Download Names To Know Actors Studio Adler, Stella Albee, Edward

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Names To Know
Actors Studio
Prestigious professional actors' workshop in New York City whose members have been among the most influential performers in American
theatre and film since World War II. It is one of the leading centres for the Stanislavsky method of dramatic training. Founded in New York
City in 1947 by directors Cheryl Crawford, Elia Kazan, and Robert Lewis, it provides a place where actors can work together without the
pressures of commercial production. Actors Studio membership, which is for life, is by invitation; from 1,000 auditions, six or seven new
members are chosen each year. Lee Strasberg was director from 1948 to 1982. Strasberg extended the teachings of Stanislavsky and
developed method acting, in which actors used their own emotional memory for the purpose of dramatic motivation. In 1962 a production
company was added to its activities, and later a western workshop was opened in Los Angeles.
Adler, Stella
American actress, teacher, and founder of the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting in New York City (1949), where she tutored performers
in "the method" technique of acting.
Adler was the daughter of classical Yiddish stage tragedians Jacob and Sara Adler, who formed the organization deemed largely
responsible for promoting Yiddish theatre in the early 20th-century United States, the Independent Yiddish Art Company. She made her
stage debut at age four in one of her father's productions. After that, she received little formal schooling and no formal acting training;
instead she studied with her father by watching other actors and learning her craft by observation and performance. In 1919 Adler made her
international debut in London, where she remained for a year. Returning to New York City, she played feature roles and performed in
vaudeville, later touring Europe and South America as the head of a repertory company. Between 1927 and 1931 she performed more than
100 roles.
In 1931 Adler joined the innovative Group Theater, whose actors were trained in "method acting," a system propounded by Russian actor
and theatre director Konstantin Stanislavsky and based on the idea that actors perform by invoking affective memory or a personal memory
of the emotion they are trying to portray.
Adler studied with Stanislavsky in Russia in 1934 and adapted his principles, which in their original form she considered too rigid. Upon
her return to the Group Theater, she taught her version of Stanislavsky's method. In her classes Adler taught that drawing on personal
experience alone was too limited. She encouraged performers to draw on their imaginations as well.
In the early 1940s Adler began teaching acting at the New School for Social Research in New York City. She remained there until 1949,
when she established the Stella Adler Theater Studio (later renamed the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting). While conducting her own
school, she also taught at Yale University's School of Drama (1966-67) and headed New York University's drama department in the 1980s.
Adler herself performed until 1961.
In addition to acting and teaching, Adler worked as an associate producer for MGM in the early 1940s, directed commercial theatre in New
York City throughout the 1940s and '50s, and wrote The Technique of Acting (1988). The second of her three marriages was to Harold
Clurman, one of the founding members of the Group Theater; it lasted from 1943 to 1960.
Albee, Edward
b. March 12, 1928, Virginia, U.S.
In full EDWARD FRANKLIN ALBEE, American dramatist and theatrical producer best known for his play Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf ? (1962), which displays slashing insight and witty dialogue in its gruesome portrayal of married life.
The adopted child of a family involved in vaudeville theatre, Albee grew up in New York City and nearby Westchester county. He was
educated at Choate School (graduated 1946) and Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. (1946-47). He wrote poetry and an unpublished novel but
turned to plays in the late 1950s.
Among Albee's early one-act plays, The Zoo Story (1959), The Sandbox (1960), and The American Dream (1961) were the most successful
and established him as an astute critic of American values. But it is his first full-length play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (filmed
1966), that remains his most important work. In this play a middle-aged professor, his wife, and a younger couple engage one night in an
unrestrained drinking bout that is filled with malicious games, insults, humiliations, betrayals, savage witticisms, and painful, self-revealing
confrontations. Virginia Woolf won immediate acclaim and established Albee as a major American playwright. It was followed by a
number of full-length works--including Tiny Alice (1964), A Delicate Balance (1966; winner of a Pulitzer Prize), Seascape (1975; Pulitzer
Prize), and Three Tall Women (1991; Pulitzer Prize)--as well as adaptations of other writers' works. In addition to writing, Albee produced
a number of plays and lectured at schools throughout the country.
Bibliography
Richard E. Amacher, Edward Albee, rev. ed. (1982); Philip C. Kolin and J. Madison Davis (eds.), Critical Essays on Edward Albee (1986); Matthew C.
Roudané, Understanding Edward Albee (1987).
Anderson, Maxwell
b. Dec. 15, 1888, Atlantic, Pa., U.S., d. Feb. 28, 1959, Stamford, Conn.
Prolific playwright noted for his efforts to make verse tragedy a popular form.
Anderson was educated at the University of North Dakota and Stanford University. He collaborated with Laurence Stallings in the World
War I comedy What Price Glory? (1924), his first hit, a realistically ribald and profane view of World War I. Saturday's Children (1927),
about the marital problems of a young couple, was also very successful. Anderson's prestige was increased by two ambitious historical
dramas in verse--Elizabeth the Queen (1930) and Mary of Scotland (1933)--and by a success of a very different nature, his humorous
Pulitzer Prize-winning prose satire, Both Your Houses (1933), an attack on venality in the U.S. Congress. He reached the peak of his career
with Winterset (1935), a poetic drama set in his own times. A tragedy inspired by the Sacco and Vanzetti case of the 1920s and set in the
urban slums, it deals with the son of a man who has been unjustly condemned to death, who seeks revenge and vindication of his father's
name. High Tor (1936), a romantic comedy in verse, expressed the author's displeasure with modern materialism. Collaborating with the
German refugee composer Kurt Weill (1900-50), Anderson also wrote for the musical theatre a play based on early New York history,
Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), and Lost in the Stars (1949), a dramatization of Alan Paton's South African novel Cry, the Beloved
Country. His last play, The Bad Seed (1954), was a dramatization of William March's novel about an evil child.
Anouilh, Jean
b. June 23, 1910, Bordeaux, Fr., . Oct. 3, 1987, Lausanne, Switz.
Playwright who became one of the strongest personalities of the French theatre and achieved an international reputation. His plays are
intensely personal messages; often they express his love of the theatre as well as his grudges against actors, wives, mistresses, critics,
academicians, bureaucrats, and others. Anouilh's characteristic techniques include the play within the play, flashbacks and flash forwards,
and the exchange of roles.
The Anouilh family moved to Paris when Jean was a teenager, and it was there that he studied law and worked briefly in advertising. At the
age of 18, however, he saw Jean Giraudoux's drama Siegfried, in which he discovered a theatrical and poetic language that determined his
career. He worked briefly as the secretary to the great actor-director Louis Jouvet.
L'Hermine (performed 1932; The Ermine) was Anouilh's first play to be produced, and success came in 1937 with Le Voyageur sans
bagage (Traveller Without Luggage), which was soon followed by La Sauvage (1938).
Anouilh rejected both Naturalism and Realism in favour of what has been called "theatricalism," the return of poetry and imagination to the
stage. Technically he showed a great versatility, from the stylized use of Greek myth, to the rewriting of history, to the comédie-ballet, to
the modern comedy of character. Although not a systematic ideologist like the Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, Anouilh developed his own
view of life highlighting the contradictions within human reality, for example, or the ambiguous relationships between good and evil. He
called two major collections of his plays Pièces roses ("Rose-coloured Plays") and Pièces noires ("Black Plays"), in which similar subjects
are treated more or less lightly. His dramatic vision of the world poses the question of how far the individual must compromise with truth
to obtain happiness. His plays show men or women facing the loss of the privileged world of childhood. Some of his characters accept the
inevitable; some, such as the light-headed creatures of Le Bal des voleurs (1938; Thieves' Carnival), live lies; and others, such as Antigone
(1944), reject any tampering with ideals.
With L'Invitation au château (1947; Ring Around the Moon), the mood of Anouilh's plays became more sombre. His aging couples seem to
perform a dance of death in La Valse des toréadors (1952; The Waltz of the Toreadors). L'Alouette (1953; The Lark) is the spiritual
adventure of Joan of Arc, who, like Antigone and Thérèse Tarde (La Sauvage), is another of Anouilh's rebels who rejects the world, its
order, and its trite happiness. In another historical play, Becket ou l'honneur de Dieu (1959; Becket, or, The Honour of God), friendship is
crushed between spiritual integrity and political power.
In the 1950s Anouilh introduced into his vision of the world the novelty of political ferment: Pauvre Bitos, ou le Dîner de têtes (1956; Poor
Bitos). In the 1960s his plays were considered by many to be dated compared with those of the Absurdist dramatists Eugène Ionesco or
Samuel Beckett. Le Boulanger, la boulangère et le petit mitron (1968; "The Baker, the Baker's Wife, and the Baker's Boy") was coolly
received, but in the following decade other new plays appeared to confirm his place as a master entertainer: Cher Antoine; ou, l'amour raté
(1969; Dear Antoine; or, The Love That Failed), Les Poissons rouges; ou, Mon père, ce héros (1970; "The Goldfish; or, My Father, This
Hero"), Ne réveillez pas madame (1970; "Do Not Awaken the Lady"), Le Directeur de l'opéra (1972), L'Arrestation (1975; "The Arrest"),
Le Scénario (1976), Vive Henry IV (1977), and La Culotte (1978; "The Trousers").
Anouilh also wrote several successful film scenarios and translated from English some works of other playwrights.
Appia, Adolphe
b. Sept. 1, 1862, Geneva, Switz. d. Feb. 29, 1928, Nyon
Swiss stage designer whose theories, especially on the interpretive use of lighting, helped bring a new realism and creativity to 20thcentury theatrical production.
Although his early training was in music, Appia studied theatre in Dresden and Vienna from the age of 26. In 1891 he propounded his
revolutionary theories of theatrical production. Four years later he published La Mise en scène du drame Wagnérien (1895; "The Staging of
the Wagnerian Drama"), a collection of stage and lighting plans for 18 of Wagner's operas that clarified the function of stage lighting and
enumerated in detail practical suggestions for the application of his theories. In Die Musik und die Inszenierung (1899; "Music and
Staging"), Appia established a hierarchy of ideas for achieving his aims: (1) a three-dimensional setting rather than a flat, dead, painted
backdrop as a proper background to display the movement of the living actors; (2) lighting that unifies actors and setting into an artistic
whole, evoking an emotional response from the audience; (3) the interpretive value of mobile and colourful lighting, as a visual counterpart
of the music; and (4) lighting that spotlights the actors and highlights areas of action. He expanded his theories in a second book, L'Oeuvre
d'art vivant (1921; "The Living Work of Art").
Appia designed sets in Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland. He collaborated with Émile Jaques-Dalcroze on numerous experimental
theatre and dance productions. He also designed sets for La Scala opera house in Milan and for the opera house at Basel.
Bibliography
Walther R. Volbach, Adolphe Appia, Prophet of the Modern Theatre (1968).
Aristophanes
b. c. 450 BCd. c. 388 BC
The greatest representative of ancient Greek comedy and the one whose works have been preserved in greatest quantity. He is the only
extant representative of the Old Comedy, that is, of the phase of comic dramaturgy in which chorus, mime, and burlesque still played a
considerable part and which was characterized by bold fantasy, merciless invective and outrageous satire, unabashedly licentious humour,
and a marked freedom of political criticism. But Aristophanes belongs to the end of this phase, and, indeed, his last extant play, which has
no choric element at all, may well be regarded as the only extant specimen of the short-lived Middle Comedy, which, before the end of the
4th century BC, was to be superseded in turn by the milder and more realistic social satire of the New Comedy.
Dramatic And Literary Achievements
Aristophanes' reputation has stood the test of time; his plays have been frequently produced on the 20th-century stage in numerous
translations, which manage with varying degrees of success to convey the flavour of Aristophanes' puns, witticisms, and topical allusions.
But it is not easy to say why his comedies still appeal to an audience almost 2,500 years after they were written. In the matter of plot
construction Aristophanes' comedies are often loosely put together, are full of strangely inconsequential episodes, and often degenerate at
their end into a series of disconnected and boisterous episodes. Aristophanes' greatness lies in the wittiness of his dialogue; in his generally
good-humoured though occasionally malevolent satire; in the brilliance of his parody, especially when he mocks the controversial tragedian
Euripides; in the ingenuity and inventiveness, not to say the laughable absurdity, of his comic scenes born of imaginative fantasy; in the
peculiar charm of his choric songs, whose freshness can still be conveyed in languages other than Greek; and, at least for audiences of a
permissive age, in the licentious frankness of many scenes and allusions in his comedies.
Works
Babylonioi (426 BC; Babylonians); Acharneis (425 BC; Acharnians); Hippeis (424 BC; Knights); Nephelai (423 BC; Clouds); Sphekes (422 BC; Wasps);
Eirene (421 BC; Peace); Ornithes (414 BC; Birds); Lysistrate (411 BC; Lysistrata); Thesmophoriazousai (411 BC; Women at the Thesmophoria); Batrachoi
(405 BC; Frogs); Ekklesiazousai (c. 392 BC; Women at the Ecclesia); Ploutos (388 BC; Wealth).
Texts
The Greek text is available in Victor Coulon (ed.) and Hilaire Van Daele (trans.), Aristophane, 5 vol. (1923-30), part of the Budé series. Greek text with
English translation is presented in Benjamin Bickley Rogers (ed. and trans.), Aristophanous komodiai: The Comedies of Aristophanes, 6 vol. in 7 (1902-16;
reissued as part of the Loeb Classical Library series, 3 vol., 1924, reissued 1979-82); and in Alan H. Sommerstein (ed. and trans.), The Comedies of
Aristophanes (1980- ), five plays in single volumes having appeared to 1986.
Recommended Editions
All the plays appear in English translation in three separate volumes in the Penguin Classics series, trans. respectively by David Barrett (1964, reprinted
1976), by Alan H. Sommerstein (1973, reprinted 1977), and by David Barrett and Alan H. Sommerstein (1978).
Aristotle
b. 384 BC, Stagira, Chalcidice, Greece, d. 322, Chalcis, Euboea
Greek ARISTOTELES, ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the two greatest intellectual figures produced by the Greeks (the
other being Plato). He surveyed the whole of human knowledge as it was known in the Mediterranean world in his day.
More than any other thinker, Aristotle determined the orientation and the content of Western intellectual history. He was the author of a
philosophical and scientific system that through the centuries became the support and vehicle for both medieval Christian and Islamic
scholastic thought: until the end of the 17th century, Western culture was Aristotelian. Even after the intellectual revolutions of centuries to
follow, Aristotelian concepts and ideas remained embedded in Western thinking.
Aristotle's intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts. He worked in physics, chemistry, biology,
zoology, and botany; in psychology, political theory, and ethics; in logic and metaphysics; in history, literary theory, and rhetoric. His
greatest achievements were in two unrelated areas: he invented the study of formal logic, devising for it a finished system, known as
Aristotelian syllogistic, that for centuries was regarded as the sum of logic; and he pioneered the study of zoology, both observational and
theoretical, in which his work was not surpassed until the 19th century.
Even though Aristotle's zoology is now out-of-date and his thought in the other natural sciences has long been left behind, his importance
as a scientist is unparalleled. But it is now of purely historical importance: he, like other scientists of the past, is not read by his successors.
As a philosopher Aristotle is equally outstanding. And here he remains more than a museum piece. Although his syllogistic is now
recognized to be only a small part of formal logic, his writings in ethical and political theory as well as in metaphysics and in the
philosophy of science are read and argued over by modern philosophers. Aristotle's historical importance is second to none, and his work
remains a powerful component in current philosophical debate.
This article deals with the man, his achievements, and the Aristotelian tradition. For treatment of Aristotelianism in the full context of
Western philosophy, see philosophy, history of.
Aristotle was born in the summer of 384 BC in the small Greek township of Stagira (or Stagirus, or Stageirus), on the Chalcidic peninsula
of Macedonia, in northern Greece. (For this reason Aristotle is also known as the "Stagirite.") His father, Nicomachus, was court physician
to Amyntas III, king of Macedonia, father of Philip II, and grandfather of Alexander the Great. As a doctor's son, Aristotle was heir to a
scientific tradition some 200 years old. The case histories contained in the Epidemics of Hippocrates, the father of Greek medicine, may
have introduced him at an early age to the concepts and practices of Greek medicine and biology. As a physician, Nicomachus was a
member of the guild of the Asclepiads, the so-called sons of Asclepius, the legendary founder and god of medicine.
Because medicine was a traditional occupation in certain families, being handed down from father to son, Aristotle in all likelihood learned
at home the fundamentals of that practical skill he was afterward to display in his biological researches. Had he been a medical student he
would have undergone a rigorous and varied training: he would have studied the role in therapy of diet, drugs, and exercise; he would have
learned how to check the flow of blood, apply bandages, fit splints to broken limbs, reset dislocations, and make poultices of flour, oil, and
wine. Such, at least, were the skills of the trained physician of his time. It is not known for certain that Aristotle actually acquired these
skills; it is known that medicine and its history were later studied in the Lyceum, Aristotle's own institute in Athens, and that later, in a
snobbish vein, he considered a man sufficiently educated if he knew the theory of medicine without having gained experience practicing it.
This early connection with medicine and with the rough-living Macedonian court largely explains both the predominantly biological cast of
Aristotle's philosophical thought and the intense dislike of princes and courts to which he more than once gave expression.
Writings
Aristotle's writings fall into two groups: the first consists of works published by Aristotle but now lost; the second of works not published
by Aristotle and, in fact, not intended for publication but collected and preserved by others. In the first group are included (1) the writings
that Aristotle himself termed "exoteric," or popular--that is, those written in dialogue or other current literary forms and meant for the
general reading public--and (2) those that he termed "hypomnematic," or notes to aid the memory, and collections of materials for further
work. Of these, only fragments are extant. Finally, the writings that generally have survived, termed "acroamatic," or treatises (logoi,
methodoi, pragmateiai), were meant for use in Aristotle's school and were written in a concise and individualistic style. In later antiquity
Aristotle's writings filled several hundred rolls; today the surviving 30 works fill some 2,000 printed pages. Three ancient catalogs list a
total of more than 170 separate works by Aristotle, a figure corroborated by references and lists of titles in the extant treatises as well as by
a number of citations and paraphrases in early commentators. Cicero must have been alluding to Aristotle's popular dialogues when he
described in the Academica "the suave style of Aristotle . . . . A river of gold." The extant works contain several passages of polished prose,
but for the most part their style is clipped.
Synopses Of The Aristotelian Corpus
Works On Art And Rhetoric
Aristotle analyzes rhetoric in terms of its end, or final, cause, which is persuasion. Like dialectic it is not a science, and therefore it has no
specific subject matter, no single method, and no proper set of principles. It is simply the faculty, or power, of observing in any given case
the available means of persuasion. According to Aristotle, there are three modes of persuasion that a speaker may exercise: the persuasive
power of his own character, the excitation of desired emotions in the audience, and proof or apparent proof.
In the Poetics Aristotle's analysis of poetry provides for careful isolation of the specific character of poetry. In comparing poetry to history,
he states that poetry is more philosophic than history and thus of greater intrinsic worth. The difference is attributable not to form--history
written in metre is still history--but to the fact that the historian deals with singulars (i.e., with specific events and specific personages). The
poet, on the other hand, creates types and situations that, while imitating nature, are, nonetheless, akin to universals; that is, the poet
describes what is possible as though it were both likely and necessary. Yet Aristotle also permits the analogy of poetry to oratory as well as
the consideration of the moral, political, and educational effects of both. Tragedy, however, which is the only kind of poetry analyzed in the
extant portions of Aristotle's work, is defined in terms of its form, not in terms of its purpose, as a kind of imitation rather than as a mode of
persuasion or excitation. Thus, in the famous definition of the sixth chapter, it imitates a serious action of great magnitude in a dramatic
form and accomplishes the purification (katharsis) of the emotions of pity and fear.
Using this definition as the basis for the discussion of poetry, Aristotle considered poetic art in terms of the characteristics and
interrelations of the six parts, or components, of tragedy: plot, character, and thought (the objects of imitation); diction and melody (the
means of imitation); and spectacle (the manner of imitation).
The last four chapters of the Poetics return to more general questions of value and to final causes by means of detailed comparisons of
tragedy with comparable poetic works and specifically with epic.
General Works
There are several good introductions to Aristotle's thought: Jonathan Barnes, Aristotle (1982); J.L. Ackrill, Aristotle the Philosopher
(1981); D.J. Allan, The Philosophy of Aristotle, 2nd ed. (1970, reissued 1978); G.E.R. Lloyd, Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His
Thought (1968); W.D. Ross, Aristotle, 5th ed. (1949, reprinted 1977); and Franz Brentano, Aristotle and His World View (1978; originally
published in German, 1911). For a comprehensive survey see Ingemar Düring, Aristoteles: Darstellung und Interpretation seiner Denkens
(1966). Two of the most influential books on Aristotle written in the 20th century are Werner W. Jaeger, Aristotle: Fundamentals of the
History of His Development, 2nd ed. (1948, reissued 1962; originally published in German, 1923), which advances a theory of the
development of Aristotle's thought; and Harold Cherniss, Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and the Academy (1944, reissued 1962), which
discusses, in a uniformly critical spirit, Aristotle's knowledge and assessment of Plato's work.
Most of the scholarly work done on Aristotle appears in articles rather than in books. There is a useful anthology: Jonathan Barnes,
Malcolm Schofield, and Richard Sorabji (eds.), Articles on Aristotle, 4 vol. (1975-79). The proceedings of the triennial Symposium
Aristotelicum contain some of the most up-to-date work.
Life
For all aspects of Aristotle's life, see Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (1957); for his writings, see Paul
Moraux, Les Listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote (1951); for the history of the Lyceum, see John Patrick Lynch, Aristotle's School: A
Study of a Greek Educational Institution (1972); and Paul Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen: Von Andronikos bis Alexander
von Aphrodisias, 2 vol. (1973-84).
Poetics
John Jones, On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (1962, reissued 1980); and Richard Janko, Aristotle on Comedy: Towards a Reconstruction of
"Poetics" II (1984).
Artaud, Antonin
b. Sept. 4, 1896, Marseille, France, d. March 4, 1948, Ivry-sur-Seine
French dramatist, poet, actor, and theoretician of the Surrealist movement who attempted to replace the "bourgeois" classical theatre with
his "theatre of cruelty," a primitive ceremonial experience intended to liberate the human subconscious and reveal man to himself.
Artaud's parents were partly Levantine Greek, and he was much affected by this background, especially in his fascination with mysticism.
Lifelong mental disorders sent him repeatedly into asylums. He sent his Surrealist poetry L'Ombilic des limbes (1925; "Umbilical Limbo")
and Le Pèse-nerfs (1925; Nerve Scales) to the influential critic Jacques Rivière, thus beginning their long correspondence. After studying
acting in Paris, he made his debut in Aurélien Lugné-Poë's Dadaist-Surrealist Théâtre de l'Oeuvre. Artaud broke with the Surrealists when
their leader, the poet André Breton, gave their allegiance to communism. Artaud, who believed the movement's strength was extrapolitical,
joined another defecting Surrealist, the dramatist Roger Vitrac, in the short-lived Théâtre Alfred Jarry. Artaud played Marat in Abel
Gance's film Napoléon (1927) and appeared as a friar in Carl Dreyer's classic film La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928).
Artaud's Manifeste du théâtre de la cruauté (1932; "Manifesto of the Theatre of Cruelty") and Le Théâtre et son double (1938; The Theatre
and Its Double) call for a communion between actor and audience in a magic exorcism; gestures, sounds, unusual scenery, and lighting
combine to form a language, superior to words, that can be used to subvert thought and logic and to shock the spectator into seeing the
baseness of his world.
Artaud's own works, less important than his theories, were failures. Les Cenci, performed in Paris in 1935, was an experiment too bold for
its time. His vision, however, was a major influence on the Absurd theatre of Jean Genet, Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, and others and
on the entire movement away from the dominant role of language and rationalism in contemporary theatre. His other works include D'un
voyage au pays des Tarahumaras (1955; Peyote Dance), a collection of texts written between 1936 and 1948 about his travels in Mexico,
Van Gogh, le suicidé de la société (1947), and Héliogabale, ou l'anarchiste couronné (1934; "Heliogabalus, or the Crowned Anarchist").
