, Prospero hardly gets everything he wants. He gives up his power, which is big deal - it’s who he is. Ever considered what a strange choice that is for him? He’s got powers that Shakespeare himself might’ve called “mad crazy.” He can raise the dead - a talent confined to one other dude whose name I need not mention. He DOES outwit his opponents, and easily so. But he gives it all up to become a Duke again, something he wasn’t very good at in the first place? Doesn’t seem like a very good deal for him.
Okay, getting off of the authorship hijack, because gods know we don’t need another one of those, I’d like to (blasphemy!) nominate the sonnets. I’m sorry, but the man couldn’t sonnet his way out of a wet paper bag. Sure, some of his plays are travesties, too (I’m looking at you, Anthony and Cleopatra), but his sonnets were just plain ridiculous.
But, Marley23, he doesn’t do that until the end of the play. The very end. There’s no hint that he’s going to do so, and there’s no reason given in the text for him to make that decision. It works only on the level of metaphor, since this is Shakespeare’s last solo play, he’s effectively giving up his powers to be an old man in the countryside (Some of this may be flavored by the fact that I’m also participating in the thread about Sandman). There’s no dramatic tension in The Tempest Sure, there’s beautiful poetry, mostly delivered by Caliban, and it brings the funny with Stephano and Trinculo, but at all times we know that Prospero is in complete control. It sort of makes for a yawner of a play…
Much has been made of this, but I think critics and historians consider it highly doubtful that Shakespeare did this intentionally. It’s just a poetic notion we’ve tacked onto the script. Whether you like the play or not, of course, is your thing. But I do.
And, on the “giving up powers” theme, this is my last post from the office, as my internship is now over. Of course, I’ll still post just as much from home, but this might be the first time I’ve logged out of the SDMB from here since I logged in. A little traveling music, Ariel!
Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint. Now, ’tis true,
I must be here confin’d by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be reliev’d by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
__As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
__Let your indulgence set me free.
I can oly remember a fragment:
(From “WINTER”):
-When icicles hang by the wall
and Dick the shepherd blows his nail
When bllode is thicke, and ways be foul,
and nightly sings the staring owl
two who, twowhit, a merry note.
while greasy Joan doth keel the pot
-when all, around the wind doth blow
and coughing drown the parson’s saw
and marian’s nose looks red and raw
sorry that’s all I remember!
Well, if you’re looking for the contemporary Elizabethan/Jacobean opinion, let’s talk box office.
It’s believed that Timon of Athens and Troilus & Cressida were never performed in Shakespeare’s own lifetime. [Source: Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, at pp. 327, 588.] If they weren’t performed, doesn’t that suggest that Shakespeare and his partners at the Globe decided they weren’t likely to be successful? (Rather like some movies nowadays that get shot but never released.)
TIMON OF ATHENS. Worst. Play. Ever. No plot! None!
KING JOHN. Read it in college, thoughtfully, carefully, seriously, then put the book down and thirty seconds later COULD NOT REMEMBER A THING ABOUT IT. Maybe it plays better than it reads or something.
COMEDY OF ERRORS, MERRY WIVES, and TWO GENTS aren’t very deep, to be sure, but they always make me laugh–and I think that’s all that Will was going for with those three. So I can’t really count these among the failures.
Although I would never label OTHELLO as a failure, I must admit that when Othello goes off his head and wants to kill Desi for marital infidelity, I want to stand up in my seat and scream, “YOU’VE ONLY BEEN MARRIED THREE DAYS! HALF OF THAT TIME YOU WERE ON A SHIP TO CYPRUS! SHE’S HASN’T BEEN OUT OF YOUR SIGHT FOR TEN MINUTES! WHEN DID SHE HAVE TIME FOR AN AFFAIR?” (Some scholars will defend this as an “Elizabethan stage convention” that would have made no difference to Shakespeare’s audience. Riiiiight. Seriously, how can someone as intelligent as Othello obviously is fall for something so transparently stupid? Comes near to spoiling the play for me.)
Call me a weirdo, but, even with weak Acts One and Two, I love PERICLES! The Marina-Pericles reunion scene near the end always gets me.