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SHAKESPEARE Y EL TEATRO BRITÁNICO E
IRLANDÉS
1. English Renaissance drama: literary terms.
When we begin to deal with English Renaissance drama, several aspects have to be underlined:
- One the one hand, we have to stress the literary relevance of English Renaissance drama and, above all, the Elizabethan one. The Renaissance in England is rich in all its manifestations, especially in the field of poetry, (Sidney and Spencer). We can see that English drama before the 16 th^ century is of mainly academic and historical interest, though there are occasional plays which possess charm and loveliness, but this is going to change in the Renaissance. We know that in the second half of the 16 th century, theatre became in England a very popular entertainment that all the levels of the society liked.
- It has to be stressed that there is a clear lack of information about English Renaissance drama and that it is impossible to obtain a perfect outline of the evolution of the theatrical world. And this is so because many plays are lost, and the chronology of those which remain is often doubtful, and the biography of the dramatists is frequently unknown to us. Moreover, we have two habits which increase the confusion: the habit of refashioning older plays and the habit of collaboration.
- This lack of information may come from how theatre was socially considered at the time. At the first half of the 16th^ century, when drama was limited to private houses, the schools and universities, it was understood as a means of education, but this is going to change with the Reformation and with the new points of view concerning the development of theatre in the second half of the century, which means that we do not have a homogeneous attitude to the role of drama in society. Theatre was tolerated by Catholics, but it was condemned by Puritans, who wished to purify the religious beliefs and attitudes of the time and to encourage people to give up worldly pleasures. That is why Puritans had a lot to do with the closing of the theatres from 1642 to 1660, and that’s why people connected with drama had to struggle against a growing opposition.
- On the other hand, we have to understand English Renaissance drama in a evolution or process which goes from religious to secular, from non-professional to professional, from private to public. When we deal with English Renaissance drama we mean a large body of plays which contains pieces coming from the English medieval tradition and new kinds of drama which follow classic models adapted to the English taste of the time. So, there is a continuous dramatic tradition.
- Finally, we have to bear in mind the fact that we have a miscellaneous art, because playwrights are more interested in experimentation than in following the classical rules or conventions.
2. Anthropocentrism and other general ideas in English Renaissance
drama.
Anthropocentrism has to do with Humanism. The Renaissance attitude, complex and multifaceted as it was, especially manifested itself in Humanism, which was primarily an educational movement which began in Italy in the early 14th^ century and reached England at
the end of the 15th. A humanist was a classical scholar with two complementary aims: to recover the moral values of classical life, and to imitate the language and style of the classics as a means to that end. He hoped to unite wisdom and eloquence.
Humanism was anthropocentric. It sought to dignify and ennoble man. In its more extreme forms humanistic attitudes regarded man as the crown of creation.
Humanism aimed to civilize man, to make him realize his potential powers and gifts. Humanism concentrated on the perfection of a worldly life, rather than on the preparation for an eternal and spiritual life.
The Humanistic attitude manifested itself in the following concepts and areas:
- Scholarship. The humanists sought the genuine and authentic classical culture. The Renaissance humanists recovered or reconstructed accurate texts of the classics, as they wanted the true original works instead of seeking in medieval versions, and in doing so they instituted the methods of modern precise scholarships.
- Imitation. Humanist educators taught their pupils to imitate closely the style and language of classical authors. And this imitation was not only limited to style but also to the attitudes and conduct of the chosen model.
- The chronical play is a free dramatizing of history with the main purpose of exalting the history of England. Its materials are usually adapted from Hall and Holinshed. It shows the shift from the religious towards the political. It is educational and patriotic.
- The revenge tragedy. This is a type of tragedy in which a murder is avenged by a surviving father, son or lover. It is full of violence and horrors enacted on the stage. Between 1559 and 1581 we can see a remarkable interest in Seneca. The influence of Seneca on the Elizabethan dramatists was very considerable, and this influence can be seen in the following levels: 1. Action hardly exists and so it is a kind of static theatre with very long speeches. 2. It uses rhetorical language, full of formulas, and the word has to suggest the action. 3. The characters are moved by the violence of their feelings and emotions. 4. There is a horror atmosphere.
- The “Fall of Princes” tragedy. A kind of tragedy in which the life of a very important person rises to a preeminent position, and then descends to misery and destruction.
- Domestic tragedy. It deals with the English middle-class at that time and the setting is frankly contemporary. The characters are here treated with pathos and sentimentally.