Beckett, Samuel
b. April 13?, 1906, Foxrock, County Dublin, Ire., d. Dec. 22, 1989, Paris, France
In full SAMUEL BARCLAY BECKETT author, critic, and playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. He wrote in both
French and English and is perhaps best known for his plays, especially En attendant Godot (1952; Waiting for Godot).
Life
Samuel Beckett was born in a suburb of Dublin. Like his fellow Irish writers George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler
Yeats, he came from a Protestant, Anglo-Irish background. At the age of 14 he went to the Portora Royal School, in what became Northern
Ireland, a school that catered to the Anglo-Irish middle classes.
From 1923 to 1927, he studied Romance languages at Trinity College, Dublin, where he received his bachelor's degree. After a brief spell
of teaching in Belfast, he became a reader in English at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1928. There he met the self-exiled Irish
writer James Joyce, the author of the controversial and seminally modern novel Ulysses, and joined his circle. Contrary to often-repeated
reports, however, he never served as Joyce's secretary. He returned to Ireland in 1930 to take up a post as lecturer in French at Trinity
College, but after only four terms he resigned, in December 1931, and embarked upon a period of restless travel in London, France,
Germany, and Italy.
In 1937 Beckett decided to settle in Paris. As a citizen of a country that was neutral in World War II, he was able to remain there even after
the occupation of Paris by the Germans, but he joined an underground resistance group in 1941. When, in 1942, he received news that
members of his group had been arrested by the Gestapo, he immediately went into hiding and eventually moved to the unoccupied zone of
France. Until the liberation of the country, he supported himself as an agricultural labourer.
In 1945 he returned to Ireland but volunteered for the Irish Red Cross and was back in France as an interpreter in a military hospital in
Saint-Lô, Normandy. In the winter of 1945, he finally returned to Paris.
Production Of The Major Works
There followed a period of intense creativity, the most concentratedly fruitful period of Beckett's life. His relatively few prewar
publications included two essays on Joyce and the French novelist Marcel Proust. The volume More Pricks Than Kicks (1934) contained
10 stories describing episodes in the life of a Dublin intellectual, Belacqua Shuah, and the novel Murphy (1938) concerns an Irishman in
London who escapes from a girl he is about to marry to a life of contemplation as a male nurse in a mental institution. His two slim
volumes of poetry were Whoroscope (1930), a poem on the French philosopher René Descartes, and the collection Echo's Bones (1935). A
number of short stories and poems were scattered in various periodicals.
During his years in hiding in unoccupied France, Beckett also completed another novel, Watt, which was not published until 1953. After
his return to Paris, between 1946 and 1949, Beckett produced a number of stories, the major prose narratives Molloy (1951), Malone meurt
(1951; Malone Dies), and L'Innommable (1953; The Unnamable), and two plays, the unpublished three-act Eleutheria and Waiting for
Godot.
It was not until 1951, however, that these works saw the light of day. After many refusals, Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil (later Mme
Beckett), Beckett's lifelong companion, finally succeeded in finding a publisher for Molloy. When this book not only proved a modest
commercial success but also was received with enthusiasm by the French critics, the same publisher brought out the two other novels and
Waiting for Godot. It was with the amazing success of Waiting for Godot at the small Théâtre de Babylone in Paris, in January 1953, that
Beckett's rise to world fame began. Beckett continued writing, but more slowly than in the immediate postwar years. Plays for the stage and
radio and a number of prose works occupied much of his attention.
Beckett continued to live in Paris, but most of his writing was done in a small house secluded in the Marne valley, a short drive from Paris.
His total dedication to his art extended to his complete avoidance of all personal publicity, of appearances on radio or television, and of all
journalistic interviews. When, in 1969, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, he accepted the award but declined the trip to Stockholm
to avoid the public speech at the ceremonies.
Continuity Of His Philosophical Explorations
Beckett's writing reveals his own immense learning. It is full of subtle allusions to a multitude of literary sources as well as to a number of
philosophical and theological writers. The dominating influences on Beckett's thought were undoubtedly the Italian poet Dante, the French
philosopher René Descartes, the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Arnold Geulincx--a pupil of Descartes who dealt with the question of how
the physical and the spiritual sides of man interact--and, finally, his fellow Irishman and revered friend, James Joyce. But it is by no means
essential for the understanding of Beckett's work that one be aware of all the literary, philosophical, and theological allusions.
The widespread idea, fostered by the popular press, that Beckett's work is concerned primarily with the sordid side of human existence,
with tramps and with cripples who inhabit trash cans, is a fundamental misconception. He dealt with human beings in such extreme
situations not because he was interested in the sordid and diseased aspects of life but because he concentrated on the essential aspects of
human experience. The subject matter of so much of the world's literature--the social relations between individuals, their manners and
possessions, their struggles for rank and position, or the conquest of sexual objects--appeared to Beckett as mere external trappings of
existence, the accidental and superficial aspects that mask the basic problems and the basic anguish of the human condition. The basic
questions for Beckett seemed to be these: How can we come to terms with the fact that, without ever having asked for it, we have been
thrown into the world, into being? And who are we; what is the true nature of our self? What does a human being mean when he says "I"?
What appears to the superficial view as a concentration on the sordid thus emerges as an attempt to grapple with the most essential aspects
of the human condition. The two heroes of Waiting for Godot, for instance, are frequently referred to by critics as tramps, yet they were
never described as such by Beckett. They are merely two human beings in the most basic human situation of being in the world and not
knowing what they are there for. Since man is a rational being and cannot imagine that his being thrown into any situation should or could
be entirely pointless, the two vaguely assume that their presence in the world, represented by an empty stage with a solitary tree, must be
due to the fact that they are waiting for someone. But they have no positive evidence that this person, whom they call Godot, ever made
such an appointment--or, indeed, that he actually exists. Their patient and passive waiting is contrasted by Beckett with the mindless and
equally purposeless journeyings that fill the existence of a second pair of characters. In most dramatic literature the characters pursue welldefined objectives, seeking power, wealth, marriage with a desirable partner, or something of the sort. Yet, once they have attained these
objectives, are they or the audience any nearer answering the basic questions that Beckett poses? Does the hero, having won his lady, really
live with her happily ever after? That is apparently why Beckett chose to discard what he regarded as the inessential questions and began
where other writing left off.
This stripping of reality to its naked bones is the reason that Beckett's development as a writer was toward an ever greater concentration,
sparseness, and brevity. His two earliest works of narrative fiction, More Pricks Than Kicks and Murphy, abound in descriptive detail. In
Watt, the last of Beckett's novels written in English, the milieu is still recognizably Irish, but most of the action takes place in a highly
abstract, unreal world. Watt, the hero, takes service with a mysterious employer, Mr. Knott, works for a time for this master without ever
meeting him face to face, and then is dismissed. The allegory of man's life in the midst of mystery is plain.
Most of Beckett's plays also take place on a similar level of abstraction. Fin de partie (one-act, 1957; Endgame) describes the dissolution of
the relation between a master, Hamm, and his servant, Clov. They inhabit a circular structure with two high windows--perhaps the image of
the inside of a human skull. The action might be seen as a symbol of the dissolution of a human personality in the hour of death, the
breaking of the bond between the spiritual and the physical sides of man. In Krapp's Last Tape (one-act, first performed 1958), an old man
listens to the confessions he recorded in earlier and happier years. This becomes an image of the mystery of the self, for to the old Krapp
the voice of the younger Krapp is that of a total stranger. In what sense, then, can the two Krapps be regarded as the same human being? In
Happy Days (1961), a woman, literally sinking continually deeper into the ground, nonetheless continues to prattle about the trivialities of
life. In other words, perhaps, as one gets nearer and nearer death, one still pretends that life will go on normally forever.
In his trilogy of narrative prose works--they are not, strictly speaking, novels as usually understood--Molloy, Malone Dies, and The
Unnamable, as well as in the collection Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967), Beckett raised the problem of the identity of the human self
from, as it were, the inside. This basic problem, simply stated, is that when I say "I am writing," I am talking about myself, one part of me
describing what another part of me is doing. I am both the observer and the object I observe. Which of the two is the real "I"? In his prose
narratives, Beckett tried to pursue this elusive essence of the self, which, to him, manifested itself as a constant stream of thought and of
observations about the self. One's entire existence, one's consciousness of oneself as being in the world, can be seen as a stream of thought.
Cogito ergo sum is the starting point of Beckett's favourite philosopher, Descartes: "I think; therefore, I am." To catch the essence of being,
therefore, Beckett tried to capture the essence of the stream of consciousness that is one's being. And what he found was a constantly
receding chorus of observers, or storytellers, who, immediately on being observed, became, in turn, objects of observation by a new
observer. Molloy and Moran, for example, the pursued and the pursuer in the first part of the trilogy, are just such a pair of observer and
observed. Malone, in the second part, spends his time while dying in making up stories about people who clearly are aspects of himself.
The third part reaches down to bedrock. The voice is that of someone who is unnamable, and it is not clear whether it is a voice that comes
from beyond the grave or from a limbo before birth. As we cannot conceive of our consciousness not being there--"I cannot be conscious
that I have ceased to exist"--therefore consciousness is at either side open-ended to infinity. This is the subject also of the play Play (first
performed 1963), which shows the dying moments of consciousness of three characters, who have been linked in a trivial amorous triangle
in life, lingering on into eternity.
The Humour And Mastery
In spite of Beckett's courageous tackling of the ultimate mystery and despair of human existence, he was essentially a comic writer. In a
French farce, laughter will arise from seeing the frantic and usually unsuccessful pursuit of trivial sexual gratifications. In Beckett's work,
as well, a recognition of the triviality and ultimate pointlessness of most human strivings, by freeing the viewer from his concern with
senseless and futile objectives, should also have a liberating effect. The laughter will arise from a view of pompous and self-important
preoccupation with illusory ambitions and futile desires. Far from being gloomy and depressing, the ultimate effect of seeing or reading
Beckett is one of cathartic release, an objective as old as theatre itself.
Technically, Beckett was a master craftsman, and his sense of form is impeccable. Molloy and Waiting for Godot, for example, are
constructed symmetrically, in two parts that are mirror images of one another. In his work for the mass media, Beckett also showed himself
able to grasp intuitively and brilliantly the essential character of their techniques. His radio plays, such as All That Fall (1957), are models
in the combined use of sound, music, and speech. The short television play Eh Joe! (1967) exploits the television camera's ability to move
in on a face and the particular character of small-screen drama. Finally, his film script Film (1967) creates an unforgettable sequence of
images of the observed self trying to escape the eye of its own observer.
Beckett's later works tended toward extreme concentration and brevity. Come and Go (1967), a playlet, or "dramaticule," as he called it,
contains only 121 words that are spoken by the three characters. The prose fragment "Lessness" consists of but 60 sentences, each of which
occurs twice. His series Acts Without Words are exactly what the title denotes, and one of his last plays, Rockaby, lasts for 15 minutes.
Such brevity is merely an expression of Beckett's determination to pare his writing to essentials, to waste no words on trivia.
Bibliography
Raymond Federman and John Fletcher, Samuel Beckett: His Works and His Critics (1970), is an exhaustive bibliography of the author's writings and of
writings about him. Richard N. Coe, Beckett (1964), is a useful introduction. Biographical studies include Vivian Mercier, Beckett/Beckett (1977); Deirdre
Bair, Samuel Beckett: A Biography (1978, reissued 1993); Anthony Cronin, Samuel Beckett (1996); Lois Gordon, The World of Samuel Beckett, 1906-1946
(1996); and James Knowlson, Damned to Fame (1996). Many critical studies have been devoted to Beckett; among these are Hugh Kenner, Samuel Beckett:
A Critical Study, new ed. (1968); Ruby Cohn, Samuel Beckett: The Comic Gamut (1962); John Fletcher, The Novels of Samuel Beckett, 2nd ed. (1970);
Rubin Rabinowvitz, The Development of Samuel Beckett's Fiction (1984); Andrew K. Kennedy, Samuel Beckett (1989); Alan Astro, Understanding Samuel
Beckett (1990); and, specifically on Beckett's plays, Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, 3rd ed., rev. and enlarged (1980, reissued 1991); and John
Fletcher and John Spurling, Beckett the Playwright, 3rd expanded ed. (1985). Beckett's early writings are the subject of Raymond Federman, Journey to
Chaos: Samuel Beckett's Early Fiction (1965); and Lawrence E. Harvey, Samuel Beckett: Poet & Critic (1970). Anthologies of important Beckett criticism
are Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by Martin Esslin (1965); Samuel Beckett Now, ed. by Melvin J. Friedman, 2nd ed. (1975); Lawrence
Graver and Raymond Federman (eds.), Samuel Beckett; The Critical Heritage (1979, reprinted 1997); and John Pilling (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Beckett (1994).
Behan, Brendan
b. Feb. 9, 1923, Dublin, Ire., d. March 20, 1964, Dublin
In full BRENDAN FRANCIS BEHAN Irish author noted for his earthy satire and powerful political commentary.
Reared in a family active in revolutionary and left-wing causes against the British, Behan at the age of eight began what became a lifelong
battle with alcoholism. After leaving school in 1937, he learned the house-painter's trade while concurrently participating in the Irish
Republican Army (IRA) as a courier.
Behan was arrested in England while on a sabotage mission and sentenced (February 1940) to three years in a reform school at Hollesley
Bay, Suffolk. He wrote an autobiographical account of this detention in Borstal Boy (1958). He was deported to Dublin in 1942 and was
soon involved in a shooting incident in which a policeman was wounded. He was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 14 years.
He served at Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, the setting of his first play, The Quare Fellow (1954), and later at the Curragh Military Camp,
County Kildare, from which he was released under a general amnesty in 1946. While imprisoned, he perfected his Irish, the language he
used for his delicately sensitive poetry and for An Giall (1957), the initial version of his second play, The Hostage (1958).
Subsequent arrests followed, either for revolutionary activities or for drunkenness, which also forced various hospitalizations. In 1948
Behan went to Paris to write. Returning to Dublin in 1950, he wrote short stories and scripts for Radio Telefis Éireann and sang on a
continuing program, Ballad Maker's Saturday Night. In 1953 he began in the Irish Press a column about Dublin, later collected (1963) in
Hold Your Hour and Have Another, with illustrations by his wife, Beatrice Salkeld, whom he had married in 1955.
The Quare Fellow opened at the small Pike Theatre, Dublin, in 1954 and was an instant success. A tragicomedy concerning the reactions of
jailors and prisoners to the hanging of a condemned man (the "quare fellow"), it presents an explosive statement on capital punishment. The
play was subsequently performed in London (1956) and in New York City (1958). The Hostage, however, is considered to be his
masterwork, in which ballads, slapstick, and fantasies satirize social conditions and warfare with a personal gaiety that emerges from
anguish. The play deals with the tragic situation of an English soldier whom the IRA holds as a hostage in a brothel to prevent the
execution of one of their own men. A success in London, the play opened in 1960 off Broadway, New York City, where Behan became a
celebrated personality.
Behan's last works, which he dictated on tape, were Brendan Behan's Island (1962), a book of Irish anecdotes; The Scarperer (1964), a
novel about a smuggling adventure, first published serially in the Irish Press; Brendan Behan's New York (1964); and Confessions of an
Irish Rebel (1965), further memoirs. Alan Simpson's Beckett and Behan, and a Theatre in Dublin appeared in 1962; Ulick O'Connor's
Brendan Behan was published in 1970.
Black Theatre Movement
In the United States, dramatic movement encompassing plays written by, for, and about blacks. The minstrel shows of the early 19th
century are believed by some to be the roots of black theatre, but they initially were written by whites, acted by whites in blackface, and
performed for white audiences. After the American Civil War, blacks began to perform in minstrel shows, and by the turn of the century
they were producing black musicals, many of which were written, produced, and acted entirely by blacks. The first known play by an
American black was James Brown's King Shotaway (1823). William Wells Brown's The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (1858), was the
first black play published, but the first real success of a black dramatist was Angelina W. Grimké's Rachel (1916).
Black theatre flourished during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and '30s. Experimental groups and black theatre companies emerged
in Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Among these was the Ethiopian Art Theatre, which established Paul Robeson as
America's foremost black actor. Garland Anderson's play Appearances (1925) was the first play of black authorship to be produced on
Broadway, but black theatre did not create a Broadway hit until Langston Hughes's Mulatto (1935) won wide acclaim. In that same year the
Federal Theatre Project was founded, providing a training ground for blacks. In the late 1930s, black community theatres began to appear,
revealing talents such as those of Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. By 1940 black theatre was firmly grounded in the American Negro Theater
and the Negro Playwrights' Company.
After World War II black theatre grew more progressive, more radical, and more militant, reflecting the ideals of black revolution and
seeking to establish a mythology and symbolism apart from white culture. Councils were organized to abolish the use of racial stereotypes
in theatre and to integrate black playwrights into the mainstream of American dramaturgy. Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
and other successful black plays of the 1950s portrayed the difficulty of blacks maintaining an identity in a society that degraded them.
The 1960s saw the emergence of a new black theatre, angrier and more defiant than its predecessors, with Amiri Baraka (originally LeRoi
Jones) as its strongest proponent. Baraka's plays, including the award-winning Dutchman (1964), depicted whites' exploitation of blacks.
He established the Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem in 1965 and inspired playwright Ed Bullins and others seeking to create a
strong "black aesthetic" in American theatre. The powerful and prolific dramatist August Wilson was the most important creator of black
theatre in the 1980s.
Brecht, Bertolt
b. Feb. 10, 1898, Augsburg, Ger., d. Aug. 14, 1956, East Berlin
Original name EUGEN BERTHOLD FRIEDRICH BRECHT, German poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer whose epic theatre
departed from the conventions of theatrical illusion and developed the drama as a social and ideological forum for leftist causes.
Until 1924 Brecht lived in Bavaria, where he was born, studied medicine (Munich, 1917-21), and served in an army hospital (1918). From
this period date his first play, Baal (produced 1923); his first success, Trommeln in der Nacht (Kleist Preis, 1922; Drums in the Night); the
poems and songs collected as Die Hauspostille (1927; A Manual of Piety, 1966), his first professional production (Edward II, 1924); and
his admiration for Wedekind, Rimbaud, Villon, and Kipling.
During this period he also developed a violently antibourgeois attitude that reflected his generation's deep disappointment in the civilization
that had come crashing down at the end of World War I. Among Brecht's friends were members of the Dadaist group, who aimed at
destroying what they condemned as the false standards of bourgeois art through derision and iconoclastic satire. The man who taught him
the elements of Marxism in the late 1920s was Karl Korsch, an eminent Marxist theoretician who had been a Communist member of the
Reichstag but had been expelled from the German Communist Party in 1926.
In Berlin (1924-33) he worked briefly for the directors Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator, but mainly with his own group of associates.
With the composer Kurt Weill he wrote the satirical, successful ballad opera Die Dreigroschenoper (1928; The Threepenny Opera) and the
opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1930; Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny). He also wrote what he called "Lehr-stücke"
("exemplary plays")--badly didactic works for performance outside the orthodox theatre--to music by Weill, Hindemith, and Hanns Eisler.
In these years he developed his theory of "epic theatre" and an austere form of irregular verse. He also became a Marxist.
In 1933 he went into exile--in Scandinavia (1933-41), mainly in Denmark, and then in the United States (1941-47), where he did some film
work in Hollywood. In Germany his books were burned and his citizenship was withdrawn. He was cut off from the German theatre; but
between 1937 and 1941 he wrote most of his great plays, his major theoretical essays and dialogues, and many of the poems collected as
Svendborger Gedichte (1939). The plays of these years became famous in the author's own and other productions: notable among them are
Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1941; Mother Courage and Her Children), a chronicle play of the Thirty Years' War; Leben des Galilei
(1943; The Life of Galileo); Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (1943; The Good Woman of Setzuan), a parable play set in prewar China; Der
Aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (1957; The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui), a parable play of Hitler's rise to power set in prewar Chicago;
Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (1948; Herr Puntila and His Man Matti), a Volksstück (popular play) about a Finnish farmer who
oscillates between churlish sobriety and drunken good humour; and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (first produced in English, 1948; Der
kaukasische Kreidekreis, 1949), the story of a struggle for possession of a child between its highborn mother, who deserts it, and the
servant girl who looks after it.
Brecht left the United States in 1947 after having had to give evidence before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He spent a
year in Zürich, working mainly on Antigone-Modell 1948 (adapted from Hölderlin's translation of Sophocles; produced 1948) and on his
most important theoretical work, the Kleines Organon für das Theater (1949; "A Little Organum for the Theatre"). The essence of his
theory of drama, as revealed in this work, is the idea that a truly Marxist drama must avoid the Aristotelian premise that the audience
should be made to believe that what they are witnessing is happening here and now. For he saw that if the audience really felt that the
emotions of heroes of the past--Oedipus, or Lear, or Hamlet--could equally have been their own reactions, then the Marxist idea that human
nature is not constant but a result of changing historical conditions would automatically be invalidated. Brecht therefore argued that the
theatre should not seek to make its audience believe in the presence of the characters on the stage--should not make it identify with them,
but should rather follow the method of the epic poet's art, which is to make the audience realize that what it sees on the stage is merely an
account of past events that it should watch with critical detachment. Hence, the "epic" (narrative, nondramatic) theatre is based on
detachment, on the Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect), achieved through a number of devices that remind the spectator that he is being
presented with a demonstration of human behaviour in scientific spirit rather than with an illusion of reality, in short, that the theatre is only
a theatre and not the world itself.
In 1949 Brecht went to Berlin to help stage Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (with his wife, Helene Weigel, in the title part) at Reinhardt's
old Deutsches Theater in the Soviet sector. This led to formation of the Brechts' own company, the Berliner Ensemble, and to permanent
return to Berlin. Henceforward the Ensemble and the staging of his own plays had first claim on Brecht's time. Often suspect in eastern
Europe because of his unorthodox aesthetic theories and denigrated or boycotted in the West for his Communist opinions, he yet had a
great triumph at the Paris Théâtre des Nations in 1955, and in the same year in Moscow he received a Stalin Peace Prize. He died of a heart
attack in East Berlin the following year.
Brecht was, first, a superior poet, with a command of many styles and moods. As a playwright he was an intensive worker, a restless
piecer-together of ideas not always his own (The Threepenny Opera is based on John Gay's Beggar's Opera, and Edward II on Marlowe), a
sardonic humorist, and a man of rare musical and visual awareness; but he was often bad at creating living characters or at giving his plays
tension and shape. As a producer he liked lightness, clarity, and firmly knotted narrative sequence; a perfectionist, he forced the German
theatre, against its nature, to underplay. As a theoretician he made principles out of his preferences--and even out of his faults.
Bibliography
A complete bibliography of Brecht's writings published up to the time of his death by Walter Nubel may be found in the Second Special Brecht Number of
the East German periodical Sinn und Form (1957); a concise summary of Brecht literature is contained in Bertolt-Brecht-Bibliographie by Klaus-Dietrich
Petersen (1968). Collected works in the original German are available in an edition in 8 thin-paper or 20 paperback volumes; Gesammelte Werke (1967).
This edition, however, is far from complete and the principles according to which it was edited are open to doubt. A major collected edition of Brecht's work
in English, under the joint editorship of John Willett and Ralph Manheim started publication with the first volume of Collected Plays (1970). Eric Bentley
has edited Seven Plays by Bertolt Brecht (1961), a series of paperback volumes of Brecht's plays, and has translated the poetry collection, Hauspostille
(1927; Manual of Piety, 1966). A good selection of Brecht's theoretical writings is Brecht on Theatre, trans. by John Willett (1964).
Critical and biographical works available in English include: John Willett, The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht (1959); Martin Esslin, Brecht: A Choice of Evils
(1959; revised edition under the title, Brecht: The Man and His Work, 1971); and Frederic Ewen, Bertolt Brecht: His Life, His Art and His Times (1967,
1970). Max Spalter, Brecht's Tradition (1967), analyzes the chief influences on Brecht in German literature.
