Shakespeare
Prof. Tryon
26 July 2012
The Influence of the Spectacle of Theater upon William Shakespeare.
William Shakespeare, the author of
many famous plays like Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, had many influences
in his life. He grew up in a culture that “prized ornate eloquence, cultivated a taste
for lavish prose”, and “expected even people of modest accomplishments and sober
sensibilities to write poems” (Greenblatt 24). This culture that held such high regard for
prose and poetry often presented them through performance in the theater. It was
the power of the spectacle of the theater that was one of the greatest influences upon
William Shakespeare.
The
instruction of the curriculum of schooling for William Shakespeare in his youth included the use of famous plays. According to
Greenblatt, “virtually all schoolmasters agreed that one of the best ways to instill
good Latin in their students was to have them read and perform ancient plays, especially the
comedies of Terence and Plautus” (27). Learning, in Shakespeare’s time, consisted of:
“rote memorization, relentless drills, endless repetition, daily analysis of
texts, elaborate exercises in imitation and rhetorical variation, all backed up by the threat of
violence” (Greenblatt 26). The use of the performance of plays in the instruction of material
became a “kind of recurrent theatrical transgression, a comic liberation from the
oppressive heaviness of the education system” (Greenblatt 27). “There is hard evidence from later
in his life”, Greenblatt states, “that Shakespeare loved” Plautus’ The Two Menaechmuses and Shakespeare borrowed heavily upon this play when he created The Comedy of Errors (28). It was the exposure to such plays in his schooling, and their use in the
instruction of curriculum that continued to be an influence upon Shakespeare throughout his
life.
In his
youth William Shakespeare saw the spectacle of the theater in the various troupes of traveling performers that occasionally arrived
where he lived. According to Greenblatt, “the arrival in provincial towns” of these
performers “generally followed a set pattern” (29). These performers arrived in a “flourish of
trumpets and the rattle of drums”, who “swaggered down the street in their colorful
liveries, scarlet cloaks, and crimson velvet caps” (Greenblatt 29). These performers
carried “letters of recommendation, with wax seals, that showed that they were
not vagabonds, and that a powerful patron protected them” (Greenblatt 29). Records of
the time tell of “broken windows and damage to chairs and benches caused by mobs of
unruly spectators jostling for a good view” of these performances (Greenblatt 29). The
arrival of such performers broke the monotony of everyday life, and the spectacle of
their performances had the power to cause the people to become unruly in their
excitement.
The bulk of
the performances that formed the spectacle of the theater were morality plays. These morality Plays, also known as “moral
interludes”, served as “sermons designed to show the terrible consequences of
disobedience, idleness, or dissipation” (Greenblatt 31). Shakespeare built upon these
crudely written, and didactic morality plays with their simple, one dimensional characters
with names like Vice, “Riot, Iniquity”, or “Misrule” (Greenblatt 32). The characters of
these morality plays “embodied simultaneously the spirit of wickedness and the spirit of
fun” (Greenblatt 32). It was commonly known that these characters would be beaten at the
end, “but for a time” they “pranced about, scorning the hicks, insulting the solemn
agents of order and piety, playing tricks on the unsuspecting, plotting mischief, and
luring the innocent into taverns and whorehouses” (Greenblatt 32). Grasping that “the
spectacle of human destiny” was “vastly more compelling when it was attached not to
generalized abstractions” of the flat characters of the morality plays, “but to particular named
people, people realized with an unprecedented intensity of individuation: not Youth but
Prince Hal, not Everyman but Othello”, Shakespeare expanded upon the simple characters
found in the moralities when he created his own characters (Greenblatt 34). The spectacle
of the morality plays that he witnessed in his youth were a significant influence upon
William Shakespeare’s own
creations of characters in his own written and performed works.