- Tragicomedy. This is a mixture of serious elements and comic elements. Central characters are kings and princes, queens and noble ladies.
- The romantic comedy deals with a love affair and everything ends happily. Every obstacle is treated in an optimistic spirit. It is the poetic view of love and life.
- Realistic comedy. The characters are not conceived in the vein poetry but with amused contemplation of human vanity.
- Comedy of humours. This type of comedy follows the classic comedies of Plautus and Terence.
4. Players and companies.
The great impetus seems to have come from the circle of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury. This group was formed by Sir Thomas More, Henry Medwall, and John Heywood, and they apparently interested in private drama , performed indoors before a festive audience composed of the household of the nation’s greatest bishop. We can see also that Renaissance drama has a lot to do with the Inns of Court of London, where tragedies were written by gentlemen who practise the law, and in their spare time, try to copy the classic Latin dramas of Seneca, Plautus and Terence. And as a third source of dramatic activity, we have the field of education , and this can be seen in Nicholas Udall: he seems to have encouraged the acting of the plays of Terence and Plautus among his pupils.
A more sophisticated kind of comedy was developed in the Court itself, in the entertainments given by the Children of Saint Paul’s and other choir schools before the Queen. A second source of court drama lay in the performances by the Inns of Court (law school) and the London choirboys.
This is in relation to comedy, and concerning tragedy it was inevitable that the Humanist interest in the Latin and Greek classics should also produce a new kind of English tragedy. There are no tragedies, indeed, there was nothing that could be called tragedy in English drama before the classical influence of the Renaissance was felt. The favourite classical writer of tragedies among English humanists was Seneca.
5. The playhouse.
The Theatre and the other playhouses derived ultimately from the medieval innyard. The capacity of each theatre was between 1300 and 3000 spectators. Theatres were about one hundred feet in diameter, and three stories in height.
Once in the pit, the spectator would be confronted with the elaborate stage directly opposite the entrance. The platform, about five feet high, projected approximately forty-five feet from the rear wall into the open pit. Every part of this complex stage was employed in Renaissance drama:
- The area beneath the stage was termed “cellarage” or the “Hell”.
- The elevated stage was a great platform on trestles and it contained most of the performance. Scenery was altogether absent from the stage, and playwrights had to
King by making him admit his actions. To do this Hamlet has people act out the death of his father in front of Claudius and declares him guilty by his reaction to the play, “O good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound” (III, II, 281-282). Hamlet affirms Claudius’ guilt to Horatio and now realizes that he must continue on with his revenge plot. Hamlet’s desire to get revenge for his father is the driving force to the development of the play.
7. Women in Shakespeare’s plays.
Shakespeare portrays women in different ways in his plays. He has attributed to them both strengths and weaknesses to make them look real. His plays apparently project an image of the conception and treatment of women in Elizabethan time. History reveals that during the Elizabethan time, women have been remaining meek and submissive. In the Renaissance, the majority of women had been uneducated unless they came from a wealthy family. Shakespeare has been qualified as sexist and misogynist as it appears that his plays emanate negative attitude towards women. Also, he is being criticized as most of his heroines seem to be emotionally weak, inferior compared to men and dominated by the male characters.
A representation of submissive women, for example in A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Hermia is forced to marry Demetrius in accordance to her father’s wish although she is in love with Lysander. She must obey her father and cannot revoke his decision or else she will be subdued to death. Demetrius is regarded as richer and nobler compared to Lysander, so, he is considered to be a suitable husband for Hermia.
History reveals that in Shakespeare time, women have been regarded as weak human beings. Ophelia in Hamlet symbolizes a vulnerable woman, who acts as per her father’s will and order. Her dutiful role is taken advantage of and Polonius uses her to spy on Hamlet. This is probably what caused the failure of the relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet. Although Ophelia loves Hamlet, she rejects him as an act of obedience towards his father. But when Hamlet insults her with his vulgarities she feels betrayed and disgraced and she cannot overcome those emotions.
Shakespeare also characterizes Gertrude as an immoral character. It appears that she is less sensible to her husband’s death and more interested to jump into a second marriage with Claudius. It seems that this wedding has a bad influence on Hamlet, forcing him to doubt his mother’s prior love for his father. Some critics claim that Shakespeare successfully portrays
Gertrude as a poor mother and a lustful lover, thus most likely reflecting human nature and society at that time.