Brook, Peter
b. March 21, 1925, London, Eng.
In full PETER STEPHEN PAUL BROOK English producer-director of Shakespeare's plays whose daring productions of other dramatists
contributed significantly to the development of the 20th century's avant-garde stage.
Attaining at an early age the status of one of the foremost British directors, Brook introduced the plays of Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul
Sartre (including Vicious Circle and Men Without Shadows) to England. After serving as director of the Royal Opera House, Covent
Garden, London (1947-50), he returned to drama and directed, in the 1950s and early '60s, Shakespearean productions of Measure for
Measure, Titus Andronicus, The Winter's Tale, and King Lear (1962; Royal Shakespeare Company). Influenced by the tenets of the Theatre
of Cruelty proposed by Antonin Artaud, he produced Jean Genet's work The Screens and, ultimately, in 1964, Peter Weiss's sensational
play commonly called Marat/Sade, whose unconventional style and staging shocked the theatre world and won him international fame. His
1967 direction of the film version of the play proved an additional success.
In 1968 Brook produced Seneca's Oedipus and published The Empty Space, which put forth his ideas on theatre. Believing that the director
is, above all, a play's chief creative force, he adopted some of the innovative techniques advocated by the experimental Polish director Jerzy
Grotowski and the American director Julian Beck, founder of the Living Theatre. Later major productions include Timon of Athens (Paris,
1974), Ubu Roi (Paris, 1977), and Antony and Cleopatra (Stratford, London, 1978). Brook has also written and directed such films as The
Lord of the Flies (1963), King Lear (1971), Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979), and The Mahabharata (1989), based on the ancient
Indian epic poem. From 1971 he worked with the International Centre of Theatre Research, which he founded. Associated with Britain's
Royal Shakespeare Theatre from 1962, Brook served as a producer and codirector. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1998.
Camus, Albert
b. Nov. 7, 1913, Mondovi, Alg., d. Jan. 4, 1960, near Sens, France
French novelist, essayist, and playwright, best known for such novels as L'Étranger (1942; The Stranger), La Peste (1947; The Plague),
and La Chute (1956; The Fall) and for his work in leftist causes. He received the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Novels And Short Stories
L'Étranger (1942; English title, The Outsider, 1946; U.S. title, The Stranger, 1946); La Peste (1947; The Plague, 1948); La Chute (1956;
The Fall, trans. by Justin O'Brien, 1957). Short stories collected in L'Exil et le royaume (1957; Exile and the Kingdom, trans. by J. O'Brien,
1958); La mort heureuse (1970; A Happy Death, 1972).
Plays
Le Malentendu (performed 1944; pub. with Caligula, performed 1945, in Le Malentendu, suivi de Caligula, 1944; Caligula and Cross
Purpose, 1947); L'État de siège (performed and pub. in 1948; State of Siege, trans. in Caligula and Three Other Plays, 1958); Les Justes
(performed 1949, pub. 1950; The Just Assassins, trans. in Caligula and Three Other Plays, 1958). Adaptations: La Dévotion à la Croix
(1953, from Calderón); Un Cas intéressant (1955, from Dino Buzatti); Requiem pour une nonne (1956, from William Faulkner); Les
Possédés (1959, from Dostoyevsky).
Essays, Journalism, And Notebooks
Collections: L'Envers et l'endroit (1937), recollections of childhood and travel sketches; Noces (1938), four Algerian essays; Actuelles, 3
vol. (1950, 1953, 1958), editorials and articles written for Combat, 1944-45; L'Été (1954). Other essays: Le Mythe de Sisyphe, essai sur
l'absurde (1942, enlarged and rev. ed. reprinted 1945; The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. by J. O'Brien, 1955), a long philosophical essay; Lettres
à un ami allemand (1945; trans. by J. O'Brien in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, 1960), four linked essays, with preface, in the form of
letters written during the Occupation, the first and second previously published in the "underground" reviews, Le Revue Libre (1943) and
Cahiers de la Libération (1944); Le Minotaure ou la halte d'Oran (written 1939, pub. 1950), poetic and satirical description of Oran, the
background for La Peste; L'Homme révolté (1951; The Rebel, 1953), a long metaphysical, historical, and political essay. Notebooks
published posthumously: Carnets: Mai 1935-Février 1942 (1962; Notebooks, 1935-42, trans. by Philip Thody, 1963); Carnets: Janvier
1942-Mars 1951 (1964; Notebooks, 1942-51, trans. by P. Thody, 1965); Carnets: Avril 1951-Décembre 1959 (1966; Notebooks, 1951-59,
trans. by P. Thody, 1969).
Bibliographies of works by and about Camus include Robert F. Roeming (ed. and compiler), Camus: A Bibliography (1968); and Brian T.
Fitch and Peter C. Hoy, Essai de bibliographie des études en langue française consacrées à Albert Camus, 1937-1967, 2nd ed. (1969).
Camus's main works are published with excellent editorial material in Théâtre, récits, nouvelles, ed. by Roger Quilliot (1962, reissued
1991); and Essais, ed. by Roger Quilliot and L. Faucon (1965, reissued 1993). Collections of Camus's writings in English translation are
The Collected Fiction of Albert Camus (1960); Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, trans. by Justin O'Brien (1960, reissued 1995); and
Lyrical and Critical, ed. by Philip Thody (1967; also published as Lyrical and Critical Essays, 1968).
Biographies include Morvan Lebesque, Portrait of Camus: An Illustrated Biography (1971; originally published in French, 1963); Herbert
R. Lottman, Albert Camus: A Biography (1979, reissued 1997); and Patrick McCarthy, Camus (1982).
Bettina L. Knapp (ed.), Critical Essays on Albert Camus (1988), presents a collection of 15 essays, including one by Jean-Paul Sartre.
Critical studies of his works and ideas include Jean-Claude Brisville, Camus (1959, reissued 1969); John Cruickshank, Albert Camus and
the Literature of Revolt (1959, reprinted 1978); Philip Thody, Albert Camus, 1913-1960 (1961), and Albert Camus (1989); Germaine Brée,
Camus, rev. ed. (1964, reissued 1972); Adele King, Camus (1964, reissued 1971); Emmett Parker, Albert Camus: The Artist in the Arena
(1965); Roger Quilliot, The Sea and Prisons: A Commentary on the Life and Thought of Albert Camus (1970; originally published in
French, rev. ed., 1970); Brian T. Fitch, The Narcissistic Text: A Reading of Camus' Fiction (1982); Susan Tarrow, Exile from the Kingdom:
A Political Rereading of Albert Camus (1985); David Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination (1988); Philip H. Rhein, Albert Camus,
rev. ed. (1989); and Joseph McBride, Albert Camus: Philosopher and Littérateur (1992). Among numerous studies of individual works are
Patrick McCarthy, Albert Camus, The Stranger (1988); Adele King (ed.), Camus's L'Étranger: Fifty Years On (1992), a collection of
original essays by leading Camus scholars; and Steven G. Kellman, The Plague: Fiction and Resistance (1993).
Chekhov, Anton
b. Jan. 29 [Jan. 17, Old Style], 1860, Taganrog, Russia, . July 14/15 [July 1/2], 1904, Badenweiler, Ger.
Major Russian playwright and master of the modern short story. He was a literary artist of laconic precision who probed below the surface
of life, laying bare the secret motives of his characters. Chekhov's best plays and short stories lack complex plots and neat solutions.
Concentrating on apparent trivialities, they create a special kind of atmosphere, sometimes termed haunting or lyrical. Chekhov described
the Russian life of his time using a deceptively simple technique devoid of obtrusive literary devices, and he is regarded as the outstanding
representative of the late 19th-century Russian realist school.
Melikhovo Period: 1892-98.
After helping, both as doctor and as medical administrator, to relieve the disastrous famine of 1891-92, Chekhov bought a country estate in
the village of Melikhovo, about 50 miles (80 km) south of Moscow. This was his main residence for about six years, providing a home for
his aging parents, as also for his sister Mariya, who acted as his housekeeper and remained unmarried in order to look after her brother. The
Melikhovo period was the most creatively effective of Chekhov's life so far as short stories were concerned, for it was during these six
years that he wrote "The Butterfly," "Neighbours" (1892), "An Anonymous Story" (1893), "The Black Monk" (1894), "Murder," and
"Ariadne" (1895), among many other masterpieces. Village life now became a leading theme in his work, most notably in "Peasants"
(1897). Undistinguished by plot, this short sequence of brilliant sketches created more stir in Russia than any other single work of
Chekhov's, partly owing to his rejection of the convention whereby writers commonly presented the Russian peasantry in sentimentalized
and debrutalized form.
Continuing to provide many portraits of the intelligentsia, Chekhov also described the commercial and factory-owning world in such
stories as "A Woman's Kingdom," (1894) and "Three Years" (1895). As has often been recognized, Chekhov's work provides a panoramic
study of the Russia of his day, and one so accurate that it could even be used as a sociological source.
In some of his stories of the Melikhovo period, Chekhov attacked by implication the teachings of Leo Tolstoy, the well-known novelist and
thinker, and Chekhov's revered elder contemporary. Himself once (in the late 1880s) a tentative disciple of the Tolstoyan simple life, and
also of nonresistance to evil as advocated by Tolstoy, Chekhov had now rejected these doctrines. He illustrated his new view in one
particularly outstanding story: "Ward Number Six" (1892). Here an elderly doctor shows himself nonresistant to evil by refraining from
remedying the appalling conditions in the mental ward of which he has charge--only to be incarcerated as a patient himself through the
intrigues of a subordinate. In "My Life" (1896) the young hero, son of a provincial architect, insists on defying middle-class convention by
becoming a house painter, a cultivation of the Tolstoyan simple life that Chekhov portrays as misconceived. In a later trio of linked stories,
"The Man in a Case," "Gooseberries," and "About Love" (1898), Chekhov further develops the same theme, showing various figures who
similarly fail to realize their full potentialities. As these pleas in favour of personal freedom illustrate, Chekhov's stories frequently contain
some kind of submerged moral, though he never worked out a comprehensive ethical or philosophical doctrine.
Chayka (The Seagull) is Chekhov's only dramatic work dating with certainty from the Melikhovo period. First performed in St. Petersburg
on Oct. 17, 1896 (O.S.), this four-act drama, misnamed a comedy, was badly received; indeed, it was almost hissed off the stage. Chekhov
was greatly distressed and left the auditorium during the second act, having suffered one of the most traumatic experiences of his life and
vowing never to write for the stage again. Two years later, however, the play was revived by the newly created Moscow Art Theatre,
enjoying considerable success and helping to reestablish Chekhov as a dramatist. The Seagull is a study of the clash between the older and
younger generations as it affects two actresses and two writers, some of the details having been suggested by episodes in the lives of
Chekhov's friends.
Yalta Period: 1899-1904
In March 1897 Chekhov had suffered a lung hemorrhage caused by tuberculosis, symptoms of which had become apparent considerably
earlier. Now forced to acknowledge himself a semi-invalid, Chekhov sold his Melikhovo estate and built a villa in Yalta, the Crimean
coastal resort. From then on he spent most of his winters there or on the French Riviera, cut off from the intellectual life of Moscow and St.
Petersburg. This was all the more galling since his plays were beginning to attract serious attention. Moreover, Chekhov had become
attracted by a young actress, Olga Knipper, who was appearing in his plays, and whom he eventually married in 1901; the marriage
probably marked the only profound love affair of his life. But since Knipper continued to pursue her acting career, husband and wife lived
apart during most of the winter months, and there were no children of the marriage.
Never a successful financial manager, Chekhov attempted to regularize his literary affairs in 1899 by selling the copyright of all his
existing works, excluding plays, to the publisher A.F. Marx for 75,000 rubles, an unduly low sum. In 1899-1901 Marx issued the first
comprehensive edition of Chekhov's works, in 10 volumes, after the author had himself rejected many of his juvenilia. Even so, this
publication, reprinted in 1903 with supplementary material, was unsatisfactory in many ways.
Chekhov's Yalta period saw a decline in the production of short stories and a greater emphasis on drama. His two last plays--Tri sestry
(1901; Three Sisters) and Vishnyovy sad (1904; The Cherry Orchard)--were both written for the Moscow Art Theatre. But much as
Chekhov owed to the theatre's two founders, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and Konstanin Stanislavsky, he remained dissatisfied with
such rehearsals and performances of his plays as he was able to witness. Repeatedly insisting that his mature drama was comedy rather than
tragedy, Chekhov grew distressed when producers insisted on a heavy treatment, overemphasizing the--admittedly frequent--occasions on
which the characters inveigh against the boredom and futility of their lives. Despite Stanislavsky's reputation as an innovator who had
brought a natural, nondeclamatory style to the hitherto overhistrionic Russian stage, his productions were never natural and
nondeclamatory enough for Chekhov, who wished his work to be acted with the lightest possible touch. And though Chekhov's mature
plays have since become established in repertoires all over the world, it remains doubtful whether his craving for the light touch has been
satisfied except on the rarest of occasions. Yet oversolemnity can be the ruin of Three Sisters, for example--the play in which Chekhov so
sensitively portrays the longings of a trio of provincial young women. Insisting that his The Cherry Orchard was "a comedy, in places even
a farce," Chekhov offered in this last play a poignant picture of the Russian landowning class in decline, portraying characters who remain
comic despite their very poignancy. This play was first performed in Moscow on Jan. 17, 1904 (O.S.), and less than six months later
Chekhov died of tuberculosis.
Though already celebrated by the Russian literary public at the time of his death, Chekhov did not become internationally famous until the
years after World War I, by which time the translations of Constance Garnett (into English) and of others had helped to publicize his work.
Yet his elusive, superficially guileless style of writing--in which what is left unsaid often seems so much more important than what is said-has defied effective analysis by literary critics, as well as effective imitation by creative writers.
It was not until 40 years after his death, with the issue of the 20-volume Polnoye sobraniye sochineny i pisem A.P. Chekhova ("Complete
Works and Letters of A.P. Chekhov") of 1944-51, that Chekhov was at last presented in Russian on a level of scholarship worthy--though
with certain reservations--of his achievement. Eight volumes of this edition contain his correspondence, amounting to several thousand
letters. Outstandingly witty and lively, they belie the legend--commonly believed during the author's lifetime--that he was hopelessly
pessimistic in outlook. As samples of the Russian epistolary art, Chekhov's letters have been rated second only to Aleksandr Pushkin's by
the literary historian D.S. Mirsky. Although Chekhov is still chiefly known for his plays, critical opinion shows signs of establishing the
stories--and particularly those that were written after 1888--as an even more significant and creative literary achievement.
Bibliography
Biographies of the writer include Sophie Laffitte, Chekhov, 1860-1904 (1973); Ronald Hingley, A New Life of Anton Chekhov (1976, reprinted 1989); Henri
Troyat, Chekhov (1986); and Carolina De Maegd-Soëp, Chekhov and Women: Women in the Life and Work of Chekhov (1987), analyzing the reflection of
personal relationships in the writer's works. A combination of biography with critical analysis is provided in V.S. Pritchett, Chekhov: A Spirit Set Free
(1988). Beverly Hahn, Chekhov: A Study of the Major Stories and Plays (1977), introduces a wide range of writings, focusing on characters and recurrent
themes. Development of Chekhov's narrative art, explored in the themes and concepts of the short stories, is the subject of Thomas Winner, Chekhov and His
Prose (1966); A.P. Chudakov, Chekhov's Poetics (1983); and Valentine Tschebotarioff Bill, Chekhov, the Silent Voice of Freedom (1987). On the plays, see
Maurice Valency, The Breaking String: The Plays of Anton Chekhov (1966, reissued 1983); David Magarshack, Chekhov the Dramatist (1952, reissued
1980), and The Real Chekhov: An Introduction to Chekhov's Last Plays (1972); and René Wellek and Nonna D. Wellek (eds.), Chekhov, New Perspectives
(1984).
Clurman, Harold
b. Sept. 18, 1901, New York, N.Y., U.S., d. Sept. 9, 1980, New York City
Influential and respected American theatrical director and drama critic.
Clurman attended Columbia University in New York City, then the University of Paris, where he received a degree in letters in 1923. He
made his stage debut the following year as an extra at the Greenwich Village Theatre in New York City. In 1931 Clurman became a
founding member of the Group Theatre, an experimental company, for which he directed several plays, notably Awake and Sing! (1935) by
Clifford Odets. Clurman's achievements as a director range over many categories of drama, including Carson McCullers' Member of the
Wedding (1950), Jean Giraudoux's drama of ideas Tiger at the Gates (1955), and Jean Anouilh's farce Waltz of the Toreadors (1957). He
also directed Eugene O'Neill's Touch of the Poet (1957) and Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy (1965). Financed by a grant from the U.S.
State Department, Clurman directed the Kumo Theatre Company of Japan in O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night (1965) and The
Iceman Cometh (1968).
Clurman also became a drama critic, writing for the weekly magazine The New Republic in 1948-52, then for the weekly The Nation from
1953 until his death. He also wrote On Directing (1972); The Divine Pastime (1974), theatrical essays; and his memoirs, All People Are
Famous (1974).
Cocteau, Jean
b. , July 5, 1889, Maisons-Laffitte, near Paris, Fr., . Oct. 11, 1963, Milly-la-Forêt, near Paris
French poet, librettist, novelist, actor, film director, and painter. Some of his most important works include the poem L'Ange Heurtebise
(1925; "The Angel Heurtebise"); the play Orphée (1926; "Orpheus"); the novels Les Enfants terribles (1929; "The Incorrigible Children";
Eng. trans. Children of the Game) and La Machine infernale (1934; The Infernal Machine); and his surrealistic motion pictures Le Sang
d'un poète (1930; The Blood of a Poet) and La Belle et la bête (1946; Beauty and the Beast).
Filmmaking In The 1940s.
In the 1940s, Cocteau returned to filmmaking, first as a screenwriter and then also as a director in La Belle et la bête, a fantasy based on the
children's tale, and Orphée (1950), a re-creation of the themes of poetry and death that he had dealt with in his play.
Also a visual artist of significance, Cocteau in 1950 decorated the Villa Santo Sospir in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and began a series of
important graphic works: frescoes on the City Hall in Menton, the Chapel of Saint-Pierre in Villefranche-sur-Mer, and the Church of SaintBlaise-des-Simples in Milly-la-Forêt. His adopted son, the painter Édouard Dermit, who also appears in his later films, continued the
decoration of a chapel at Fréjus, a work Cocteau had not completed at his death at the age of 74.
Bibliography
Francis Steegmuller, Cocteau: A Biography (1970, reissued 1986), is the most fully documented study of Cocteau's life that has yet appeared. Biographical
information also appears in Bettina L. Knapp, Jean Cocteau, updated ed. (1989), and Jean Cocteau and the French Scene (1984), a collection of illustrated
essays. Critical studies of Cocteau's works include Wallace Fowlie, Jean Cocteau: The History of a Poet's Age (1966), a discussion of the various genres
used by Cocteau in his writings, attempting to analyze the success or lack of success of the various works in terms of the historical moment at which they
appeared; Neal Oxenhandler, Scandal & Parade: The Theater of Jean Cocteau (1957), an analysis of his plays based largely on the myths behind the plays
and the personal myths or legends of Cocteau himself; Frank W.D. Ries, The Dance Theatre of Jean Cocteau (1986); and William Emboden, The Visual Art
of Jean Cocteau (1989), illustrations of his drawings, paintings, designs, and sculpture.
Coward, Noël
b. Dec. 16, 1899, Teddington, near London, Eng., . March 26, 1973, St. Mary, Jamaica
English playwright, actor, and composer best known for highly polished comedies of manners.
Coward appeared professionally as an actor from the age of 12. Between acting engagements he wrote such light comedies as I'll Leave It
to You (1920) and The Young Idea (1923), but his reputation as a playwright was not established until the serious play The Vortex (1924),
which was highly successful in London. In 1925 the first of his durable comedies, Hay Fever, opened in London. Coward ended the decade
with his most popular musical play, Bitter Sweet (1929).
Another of his classic comedies, Private Lives (1930), is often revived. It shares with Design for Living (1933) a worldly milieu and
characters unable to live with or without one another. His patriotic pageant of British history, Cavalcade (1931), traced an English family
from the time of the South African (Boer) War through the end of World War I. Other successes included Tonight at Eight-Thirty (1936), a
group of one-act plays performed by Coward and Gertrude Lawrence, with whom he often played. He rewrote one of the short plays, Still
Life, as the film Brief Encounter (1946). Present Laughter (1939) and Blithe Spirit (1941; filmed 1945; musical version, High Spirits,
1964) are usually listed among his better comedies.
In his plays Coward caught the clipped speech and brittle disillusion of the generation that emerged from World War I. His songs and revue
sketches also struck the world-weary note of his times. Coward had another style, sentimental but theatrically effective, that he used for
romantic, backward-glancing musicals and for plays constructed around patriotism or some other presumably serious theme. He performed
almost every function in the theatre--including producing, directing, dancing, and singing in a quavering but superbly timed and articulate
baritone--and acted in, wrote, and directed motion pictures as well.
Coward's Collected Short Stories appeared in 1962, followed by a further selection, Bon Voyage, in 1967. Pomp and Circumstance (1960)
is a light novel, and Not Yet the Dodo (1967) is a collection of verse. His autobiography through 1931 appeared as Present Indicative
(1937) and was extended through his wartime years in Future Indefinite (1954); a third volume, Past Conditional, was incomplete at his
death. Among his more notable songs are "Mad Dogs and Englishmen," "I'll See You Again," "Some Day I'll Find You," "Poor Little Rich
Girl," "Mad About the Boy," and "Marvellous Party."
Coward was knighted in 1970. He spent his last years chiefly in the Caribbean and Switzerland.
Bibliography
Biography and criticism may be found in Sheridan Morley, A Talent to Amuse (1969, reissued 1985); Cole Lesley, Remembered Laughter (1976); John Lahr,
Coward, the Playwright (1982); and Clive Fisher, Noel Coward (1992).
Craig, Edward Gordon
b. Jan. 16, 1872, Stevenage, Hertfordshire, Eng., . July 29, 1966, Vence, France
English actor, theatre director-designer, producer, and theorist who influenced the development of the theatre in the 20th century.
Early Life
Craig was the second child of a liaison between the actress Ellen Terry and the architect Edward William Godwin. Like Edith (the other
child of his parents), their son was given the name Craig, which he adopted as a surname. He began his career as an actor, in Henry Irving's
company at the Lyceum Theatre, London, and in several touring companies (1889-97), but he abandoned acting before undertaking his first
important theatrical productions: Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (1900) and George Frideric Handel's Acis and Galatea (1902) for the
Purcell Operatic Society and Henrik Ibsen's The Vikings (1903) for Terry's company at the Imperial Theatre, London. In his sets, decor, and
costumes for these productions, Craig asserted his revolutionary theories of theatrical design. His productions were marked by simplicity
and unity of concept, with the emphasis being placed on the movement of actors and of light. But his productions--their artistic impact
notwithstanding--were commercial failures, and the financial support that would have permitted him to develop his ideas was not
forthcoming in England.
Consequently, in 1904, Craig went into voluntary exile, accepting the invitation of Count Harry Kessler--the arbiter of taste at the Weimar
court--to visit Germany. While there he wrote his best-known essay, The Art of the Theatre (1905; republished, with articles from The
Mask, as On the Art of the Theatre, 1911). He finally arrived in Italy, where he created the sets for a production of Ibsen's Rosmersholm for
Eleonora Duse and settled in Florence. There he invented (1907) the portable folding screens used in set designs for a co-production with
Konstantin Stanislavsky of Hamlet at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1912. There too he made the copperplate etchings that record his
researches into the creation of an art of movement, and he founded and edited his international review, The Mask (1908-29), which helped
to make his theatrical ideals widely known and in which many of his articles--notably "The Actor and the Übermarionette" (1907)--were
published. In Florence he published the etchings illustrating his scenographic concepts in A Portfolio of Etchings (1908) and also wrote
Towards a New Theatre (1913), which contains 40 plates of his original scenic designs. He established his School for the Art of the Theatre
in 1903.
