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SHAKESPEARE - A BASIC GUIDE

Every great author writes about what he knows: James Joyce is great when writing about Dublin and its characters, not so great when writing about other things; Lewis Grassic Gibbon is great when writing about the North-East of Scotland; F. Scott Fitzgerald when writing about - well, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Shakespeare was an actor his whole life who depended on patronage from the King, so he knew about politics. He was a manager and so knew about money - and he sued people when he thought they owed him something, so he knew about the law. And he was a father whose son had died, so he knew about fatherhood and loss.

If you have read the great Shakespeare plays you may recognise in this brief account how he knows about the subject matter of: A Midsummer Night's Dream (staging a play); Macbeth (a Scottish lord who wanted to be King - like King James); The Merchant of Venice (a money-lender who has to rely on the law for justice); Hamlet (whose grief was caused by the loss of his father).

Iago (from Othello) is like a playwright manipulating the other characters to do his bidding. Prospero (from The Tempest) is also a playwright who manipulates events. The travelling actors in Hamlet stage a play and Hamlet writes one for them (The Mousetrap). King Lear is an aging father who wants to do his best by his daughters (Shakespeare had two daughters)and he gives them parts to play, although one of his daughters refuses her part and will not say the lines he wants to hear. And the plays about the Wars of the Roses give us a history of kingship in England.

"So, how does Romeo and Juliet come into this?" I hear you say. "That's the one I'm studying!"

Romeo's speeches are, well, speeches. Some are even in sonnet form - how often have you spontaneously uttered a sonnet? This speechiness should alert us to suspect that not all Romeo utters is "the truth". When first we meet him he is in love - he says - and, since the audience or reader knows the name of the play, we expect his love's name to be Juliet. What a surprize, then, to discover that the one he "loves" is - Rosaline! And how long does it take him to change his mind?

"What lady's that which doth enrich the hand/Of yonder knight?" (Act 1, Scene 5, line 41)

One and a half lines!

This boy is acting a part. He bahaves the way he thinks he should behave and says the things he thinks people in his situation should recite.

"Tut, I have lost myself. I am not here. This is not Romeo; he's some other where." (I,ii,194-5)

Indeed. And he plays this part right through to the end, killing himself because that is what he believes people in his circumstances should do.

And Friar Laurence? A playwright whose opinions influence the action of the play. He is the Iago character who is turning life into a story.

So, look for these themes whenever you read any Shakespeare play: Acting, Politics, Money, The Law, Fatherhood, Loss.