8. Hamlet as a dramatist.
9. Hamlet’s language.
Much of Hamlet's language is courtly: elaborate, witty discourse, as recommended by Baldassare Castiglione's 1528 etiquette guide, The Courtier. This work specifically advises royal retainers to amuse their masters with inventive language. Of all the characters, Hamlet has the greatest rhetorical skill. He uses highly developed metaphors, stichomythia, and in nine memorable words deploys both anaphora and asyndeton: "to die: to sleep— / To sleep, perchance to dream". In contrast, when occasion demands, he is precise and straightforward. At times, he relies heavily on puns to express his true thoughts while simultaneously concealing them. His "nunnery" remarks to Ophelia are an example of a cruel double meaning as nunnery was Elizabethan slang for brothel. His very first words in the play are a pun; when Claudius addresses him as "my cousin Hamlet, and my son", Hamlet says as an aside: "A little more than kin, and less than kind."
Prose is used to distinguish the social classes. For example: characters that aren’t so high-class, like the gravediggers, don’t get to speak in verse; they just talk. Hamlet himself, however, sometimes speaks in prose, even when he’s being poetic.
Hamlet's soliloquies have also captured the attention of scholars. Hamlet interrupts himself, vocalising either disgust or agreement with himself, and embellishing his own words. He has difficulty expressing himself directly and instead blunts the thrust of his thought with wordplay. It is not until late in the play, after his experience with the pirates, that Hamlet is able to articulate his feelings freely.
10. Renaissance aspects in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
Shakespeare's " A Midsummer Night's Dream " portrays the passing from the middle ages to the renaissance. The play is set in Athens (where pagan gods were worshiped) this goes against Christian religion. It combines elements of Ancient Greece with elements of Renaissance England. In Renaissance and Shakespearean comedy the convention had come
Courtly love is also present as a medieval concept.
11. Renaissance aspects in “Hamlet”.
The word renaissance literally means "rebirth." In the context of the English Renaissance, this rebirth refers to a renewal of learning, especially in terms of new beliefs and ways of doing things differently from the Middle Ages. Characteristics of the Renaissance include a renewed interest in classical antiquity; a rise in humanist philosophy (a belief in self, human worth, and individual dignity); and radical changes in ideas about religion, politics, and science.
Here are some examples of how these characteristics are illustrated in Hamlet:
- Classic antiquity : Hamlet has lots of references to classical Greek and Roman stories, characters, and historical events. For example, you can find a murderous king (Pyrrhus), and a queen in mourning over her murdered husband (Hecuba), which mirror the main plot points of the play.
- Humanist philosophy : In Act II, Scene 2, Line 311, Hamlet asks: "What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties..." In this speech, you can see a clear assertion of humanist ideas about the uniqueness and extraordinary abilities of the human mind.
- Religion : In Hamlet's most famous soliloquy, which begins, "To be or not to be...", he alludes to an unknown afterlife, "The undiscovered country...," which is a stark departure from Medieval religious ideas rooted in a strict belief that people either go to heaven or hell when they die.
- Politics : There were big political changes taking place during the time that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. This is reflected in the play by Hamlet's questioning of Claudius's right to ascend to the throne in his father's place. It was a new idea to question anything having to do with the "natural" hierarchical structures that maintained political power.
- Science : This point is illustrated by Shakespeare's use of the play-within-the play in Hamlet. Here, Prince Hamlet's play, The Mousetrap, is presented to the court supposedly as entertainment, but Hamlet's intent is to gather obvious evidence of
Claudius's guilt for the murder of his father. Says Hamlet: "...the play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." Shakespeare's works were partly influenced by the humanistic movement during the renaissance period, which more specifically was the "free play of language. Hamlet was written in part to celebrate the "free play of language". Shakespeare wants the audience to see that he is not afraid of showing us more about the play with words, than with actions.
There are many themes in "Hamlet" and none are obvious than the theme of revenge, which was very popular in the Elizabethan era. Revenge was a popular theme among plays. Revenge is a very popular theme in the Elizabethan theatre. A crime is committed in most of the revenge tragedies, and for some reason the person who committed the crime cannot be persecuted. In the case of the play Hamlet, Hamlet was not found to be the one who killed king Hamlet. This type of event happened in the everyday lives of the people living during the renaissance period. Shakespeare wanted the audience to make it aware that these issues are also in the lives of royalty.
12. The courtly love theme in Shakespeare.
Shakespeare reveals his interest in the popular theme of courtly love, which came to him as an established tradition, in a number of his plays. This tradition can be traced back to the troubadours of Provence who, during the Crusades, appeared as a class of knights whose chief values were valour, courtesy, and knightly worth.