After World War I, which put an end to his school's activities, Craig turned increasingly to theatrical history, writing Henry Irving (1930)
and Ellen Terry and Her Secret Self (1931). He did take part in some outstanding productions, though, designing sets and scenery for
Ibsen's The Pretenders (Copenhagen, 1926) and the decor for Macbeth (New York, 1928). His work as an engraver reached its peak in the
illustrations for the Cranach Press Hamlet (1929), and among his notable postwar publications were the essays and articles collected in
Scene (1923), in which he defined his theory of the history of stage design and expounded his ideas of a stage setting based on the use of
portable screens and the part played by light in evoking atmosphere. In 1931 he went to live in France and in 1948 made his home in the
south of that country, where he wrote his memoirs, entitled Index to the Story of My Days (1957).
From the outset, Craig propounded an art of the theatre in which reality, instead of being reproduced by traditional representational
methods, would be transcended and interpreted by symbol. To him outlines, forms, colours, and lighting were a means of conveying
atmosphere. His most original theatrical concept was that the entire "scene" in a dramatic work should be movable in all parts; both the
floor and the ceiling were to be composed of squares that, under the control of the artist, could be moved up and down independently or in
groups within a constantly changing pattern of light. Thus an emotional response might arise in the audience through the abstract
movement of these plastic forms. Craig's stage productions and, even more, his writings and his highly stylized stage designs, woodcuts,
and etchings strongly influenced the antinaturalist trends of the modern theatre in the first half of the 20th century.
Bibliography
Edward Craig (Edward Carrick), Gordon Craig: The Story of His Life (1968, reprinted 1985), is the definitive work. An earlier study, based largely on the
Craig collection in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, is Denis Bablet, Edward Gordon Craig (1966, reissued as The Theatre of Edward Gordon Craig,
1981). Important because of the chronology by Craig himself is the brief work by Janet Leeper, Edward Gordon Craig: Designs for the Theatre (1948).
Christopher Innes, Edward Gordon Craig (1983), examines his theories, plans, and productions. Ifan Kyrle Fletcher and Arnold Rood, Edward Gordon
Craig: A Bibliography (1967), records Craig's written and graphic work.
da Vinci, Leonardo
b. 1452, Vinci, Republic of Florence [now in Italy], d. May 2, 1519, Cloux, France
Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any figure, epitomized the Renaissance
humanist ideal. His "Last Supper" (1495-97) and "Mona Lisa" (1503-06) are among the most widely popular and influential paintings of
the Renaissance. His notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific inquiry and a mechanical inventiveness that were centuries ahead of their time.
The unique fame that Leonardo enjoyed in his lifetime and that, filtered and purified by historical criticism, has remained undimmed to the
present day is based on the equally unique universality of his spirit. Leonardo's universality is more than many-sidedness. True, at the time
of the Renaissance and the period of humanism, many-sidedness was a highly esteemed quality; but it was by no means rare. Many other
good artists possessed it. Leonardo's universality, on the other hand, was a spiritual force, peculiarly his own, that generated in him an
unlimited desire for knowledge and guided his thinking and behaviour. An artist by disposition and endowment, he found that his eyes
were his main avenue to knowledge; to Leonardo, sight was man's highest sense organ because sight alone conveyed the facts of experience
immediately, correctly, and with certainty. Hence, every phenomenon perceived became an object of knowledge. Saper vedere ("knowing
how to see") became the great theme of his studies of man's works and nature's creations. His creativity reached out into every realm in
which graphic representation is used: he was painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer. But he went even beyond that. His superb intellect,
his unusual powers of observation, and his mastery of the art of drawing led him to the study of nature itself, which he pursued with
method and penetrating logic--and in which his art and his science were equally revealed.
Life And Works
Unfolding of Leonardo's genius: first Milanese period (1482-99)
In 1482 Leonardo entered the service of the Duke of Milan--a surprising step when one realizes that the 30-year-old artist had just received
his first substantial commissions from his native city of Florence: the above-mentioned unfinished panel painting of "The Adoration of the
Magi" for the monastery of S. Donato a Scopeto (1481) and an altar painting for the St. Bernard Chapel in the Palazzo della Signoria,
which was never fulfilled. That he gave up both projects despite the commitments he had undertaken--not even starting on the second
named--seems to indicate deeper reasons for his leaving Florence. It may have been that the rather sophisticated spirit of Neoplatonism
prevailing in the Florence of the Medici went against the grain of his experience-oriented mind and that the more realistic academic
atmosphere of Milan attracted him. Moreover, there was the fascination of Ludovico Sforza's brilliant court and the meaningful projects
awaiting him there.
Leonardo spent 17 years in Milan, until Ludovico's fall from power in 1499. He was listed in the register of the royal household as pictor et
ingeniarius ducalis ("painter and engineer of the duke"). Highly esteemed, Leonardo was constantly kept busy as a painter and sculptor and
as a designer of court festivals. He was also frequently consulted as a technical adviser in the fields of architecture, fortifications, and
military matters, and he served as a hydraulic and mechanical engineer.
In this phase of his life Leonardo's genius unfolded to the full, in all its versatility and creatively powerful artistic and scientific thought,
achieving that quality of uniqueness that called forth the awe and astonished admiration of his contemporaries. At the same time, in the
boundlessness of the goals he set himself, Leonardo's genius bore the mark of the unattainable so that, if one traces the outlines of his
lifework as a whole, one is tempted to call it a grandiose "unfinished symphony."
Painting And Sculpture
As a painter Leonardo completed only six works in the 17 years in Milan: portraits of Cecilia Gallerani ("Lady with an Ermine") and a
musician, an altar painting of "The Virgin of the Rocks" (two versions), a monumental wall painting of the "Last Supper" in the refectory
of the monastery of Sta. Maria delle Grazie (1495-97), and the decorative ceiling painting of the Sala delle Asse in the Milan Castello
Sforzesco (1498). Three other pictures that, according to old sources, Leonardo was commissioned to do have disappeared or were never
done: a "Nativity" said to have belonged to Emperor Maximilian; a "Madonna" that Ludovico Sforza announced as a gift to the Hungarian
king Matthias Corvinus; and the portrait of one of Ludovico's mistresses, Lucrezia Crivelli.
Also unfinished was a grandiose sculptural project that seems to have been the real reason Leonardo was invited to Milan: a monumental
equestrian statue in bronze to be erected in honour of Francesco Sforza, the founder of the Sforza dynasty. Leonardo devoted 12 years-with interruptions--to this task. Many sketches of it exist, the most impressive ones discovered only in the mid-20th century, when two of
Leonardo's notebooks came to light again in Madrid. They reveal the sublimity but also the almost unreal boldness of his conception. In
1493 the clay model of the horse was put on open display on the occasion of the marriage of Emperor Maximilian with Bianca Maria
Sforza, and preparations were made to cast the colossal figure, which was to be 16 feet (five metres) high--double the size of Verrocchio's
equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni! But, because of the imminent danger of war, the metal, ready to be poured, was used for cannon
instead, and so the project came to a halt. Ludovico's fall in 1499 sealed the fate of this abortive undertaking, which was perhaps the
grandest concept of a monument in the 15th century. The ravages of war left the clay model a heap of ruins.
As a master artist Leonardo maintained an extensive workshop in Milan, employing apprentices and students. The role of most of these
associates is unclear. Their activity involves the question of Leonardo's so-called apocryphal works, in which the master collaborated with
his assistants. Scholars have been unable to agree in their attributions of these works, which include such paintings as "La Belle
Ferronnière" in the Louvre, the so-called "Lucrezia Crivelli" in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, and the "Madonna Litta" in the
Hermitage, St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). Among Leonardo's pupils at this time were Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Ambrogio de
Predis, Bernardino de' Conti, Francesco Napoletano, Andrea Solari, Marco d'Oggiono, and Salai.
Art And Science: The Notebooks
The Milan years also saw Leonardo's decided turn toward scientific studies. He began to pursue these systematically and with such
intensity that they demanded more and more of his time and energy and developed into an independent realm of creative productivity.
Within him there arose now a growing need to note and write down in literary form every one of his perceptions and experiences. It is a
unique phenomenon in the history of art. Undoubtedly, the several treatises on art that appeared or were made available during those
decades provided an external stimulus. Leon Battista Alberti's De re aedificatoria (Ten Books on Architecture) was first printed in 1485;
Francesco di Giorgio's treatise on architecture was available in its first manuscript versions, and Leonardo had received a copy from the
author as a gift. Moreover, Piero della Francesca in his De prospectiva pingendi ("On Perspective in Painting") had provided for his
contemporaries a model text on the theory of perspective. Finally, there was the mathematician Lucas Pacioli, who had become an
acquaintance of Leonardo's. In 1494 Pacioli published his Summa de arithmetica geometria proportioni et proportional ità, followed by his
Divina proportione ("On Divine Proportion"), for which Leonardo drew figures of symmetrical bodies.
In this ambience Leonardo began to nourish the desire to write a theory of art of his own, and there arose in him the far-reaching concept of
a "science of painting." Alberti and Piero della Francesca had already offered proof of the mathematical basis of painting in their analysis
of the laws of perspective and proportion and thereby buttressed painting's claim to being a science. But Leonardo's claims went much
further. Proceeding from the basic conviction that sight is the human being's most unerring sense organ, yielding immediate, accurate, and
reliable data of experience, Leonardo--equating "seeing" with "perceiving"--arrived at a bold conclusion: the painter, doubly endowed with
subtle powers of perception and the complete ability to pictorialize them, was the prime person qualified to achieve knowledge by
observing and to reproduce that knowledge authentically in a pictorial manner. Hence, Leonardo conceived the staggering plan of
observing all objects in the visible world, recognizing their form and structure, and pictorially describing them exactly as they are. Thus,
drawing became the chief instrument of his didactic method.
In the years between 1490 and 1495 the great program of Leonardo the writer (author of treatises) began. In it, four main themes, which
were to occupy him for the rest of his life, could be discerned and gradually took shape: a treatise on painting, a treatise on architecture, a
book on the elements of mechanics, and a broadly outlined work on human anatomy. His geophysical, botanical, hydrological, and
aerological researches also belong to this period and constitute parts of the "visible cosmology" that loomed before Leonardo as a distant
goal. Against speculative book knowledge, which he scorned, he set irrefutable facts gained from experience--from saper vedere.
All these studies and sketches were written down in Leonardo's notebooks and on individual sheets of paper. Altogether they add up to
thousands of closely written pages abundantly illustrated with sketches--the most voluminous literary legacy any painter has ever left
behind. Of more than 40 codices mentioned in the older sources--often, of course, rather inaccurately--21 have survived; these in turn
sometimes contain notebooks originally separate and now bound together so that 31 in all have been preserved. To these should be added
several large bundles of documents: an omnibus volume in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, called Codex Atlanticus because of its size,
was collected by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni at the end of the 16th century; its sister volume, after a roundabout journey, fell into the
possession of the English crown and was placed in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. Finally there is the Arundel Manuscript (British
Museum, MS. 263), which contains a number of Leonardo's fascicles on various themes.
It was during his years in Milan that Leonardo began the earliest of these notebooks. He would first make quick sketches of his
observations on loose sheets or on tiny paper pads he kept in his belt; then he would arrange them according to theme and enter them in
order in the notebook. Surviving are a first collection of material for the painting treatise (MSS. A and B in the Institut de France, Paris), a
model book of sketches for sacred and profane architecture (MS. B, Institut de France, Paris), the treatise on elementary theory of
mechanics (MS. 8937, Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid), and the first sections of a treatise on the human body (Anatomical MS. B; Windsor
Castle, Royal Library).
Two special features make Leonardo's notes and sketches unusual: his use of mirror writing and the relationship between word and picture.
Leonardo was left-handed; so mirror writing came easily and naturally to him. It should not be looked upon as a secret handwriting.
Though somewhat unusual, his script can be read clearly and without difficulty with the help of a mirror--as his contemporaries testified.
But the fact that Leonardo used mirror writing throughout, even in his fair copies drawn up with painstaking calligraphy, forces one to
conclude that, although he constantly addressed an imaginary reader in his writings, he never felt the need to achieve easy communication
by using conventional handwriting. Yet occasional examples of normal handwriting (drafts of letters, notes, and comments to be submitted
to third parties) show that Leonardo was completely at home in it. In the overwhelming majority of his notes in mirror writing, therefore,
one gets the strong impression of "monologues in writing." Finally, then, his writings must be interpreted as preliminary stages of works
destined for eventual publication, which Leonardo never got around to completing. In a sentence in the margin of one of his late anatomy
sketches, he implores his followers to see that his works are printed.
The second unusual feature in Leonardo's writings is the new function given to illustration vis-à-vis the text. Leonardo strove passionately
for a language that was clear yet expressive. The vividness and wealth of his vocabulary were the result of intense self-study and
represented a significant contribution to the evolution of scientific prose in the Italian vernacular. On the other hand, in his teaching method
Leonardo gave absolute precedence to the illustration over the written word; hence, the drawing does not illustrate the text; rather, the text
serves to explain the picture. In formulating his own principle of graphic representation--which he himself called dimostrazione
("demonstrations")--Leonardo was a precursor of modern scientific illustration.
Thus, during Leonardo's years in Milan the two "action fields"--the artistic and the scientific--developed and shaped his future creativity. It
was a kind of "creative dualism," with mutual encouragement but also mutual pressure from each field.
Second Florentine Period (1500-06)
In December 1499 or at the latest January 1500--three months after the victorious entry of the French into Milan--Leonardo left that city in
the company of Lucas Pacioli. He stopped first at Mantua, where, in February 1500, he drew a portrait of his hostess, Marchioness Isabella
d'Este, and then proceeded to Venice (in March), where the Signoria (governing council) sought his advice on how to ward off a threatened
Turkish incursion in Friuli. Leonardo recommended that they prepare to flood the menaced region. From Venice he returned to Florence,
where, after a long absence, he was received with acclaim and honoured as a renowned native son. In that same year he was appointed an
architectural expert to a committee investigating damages to the foundation and structure of the church of S. Francesco al Monte. A guest
of the Servite order in the cloister of SS. Annunziata, Leonardo began there a cartoon for a painting of the "Virgin and Child with St.
Anne," the composition of which won admiration from artists and art lovers of the city. He also painted (1501) a "Madonna with the YarnWinder," which has survived only in copies and which he probably never finished. Mathematical studies seem to have kept him away from
his painting activity much of the time, or so Isabella d'Este, who sought in vain to obtain a painting done by him, was informed by Fra
Pietro Nuvolaria, her representative in Florence.
Only his omnivorous "appetite for life" can explain Leonardo's decision, in the summer of the following year (1502), to leave Florence and
enter the service of Cesare Borgia as "senior military architect and general engineer." Borgia, the notorious son of Pope Alexander VI, had,
as commander in chief of the papal army, sought with unexampled ruthlessness to gain control of the Papal States of Romagna and the
Marches. Now he was at the peak of his power and, at 27, was undoubtedly the most compelling and at the same time most feared person
of his time. Leonardo, twice his age, must have been fascinated by his personality. For 10 months he travelled across the condottiere's
territories and surveyed them. In the course of his activity Leonardo sketched some of the city plans and topographical maps that laid the
groundwork for modern cartography. At the court of Cesare Borgia, Leonardo also met Niccolò Machiavelli, temporarily stationed there as
a political observer for the city of Florence.
In the spring of 1503 Leonardo returned to Florence to make an expert survey of a project for diverting the Arno River behind Pisa so that
the city, then under siege by the Florentines, would be deprived of access to the sea. The plan proved unworkable, but Leonardo's activity
led him to a much more significant theme, one that served peace rather than war; the project, first advanced in the 13th century and now
again under consideration, was to build a large canal that would bypass the unnavigable stretch of the Arno and connect Florence by water
with the sea. Leonardo developed his ideas in a series of studies; with panoramic views of the river bank, which are also landscape sketches
of great artistic charm, and with exact measurements of the terrain, he produced a map in which the route of the canal (with its transit
through the mountain pass of Serravalle) was shown. The project, considered time and again in subsequent centuries, was never carried out,
but centuries later the express highway from Florence to the sea was built over the exact route Leonardo chose for his canal.
That same year (1503), however, Leonardo also received a prized commission: to paint a mural for the Hall of the Five Hundred in
Florence's Palazzo Vecchio; a historical scene of monumental proportions (at 23 x 56 feet [7 x 17 metres], it would have been twice as
large as the "Last Supper"). For three years he worked on this "Battle of Anghiari"; like its intended complementary painting,
Michelangelo's "Battle of Cascina," it remained unfinished. But the cartoon and the copies showing the main scene of the battle, the fight
for the standard, were for a long time, to quote the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, "the school of the world." These same years saw the portrait
of "Mona Lisa" and a painting of a standing "Leda," which was not completed and has survived only in copies.
The Florentine period was also, however, a time of intensive scientific study; Leonardo did dissections in the hospital of Sta. Maria Nuova
and broadened his anatomical work into a comprehensive study of the structure and function of the human organism. He made systematic
observations of the flight of birds, concerning which he planned a treatise. Even his hydrological studies, "on the nature and movement of
water," broadened into research on the physical properties of water, especially the laws of currents, which he compared with those
pertaining to air. These were also set down in his own collection of data, contained in the so-called Leicester Codex in Holkham Hall,
Norfolk, England.
Second Milanese Period (1506-13)
Thus, during these years in Florence, Leonardo's productivity was also marked by his "creative dualism." Only sporadically did he work at
his paintings. When, in May 1506, Charles d'Amboise, governor of the King of France in Milan, asked and was granted permission by the
Signoria in Florence for Leonardo to go for a time to Milan, the artist had no hesitation about accepting the invitation. But what was
originally a limited period of time became a permanent move under the stress of political circumstances. Florence let Leonardo go, and the
monumental "Battle of Anghiari" remained unfinished. Unsuccessful technical experiments with paints seem to have impelled Leonardo to
stop working on the mural. One cannot otherwise explain his abandonment of this great work--great both in conception and in realization.
Leonardo spent six years in Milan, interrupted only by a six-month stay in Florence in the winter of 1507-08, where he helped the sculptor
Giovanni Francesco Rustici execute his bronze statues for the Florence Baptistery but did not resume work on the "Battle of Anghiari."
Honoured and admired by his patrons Charles d'Amboise and King Louis XII, who gave him a yearly stipend of 400 ducats, Leonardo
never found his duties onerous. They were limited to advice in architectural matters, tangible evidence of which are plans for a palace-villa
for Charles d'Amboise and perhaps also sketches for an oratory for the church of Sta. Maria alla Fontana, which Charles funded. Leonardo
also looked into an old project revived by the French governor: the Adda canal that would link Milan with Lake Como by water.
In Milan he did very little as a painter: two Madonnas, which he promised the King of France, were never painted. He continued to work on
the paintings of the "Virgin and Child with St. Anne" and "Leda," which he had brought with him from Florence, as copies from the
Lombard school of that period attest. Again Leonardo gathered pupils around him. With Ambrogio de Predis he completed a second
version of "The Virgin of the Rocks" (1508), in the course of which protracted litigation between the purchasers and the artists had a happy
ending. Of his older disciples, Bernardino de' Conti and Salai were again in his studio; new pupils came, among them Cesare da Sesto,
Giampetrino, Bernardino Luini, and the young nobleman Francesco Melzi, Leonardo's most faithful friend and companion until his death.
An important commission in sculpture came his way. Gian Giacomo Trivulzio had returned victoriously to Milan as marshal of the French
army and a bitter foe of Ludovico Sforza. He commissioned Leonardo to sculpt his tomb, which was to take the form of an equestrian
statue and be placed in the mortuary chapel donated by Trivulzio to the church of S. Nazaro Maggiore. But after years of preparatory work
on the monument, for which a number of significant sketches have survived, the Marshal himself gave up the plan in favour of a more
modest one; so this undertaking, too, remained unfinished. Leonardo must have felt keenly this second disappointment in his work as a
sculptor.
Compared with his almost cursory work in art, Leonardo's scientific activity flourished. His studies in anatomy achieved a new dimension
in his collaboration with a famous anatomist from Pavia, Marcantonio della Torre. He outlined a plan for an overall work that would
include not only exact, detailed reproductions of the human body and its organs but would also include comparative anatomy and the whole
field of physiology. He even thought he would finish his anatomical manuscript in the winter of 1510-11. Beyond that, his manuscripts are
replete with mathematical, optical, mechanical, geological, and botanical studies that must be understood as data for his "perceptual
cosmology." This became increasingly actuated by a central idea: the conviction that force and motion as basic mechanical functions
produce all outward forms in organic and inorganic nature and give them their shape and, furthermore, the recognition that these
functioning forces operate in accordance with orderly, harmonious laws.
Last Years (1513-19)
In 1513 political events--the temporary ouster of the French from Milan--caused the now 60-year-old Leonardo to move again. At the end
of the year he went to Rome, accompanied by his pupils Melzi and Salai as well as by two studio assistants, hoping to find employment
there through his patron, Giuliano de' Medici, brother of the new pope Leo X. Giuliano gave him a suite of rooms in his residence, the
Belvedere, in the Vatican. He also gave him a considerable monthly stipend, but no large commissions came to him. For three years
Leonardo remained in the Eternal City, off to one side, while Donato Bramante was building St. Peter's, Raphael was painting the last
rooms of the Pope's new apartments, Michelangelo was struggling to complete the tomb of Pope Julius, and many younger artists such as
Peruzzi, Timoteo Viti, and Sodoma were active there. Drafts of embittered letters betray the disappointment of the aging master who
worked in his studio on mathematical studies and technical experiments or, strolling through the city, surveyed ancient monuments. A
magnificently executed map of the Pontine Marshes (Royal Library, Windsor Castle; 12684) suggests that Leonardo was at least a
consultant for a reclamation project that Giuliano de' Medici ordered in 1514. On the other hand, there were sketches for a spacious
residence for the Medici in Florence, who had returned to power there in 1512. But this did not go beyond the stage of preliminary sketches
and never came to pass. Leonardo seems to have resumed his friendship with Bramante, but the latter died in 1514. And there is no record
of Leonardo's relations with any other artists in Rome.
In a life of such loneliness, it is easy to understand why Leonardo, despite his 65 years, decided to accept the invitation of the young king
Francis I to enter his service in France. At the end of 1516 he left Italy forever, together with his most devoted pupil, Francesco Melzi.
Leonardo spent the last three years of his life in the small residence of Cloux (later called Clos-Lucé), near the King's summer palace at
Amboise on the Loire. Premier peintre, architecte et méchanicien du Roi ("first painter, architect, and mechanic of the King") was the
proud title he bore; yet the admiring King left him complete freedom of action. He did no more painting or at most completed the painting
of the enigmatic, mystical "St. John the Baptist," which the Cardinal of Aragon, when he visited Amboise, saw in Leonardo's studio along
with the "Mona Lisa" and the "Virgin and Child with St. Anne."
For the King he drew up plans for the palace and garden of Romorantin, destined to be the widow's residence of the Queen Mother. But the
carefully worked-out project, combining the best features of Italian-French traditions in palace and landscape architecture, had to be halted
because the region was threatened with malaria.
Leonardo still made sketches for court festivals, but the King treated him in every respect as an honoured guest. Decades later, Francis I
talked with the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini about Leonardo in terms of the utmost admiration and esteem. Leonardo spent most of his time
arranging and editing his scientific studies. The final drafts for his treatise on painting and a few pages of the anatomy appeared.
Consummate drawings such as the "Floating Figure" (Royal Library, Windsor Castle; 12581) are the final testimonials to his undiminished
genius. In the so-called "Visions of the End of the World," or "Deluge" (Royal Library, Windsor Castle), he depicts with overpowering
pictorial imagination the primal forces that rule nature.
Leonardo died at Cloux. He was laid to rest in the palace church of Saint-Florentin. But the church was devastated during the French
Revolution and completely torn down at the beginning of the 19th century. Hence, his grave can no longer be located. Francesco Melzi fell
heir to his artistic and scientific estate.