Various
celebrations in Elizabethan England also contained within them the same spectacle as the theater. “In Late May or June”,
Greenblatt states, “the great annual Corpus Christi
pageants” occurred, “presenting the whole destiny of mankind from the Creation and the Fall to the redemption”. (37). Also known
as “mystery cycles”, they consisted of a “grand procession to know the Eucharist, and
were a “major civic enterprise, involving large numbers of people and
significant expenditure” (Greenblatt 37). “At various places in the city”, Greenblatt states,
“usually on specially built scaffolds or carts, a part of the cycle – the story of Noah” or the
“angel of Annunciation”, for instance, was performed by “pious (or simply exuberantly
histrionic) townspeople”, whose cost was assumed by individual guilds (37). Typically
“the shipwrights undertook Noah, the goldsmiths the Magi, the bakers the Last Supper,
and the pinners (men who made pins and needles) the Crucifixion” (Greenblatt 37). Another
traditional May event was the May Day festival that “celebrated the legend of
Robin Hood, with raucous, often bawdy rituals” (Greenblatt 38). These events, according to
Greenblatt, would contain a “coarse Robin Hood show, with a drunken Friar Tuck, and a
lascivious Maid Marion” (40). These festivals offered just as much spectacle as the
theater, and they show their influence in Shakespeare’s various works.
Another
event which influenced Shakespeare as theatrical spectacle was the tour of her realm that Queen Elizabeth made when Shakespeare was
still a young boy. “In the summer of 1575, when Will was eleven”, Greenblatt states,
“the queen had gone to the Midlands on one of her
royal progresses – journeys, accompanied by an enormous retinue, on which, bejeweled like a Byzantine icon” (42). The
Queen, according to Greenblatt, would have been “arrayed in one of her famously
elaborate dresses, carried in a litter on the shoulders of guards specially picked for
their good looks, accompanied by her gorgeously arrayed courtiers” (46). Queen Elizabeth was
the “supreme mistress of these occasions” who had for her staged “elaborate
entertainments” such as “speeches by Sibylla, Hercules, the Lady of the Lake”
to name a few, and displays of “fireworks”, “bearbaiting (a “sport” in which mastiffs attacked a bear
chained to a stake)”, acrobatics, and “an elaborate water pageant” (Greenblatt 43). Either
William Shakespeare witnessed “these pieces of his own local culture staged for the grand visitors”
or at the very least “have heard the events described in loving detail” in an “elaborate
written description of them” by Robert Langham which was “inexpensively printed
and widely circulated” (Greenblatt 43). Langham’s letter, Greenblatt states, would
have been “useful reading for anyone who was in the business of trying to entertain the
queen – and Shakespeare was shortly to go into that business” (44). The power of the
spectacle of theater embodied in the excitement and awe inspired by royalty would later
influence Shakespeare to use them in his later works and plays.
William Shakespeare had many
influences in his life, yet the spectacle of the theater was one of strongest upon his life, and perhaps
decided the choice of his career. The use of ancient plays in William Shakespeare’s schooling
might have been one of his first introductions to the spectacle to the spectacle of
theatrics. Shakespeare would have also witnessed the spectacle of theater in the arrival of
traveling performers, who journeyed freely through the countryside, yet were protected
by permit from high authorities despite the unruliness they caused in spectators
attempting to get the best view to observe these entertainments. The religious morality
plays that would have comprised much of the substance of the performances in the theater had
much influence on William Shakespeare. Other spectacles of theater that greatly
influenced Shakespeare as well, would have been the various celebrations and festivals that
occurred annually, events which comprised the spectrum between the sacred and the
profane. The spectacle of theatrics that influenced William Shakespeare was not
limited to the theater, or celebrations and festivals, but also in the awe and mystery
that was evoked by royalty. Of the many influences in Shakespeare’s life, the spectacle of
the theater was one of the most profound, and had, in it’s many forms, the greatest
impact upon him in his life.
Works Cited:
Greenblatt, Stephen. Will
in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2004.
Print.
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