Shakespeare uses the courtly theme in a vein of comedy in some plays, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the imaginary world of this play the irrationality of love is given free rein and the comedy arises out of ludicrous situations. The impulsiveness of love causes Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena to flee into the wood where the nature of their passion is exposed for all to laugh at. In the same wood, Titania becomes infatuated with Bottom, the weaver with the head of an ass. This episode reduces love to the level of farce and provides a contrast to the love of the courtly figures.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a romantic comedy which appeals to the fancy with its fairies, magic herbs, and its flowing, lyrical poetry. Oberon, assisted by Puck, tangles and untangles the plot with the juices from magic herbs. This capricious activity of the fairies finally leads to the happy union of Helena and Demetrius while doing no serious harm to the
Theseus seems less aggressive overall, he's also an antagonist because he sides with Egeus in the beginning of the play. He's fully prepared to prosecute Hermia if she doesn't obey her father. He, too, is an obstacle to the couple's happiness. Even though he changes his mind at the end of the play, his early mandate causes the couple to flee to the forest where the mayhem unfolds.
Demetrius is a main character in A Midsummer Night's Dream , and he too seeks romantic happiness. However, he's both antagonistic and unreliable. He's engaged to marry Helena, but changes his mind and falls for Hermia. He doggedly pursues her even though she's betrothed to Lysander---all without the influence of potion. He mimics Egeus' violent temperament when he says he'd like to feed Lysander to his dogs, and his commitment to Helena at the play's end appears to be potion-induced, not genuine.
Puck is an antagonist insofar as he bungles Oberon's potion-giving instructions and finds the ensuing misadventures comical. This sets him in opposition to Oberon's intent as well as the lovers'. After enchanting Demetrius, he says, 'Then will two at once woo one; That must needs be sport alone. And those things do best please me That befall prepost'rously.' However, Puck isn't really malicious. He ultimately sympathizes with Helena and Hermia: 'Cupid is a knavish lad, Thus to make poor females mad.' He also corrects his mistakes as soon as Oberon commands he do so. He's not really a protagonist, though, since his actions are mostly limited to Oberon's orders.
Oberon is clearly a major antagonist in the play, since he capriciously interferes with his own wife's peaceful activities. He behaves cruelly toward Titania, drugging her so she’ll fall in love with a donkey-headed workman and return the child he covets.
14. What sort of drama is “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”? Justify your
answer.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an example of comedy, as a comedy is a play that has a humorous storyline; it is a type of drama that often has a happy ending and is humorous. However, there are two types of tones: comic and serious. The comic tone occurs when the mechanicals are on-stage, while the serious tone is when either the nobles or the magicals are on-stage. Although, sometimes with the magicals, the play can turn comical, for they can be quite silly.
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of his most popular and enduring comedic plays. As do most Elizabethan comedies, this play is a light-hearted romp through many types of humour, all ending happily in the final scene. Also common to this era, comedy is centred on marriage and relationships, and a happy ending means uniting the courting couples.
Types of Comedy:
- High Comedy can also be called situational comedy, in which the source of humor is the situation of mistaken identity or miscommunication.
- Low Comedy involves silliness, inappropriateness, and sometimes references that can be taken as vulgar or sexual.
- Slapstick is physical humor - action rather than dialogue.
- Shakespearean Comedy is the fast-paced, witty banter we see in all of Shakespeare's comedic plays: clever dialogue and play-on-words, often delivered in a dramatic manner. There are four sets of characters in the play, representing four specific and recognizable types. First, the authorities begin the action of the play: Theseus and Hippolyta, accompanied by Egeus. Their ruling about Hermia's choice of man sets the plot in motion.
Then we have the fairy world, represented by King Oberon and Queen Titania, the mischievous Puck, and Titania's attendants. The fairy world represents the place separated from reality, where any strange and magical thing might occur. Yet we soon discover that magical spells can even work on the inhabitants of the fairy world when Titania falls in love with Bottom.
The would-be lovers, Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius, retreat into the forest to escape Hermia's sentence to marry Demetrius or be banished from Athens. Hermia wants Lysander, and Helena is pursuing Demetrius. This type of high comedy was very popular in Shakespeare's time: the humour of troublesome situations and how to talk one's way out of them. The fast-paced, witty banter, especially between the sexes, along with double meanings and puns, are generally what we think of as Shakespearean comedy.