The "Last Supper"
Leonardo's "Last Supper" is among the most famous paintings in the world. In its monumental simplicity, the composition of the scene is
masterful; the power of its effect comes from the striking contrast in the attitudes of the 12 disciples as counterposed to Christ. Leonardo
did not choose the portrayal of the traitor Judas customary in the iconographic tradition; he portrayed, rather, that moment of highest
tension as related in the New Testament, "One of you which eateth with me will betray me." All of the Apostles--as human beings who do
not understand what is about to occur--are agitated, whereas Christ alone, conscious of his divine mission, sits in lonely, transfigured
serenity. Only one other being shares the secret knowledge: Judas, who is both part of and yet excluded from the movement of his
companions; in this isolation he becomes the second lonely figure--the guilty one--of the company.
In the profound conception of his theme, in the perfect yet seemingly simple arrangement of the individuals, in the temperaments of the
Apostles highlighted by gesture and mimicry, in the drama and at the same time the sublimity of the treatment, Leonardo attained a height
of expression that has remained a model of its kind. Untold painters in succeeding generations, among them great masters such as Rubens
and Rembrandt, marvelled at Leonardo's composition and were influenced by it. The painting also inspired some of Goethe's finest pages
of descriptive prose. It has become widely known through countless reproductions and prints, the most important being those produced by
Raffaello Morghen in 1800. Thus, the "Last Supper" has become part of humanity's common heritage and remains today one of the world's
outstanding paintings.
Technical deficiencies in the execution of the work have not lessened its fame. Leonardo was uncertain about the technique he should use.
He bypassed fresco painting, which, because it is executed on fresh plaster, demands quick and uninterrupted painting, in favour of another
technique he had developed: tempera on a base mixed by himself on the stone wall. This procedure proved unsuccessful, inasmuch as the
base soon began to be loosened from the wall. Damage appeared by the beginning of the 16th century, and deterioration soon set in. By the
middle of the century the work was called a ruin. Later, inadequate attempts at restoration only aggravated the situation, and not until the
most modern restoration techniques were applied after World War II was the process of decay halted.
The "Mona Lisa" And Other Works
In the Florence years between 1500 and 1506, four great creations appeared that confirmed and heightened Leonardo's fame: the "Virgin
and Child with St. Anne" (Louvre), "Mona Lisa," "Battle of Anghiari," and "Leda." Even before it was completed, the "Virgin and Child
with St. Anne" won the critical acclaim of the Florentines; the monumental plasticity of the group and the calculated effects of dynamism
and tension in the composition made it a model that inspired Classicists and Mannerists in equal measure. The "Mona Lisa" became the
ideal type of portrait, in which the features and symbolic overtones of the person painted achieved a complete synthesis. The young
Raphael sketched the work in progress, and it served as a model for his "Portrait of Maddalena Doni." Similarly, the "Leda" became a
model of the figura serpentinata ("sinuous figure")--that is, a figure built up from several intertwining views. It influenced such classical
artists as Raphael, who drew it, but it had an equally strong effect on Mannerists such as Jacopo Pontormo.
In the "Battle of Anghiari" (1503-06) Leonardo's art of expression reached its high point. The preliminary drawings--many of which have
been preserved--reveal Leonardo's lofty conception of the "science of painting"; the laws of equilibrium that he had probed in his studies in
mechanics were put to artistic use in this painting. The "centre of gravity" lies in the group of flags fought for by all the horsemen. For a
moment the intense and expanding movement of the swirl of riders seems frozen; this passing moment, the transition from one active
movement to the next, is uniquely interpreted.
On the other hand, Leonardo's studies in anatomy and physiology influenced his representation of human and animal bodies, particularly
when they were in a state of excitement. He studied and described extensively the baring of teeth and puffing of lips as signs of animal and
human anger. On the painted canvas, rider and horse, their features distorted, are remarkably similar in expression.
The highly imaginative trappings take the event out of the sphere of the historical into a timeless realm. Thus, the "Battle of Anghiari"
became the standard model for a cavalry battle. Its composition has influenced many painters: from Rubens in the 17th century, who made
the most impressive copy of the scene from Leonardo's now-lost cartoon, to Delacroix in the 19th century.
Later Painting And Drawing
After 1507--in Milan, Rome, and France--Leonardo did very little painting. He did resume work on the Leda theme during his years in
Milan and sketched a variation, the "Kneeling Leda." The drawings he prepared--revealing examples of his late style--have a curious,
enigmatic sensuality. Perhaps in Rome he began the "St. John the Baptist," which he completed in France. Bursting all the boundaries of
usual painting tradition, he presented Christ's forerunner as the herald of a mystic oracle; his was an "art of expression" that seemed to
strive consciously to bring out the hidden ambiguity of the theme.
The last manifestation of Leonardo's art of expression was in his "Visions of the End of the World," a series of pictorial sketches that took
the end of the world as its theme. Here Leonardo's power of imagination--born of reason and fantasy--attained its highest level. The
immaterial forces in the cosmos, invisible in themselves, appear in the material things they set in motion. What Leonardo had observed in
the swirling of water and eddying of air, in the shape of a mountain boulder and in the growth of plants now assumed gigantic shape in
cloud formations and rainstorms. The framework of the world splits asunder, but even its destruction occurs--as the monstrously "beautiful"
forms of the unleashed elements show--in accordance with the self-same laws of order, harmony, and proportion that presided at its
creation and that govern the life and death of every created thing in nature. Without any model, these "visions" are the last and most
original expressions of Leonardo's art--an art in which his perception based on saper vedere seems to have come to fruition.
Sculpture
That Leonardo worked as a sculptor from his youth on is borne out by his own statements and those of other sources. In the introduction to
his Treatise on Painting he gives painting precedence over sculpture in the hierarchy of the arts; yet he emphasizes that he practices both
arts equally. A small group of generals' heads in marble and plaster, works of Verrocchio's followers, are sometimes linked with Leonardo
because a lovely drawing on the same theme from his hand suggests such a connection. But the inferior quality of this group rules out an
attribution to the master. Not a trace has remained of the heads of women and children that, according to Vasari, Leonardo modelled in clay
in his youth.
The two great sculptural projects to which Leonardo devoted himself wholeheartedly stood under an unlucky star; neither the huge, bronze
equestrian statue for Francesco Sforza, on which he worked until 1494, nor the monument for Marshal Trivulzio, on which he was busy in
the years 1506-11, were brought to completion. Leonardo kept a detailed diary about his work on the Sforza horse; it came to light with the
rediscovery of the Madrid MS. 8936. Text and drawings both show Leonardo's wide experience in the technique of bronze casting but at
the same time reveal the almost utopian nature of the project. He wanted to cast the horse in a single piece, but the gigantic dimensions of
the steed presented insurmountable technical problems. Indeed, Leonardo remained uncertain of the problem's solution to the very end.
The drawings for these two monuments reveal the greatness of Leonardo's concept of sculpture. Exact studies of the anatomy, movement,
and proportions of a live horse--Leonardo even seems to have thought of writing a treatise on the horse--preceded the sketches for the
monuments. Leonardo pondered the merits of two types, the galloping or trotting horse, and in both cases decided in favour of the latter.
These sketches, superior in the suppressed tension of horse and rider to the achievements of Donatello's Gattamelata and Verrocchio's
Colleoni sculptures, are among the most beautiful and significant examples of Leonardo's art. Unquestionably--as ideas--they exerted a
very strong influence on the development of equestrian statues in the 16th century.
A small bronze of a galloping horseman in Budapest is so close to Leonardo's style that, if not from his own hand, it must have been done
under his immediate influence (perhaps by Giovanni Francesco Rustici). Rustici, according to Vasari, was Leonardo's zealous student and
enjoyed his master's help in sculpting his large group in bronze of "St. John the Baptist Teaching" over the north door of the Baptistery in
Florence. There are, indeed, discernible traces of Leonardo's influence in John's stance, with the unusual gesture of his upward pointing
hand, and in the figure of the bald-headed Levite. Moreover, an echo of Leonardo's inspiration is unmistakable in the much-discussed and
much-reviled wax bust of "Flora" in Berlin. It may have been made in France, perhaps in the circle of Rustici, who entered Francis I's
service in 1528.
Architecture
Leonardo, who in a letter to Ludovico Sforza applying for service described himself as an experienced architect, military engineer, and
hydraulic engineer, was concerned with architectural matters all his life. But his effectiveness was essentially limited to the role of an
adviser. Only once--in the competition for the cupola of the Milan cathedral (1487-90)--did he actually consider personal participation; but
he gave up this idea when the model he had submitted was returned to him. In other instances, his claim to being a practicing architect
involved sketches for representative secular buildings: for the palace of a Milanese nobleman (around 1490), for the villa of the French
governor in Milan (1507-08), and for the Medici residence in Florence (1515). Finally, there was his big project for the palace and garden
of Romorantin in France (1517-19). Especially in this last named, Leonardo's pencil sketches clearly reveal his mastery of technical as well
as artistic architectural problems; the view in perspective (at Windsor Castle) gives an idea of the magnificence of the site.
Leonardo was also quite active as a military engineer, beginning with the years of his stay in Milan. But no definite examples of his work
can be adduced. Not until the discovery of the Madrid notebooks was it known that in 1504, sent probably by the Florence governing
council, he stood at the side of the Lord of Piombino when the city's fortifications system was repaired and that Leonardo suggested a
detailed plan for overhauling it. Finally, his studies for large-scale canal projects in the Arno region and in Lombardy show that he was also
an expert in hydraulic engineering.
But what really characterizes Leonardo's architectural studies and makes them stand out is their comprehensiveness; they range far afield
and embrace every type of building problem of his time. Furthermore, there frequently appears evidence of Leonardo's impulse to teach: he
wanted to collect his writings on this theme in a theory of architecture. This treatise on architecture--the initial lines of which are in MS. B
(Institut de France, Paris), a model book of the types of sacred and profane buildings--was to deal with the entire field of architecture as
well as with the theory of forms and construction and was to include such items as urbanism, sacred and profane building, and a
compendium of the important individual elements (for example, domes, steps, portals, and windows).
In the fullness and richness of their ideas, Leonardo's architectural studies offer an unusually wide-ranging insight into the architectural
achievements of his epoch. Like a seismograph, his observations sensitively register all themes and problems. For almost 20 years he was
associated with Bramante at the court of Milan and again met him in Rome in 1513-14; he was closely associated with such other
distinguished architects as Francesco di Giorgio, Giuliano da Sangallo, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, and Luca Fancelli. Thus, he was
brought in closest touch with all of the most significant building undertakings of the time. Since Leonardo's architectural drawings extend
over his whole life, they span precisely that developmentally crucial period--from the 1480s to the second decade of the 16th century--in
which the principles of the classical style were formulated and came to maturity. That this genetic process can be followed in the ideas of
one of the greatest men of the period lends Leonardo's studies their distinctive artistic value and their outstanding historical significance.
Science
Science Of Painting
Notwithstanding Leonardo's abundant scientific activity, one must never lose sight of the fact that it was the intellectual output of a man
who proudly and consciously felt himself an artist throughout his life. And he described himself as such. He first came in contact with
science as an artist, in the task he set himself of writing a treatise on painting.
Leonardo's famous book on painting, in the form known and read today, is not an original work by the master but a compilation of texts
from various manuscripts by Leonardo, collected and arranged with loving care by his disciple and heir, Francesco Melzi. It is the Codex
Urbinas Latinus 1270, now in the Vatican Library. It was prepared around 1540-50, but from its form one can see that it was still an
unfinished rather than a completed manuscript. Many original texts known to exist are missing; whole sections of Leonardo's overall plan
are not included.
The first printed edition of the treatise in Melzi's version, omitting the long introductory chapter concerning the "pecking order" among the
arts, appeared in a luxurious binding in 1651 in Paris, published by Raffaelo du Fresne with illustrations after drawings by Nicolas Poussin.
The first complete edition of Melzi's text did not appear until 1817, published by Guglielmo Manzi in Rome. The two standard modern
editions are that of Emil Ludwig, three volumes, Vienna, 1882 (with German translation); and that of A. Philip McMahon, Princeton, 1956,
two volumes (facsimile of the Codex Urbinas and English translation).
Leonardo's plan envisaged a much broader treatment of the theme, as his own allusions to it indicate. For, in addition to detailed practical
instructions for painting and drawing, the treatise was to deal with every area involving the artist's perception and experience, which he
could then convey as acquired criteria. Three main problems form the keynote of the work: the definition of painting as a science, which is
briefly outlined above; the theory of the mathematical basis of painting--that is, geometry, perspective, and optics--with the systematic
study of light and shadow, colour, and aerial perspective; and the theory of forms and functions in organic and inorganic nature, as they are
explained and made comprehensible to the painter trained in saper vedere. This theory of the forms and functions of the visible world
sought first of all to describe the animal world, including man; next it sought to include the plant world; finally it endeavoured to explain
how such phenomena of inorganic nature as water and earth, air and fire came into being.
In the drawings for the Treatise on Painting, extending from the earliest Milan period to the final years of Leonardo's life in France, the
progressive broadening and deepening of the theme can be followed. Many drawings were placed by the side of the text, and some of them
were coloured; many studies of nature that are admired as art works, such as the famous rain landscape (Windsor Castle; 12409) or the
"Foliage" (Royal Library, Windsor Castle; 12431), can be identified as illustrations for the treatise. Manuscript C in the Institut de France,
Paris, with its diagrams of the blending of lights and shadows, likewise represents a segment of this textbook. Leonardo's so-called
grotesque heads are also closely linked with the treatise. They have often been erroneously described as caricatures; but actually, for the
most part, they represent types and only occasionally individuals. They are variations of the human face in its gradations between the poles
of the beautiful and ugly, the normal and abnormal, the dignified and vulgar. They are also related to anatomical-physiological studies, in
which old age--with wrinkled skin and bulging tendons--is contrasted with youth. Representation of the human being was to be treated at
length: his body, his proportions, his organs and their functions but also his attitudes in physical and spiritual movement. Here Leonardo's
artistic and scientific aims intertwine.
Anatomical Studies And Drawing
Leonardo's anatomical studies are perhaps the best way of revealing the process by which, in Leonardo's mind, an increasing differentiation
set in among his diverse spheres of interest; but it was a differentiation in which the seemingly divergent areas of study--likewise on a
higher level--always remained interrelated. Thus, Leonardo's study of anatomy, originally pursued for his training as an artist, quickly grew
into an independent area of research. As his sharp eye uncovered the structure of the human body, Leonardo became fascinated by the
figura istrumentale dell' omo ("man's instrumental figure"), and he sought to probe it and present it as a creation of nature. The early
studies dealt chiefly with the skeleton and muscles; yet even at the outset Leonardo combined anatomical with physiological researches.
From observing the static structure, Leonardo proceeded to study the functions exercised by the individual parts of the body as they bring
into play the organism's mechanical activity. This led him finally to the study of the internal organs; among them he probed most deeply
into the brain, heart, and lungs as the "motors" of the senses and of life. He did practical work in anatomy on the dissection table in Milan,
then in the hospital of Sta. Maria Nuova in Florence, and again in Milan and Pavia, where he received counsel and inspiration from the
physician-anatomist Marcantonio della Torre. By his own admission he dissected 30 corpses in his lifetime, thus acquiring an astonishing
range of experience on his own. This experience was distilled in the famous anatomical drawings, which are among the most significant
achievements of Renaissance science. These drawings, among his dimostrazione, are based on a curious connection between natural and
abstract representation; sections in perspective, reproduction of muscles as "strings" or the indication of hidden parts by dotted lines, and
finally a specifically devised hatching system enable him to represent any part of the body in transparent layers that afford an "insight" into
the organ. Here Leonardo's mastery of drawing proved most useful. The genuine value of these dimostrazione and their superiority to
descriptive words--as Leonardo proudly emphasized--lay in the fact that they were able to synthesize a multiplicity of individual
experiences at the dissecting table and make the data immediately and accurately visible. The effect is unlike that of all dead anatomical
preparations; in this way the "live quality" of the organism is retained.
This great picture chart of the human body was what Leonardo envisaged as a cosmografia del minor mondo ("cosmography of the
microcosm"). From the advanced portions that have survived, it is apparent how much and how long it occupied his mind. And it provided
the basic principles for modern scientific illustration. Leonardo has not sufficiently received his due in this domain. Thanks to a method of
seeing that was peculiarly his own, he elevated the art of drawing into a means of scientific investigation and teaching of the highest
quality.
Mechanics And Cosmology
With Leonardo, mechanics also proceeds from artistic practice, with which he became quite familiar as an architect and engineer.
Throughout his life Leonardo was an inventive builder; he was thoroughly at home in the principles of mechanics of his epoch and
contributed in many ways to advancing them.
His model book on the elementary theory of mechanics, which appeared in Milan at the end of the 1490s, was discovered in the Madrid
Codex 8937. Its importance lay less in its description of specific machines or work tools than in its use of demonstration models to explain
the basic mechanical principles and functions employed in building machinery. Leonardo was especially concerned with problems of
friction and resistance. These elements--screw threads, gears, hydraulic jacks, swivelling devices, transmission gears, and the like--are
described individually or in various combinations; and here, too, drawing takes precedence over the written word. As in his anatomical
drawings, Leonardo develops definite principles of graphic representation--stylization, patterns, and diagrams--that guarantee a precise
demonstration of the object in question.
In the course of years his interest in pure mechanics merged increasingly with an interest in applied mechanics. Leonardo realized that the
mechanical forces at work in the basic laws of mechanics operate everywhere in the organic and inorganic world. They determine animate
and inanimate nature alike as well as man. Leonardo wrote on a page of his treatise on anatomy:
See to it that the book of the principles of mechanics precedes the book of force and movement of man and the other living creatures, for
only in that way will you be able to prove your statements.
So, finally, "force" became the key concept for Leonardo; as virtù spirituale ("spiritual property"), it shaped and ruled the cosmos.
Wherever Leonardo probed the phenomena of nature, he recognized the existence of primal mechanical forces that govern the shape and
function of the universe: in his studies on the flight of birds, in which his youthful idea of the feasibility of a flying apparatus took shape
and led to exhaustive research into the element of air; in his studies of water, the vetturale della natura ("conveyor of nature"), in which he
was as much concerned with the physical properties of water as with its laws of motion and currents; in his researches on the laws of
growth of plants and trees as well as the geological structure of earth and hill formations; and finally in his observation of air currents,
which evoked the image of the flame of a candle or the picture of a wisp of cloud and smoke. In his drawings, especially in his studies of
whirlpools, based on numerous experiments he undertook, Leonardo again found a stylized form of representation that was uniquely his
own: this involved breaking down a phenomenon into its component parts--the traces of water or eddies of the whirlpool--yet at the same
time preserving the total picture, analytic and synthetic vision.
Thus, for all the separate individual realms of his knowledge, Leonardo's science offered a unified picture of the world: a cosmogony based
on saper vedere. Its final wisdom is that all the workings of nature are subject to a law of necessity and a law of order that the Primo
Motore, the divine "Prime Mover," created. "Marvelous is Thy justice, O Prime Mover! Thou hast seen to it that no power lacks the order
and value of your necessary governance."
Leonardo As Artist-Scientist
As the 15th century expired, Scholastic doctrines were in decline, and humanistic scholarship was on the rise. Leonardo, however, was part
of an intellectual circle that developed a third, specifically modern form of cognition. In his view the artist--as transmitter of the true and
accurate data of experience acquired by visual observation--played a significant part. With this sense of the artist's high calling, Leonardo
approached the vast realm of nature to probe its secrets. His utopian idea of transmitting in encyclopaedic form the knowledge thus won
was still bound up with medieval Scholastic conceptions, but the results of his research were among the first great achievements of the
thinking of the new age because they were based on the principle of experience in an absolutely new way and to an unprecedented degree.
Finally, Leonardo, although he made strenuous efforts to teach himself and become erudite in languages, natural science, mathematics,
philosophy, and history, as a mere listing of the wide-ranging contents of his library demonstrates, remained an empiricist of visual
observation. But precisely here--thanks to his genius--he developed his own "theory of knowledge," unique in its kind, in which art and
science form a synthesis. In the face of the overall achievements of Leonardo's creative genius, the question of how much he finished or did
not finish becomes pointless. The crux of the matter is his intellectual force--self-contained and inherent in every one of his creations. This
force has remained constantly operative to the present day.
Paintings
"The Annunciation" (c. 1472-77; Uffizi, Florence); "The Annunciation" (c. 1472-77; Louvre, Paris); "Madonna with the Carnation" (c.
1474; Alte Pinakothek, Munich); "Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci" (c. 1475-78; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.); "Madonna
Benois" (1478-after 1500; Hermitage, St. Petersburg); "St. Jerome" (c. 1480; Vatican Museums, Rome); "The Adoration of the Magi"
(1481; Uffizi); "The Virgin of the Rocks" (c. 1483-85; Louvre); "The Musician" (c. 1490; Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan); "Lady with an
Ermine" ("Cecilia Gallerani"; c. 1490; Muzeum Narodowe, Kraków, Poland); "The Virgin of the Rocks" (1494-1508; National Gallery,
London); "Last Supper" (1495-97; Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan); decoration of the Sala delle Asse (1498; Castello Sforzesco, Milan);
"The Virgin and Child with St. Anne" (cartoon, c. 1499; National Gallery); "Virgin and Child with St. Anne" (c. 1501-12; Louvre); "Mona
Lisa" ("La Gioconda"; 1503-06; Louvre); "St. John the Baptist" (before 1517; Louvre). Lost: "Madonna with the Yarn-Winder" (1501; best
copy in the Duke of Buccleuch Collection, Boughton, Kettering); "Leda" (1503-06; best copy at Galleria Borghese, Rome); "Battle of
Anghiari" (1503-06; copy at Palazzo Vecchio, Florence).
Drawings And Notebooks
Main collections: Institut de France, Paris; British Museum; Uffizi, Florence; Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan; Accademia, Venice; Royal
Library, Windsor Castle; Biblioteca Reale, Turin; Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid; Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Bibliography
Angela Ottino Della Chiesa (ed.), The Complete Paintings of Leonardo da Vinci (1967, reissued 1985; originally published in Italian, 1967), catalogs the
paintings. The standard publication on the drawings is Kenneth Clark, The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at
Windsor Castle, 2nd ed., rev. with Carlo Pedretti, 3 vol. (1968). A.E. Popham (ed.), The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, 2nd ed. (1947, reissued 1973), is
important for the study of Leonardo as a draftsman. A. Marioni", I manoscritti di Leonardo da Vinci," in Comitato Nazionale Per Le Onoranze A Leonardo
Da Vinci Nel Quinto Centenario Della Nascita, Leonardo: Saggi e richerche (1954), is a concise summary of all manuscripts, their facsimile editions, and
their chronology and contains other excellent essays by various authors on Leonardo as artist and scientist. The Madrid Codices, 5 vol. (1974), contains
facsimiles of the codices (vol. 1-2), commentary by Ladislao Reti (vol. 3), and Reti's transcription and translation of the codices into English (vol. 4-5). Also
of interest is Ladislao Reti, "The Two Unpublished Manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci in the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid," Burlington Magazine, 110:1024 (January/February 1968), with extended discussion in the February 1969 issue, pp. 111-191. A. Philip McMahon (trans.), Treatise on Painting, 2 vol.
(1956), is a facsimile edition of Codex Urbinas Latinus 1270, accompanied by an English translation. Kenneth D. Keele and Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo da
Vinci: Corpus of the Anatomical Studies in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, 3 vol. (1978-80), includes a volume of facsimile
plates. The best anthologies of Leonardo's literary heritage are Edward McCurdy (ed. and trans.), The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1955,
reissued 1977); and Jean Paul Richter (compiler and ed.), The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, trans. from Italian, 3rd ed., 2 vol. (1970). A selection of
stories, with drawings, from Leonardo's notebooks is found in Emery Kelen (ed.), Fantastic Tales, Strange Animals, Riddles, Jests, and Prophecies of
Leonardo da Vinci (1971). Martin Kemp (ed.), Leonardo on Painting: An Anthology of Writings (1989), is a readable and organized translated collection of
Leonardo's notes on art. Istituto Geografico De Agostini, Leonardo da Vinci (1956; originally published in Italian, 1938), an exhibition catalog, contains
numerous essays and is a richly illustrated compendium of Leonardo's artistic and scientific activity.
The two standard publications on Leonardo sources are Luca Beltrami (ed.), Documenti e memorie riguardanti la vita e le opere di Leonardo da Vinci in
ordine cronologico (1919); and Gerolamo Calvi, I manoscritti di Leonardo da Vinci, dal punto di vista cronologico, storico e biografico (1925, reissued
1982). Additional sources of information include Ettore Verga, Bibliografia Vinciana, 1493-1930, 2 vol. (1931, reprinted 1970); and Raccolta Vinciana,
fascicle 1-20 (1905-64).
Studies of Leonardo's life and works are found in Gabriel Séailles, Léonard de Vinci: l'artiste & le savant, new, rev. and augmented ed. (1912); Woldemar
Von Seidlitz, Leonardo da Vinci, new ed. edited by Kurt Zoege Von Manteuffel (1935), in German, accompanied by extensive documentation; Ludwig H.
Heydenreich, Leonardo da Vinci, 2 vol. (1954; originally published in German, 1953); Richard McLanathan, Images of the Universe: Leonardo da Vinci:
The Artist as Scientist (1966); Morris Philipson (ed.), Leonardo da Vinci: Aspects of the Renaissance Genius (1966), containing valuable contributions to the
historical and psychological aspects of Leonardo; V.P. Zubov, Leonardo da Vinci (1968; originally published in Russian, 1961); C.D. O'Malley (ed.),
Leonardo's Legacy: An International Symposium (1969), a collection of essays exploring various aspects of Leonardo's works; Ritchie Calder, Leonardo &
the Age of the Eye (1970), with emphasis on his artistic as well as his scientific work; Ladislao Reti (ed.), The Unknown Leonardo (1974, reprinted 1990), 10
essays discussing aspects of Leonardo's personality and creativity made evident in the Madrid Codices; Cecil Gould, Leonardo: The Artist and the Non-artist
(1975); Robert Payne, Leonardo (1978), an account of Leonardo's career, with several new interpretations; Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The
Marvellous Works of Nature and Man (1981); and Kenneth Clark, Leonardo da Vinci, new ed. rev. by Martin Kemp (1988). The most informative account
of Leonardo's workshop and pupils is Wilhelm Suida, Leonardo und sein Kreis (1929). Leonardo's architectural ventures are examined in Carlo Pedretti,
Leonardo da Vinci: The Royal Palace at Romorantin (1972), and Leonardo, Architect (1985; originally published in Italian, 1978), an in-depth survey, while
Leonardo: A Study in Chronology and Style (1973, reprinted 1982), focuses on his art. Emanuel Winternitz, Leonardo da Vinci as a Musician (1982), studies
Leonardo's interest in and explorations of music and musical instruments. His studies of human anatomy and movement are discussed and supplemented by
numerous illustrations in Kenneth D. Keele, Leonardo da Vinci's Elements of the Science of Man (1983). A seldom-explored topic, Leonardo's interest in
botany, is treated in William A. Emboden, Leonardo da Vinci on Plants and Gardens (1987). A. Richard Turner, Inventing Leonardo (1993), treats his
posthumous reputation.
Dante
b. c. May 21-June 20, 1265, Florence, Italy, d. Sept. 13/14, 1321, Ravenna
In full DANTE ALIGHIERI, Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the
monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy).
Dante's Divine Comedy, a great work of medieval literature, is a profound Christian vision of man's temporal and eternal destiny. On its
most personal level, it draws on the poet's own experience of exile from his native city of Florence; on its most comprehensive level, it may
be read as an allegory, taking the form of a journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise. The poem amazes by its array of learning, its
penetrating and comprehensive analysis of contemporary problems, and its inventiveness of language and imagery. By choosing to write
his poem in Italian rather than in Latin, Dante decisively influenced the course of literary development. Not only did he lend a voice to the
emerging lay culture of his own country, but Italian became the literary language in western Europe for several centuries.
In addition to poetry Dante wrote important theoretical works ranging from discussions of rhetoric to moral philosophy and political
thought. He was fully conversant with the classical tradition, drawing for his own purposes on such writers as Virgil, Cicero, and Boethius.
But, most unusual for a layman, he also had an impressive command of the most recent scholastic philosophy and of theology. His learning
and his personal involvement in the heated political controversies of his age led him to the composition of De monarchia, one of the major
tracts of medieval political philosophy.
The Divine Comedy
Dante's years of exile were years of difficult peregrinations from one place to another--as he himself repeatedly says, most effectively in
Paradiso [XVII], in Cacciaguida's moving lamentation that "bitter is the taste of another man's bread and . . . heavy the way up and down
another man's stair." Throughout his exile Dante nevertheless was sustained by work on his great poem, possibly begun prior to 1308 and
completed just before his death in 1321. In addition, in his final years Dante was received honourably in many noble houses in the north of
Italy, most notably by Guido Novello da Polenta, the nephew of the remarkable Francesca, in Ravenna. There at his death Dante was given
an honourable burial attended by the leading men of letters of the time, and the funeral oration was delivered by Guido himself.
The plot of The Divine Comedy is simple: a man, generally assumed to be Dante himself, is miraculously enabled to undertake an
ultramundane journey, which leads him to visit the souls in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. He has two guides: Virgil, who leads him
through the Inferno and Purgatorio, and Beatrice, who introduces him to Paradiso. Through these fictional encounters taking place from
Good Friday evening in 1300 through Easter Sunday and slightly beyond, Dante learns of the exile that is awaiting him (which had, of
course, already occurred at the time of the writing). This device allowed Dante not only to create a story out of his pending exile but also to
explain the means by which he came to cope with his personal calamity and to offer suggestions for the resolution of Italy's troubles as
well. Thus, the exile of an individual becomes a microcosm of the problems of a country, and it also becomes representative of the fall of
man. Dante's story is thus historically specific as well as paradigmatic.
The basic structural component of The Divine Comedy is the canto. The poem consists of 100 cantos, which are grouped together into three
sections, or canticles, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Technically there are 33 cantos in each canticle and one additional canto,
contained in the Inferno, which serves as an introduction to the entire poem. For the most part the cantos range from about 136 to about 151
lines. The poem's rhyme scheme is the terza rima (aba, bcb, cdc, etc.) Thus, the divine number of three is present in every part of the work.
Dante's Inferno differs from its great classical predecessors in both position and purpose. In Homer's Odyssey (Book XII) and Virgil's
Aeneid (Book VI) the visit to the land of the dead occurs in the middle of the poem because in these centrally placed books the essential
values of life are revealed. Dante, while adopting the convention, transforms the practice by beginning his journey with the visit to the land
of the dead. He does this because his poem's spiritual pattern is not classical but Christian: Dante's journey to Hell represents the spiritual
act of dying to the world, and hence it coincides with the season of Christ's own death. (In this way, Dante's method is similar to that of
Milton in Paradise Lost, where the flamboyant but defective Lucifer and his fallen angels are presented first.) The Inferno represents a
false start during which Dante, the character, must be disabused of harmful values that somehow prevent him from rising above his fallen
world. Despite the regressive nature of the Inferno, Dante's meetings with the roster of the damned are among the most memorable
moments of the poem: the Neutrals, the virtuous pagans, Francesca da Rimini, Filipo Argenti, Farinata degli Uberti, Piero delle Vigne,
Brunetto Latini, the simoniacal popes, Ulysses, and Ugolino impose themselves upon the reader's imagination with tremendous force.
The visit to Hell is, as Virgil and later Beatrice explain, an extreme measure, a painful but necessary act before real recovery can begin.
This explains why the Inferno is both aesthetically and theologically incomplete. For instance, readers frequently express disappointment at
the lack of dramatic or emotional power in the final encounter with Satan in canto XXXIV. But because the journey through the Inferno
primarily signifies a process of separation and thus is only the initial step in a fuller development, it must end with a distinct anticlimax. In
a way this is inevitable because the final revelation of Satan can have nothing new to offer: the sad effects of his presence in human history
have already become apparent throughout the Inferno.
In the Purgatorio the protagonist's painful process of spiritual rehabilitation commences; in fact, this part of the journey may be considered
the poem's true moral starting point. Here the pilgrim Dante subdues his own personality in order that he may ascend. In fact, in contrast to
the Inferno, where Dante is confronted with a system of models that needs to be discarded, in the Purgatorio few characters present
themselves as models; all of the penitents are pilgrims along the road of life. Dante, rather than being an awed if alienated observer, is an
active participant. If the Inferno is a canticle of enforced and involuntary alienation, in which Dante learns how harmful were his former
allegiances, in the Purgatorio he comes to accept as most fitting the essential Christian image of life as a pilgrimage. As Beatrice in her
magisterial return in the earthly paradise reminds Dante, he must learn to reject the deceptive promises of the temporal world.
Despite its harsh regime, the Purgatorio is the realm of spiritual dawn, where larger visions are entertained. Whereas in only one canto of
the Inferno (VII), in which Fortuna is discussed, is there any suggestion of philosophy, in the Purgatorio, historical, political, and moral
vistas are opened up. It is, moreover, the great canticle of poetry and the arts. Dante meant it literally when he proclaimed, after the dreary
dimensions of Hell: "But here let poetry rise again from the dead." There is only one poet in Hell proper and not more than two in the
Paradiso, but in the Purgatorio the reader encounters the musicians Casella and Belacqua and the poet Sordello and hears of the fortunes
of the two Guidos, Guinizelli and Cavalcanti, the painters Cimabue and Giotto, and the miniaturists. In the upper reaches of Purgatory, the
reader observes Dante reconstructing his classical tradition and then comes even closer to Dante's own great native tradition (placed higher
than the classical tradition) when he meets Forese Donati, hears explained--in an encounter with Bonagiunta da Lucca--the true resources
of the dolce stil nuovo, and meets with Guido Guinizelli and hears how he surpassed in skill and poetic mastery the reigning regional poet,
Guittone d'Arezzo. These cantos resume the line of thought presented in the Inferno (IV), where among the virtuous pagans Dante
announces his own program for an epic and takes his place, "sixth among that number," alongside the classical writers. In the Purgatorio he
extends that tradition to include Statius (whose Thebaid did in fact provide the matter for the more grisly features of the lower inferno), but
he also shows his more modern tradition originating in Guinizelli. Shortly after his encounter with Guinizelli comes the long-awaited
reunion with Beatrice in the earthly paradise. Thus, from the classics Dante seems to have derived his moral and political understanding as
well as his conception of the epic poem, that is, a framing story large enough to encompass the most important issues of his day, but it was
from his native tradition that he acquired the philosophy of love that forms the Christian matter of his poem.
This means of course that Virgil, Dante's guide, must give way to other leaders, and in a canticle generally devoid of drama the rejection of
Virgil becomes the single dramatic event. Dante's use of Virgil is one of the richest cultural appropriations in literature. To begin, in
Dante's poem he is an exponent of classical reason. He is also a historical figure and is presented as such in the Inferno (I): ". . . once I was
a man, and my parents were Lombards, both Mantuan by birth. I was born sub Julio, though late in his time, and I lived in Rome under the
good Augustus, in the time of the false and lying gods." Virgil, moreover, is associated with Dante's homeland (his references are to
contemporary Italian places), and his background is entirely imperial. (Born under Julius Caesar, he extolled Augustus Caesar.) He is
presented as a poet, the theme of whose great epic sounds remarkably similar to that of Dante's poem: "I was a poet and sang of that just
son of Anchises who came from Troy after proud Ilium was burned." So, too, Dante sings of the just son of a city, Florence, who was
unjustly expelled, and forced to search, as Aeneas had done, for a better city, in his case the heavenly city.
Virgil is a poet whom Dante had studied carefully and from whom he had acquired his poetic style, the beauty of which has brought him
much honour. But Dante had lost touch with Virgil in the intervening years, and when the spirit of Virgil returns it is one that seems weak
from long silence. But the Virgil that returns is more than a stylist; he is the poet of the Roman Empire, a subject of great importance to
Dante, and he is a poet who has become a saggio, a sage, or moral teacher.
Though an exponent of reason, Virgil has become an emissary of divine grace, and his return is part of the revival of those simpler faiths
associated with Dante's earlier trust in Beatrice. And yet, of course, Virgil by himself is insufficient. It cannot be said that Dante rejects
Virgil; rather he sadly found that nowhere in Virgil's work, that is, in his consciousness, was there any sense of personal liberation from the
enthrallment of history and its processes. Virgil had provided Dante with moral instruction in survival as an exile, which is the theme of his
own poem as well as Dante's, but he clung to his faith in the processes of history, which, given their culmination in the Roman Empire,
were deeply consoling. Dante, on the other hand, was determined to go beyond history because it had become for him a nightmare.
In the Paradiso true heroic fulfillment is achieved. Dante's poem gives expression to those figures from the past who seem to defy death.
Their historical impact continues and the totality of their commitment inspires in their followers a feeling of exaltation and a desire for
identification. In his encounters with such characters as his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida and SS. Francis, Dominic, and Bernard,
Dante is carried beyond himself. The Paradiso is consequently a poem of fulfillment and of completion. It is the fulfillment of what is
prefigured in the earlier canticles. Aesthetically it completes the poem's elaborate system of anticipation and retrospection.
Assessment And Influence
The recognition and the honour that were the due of Dante's Divine Comedy did not have to await the long passage of time: by the year
1400 no fewer than 12 commentaries devoted to detailed expositions of its meaning had appeared. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote a life of the
poet and then in 1373-74 delivered the first public lectures on The Divine Comedy (which means that Dante was the first of the moderns
whose work found its place with the ancient classics in a university course). Dante became known as the divino poeta, and in a splendid
edition of his great poem published in Venice in 1555 the adjective was applied to the poem's title; thus, the simple Commedia became La
divina commedia, or The Divine Comedy.
Even when the epic lost its appeal and was replaced by other art forms (the novel, primarily, and the drama) Dante's own fame continued.
In fact, his great poem enjoys the kind of power peculiar to a classic: successive epochs have been able to find reflected in it their own
intellectual concerns. In the post-Napoleonic 19th century, readers identified with the powerful, sympathetic, and doomed personalities of
the Inferno. In the early 20th century they found the poem to possess an aesthetic power of verbal realization independent of and at times in
contradiction to its structure and argument. Later readers have been eager to show the poem to be a polyphonic masterpiece, as integrated
as a mighty work of architecture, whose different sections reflect and, in a way, respond to one another. Dante created a remarkable
repertoire of types in a work of vivid mimetic presentations, as well as a poem of great stylistic artistry in its prefigurations and
correspondences. Moreover, he incorporated in all of this important political, philosophical, and theological themes and did so in a way that
shows moral wisdom and lofty ethical vision.
Dante's Divine Comedy is a poem that has flourished for more than 650 years: in the simple power of its striking imaginative conceptions it
has continued to astonish generations of readers; for more than a hundred years it has been a staple in all higher educational programs in the
Western world; and it has continued to provide guidance and nourishment to the major poets of our own times. William Butler Yeats called
Dante "the chief imagination of Christendom"; and T.S. Eliot elevated Dante to a preeminence shared by only one other poet in the modern
world, William Shakespeare: "[They] divide the modern world between them. There is no third." In fact, they rival one another in their
creation of types that have entered into the world of reference and association of modern thought. Like Shakespeare, Dante created
universal types from historical figures, and in so doing he considerably enhanced the treasury of modern myth.
Individual Works
La commedia (1472); Vita nuova (1576).
Lyric Poetry
Canzoni e madrigali di Dante, di Mess. Gino da Pistoja e di Giraldo Novello (1518); Rime di diversi antichi autori toscani in dieci libri (1532).
Treatises
Convivio di Dante Alighieri fiorentino (1490); De vulgari eloquentia libri duo (1577); Dantis Aligherii Florentini Monarchia (1740).
Latin Eclogues
I versi latini di Giovanni del Virgilio e di Dante Allighieri (1845).
Recommended Modern Editions
Because Dante lived and worked long before book printing began, the works above are early printed editions of his works in the original languages. The
following modern editions can be recommended: La commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, ed. by Giorgio Petrocchi (1966-67); La divina commedia, ed. by
Natalino Sapegno, 3rd ed. (1985), with excellent commentary; The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. by John D. Sinclair (1958), with superb small
essays for each canto; The Divine Comedy, trans. with a commentary by Charles S. Singleton (1970-75), the most useful work in English, published in the
Bollingen series.
La vita nuova, ed. by Michele Barbi (1932), a critical edition; Dante's Vita Nuova, trans. by Mark Musa, new ed. (1973).
Rime della "Vita nuova" e della giovinezza, ed. by Michele Barbi and F. Maggini (1956); Rime della maturità e dell'esilio, ed. by Michele Barbi and V.
Pernicone (1969); Rime. ed. by Gianfranco Contini (1965); Dante's Lyric Poetry, ed. and trans. by K. Foster and P. Boyde (1967).
Il convivio, 2nd ed., ed. by G. Busnelli, G. Vandelli, and Antonio E. Quaglio (1968); Dante's Convivio, trans. by William Walrond Jackson (1909).
De vulgari eloquentia, ed. by Aristide Marigo (1957); Dante's Treatise "De Vulgari Eloquentiâ," trans. by A.G. Ferrers Howell (1890); Literary Criticism of
Dante Alighieri, trans. and ed. by Robert S. Haller (1973).
Monarchia, ed. by Pier Giorgio Ricci (1965); On World Government, or, De Monarchia, trans. by Herbert W. Schneider, 2nd rev. ed. (1957).
Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio, Including a Critical Edition of the Text of Dante's "Eclogae Latinae" and of the Poetic Remains of Giovanni del Virgilio,
ed. by Philip H. Wicksteed and Edmund G. Gardner (1902).
Collected Works
Le opere di Dante: testo critico della società dantesca italiana, ed. by Michele Barbi et al., 2nd ed. (1960); Le opere di Dante Alighieri, ed. by E. Moore and
Paget Toynbee, 5th ed. (1963).
Biographies
Ricardo J. Quinones, Dante Alighieri (1979, reprinted 1985), an overview; Cecil Grayson (ed.), The World of Dante: Essays on Dante and His Times (1980);
and William Anderson, Dante the Maker (1980), a critical biographical study, with the emphasis on Dante's creative processes. See also Patrick Boyde,
Dante, Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos (1981), an examination of Dante's intellectual concerns.
Commentaries
For extracts from early commentaries, see Guido Biagi et al. (eds.), La Divina Commedia nella figurazione artistica e nel secolare commento (1921-40),
issued in separate parts, and its useful bibliography. Modern commentaries on The Divine Comedy include those by Giuseppe Vandelli, Carlo Grabher,
Manfredi Porena, Attilio Momigliano, and Natalino Sapegno in their respective editions of La divina commedia. See also Francesco Mazzoni, Saggio di un
nuovo commento alla Divina Commedia (1967). For English-speaking readers, the commentary of Charles H. Grandgent (ed.), La Divina Commedia di
Dante Alighieri (1933; rev. ed. by Charles S. Singleton, 1972), is excellent; as is that of Charles S. Singleton (trans. and ed.), The Divine Comedy (1970-75).
See also George Holmes, Dante (1980), a brief study; Mark Musa, Advent at the Gates (1974), a study of seven cantos; and David Nolan (ed.), Dante
Commentaries: Eight Studies of the Divine Comedy (1977), and Dante Soundings: Eight Literary and Historical Essays (1981).
Introductory Works
Of the general works available to English-speaking readers, see especially Ernest Hatch Wilkins and Thomas Goddard Bergin, A Concordance to the Divine
Comedy of Dante Alighieri (1965). Edward S. Sheldon and Alain C. White, Concordanza delle opere italiane in prosa e del Canzoniere di Dante Alighieri
(1905, reprinted 1969 with Supplementary Concordance to the Minor Italian Works of Dante, comp. by Lewis H. Gordon); and Edward Kennard Rand and
Ernest Hatch Wilkins, Dantis Alagherii Operum Latinorum Concordantiae, to the Latin works (1912, reprinted 1970), are also useful. Paget Toynbee, A
Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante, new ed., rev. by Charles S. Singleton (1968), is invaluable. Excellent introductions
to Dante include Umberto Cosmo, A Handbook to Dante Studies (1947, reprinted 1978; originally published in Italian, 1947); Michele Barbi, Life of Dante
(1954, reprinted 1966; originally published in Italian, 1933); and Thomas Goddard Bergin, Dante (1965, reprinted 1976). Also useful are Nicola Zingarelli,
La vita, i tempi e le opere di Dante, 3rd ed., 2 vol. (1931); and Aldo Vallone, Dante, 2nd ed. (1981). Essential information is found in Codice diplomatico
dantesco, ed. by Renato Piattoli, 2nd ed. (1950); and in Enciclopedia dantesca, 2nd ed., 5 vol. (1984).
General Studies
Edward Moore, Studies in Dante, 4 vol. (1896-1917, reprinted with new introductory matter ed. by Colin Hardie, 1969); Paget Toynbee, Dante Studies
(1921); Benedetto Croce, The Poetry of Dante (1922, reissued 1971; originally published in Italian, 1920); T.S. Eliot, Dante (1929; reprinted 1974); John
Freccero (ed.), Dante: A Collection of Critical Essays (1965); Uberto Limentani (ed.), The Mind of Dante (1965); Oxford Dante Society, Centenary Essays
on Dante (1965); William J. De Sua and Gino Rizzo (eds.), A Dante Symposium (1965); Francesco Mazzoni, Contributi di filologia dantesca (1966).
Specialized Studies
On the Vita nuova, see Charles S. Singleton, An Essay on the Vita Nuova (1949, reprinted 1977); on the canzoni, Patrick Boyde, Dante's Style in His Lyric
Poetry (1971); on Dante's philosophical thought, Étienne Gilson, Dante the Philosopher (1948, reissued 1963; originally published in French, 1939); on
Dante's political thought, Alessandro Passerin D'entrèves, Dante as a Political Thinker (1952, reprinted 1965); Ewart K. Lewis, Medieval Political Ideas, 2
vol. (1954, reprinted 1974); Charles T. Davis, Dante and the Idea of Rome (1957); and Dante's Italy (1984); on The Divine Comedy, William H.V. Reade,
The Moral System of Dante's Inferno (1909, reprinted 1969); Karl Vossler, Medieval Culture: An Introduction to Dante and His Times, 2 vol. (1929,
reissued 1970; originally published in German, 1907-10); Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1953, reissued 1973;
originally published in German, 1948); Francis Fergusson, Dante's Drama of the Mind (1953, reissued 1981); Charles S. Singleton, Dante Studies: vol. 1,
Commedia: Elements of Structure (1954, reprinted 1977), and vol. 2, Journey to Beatrice (1958); Johan Chydenius, The Typological Problem in Dante
(1958); Joseph A. Mazzeo, Structure and Thought in the Paradiso (1958, reissued 1968), and Medieval Cultural Tradition in Dante's Comedy (1960,
reprinted 1968); Irma Brandeis, The Ladder of Vision: A Study of Dante's Comedy (1960); Helen F. Dunbar, Symbolism in Medieval Thought and Its
Consummation in the Divine Comedy (1929, reissued 1961); Thomas Goddard Bergin, Perspectives on the Divine Comedy (1967), and A Diversity of Dante
(1969).
Illuminated Manuscripts
Peter H. Brieger, Millard Meiss, and Charles S. Singleton, Illuminated Manuscripts of the Divine Comedy, 2 vol. (1969).