Finally, the fourth set of characters are the Rude Mechanicals, six rough and uneducated tradesmen who have decided to put on a performance in honour of the royal wedding. The entire thing is something of a farce: the play is Pyramus and Thisbe, a sad tale of ill-fated lovers ending in tragedy. Completely inappropriate for a wedding dinner, it is also acted in a ridiculous and exaggerated manner by the six buffoonish ruffians. Their rehearsal provides the low comedy of the play.
Hamlet stabs Claudius with the poisoned rapier and then forces him to drink from the poisoned goblet.
Assassination and execution : Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, assassinated Hamlet's father by pouring the "juice of cursed hebenon" (1.5.63) in his ear while he slept in his orchard. Hebenon is a folk name for Henbane, the expressed juice of the fresh plant, Hyoscyamus niger. Other folk names for Henbane include Black Nightshade, Cassilago, Devil's Eye, and Jupiter's Bean. The death of Hamlet's father was inspired by a real event in 1538, when the Duke of Urbino was killed by a poisoned lotion rubbed into his ears by his barber.
Killed in combat : Hamlet is stabbed with the end of Laertes' poisoned rapier.
16. Comic characters and serious characters in “A Midsummer Night’s
Dream”.
Though there is little character development in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and no true protagonist, critics generally point to Puck as the most important character in the play. The mischievous, quick-witted sprite sets many of the play’s events in motion with his magic, by means of both deliberate pranks on the human characters (transforming Bottom’s head into that of an ass) and unfortunate mistakes (smearing the love potion on Lysander’s eyelids instead of Demetrius’s).
More important, Puck’s capricious spirit, magical fancy, fun-loving humour, and lovely, evocative language permeate the atmosphere of the play. Wild contrasts, such as the implicit comparison between the rough, earthy craftsmen and the delicate, graceful fairies, dominate A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Puck seems to illustrate many of these contrasts within his own character: he is graceful but not as saccharine as the other fairies; as Oberon’s jester, he is given to a certain coarseness, which leads him to transform Bottom’s head into that of an ass merely for the sake of enjoyment. He is good-hearted but capable of cruel tricks.
Nick Bottom – he provides comic relief throughout the play. A weaver by trade, he is famously known for getting his head transformed into that of a donkey by the elusive Puck. Bottom and Puck are the only two characters who converse with and progress the three central stories in the whole play. Puck is first introduced in the fairies' story and creates the drama of the lovers' story by messing up who loves whom, and places the donkey head on Bottom's in his story. Similarly, Bottom is performing in a play in his story intending it to be presented in the lovers' story, as well as interacting with Titania in the fairies' story.
All the more serious characters, therefore, are but sketches. Between Lysander and Demetrius scarcely any distinction is to be traced. In Theseus we see nothing but an imposing outside, a love of hunting, and a taste for puns and quibbles, for which the dramatic representation of the Athenian operatives affords ample scope. Somewhat more of discrimination is shown in the characters of Hermia and Helena; the mildness of the tall beauty, the vivacity and somewhat shrewish temper of the little brunette, qualities of which her rival does not fail to remind her in their encounter in the wood, are brought out with a few touches of a light pencil, but so as quite sufficiently to paint to the mind's eye the difference of their possessors. Though no strong feeling of anxiety or suffering is created by the crosses to which the lovers are subjected; though we follow their footsteps with a secret assurance, that all these misconceptions and mislikings, these instances of fickleness, these words of reproach, these acts of ungentleness, are but the perplexing dream of a night, and to disappear with the tomorrow, there is yet a gentle air of softened earnestness and qualified reality spread over them sufficient to create a mild interest in their fate.
17. Classic elements in Shakespeare’s plays.
In the Roman history plays and the dramas set in the Greek world, Shakespeare clearly reveals a continuing fascination with classical culture and politics shared by Renaissance artists generally. Such Roman plays as Titus Andronicus , Julius Caesar , Antony and Cleopatra , and Coriolanus focus on what was for the Renaissance the nodal point of the European past: the Roman Republic and Empire.
Shakespeare's Elizabethan tragedies (including the history plays with tragic designs, such as Richard II ) demonstrate his relative independence from classical models. He takes from Aristotle and Horace the notion of decorum; with few exceptions, he focuses on high- born characters and national affairs as the subject of tragedy. In most other respects, though, the early tragedies are far closer to the spirit and style of moralities.