Bibliographies
Paul Colomb De Batines, Bibliografia dantesca, trans. from the French, 2 vol. in 3 (1845-46), supplemented by Guido Biagi, Giunte e correzioni inediti alla
Bibliografia dantesca (1888); continued also in Carlo F. Carpellini, Della letteratura dantesca degli ultimi venti anni dal 1845 a tutto il 1865 (1866); Cornell
University Library, Catalogue of the Dante Collection, comp. by Theodore Wesley Koch, 2 vol. (1898-1900), and Catalogue of the Dante Collection
Additions 1898-1920, comp. by Mary Fowler (1921); and Giuliano Mambelli, Gli annali delle edizioni dantesche (1931, reprinted 1965). For post-World
War II studies, see Aldo Vallone, Gli studi danteschi dal 1940 al 1949 (1950); and Enzo Esposito, Gli studi danteschi dal 1950 al 1964 (1965). Annual
bibliographies of Dante studies published in the United States are printed in Dante Studies (annual), published by the Dante Society of America (founded
1881). Bodies specializing in Dante studies have been established in many countries. Apart from the Società Dantesca Italiana (founded 1888), of special
interest to English-speaking readers is the Oxford Dante Society (founded 1876).
de Vega, Lope
b. Nov. 25, 1562, Madrid, d. Aug. 27, 1635, Madrid
In full Lope Félix De Vega Carpio, byname The Phoenix Of Spain, Spanish El Fénix De España
Outstanding dramatist of the Spanish Golden Age, author of as many as 1,800 plays and several hundred shorter dramatic pieces, of which
431 plays and 50 shorter pieces are extant.
Height Of Literary Productivity
From 1605 until his death he remained a confidential secretary and counselor to the duke of Sessa, with whom he maintained a voluminous
and revealing correspondence. In 1608 he was also named to a sinecure position as a familiar of the Inquisition and then prosecutor
(promotor fiscal) of the Apostolic Chamber. By this time, Vega had become a famous poet and was already regarded as the "phoenix of
Spanish wits." In 1609 he published Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo ("New Art of Writing Plays in This Time"), a poetic
treatise in which he defended his own plays with more wit than effectiveness.
In 1610, in the midst of full literary production--on the road to his 500 comedias--Vega moved his household definitively from Toledo to
Madrid. In Madrid, Vega was afflicted by painful circumstances that complicated his life in a period when he was still very creative. Juana
became ill, miscarried, and lived in precarious health under Vega's constant care; Carlos Félix, his favourite son, also became ill and died,
in 1612. Juana died in childbirth with Feliciana, and Micaela de Luján must also have died during that time, since Vega took into his own
home the children remaining from this relationship, Marcela and Lope Félix, or Lopito.
These heartbreaks moved the poet to a deep religious crisis. In 1609 he entered the first of several religious orders. From this time on he
wrote almost exclusively religious works, though he also continued his theatrical work, which was financially indispensable. In 1614 he
entered the priesthood, but his continued service as secretary and panderer to his patron, the duke of Sessa, hindered him from obtaining the
ecclesiastical benefits he sought. The duke, fearful of losing Vega's services, succeeded in having one of the poet's former lovers, the
actress Lucia de Salcedo, seduce Vega. The duke thus permanently recovered his secretary. Vega thereafter became involved in new and
scandalous romantic relationships. In 1627 his verse epic on the life and execution of Mary, queen of Scots, La corona trágica, which was
dedicated to Pope Urban VIII, brought in reward a doctorate in theology of the Collegium Sapientiae and the cross of the Order of Malta,
out of which came his proud use of the title Frey ("Brother"). His closing years were full of gloom. His last lover, Marta de Nevares, who
shared his life from 1619 until her death in 1632, lost first her sight and then her sanity in the 1620s. The death at sea of his son Lope Félix
del Carpio y Luján and the abduction and abandonment of his youngest daughter, Antonia Clara, both in 1634, were blows that rent his
soul. His own death in Madrid in August 1635 evoked national mourning.
Works
Vega became identified as a playwright with the comedia, a comprehensive term for the new drama of Spain's Golden Age. Vega's
productivity for the stage, however exaggerated by report, remains phenomenal. He claimed to have written an average of 20 sheets a day
throughout his life and left untouched scarcely a vein of writing then current. Cervantes called him "the prodigy of nature." Juan Pérez de
Montalván, his first biographer, in his Fama póstuma (1636), attributed to Vega a total of 1,800 plays, as well as more than 400 autos
sacramentales (short allegorical plays on sacramental subjects). The dramatist's own first figure of 230 plays in 1603 rises to 1,500 in 1632;
more than 100, he boasts, were composed and staged in 24 hours. The titles are known of 723 plays and 44 autos, and the texts survive of
426 and 42, respectively.
The earliest firm date for a play written by Vega is 1593. His 18 months in Valencia in 1589-90, during which he was writing for a living,
seem to have been decisive in shaping his vocation and his talent. The influence in particular of the Valencian playwright Cristóbal de
Virués (1550-1609) was obviously profound. Toward the end of his life, in El laurel de Apolo, Vega credits Virués with having, in his
"famous tragedies," laid the very foundations of the comedia. Virués' five tragedies, written between 1579 and 1590, do indeed display a
gradual evolution from a set imitation of Greek tragedy as understood by the Romans to the very threshold of romantic comedy. In the
process the five acts previously typical of Spanish plays have become three; the classical chorus has given way to comment within the play,
including that implicit in the expansion of a servant's role to that of confidant; the unities of time, place, and action have disappeared,
leaving instead to each act its own setting in time and space; and hendecasyllabic blank verse has yielded to a metrical variety that, seeking
to reflect changing moods and situations, also suggests the notable degree of lyricism soon to permeate the drama. The Spanish drama's
confusing of tragic effect with a mere accumulation of tragic happenings has deflected the emphasis from in-depth character portrayal to
that of complexity of plot, action, and incident, and the resulting emphasis on intrigues, misunderstandings, and other devices of intricate
and complicated dramatic plotting have broken down the old divisions between dramatic genres in favour of an essentially mixed kind,
tragicomedy, that would itself soon be known simply as comedia. Finally, from initially portraying kings and princes of remote ages,
Virués began to depict near-contemporary Spain and ordinary men and women.
There can be no claiming that Vega learned his whole art from Virués. Bartolomé de Torres Naharro at the beginning of the 16th century
had already adumbrated the cloak and sword (cape y espada) play of middle-class manners. A decade before Virués, Juan de la Cueva had
discovered the dramatic interest latent in earlier Spanish history and its potential appeal to a public acutely responsive to national greatness.
In the formation of the comedia this proved another decisive factor on which Vega fastened instinctively.
It was at this point that Vega picked up the inheritance and, by sheer force of creative genius and fertility of invention, gave the comedia its
basic formula and raised it to a peak of splendour. The comedia's manual was Vega's own poetic treatise, El arte nuevo de hacer comedias
en este tiempo, in which he firmly rejected the Classical and Neoclassical "rules," opted for a blend of comedy and tragedy and for metrical
variety, and made public opinion the ultimate arbiter of taste.
The comedia was essentially, therefore, a social drama, ringing a thousand changes on the accepted foundations of society: respect for
crown, for church, and for the human personality, the latter being symbolized in the "point of honour" (pundonor) that Vega commended as
the best theme of all "since there are none but are strongly moved thereby." This "point of honour" was a matter largely of convention,
"honour" being equivalent, in a very limited and brittle sense, to social reputation; men were expected to be brave and proud and not to put
up with an insult, while "honour" for women basically meant maintaining their chastity (if unmarried) or their fidelity (if married). It
followed that this was a drama less of character than of action and intrigue that rarely, if ever, grasped the true essence of tragedy.
Few of the plays that Vega wrote were perfect, but he had an unerring sense for the theme and detail that could move an audience
conscious of being on the crest of its country's greatness to respond to a mirroring on the stage of some of the basic ingredients of that
greatness. Because of him the comedia became a vast sounding board for every chord in the Spanish consciousness, a "national" drama in
the truest sense.
In theme Vega's plays range over a vast horizon. Traditionally his plays have been grouped as religious, mythological, classical, historical
(foreign and national), pastoral, chivalric, fantastic, and of contemporary manners. In essence the categories come down to two, both
Spanish in setting: the heroic, historical play based on some national story or legend, and the cloak and sword drama of contemporary
manners and intrigue.
For his historical plays Vega ransacked the medieval chronicle, the romancero, and popular legend and song for heroic themes, chosen for
the most part as throwing into relief some aspect either of the national character or of that social solidarity on which contemporary Spain's
greatness rested. The conception of the crown as fount of justice and bulwark of the humble against oppression inspires some of his finest
plays. Peribáñez y el comendador de Ocaña (Peribáñez and the Commander of Ocaña), El mejor alcalde, el rey (The King, the Greatest
Alcalde), and Fuente Ovejuna (All Citizens Are Soldiers) are still memorable and highly dramatic vindications of the inalienable rights of
the individual, as is El caballero de Olmedo (The Knight from Olmedo) on a more exalted social plane. In Fuente Ovejuna the entire village
assumes responsibility before the king for the slaying of its overlord and wins his exoneration. This experiment in mass psychology, the
best known outside Spain of all his plays, evoked a particular response from audiences in tsarist Russia.
Vega's cloak and sword plays are all compounded of the same ingredients and feature the same basic situations: gallants and ladies falling
endlessly in and out of love, the "point of honour" being sometimes engaged, but very rarely the heart, while servants imitate or parody the
main action and one, the gracioso, exercises his wit and common sense in commenting on the follies of his social superiors. El perro del
hortelano (The Gardener's Dog), Por la puente Juana (Across the Bridge, Joan), La dama boba (The Lady Nit-Wit), La moza de cántaro
(The Girl with the Jug), and El villano en su rincón (The Peasant's House Is His Castle) are reckoned among the best in this minor if stillentertaining kind of play.
All Vega's plays suffer from haste of composition, partly a consequence of the public's insatiable desire for novelty. His first acts are
commonly his best, with the third a hasty cutting of knots or tying up of loose ends that takes scant account both of probability and of
psychology. There was, too, a limit to his inventiveness in the recurrence of basic themes and situations, particularly in his cloak and sword
plays. But Vega's defects, like his strength, derive from the accuracy with which he projected onto the stage the essence of his country and
age. Vega's plays remain true to the great age of Spain into which he had been born and which he had come to know, intuitively rather than
by study, as no one had ever known it before.
Vega's nondramatic works in verse and prose filled 21 volumes in 1776-79. Much of this vast output has withered, but its variety remains
impressive. Vega wrote pastoral romances, verse histories of recent events, verse biographies of Spanish saints, long epic poems and
burlesques upon such works, and prose tales, imitating or adapting works by Ariosto and Cervantes in the process. His lyric compositions-ballads, elegies, epistles, sonnets (there are 1,587 of these)--are myriad. Formally they rely much on the conceit, and in content they
provide a running commentary on the poet's whole emotional life.
Among specific nondramatic works that deserve to be mentioned are the 7,000-line Laurel de Apolo (1630), depicting Apollo's crowning of
the poets of Spain on Helicon, which remains of interest as a guide to the poets and poetasters of the day; La Dorotea (1632), a thinly
veiled chapter of autobiography cast in dialogue form that grows in critical esteem as the most mature and reflective of his writings; and,
listed last because it provides a bridge and key to his plays, the Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo. This verse apology rested on
the sound Aristotelian principle that the dramatist's first duty is to hold and satisfy his audience: the comedia, he says in effect, had
developed in response to what the Spanish public demanded of the theatre. The treatise provides a clear picture of the principles and
conventions of a drama entitled to be called national in its close identification with the social values and emotional responses of the age.
Bibliography
An excellent edition of the works in Spanish is Obras de Lope de Vega, 15 vol. (1890-1913), supplemented by a new edition with the same title, 13 vol.
(1916-30). Biographical and critical works include C.A. de la Barrera y Leirado, Nueva biografía (1890, reissued in 2 vol., 1973-74), the first biography of
the poet, and the basis for most of the later works; Hugo Albert Rennert, The Life of Lope de Vega (1562-1635) (1904, reprinted 1968), the classic
biographical study and a fundamental source; Joaquín de Entrambasaguas, Estudios sobre Lope de Vega, 3 vol. (1946-58), a full biography; Francis C.
Hayes, Lope de Vega (1967), a general but well-balanced introduction to Vega's life and works, with a good basic bibliography; Alan S. Trueblood,
Experience and Artistic Expression in Lope de Vega: The Making of La Dorotea (1974), a study of his genius and the creative process; Donald R. Larson,
The Honor Plays of Lope de Vega (1977), an examination of his development as a dramatist; Rudolph Schevill (ed.), The Dramatic Art of Lope de Vega,
Together with La Dama Boba (1918, reissued 1964), an excellent treatment of Vega's technique as playwright; Angel Flores, Lope de Vega, Monster of
Nature (1930, reprinted 1969), a somewhat popularized treatment of Vega's life and times; and Dian Fox, Refiguring the Hero: From Peasant to Noble in
Lope de Vega and Calderón (1991), which demolishes the notion that Vega portrayed a democratic equality between peasants and nobles.
Dürrenmatt, Friedrich
b. Jan. 5, 1921, Konolfingen, near Bern, Switz., d. Dec. 14, 1990, Neuchâtel
Swiss playwright, novelist, and essayist whose tragicomic plays were central to the post-World War II revival of German theatre.
Dürrenmatt, who was educated in Zürich and Bern, became a full-time writer in 1947. His technique was clearly influenced by the German
expatriate writer Bertolt Brecht, as in the use of parables and of actors who step out of their roles to act as narrators. Dürrenmatt's vision of
the world as essentially absurd gave a comic flavour to his plays. Writing on the theatre in Theaterprobleme (1955; Problems of the
Theatre), he described the primary conflict in his tragicomedies as humanity's comic attempts to escape from the tragic fate inherent in the
human condition.
His plays often have bizarre settings. His first play, Es steht geschrieben (1947; "It Is Written"), is about the Anabaptist suppression in
Münster in 1534-36. In it, as in Der Blinde (1948; "The Blind Man") and Romulus der Grosse (1949; Romulus the Great), Dürrenmatt
takes comic liberties with the historical facts. Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi (1952; The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi), a serious play in the
guise of an old-fashioned melodrama, established his international reputation, being produced in the United States as Fools Are Passing
Through in 1958. Among the plays that followed were Der Besuch der alten Dame (1956; The Visit); Die Physiker (1962; The Physicists),
a modern morality play about science, generally considered his best play; Der Meteor (1966; The Meteor); and Porträt eines Planeten
(1970; Portrait of a Planet).
In 1970 Dürrenmatt wrote that he was "abandoning literature in favour of theatre," no longer writing plays but working to produce
adaptations of well-known works. In addition to plays, Dürrenmatt wrote detective novels, radio plays, and critical essays.
Euripides
b. c. 484 BC, Athens [Greece], d. 406, Macedonia
Last of classical Athens' three great tragic dramatists, following Aeschylus and Sophocles.
Dramatic And Literary Achievements
Euripides' plays exhibit his iconoclastic, rationalizing attitude toward both religious belief and the ancient legends and myths that formed
the traditional subject matter for Greek drama. These legends seem to have been for him a mere collection of stories without any particular
authority. He also apparently rejected the gods of Homeric theology, whom he frequently depicts as irrational, petulant, and singularly
uninterested in meting out "divine justice." That the gods are so often presented on the stage by Euripides is partly due to their convenience
as a source of information that could not otherwise be made available to the audience.
Given this attitude of sophisticated doubt on his part, Euripides invents protagonists who are quite different from the larger-than-life
characters drawn with such conviction by Aeschylus and Sophocles. They are, for the most part, commonplace, down-to-earth men and
women who have all the flaws and vulnerabilities ordinarily associated with human beings. Furthermore, Euripides makes his characters
express the doubts, the problems and controversies, and in general the ideas and feelings of his own time. They sometimes even take time
off from the dramatic action to debate each other on matters of current philosophical or social interest.
Euripides differed from Aeschylus and Sophocles in making his characters' tragic fates stem almost entirely from their own flawed natures
and uncontrolled passions. Chance, disorder, and human irrationality and immorality frequently result not in an eventual reconciliation or
moral resolution but in apparently meaningless suffering that is looked upon with indifference by the gods. The power of this type of drama
lies in the frightening and ghastly situations it creates and in the melodramatic, even sensational, emotional effects of its characters' tragic
crises.
Given this strong strain of psychological realism, Euripides shows moments of brilliant insight into his characters, especially in scenes of
love and madness. His depictions of women deserve particular attention; it is easy to extract from his plays a long list of heroines who are
fierce, treacherous, or adulterous, or all three at once. Misogyny is altogether too simple an explanation here, although Euripides' reputation
in his own day was that of a woman hater, and a play by Aristophanes, Women at the Thesmophoria, comically depicts the indignation of
the Athenian women at their portrayal by Euripides.
The chief structural peculiarities of Euripides' plays are his use of prologues and of the providential appearance of a god (deus ex machina)
at the play's end. Almost all of the plays start with a monologue that is in effect a bare chronicle explaining the situation and characters with
which the action begins. Similarly, the god's epilogue at the end of the play serves to reveal the future fortunes of the characters. This latter
device has been criticized as clumsy or artificial by modern authorities, but it was presumably more palatable to the audiences of Euripides'
own time. Another striking feature of his plays is that over time Euripides found less and less use for the chorus; in his successive works it
tends to grow detached from the dramatic action.
The word habitually used in antiquity to describe Euripides' ordinary style of dramatic speech is lalia ("chatter"), alluding probably both to
its comparatively light weight and to the volubility of his characters of all classes. Notwithstanding this, Euripides' lyrics at times have
considerable charm and sweetness. In the works written after 415 BC his lyrics underwent a change, becoming more emotional and
luxuriant. At its worst this style is hardly distinguishable from Aristophanes' parody of it in his comedy Frogs, but where frenzied emotion
is appropriate, as in the tragedy Bacchants, Euripides' songs are unsurpassed in their power and beauty.
During the last decade of his career Euripides began to write "tragedies" that might actually be called romantic dramas, or tragicomedies
with happy endings. These plays have a highly organized structure leading to a recognition scene in which the discovery of a character's
true identity produces a complete change in the situation, and in general a happy one. Extant plays in this style include Ion, Iphigenia
Among the Taurians, and Helen. Plays of the tragicomedy type seem to anticipate the New Comedy of the 4th century BC.
The fame and popularity of Euripides eclipsed that of Aeschylus and Sophocles in the cosmopolitan Hellenistic period. The austere, lofty,
essentially political and "religious" tragedy of Aeschylus and Sophocles had less appeal than that of Euripides, with its more accessible
realism and its obviously emotional, even sensational, effects. Euripides thus became the most popular of the three for revivals of his plays
in later antiquity; this is probably why at least 18 of his plays have survived compared to seven each for Aeschylus and Sophocles, and why
the extant fragmentary quotations from his works are more numerous than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles put together.
Works
Alkestis (438 BC; Alcestis); Medeia (431 BC; Medea); Herakleidai (c. 430 BC; Children of Heracles); Hippolytos (428 BC; Hippolytus); Andromache (c.
426 BC); Hekabe (c. 425 BC; Hecuba); Hiketides (c. 423 BC; Latin trans., Supplices; Eng. trans., Suppliants); Elektra (c. 418 BC; Electra); Herakles
mainomenos (c. 416 BC; Latin trans., Hercules furens; Eng. trans., Madness of Heracles); Troades (415 BC; Trojan Women); Ion (c. 413 BC); Iphigeneia en
Taurois (c. 413 BC; Latin trans., Iphigenia in Tauris; Eng. trans., Iphigenia Among the Taurians); Helene (412 BC; Helen); Phoinissai (c. 409 BC;
Phoenician Women); Orestes (408 BC); Iphigeneia en Aulidi (c. 406 BC; Iphigenia at Aulis); Bakchai (c. 406 BC; Latin trans., Bacchae; Eng. trans.,
Bacchants); Kyklops(date unknown; Cyclops); Rhesos (authorship disputed; date unknown; Rhesus); Hypsipyle (sizable fragments; date uncertain).
Texts
The Greek text is available in Euripidis fabulae, ed. by J. Diggle (1981- ), a new Oxford Classical Text replacing the 3-vol. text ed. by Gilbert Murray, 190209; 2 vol. of the Diggle work have appeared to 1986.
Recommended Editions
Euripides, 5 vol. (1955-59), contains English translations of all the plays and is part of The Complete Greek Tragedies series, ed. by Richmond Lattimore
and David Grene. All the complete plays excluding Cyclops and Rhesus are found in the Penguin Classics series, trans. by Philip Vellacott, Three Plays
(1953, reissued 1974), Medea, and Other Plays (1963), Orestes, and Other Plays (1972), and The Bacchae, and Other Plays, rev. ed. (1972). See also
Geoffrey S. Kirk (trans.), The Bacchae (1970, reprinted 1979 as The Bacchae of Euripides).
Bibliography
Greek tragedy in general is treated in H.D.F. Kitto, Greek Tragedy: A Literary Study, 3rd ed. (1961, reissued 1976), a lively survey but becoming dated;
Richmond Lattimore, Story Patterns in Greek Tragedy (1964, reissued 1969); Arthur Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd ed. rev. by
John Gouldand D.M. Lewis (1968), a standard work on the practical arrangements; H.C. Baldry, The Greek Tragic Theatre (1971), a simple, orthodox
introduction; Albin Lesky, Greek Tragic Poetry (1983; originally published in German, 3rd rev. ed., 1972); Erika Simon, The Ancient Theatre (1982;
originally published in German, 2nd ed., 1981), a concise and expert introduction to staging; Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Tragedy and
Myth in Ancient Greece (1981; originally published in French, 1972), stimulating structuralist essays; Brian Vickers, Towards Greek Tragedy: Drama, Myth,
Society (1973, reprinted 1979), long but thought-provoking; Oliver Taplin, Greek Tragedy in Action (1978), emphasis on the significance of performance;
Bernard Knox, Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater (1979), a collection of important essays; Donald J. Mastronarde, Contact and Discontinuity:
Some Conventions of Speech and Action on the Greek Tragic Stage (1979), a specialist study of dialogue; R.G.A. Buxton, Persuasion in Greek Tragedy: A
Study of Peitho (1982); and Erich Segal (ed.), Greek Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism (U.K. title, Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy, 1983), a wellchosen and varied selection of articles.
Critical works on Euripides' plays include G.M.A. Grube, The Drama of Euripides (1941, reprinted 1973), a survey; D.J. Conacher, Euripidean Drama:
Myth, Theme and Structure (1967), a helpful play-by-play survey, including a useful bibliography; Gilbert Murray, Euripides and His Age, 2nd ed. (1946,
reissued 1979), an idealistic introduction; T.B.L. Webster, The Tragedies of Euripides (1967), helpful on the lost tragedies; R.P. Winnington-Ingram,
Euripides and Dionysus: An Interpretation of the Bacchae (1948, reprinted 1969), an enterprising study; William Ritchie, The Authenticity of the Rhesus of
Euripides (1964), a scholarly though unsuccessful case for authorship; Anne Pippin Burnett, Catastrophe Survived: Euripides Plays of Mixed Reversal
(1971, reprinted 1985), an original interpretation of seven plays; Pietro Pucci, The Violence of Pity in Euripides' "Medea" (1980); Shirley A. Barlow, The
Imagery of Euripides: A Study in the Dramatic Use of Pictorial Language (1971, reprinted 1974); and Helene P. Foley, Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifices
in Euripides (1985), a structuralist study of four plays.
Freud, Sigmund
b. May 6, 1856, Freiberg, Moravia, Austrian Empire [now Príbor, Czech Republic] d. Sept. 23, 1939, London, Eng.
Austrian neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis.
Freud may justly be called the most influential intellectual legislator of his age. His creation of psychoanalysis was at once a theory of the
human psyche, a therapy for the relief of its ills, and an optic for the interpretation of culture and society. Despite repeated criticisms,
attempted refutations, and qualifications of Freud's work, its spell remained powerful well after his death and in fields far removed from
psychology as it is narrowly defined. If, as the American sociologist Philip Rieff once contended, "psychological man" replaced such
earlier notions as political, religious, or economic man as the 20th century's dominant self-image, it is in no small measure due to the power
of Freud's vision and the seeming inexhaustibility of the intellectual legacy he left behind.