Both Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies were heavily influenced by the resurgence in popularity of classical mythology, particularly the works of the Roman writer, Ovid, which took place during the early-Elizabethan period.
When examined with special attention to the classical mythological influence, Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream epitomizes the dynamic role of classical mythology in literature of both providing context for the events of the play and
The use of classical allusions, then, is largely metaphorical. Hamlet utilizes classical references to define others and himself. In "The Mousetrap" classical allusions decorate the language, throwing an air of fantasy over the play-within-the-play.
18. The use of mythology in Shakespeare’s plays: “A Midsummer Night’s
Dream”
A Midsummer Night's Dream includes many direct references to myth by directly referring to mythical characters and stories.
Theseus and Hippolyta : The framing device for the main story of the play is the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, referring to a particular Greek myth. Theseus was a Greek hero from Athens, who is sometimes considered the son of the god of the seas, Poseidon, or the king of Athens, Aegeus. Theseus is best known for slaying the Minotaur, a monster who was half man, half bull in the labyrinth, a massive maze in which all paths led to the centre, or the Minotaur.
Unfortunately for Theseus, he had horrible luck with women. The first woman he fell in love with was Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos. It was she who helped him solve the path of the Labyrinth. He took her with him when they escape the island of Crete, but he later abandoned her on an island. Later, he and a friend decided that they each wished to marry a daughter of Zeus. Theseus chose Helen of Troy, who was still a child at this time. The two men kidnapped her and decided to wait until she was old enough to marry. Helen's brothers, Castor and Pollux, kidnapped her back. Theseus later went with his cousin, the hero Heracles, to obtain the girdle of the Amazonian queen, Hippolyta. She fell in love with Theseus and went with him, making her the only Amazon to ever marry. Their marriage is where Shakespeare's tale takes place. However, even that does not turn out a happy marriage. Theseus later casts her aside to marry Phaedra, the sister of Ariadne. Hippolyta does not take this well and attacks his wedding party, where she is later killed.
Puck : Puck could be compared to two mythic figures, and sometimes is, depending on the director's choices for costuming. On the one hand, Puck bears some resemblance to Pan, the Greek god of nature. Pan was a satyr, who was also the son of Hermes, making him just as cunning and playful. Pan was known to enjoy scaring travellers in the woods with loud noises, and it is from him that we get the word 'panic.' Puck has this impish and tricky nature as well, and gets joy out of causing chaos, if only for a little while.
On the other hand, Puck is sometimes compared to Eros, or Cupid as his Roman name would be. Eros was the god of love and the son of Aphrodite. He too had a little bit of a trickster streak and would sometimes play around with the hearts of mortals. Puck's tricks do cause some problems in the love lives of the mortals of the play, but eventually work out for the better.
Shakespeare even twists Greek mythology to provide some comic relief for his audience when he has Nick Bottom and his cast of actors put on the play Pyramus and Thisbe in Act V. In antiquity, Pyramus and Thisbe is a tragic tale of forbidden love in which the two end up killing themselves because they each believe the other to be dead. In Shakespeare however, Nick Bottom’s troupe puts on such a terrible performance that it is seen as a comedy instead of a tragedy.
There are also allusions to the Carthage Queen, Dido , and “the false Trojan” Aeneas. Dido took her own life when she was abandoned by Aeneas, who left her to found the city of Rome.
Shakespeare produces a comedic reference to the myth of Helen and Paris when in the play Lysander (who Robert Graves says is an analogue of Paris of Troy) says of Helen, “ ...and she, sweet lady, dotes, Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry, Upon this spotted and inconstant man ”. Those familiar with the Greek myths will know that Helen was considered to be anything but a faithful, doting, and sweet lady. She was considered the most beautiful woman in the world, and yet scandalously spotted and inconstant. Shakespeare is purposefully muddling together classical myth in a way that pokes fun at the incestuous entanglements of the Gods and mortals.
19. The use of Mythology in Shakespeare’s plays: “Hamlet”.
Hamlet in Act One, Scene Two, line 140, compares his deceased father to Hyperion , the Greek sun god, and the usurping Claudius to a satyr , a Greek mythic amalgam of man and goat. The comparison is apt when one recalls that the satyr was held to be the very epitome of animal lust and carnal passion. In Act Three, Scene Four, Hamlet develops the other aspect of the metaphor, once again in comparing his father to his uncle. In no uncertain terms, Hamlet holds his father up to his mother as a divinity who combines the best aspects of the chief Greco-Roman deities: Old Hamlet was (if we follow the logic or mental