The Interpretation Of Dreams
In what many commentators consider his master work, Die Traumdeutung (published in 1899, but given the date of the dawning century to
emphasize its epochal character; The Interpretation of Dreams), he presented his findings. Interspersing evidence from his own dreams
with evidence from those recounted in his clinical practice, Freud contended that dreams played a fundamental role in the psychic
economy. The mind's energy--which Freud called libido and identified principally, but not exclusively, with the sexual drive--was a fluid
and malleable force capable of excessive and disturbing power. Needing to be discharged to ensure pleasure and prevent pain, it sought
whatever outlet it might find. If denied the gratification provided by direct motor action, libidinal energy could seek its release through
mental channels. Or, in the language of The Interpretation of Dreams, a wish can be satisfied by an imaginary wish fulfillment. All dreams,
Freud claimed, even nightmares manifesting apparent anxiety, are the fulfillment of such wishes.
More precisely, dreams are the disguised expression of wish fulfillments. Like neurotic symptoms, they are the effects of compromises in
the psyche between desires and prohibitions in conflict with their realization. Although sleep can relax the power of the mind's diurnal
censorship of forbidden desires, such censorship, nonetheless, persists in part during nocturnal existence. Dreams, therefore, have to be
decoded to be understood, and not merely because they are actually forbidden desires experienced in distorted fashion. For dreams undergo
further revision in the process of being recounted to the analyst.
The Interpretation of Dreams provides a hermeneutic for the unmasking of the dream's disguise, or dreamwork, as Freud called it. The
manifest content of the dream, that which is remembered and reported, must be understood as veiling a latent meaning. Dreams defy logical
entailment and narrative coherence, for they intermingle the residues of immediate daily experience with the deepest, often most infantile
wishes. Yet they can be ultimately decoded by attending to four basic activities of the dreamwork and reversing their mystifying effect.
The first of these activities, condensation, operates through the fusion of several different elements into one. As such, it exemplifies one of
the key operations of psychic life, which Freud called overdetermination. No direct correspondence between a simple manifest content and
its multidimensional latent counterpart can be assumed. The second activity of the dreamwork, displacement, refers to the decentring of
dream thoughts, so that the most urgent wish is often obliquely or marginally represented on the manifest level. Displacement also means
the associative substitution of one signifier in the dream for another, say, the king for one's father. The third activity Freud called
representation, by which he meant the transformation of thoughts into images. Decoding a dream thus means translating such visual
representations back into intersubjectively available language through free association. The final function of the dreamwork is secondary
revision, which provides some order and intelligibility to the dream by supplementing its content with narrative coherence. The process of
dream interpretation thus reverses the direction of the dreamwork, moving from the level of the conscious recounting of the dream through
the preconscious back beyond censorship into the unconscious itself.
Major Works
Several of these works appeared originally as journal articles; only the publication in book form is cited here. Studien über Hysterie, with
Josef Breuer (1895; Studies in Hysteria, 1936); Die Traumdeutung (1899, dated 1900; The Interpretation of Dreams, 1913); Zur
Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens (1904; Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1914); Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie (1905; Three
Contributions to the Sexual Theory, 1910); Über Psychoanalyse (1910; The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, 1949); Totem und
Tabu: einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker (1913; Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the
Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics, 1918); Zur Geschichte der psychoanalytischen Bewegung (1924; The History of the
Psychoanalytic Movement, 1917); Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse (1916-17; A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis,
1920); Jenseits des Lustprinzips (1920; Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1922); Das Ich und das Es (1923; The Ego and the Id, 1927);
Hemmung, Symptom und Angst (1926; Inhibition, Symptoms and Anxiety, 1927); Die Frage der Laienanalyse (1926; The Problem of LayAnalyses, 1927); Die Zukunft einer Illusion (1927; The Future of an Illusion, 1928); Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (1930; Civilization and
Its Discontents, 1930); Neue Folge der Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse (1933; New Introductory Lectures on PsychoAnalysis, 1933); Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion (1939; Moses and Monotheism, 1939).
The standard German edition of Freud's works is Gesammelte Werke: Chronologisch geordnet, 18 vol. in 17 (1940-68). The English
edition, with better annotations than the original, is The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans.
and ed. by James Strachey, et al., 24 vol. (1953-74, reprinted 1981); it is complemented by Samuel A. Guttman, Stephen M. Parrish, and
Randall L. Jones (eds.), The Concordance to The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 6 vol., 2nd ed.
(1984). Also helpful is Alexander Grinstein (comp.), Sigmund Freud's Writings: A Comprehensive Bibliography (1977), including listings
of works not found in The Standard Edition and an index of English titles of Freud's works.
Bibliography
Among biographical works are Sigmund Freud, An Autobiographical Study, 2nd ed. (1946, reissued 1963; originally published in German, 1925), his own
brief account of his career and theories; Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 3 vol. (1953-57, reissued 1981; also published as Sigmund
Freud: Life and Work, 1953-57), also available in a one-volume condensed edition with the same title, edited and abridged by Lionel Trilling and Steven
Marcus (1961, reissued 1964); Richard Wollheim, Sigmund Freud (1971, reissued 1981); Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of a Moralist, 3rd ed. (1979);
Ronald W. Clark, Freud: The Man and the Cause (1980); and Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time (1980).
Selections from Freud's original writings and correspondence include Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (trans. and ed.), The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to
Wilhelm Fliess, 1877-1904 (1985); Ernst L. Freud (ed.), Letters of Sigmund Freud, 1873-1939 (1961, reprinted 1975; originally published in German, 1960);
Hilda C. Abraham and Ernst L. Freud (eds.), A Psycho-Analytic Dialogue: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, 1907-1926 (1965; originally
published in German, 1965); Ernst L. Freud (ed.), The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Arnold Zweig (1970, reprinted 1987; originally published in German,
1968); Nathan G. Hale, Jr. (ed.), James Jackson Putnam and Psychoanalysis: Letters Between Putnam and Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones, William James,
Sandor Ferenczi, and Morton Prince, 1877-1917 (1971); Ernst Pfeiffer (ed.), Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé: Letters (1972, reissued 1985;
originally published in German, 1966); William McGuire (ed.), The Freud/Jung Letters, trans. from German (1974, reprinted 1979); R. Andrews Paskauskas
(ed.), The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, 1908-1939 (1993); and Eva Brabant, Ernst Falzader, and Patrizia GiampieriDeutsch (eds.), The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi (1993- ).
Views by Freud's family, friends, and colleagues include Fritz Wittels, Sigmund Freud: His Personality, His Teaching, & His School (1924, reprinted 1971;
originally published in German, 1924); Theodor Reik, From Thirty Years with Freud, trans. from German (1940, reissued 1975); Hanns Sachs, Freud (1944,
reissued 1970); Martin Freud, Glory Reflected: Sigmund Freud, Man and Father (1957; also published as Sigmund Freud: Man and Father, 1928, reissued
1983), by one of his children; Erich Fromm, Sigmund Freud's Mission: An Analysis of His Personality and Influence (1959, reprinted 1978); Mary Higgins
and Chester M. Raphael (eds.), Reich Speaks of Freud: Wilhelm Reich Discusses His Work and His Relationship with Sigmund Freud (1967, reissued 1975);
Max Schur, Freud (1972); and Aldo Carotenuto, A Secret Symmetry: Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud (1982; originally published in Italian, 1980).
Contemporaries and associates are described in Vincent Brome, Freud and His Early Circle: The Struggles of Psycho-Analysis (1967); and Paul Roazen,
Freud and His Followers (1975, reissued 1984), and Brother Animal: The Story of Freud and Tausk (1969, reprinted 1986). Also of interest is K.R. Eissler,
Talent and Genius: The Fictitious Case of Tausk Contra Freud (1971).
Histories of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory are offered in Marie Jahoda, Freud and the Dilemmas of Psychology (1977, reissued 1981); Seymour
Fisher and Roger P. Greenberg, The Scientific Credibility of Freud's Theories and Therapy (1977, reprinted 1985), and The Scientific Evaluation of Freud's
Theories and Therapy: A Book of Readings (1977); Frank J. Sulloway, Freud, Biologist of the Mind (1979, reprinted 1983); Alexander Grinstein, Sigmund
Freud's Dreams, 2nd ed. (1980); Bruno Bettelheim, Freud and Man's Soul (1983); Marshall Edelson, Hypothesis and Evidence in Psychoanalysis (1984);
and William J. McGrath, Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria (1986).
Interpretive studies of Freud's work and views include Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilisation: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955, reissued 1974);
J.A.C. Brown, Freud and the Post-Freudians (1961, reprinted 1985); Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (1966,
reissued 1987); Paul Roazen, Freud: Political and Social Thought (1968, reissued 1986); Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy (1970, originally published in
French, 1961); and Juliet Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974).
Recent critiques of Freudian theory include Erich Fromm, Greatness and Limitations of Freud's Thought (1980); Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives
(1984); Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory (1984, reissued 1994; also published as Freud: The
Assault on Truth, 1984); Adolf Grünbaum, The Foundations of Psychoanalysis (1984); and Robert R. Holt, Freud Reappraised: A Fresh Look at
Psychoanalytic Theory (1989). Paul Robinson, Freud and His Critics (1993), is a defense against several critics.
Freud's major case studies are reappraised in Karin Obholzer, The Wolf-Man: Conversations with Freud's Patient--Sixty Years Later (1982; originally
published in German, 1980); Patrick J. Mahony, Freud and the Rat Man (1986); Frank J. Sulloway, "Reassessing Freud's Case Histories: The Social
Construction of Psychoanalysis," Isis, 82:245-275 (1991, reprinted in Toby Gelfand and John Kerr [eds.], Freud and the History of Psychoanalysis, 1992);
Hannah S. Decker, Freud, Dora, and Vienna 1900 (1991); and Rogin Tolmach Lakoff and James C. Coyne, Father Knows Best: The Use and Abuse of
Power in Freud's Case of Dora (1993).
Frisch, Max
b. May 15, 1911, Zürich, Switz., d. April 4, 1991, Zürich
German-Swiss dramatist and novelist, noted for his Expressionist depictions of the moral dilemmas of 20th-century life.
In 1933 Frisch withdrew from the University of Zürich, where he had studied German literature, and became a newspaper correspondent.
After touring southern and eastern Europe from 1934 to 1936, he returned to Zürich, where he studied architecture. Frisch worked as an
architect after service in the Swiss army during World War II. He abandoned architecture in 1955 to devote himself full-time to writing.
Frisch's play Santa Cruz (1947) established the central theme found throughout his subsequent works: the predicament of the complicated,
skeptical individual in modern society. One of Frisch's earliest dramas is the morality play Nun singen sie wieder (1946; Now They Sing
Again), in which Surrealistic tableaux reveal the effects caused by hostages being assassinated by German Nazis. His other historical
melodramas include Die chinesische Mauer (1947; The Chinese Wall) and the bleak Als der Krieg zu Ende war (1949; When the War Was
Over). Reality and dream are used to depict the terrorist fantasies of a responsible government prosecutor in Graf Öderland (1951; Count
Oederland), while Don Juan oder die Liebe zur Geometrie (1953; Don Juan, or The Love of Geometry) is a reinterpretation of the legend
of the famous lover of that name. In his powerful parable play Biedermann und die Brandstifter (1958; The Firebugs, also published as The
Fire Raisers), arsonists insinuate themselves into the house of the weak-willed, complacent Biedermann, who allows them to destroy his
home and his world rather than confront them. Frisch's later plays include Andorra (1961), with its theme of collective guilt, and Biografie
(published 1967; Biography), which deals with social relationships and their limitations.
Frisch's early novels Stiller (1954; I'm Not Stiller), Homo Faber (1957), and Mein Name sei Gantenbein (1964; A Wilderness of Mirrors)
portray aspects of modern intellectual life and examine the theme of identity. His autobiographical works include two noteworthy diaries,
Tagebuch 1946-1949 (1950; Sketchbook 1946-1949) and Tagebuch 1966-1971 (1972; Sketchbook 1966-1971). His later novels include
Montauk: Eine Erzählung (1975), Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän (1979; Man in the Holocene), and Blaubart (1982; Bluebeard).
Genet, Jean
b. Dec. 19, 1910, Paris, France, d. April 15, 1986, Paris
French criminal and social outcast turned writer who, as a novelist, transformed erotic and often obscene subject matter into a poetic vision
of the universe and, as a dramatist, became a leading figure in the avant-garde theatre, especially the Theatre of the Absurd.
Genet, an illegitimate child abandoned by his mother, Gabrielle Genet, was raised by a family of peasants. Caught stealing at the age of 10,
he spent part of his adolescence at a notorious reform school, Mettray, where he experienced much that was later described in the novel
Miracle de la rose (1945-46; Miracle of the Rose). His autobiographical Journal du voleur (1949; The Thief's Journal) gives a complete
and uninhibited account of his life as a tramp, pickpocket, and male prostitute in Barcelona, Antwerp, and various other cities (c. 1930-39).
It also reveals him as an aesthete, an existentialist, and a pioneer of the Absurd.
He began to write in 1942 while imprisoned for theft at Fresnes and produced an outstanding novel, Notre-Dame des Fleurs (1943; Our
Lady of the Flowers), vividly portraying the prewar Montmartre underworld of thugs, pimps, and perverts. His talent was brought to the
attention of Jean Cocteau and later Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Because Genet in 1948 was convicted of theft for the 10th
time and would have faced automatic life imprisonment if convicted again, a delegation of well-known writers appealed on his behalf to the
president of the French republic, and he was "pardoned in advance."
After writing two other novels, Pompes funèbres (1947; Funeral Rites) and Querelle de Brest (1947; Querelle of Brest, filmed 1982),
Genet began to experiment with drama. His early attempts, by their compact, neoclassical, one-act structure, reveal the strong influence of
Sartre. Haute Surveillance (1949; Deathwatch) continues his prison-world themes. Les Bonnes (1947; The Maids), however, begins to
explore the complex problems of identity that were soon to preoccupy other avant-garde dramatists such as Samuel Beckett and Eugène
Ionesco. With this play Genet was established as an outstanding figure in the Theatre of the Absurd.
His subsequent plays, Le Balcon (1956; The Balcony), Les Nègres (1958; The Blacks), and Les Paravents (1961; The Screens), are largescale, stylized dramas in the Expressionist manner, designed to shock and implicate an audience by revealing its hypocrisy and complicity.
This "Theatre of Hatred" attempts to wrest the maximum dramatic power from a social or political situation without necessarily endorsing
the political platitudes of either the right or the left.
Genet, a rebel and an anarchist of the most extreme sort, rejected almost all forms of social discipline or political commitment. The violent
and often degraded eroticism of his experience led him to a concept of mystic humiliation.
Bibliography
Biographies in English include Harry E. Stewart and Rob Roy McGregor, Jean Genet (1989); and Edmund White, Genet (1993). Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint
Genet, Actor and Martyr (1963, reissued 1988; originally published in French, 1952), compares Genet's evident pursuit of mortification and self-abasement
to that of a saint. Peter Brooks and Joseph Halpern (eds.), Genet: A Collection of Critical Essays (1979), examines his novels and plays.
Grotowski, Jerzy
b. Aug. 11, 1933, Rzeszów, Pol., d. Jan. 14, 1999, Pontedera, Italy
International leader of the experimental theatre who became famous in the 1960s as the director of productions staged by the Polish
Laboratory Theatre of Wroclaw. A leading exponent of audience involvement, he set up emotional confrontations between a limited group
of spectators and the actors; the performers were disciplined masters of bodily and vocal contortions.
Grotowski studied at the National Theatrical Academy in Kraków (1951-59), then joined the Laboratory Theatre in 1959, the year it was
founded. Grotowski's permanent company first appeared in western Europe in 1966. He became a guest lecturer and influential director in
the avant-garde theatre of England, France, and the Scandinavian countries. His productions included Faustus (1963), Hamlet (1964), and
The Constant Prince (1965). Grotowski's methods and pronouncements--which can be found in his highly influential work Towards a Poor
Theatre (1968)--influenced such U.S. experimental theatre movements as The Living Theatre, the Open Theatre, and the Performance
Group. In 1969 the Laboratory Theatre made a successful U.S. debut in New York City with Akropolis, based on a 1904 play by Stanislaw
Wyspianski. Later productions of the Laboratory Theatre included Undertaking Mountain (1977) and Undertaking Earth (1977-78). In
1982 Grotowski immigrated to the United States, where he taught for several years before moving to Pontedera, Italy. There in 1985, a year
after the closing of the Laboratory Theatre in Poland, he opened a new theatrical centre.
Group Theatre
Company of stage craftsmen founded in 1931 in New York City by a former Theatre Guild member, Harold Clurman, in association with
the directors Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg, for the purpose of presenting American plays of social significance. Embracing
Konstantin Stanislavsky's method (an acting technique that stressed the introspective approach to artistic truth), the characteristic trend of
the Group's productions was primarily in the staging of social protest plays with a point of view from the left. After its first trial production
of Sergey Tretyakov's Roar China (1930-31), the Group staged Paul Green's House of Connelly, a play of the decadent Old South as
reflected by the disintegrating gentry class. The play was favourably received by the critics and ran for 91 performances. The Group then
followed with two anticapitalist plays, 1931 and Success Story; the former closed after only nine days, but the latter ran for more than 100
performances. Financial and artistic success came two years later with the production of Sidney Kingsley's Men in White (1933), a
melodrama of hospital interns. Directed by Strasberg and with settings by Mordecai Gorelik, the play ran close to a year and was awarded
the Pulitzer Prize for that season.
In 1935 the Group staged Waiting for Lefty by one of its actors, Clifford Odets. The play, suggested by a taxicab drivers' strike of the
previous year, used flashback techniques and "plants" in the audience to create the illusion that the strikers' meeting was occurring
spontaneously. The group also staged Odets' Awake and Sing, a look at Jewish life in the Bronx during the Depression, as well as his Till
the Day I Die (1935), Paradise Lost (1935), and Golden Boy (1937). Other productions included Paul Green's Johnny Johnson, a satirical,
anti-war play, partly in blank verse, with music by Kurt Weill; Bury the Dead (1936, by Irwin Shaw); Thunder Rock (1939, by Robert
Ardrey); and My Heart's in the Highlands (1939, by William Saroyan).
The Group exercised a profound influence on the American theatre in three ways: (1) it stimulated the writing talent of such playwrights as
Odets, and Saroyan; (2) many of its actors and directors, including Clurman, Elia Kazan, Lee J. Cobb, Stella Adler, and Strasberg, went on
to prominent positions in theatre and film after the Group's dissolution; and (3) its presentations established a unified acting and working
method that became virtually standard after the Group disbanded in 1941.
Hansberry, Lorraine
b. May 19, 1930, Chicago, Ill., U.S., d. Jan. 12, 1965, New York, N.Y.
American playwright whose A Raisin in the Sun (1959) was the first drama by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.
Hansberry was interested in writing from an early age and while in high school was drawn especially to the theatre. She attended the
University of Wisconsin in 1948-50 and then briefly the school of the Art Institute of Chicago and Roosevelt University (Chicago). After
moving to New York City, she held various minor jobs and studied at the New School for Social Research while refining her writing skills.
In 1958 she raised funds to produce her play A Raisin in the Sun, which opened in March 1959 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on
Broadway, meeting with great success.
A penetrating psychological study of the personalities and emotional conflicts within a working-class black family in Chicago, A Raisin in
the Sun was directed by actor Lloyd Richards, the first African American to direct a play on Broadway since 1907. It won the New York
Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the film version of 1961 received a special award at the Cannes Festival. Hansberry's next play, The Sign
in Sidney Brustein's Window, a drama of political questioning and affirmation set in Greenwich Village, New York City, where she had
long made her home, had only a modest run on Broadway in 1964. Her promising career was cut short by her early death.
In 1969 a selection of her writings, adapted by Robert Nemiroff (to whom Hansberry was married from 1953 to 1964), was produced on
Broadway as To Be Young, Gifted, and Black and was published in book form in 1970.
Anne Cheney, Lorraine Hansberry (1984).
Hauptmann, Gerhart
b. Nov. 15, 1862, Bad Salzbrunn, Silesia, Prussia [Germany], d. June 6, 1946, Agnetendorf, Ger.
In full GERHART JOHANN ROBERT HAUPTMANN German playwright, poet, and novelist who was a recipient of the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1912.
Hauptmann was born in a then-fashionable Silesian resort town, where his father owned the main hotel. He studied sculpture from 1880 to
1882 at the Breslau Art Institute. He then studied science and philosophy at the university in Jena (1882-83), worked as a sculptor in Rome
(1883-84), and studied further in Berlin (1884-85). It was at this time that he decided to make his career as a poet and dramatist. Having
married the well-to-do Marie Thienemann in 1885, Hauptmann settled down in Erkner, a rural suburb of Berlin, dabbling in political,
theological, and literary studies and associating with a group of scientists, philosophers, and avant-garde writers who were interested in
naturalist and socialist ideas.
In October 1889 the performance of Hauptmann's social drama Vor Sonnenaufgang (Before Dawn) made him famous overnight, though it
shocked the theatregoing public. This starkly realistic tragedy, dealing with contemporary social problems, signaled the end of the
rhetorical and highly stylized German drama of the 19th century. Encouraged by the controversy, Hauptmann wrote in rapid succession a
number of outstanding dramas on naturalistic themes (heredity, the plight of the poor, the clash of personal needs with societal restrictions)
in which he artistically reproduced social reality and common speech. Most gripping and humane, as well as most objectionable to the
political authorities at the time of its publication, is Die Weber (1892; The Weavers), a compassionate dramatization of the Silesian
weavers' revolt of 1844. Das Friedensfest (1890; "The Peace Festival") is an analysis of the troubled relations within a neurotic family,
while Einsame Menschen (1891; Lonely Lives) describes the tragic end of an unhappy intellectual torn between his wife and a young
woman with whom he can share his thoughts.
Hauptmann resumed his treatment of proletarian tragedy with Fuhrmann Henschel (1898; Drayman Henschel), a claustrophobic study of a
workman's personal deterioration from the stresses of his domestic life. However, critics felt that the playwright had abandoned naturalistic
tenets in Hanneles Himmelfahrt (1894; The Assumption of Hannele), a poetic evocation of the dreams an abused workhouse girl has shortly
before she dies. Der Biberpelz (1893; The Beaver Coat) is a successful comedy, written in a rich Berlin dialect, that centres on a cunning
female thief and her successful confrontation with pompous, stupid Prussian officials.
Hauptmann's longtime estrangement from his wife resulted in their divorce in 1904, and in the same year he married an actress and
violinist, Margarete Marschalk, with whom he had moved in 1901 to a house in Agnetendorf in Silesia. Hauptmann spent the rest of his life
there, though he traveled frequently.
Although Hauptmann helped to establish naturalism in Germany, he later abandoned naturalistic principles in his plays. In his later plays,
fairytale and saga elements mingle with mystical religiosity and mythical symbolism. The portrayal of the primordial forces of the human
personality in a historical setting (Kaiser Karls Geisel, 1908; Charlemagne's Hostage) stands beside naturalistic studies of the destinies of
contemporary people (Dorothea Angermann, 1926). The culmination of the final phase in Hauptmann's dramatic work is the Atrides cycle,
Die Atriden-Tetralogie (1941-48), which expresses through tragic Greek myths Hauptmann's horror of the cruelty of his own time and his
disappointment with post-World War I European society.
Hauptmann's stories, novels, and epic poems are as varied as his dramatic works and are often thematically interwoven with them. The
novel Der Narr in Christo, Emanuel Quint (1910; The Fool in Christ, Emanuel Quint) depicts, in a modern parallel to the life of Christ, the
passion of a Silesian carpenter's son, possessed by pietistic ecstasy. A contrasted figure is the apostate priest in his most famous story, Der
Ketzer von Soana (1918; The Heretic of Soana), who surrenders himself to a pagan cult of Eros.
In his early career Hauptmann found sustained effort difficult; later his literary production became more prolific, but it also became more
uneven in quality. For example, the ambitious and visionary epic poems Till Eulenspiegel (1928) and Der grosse Traum (1942; "The Great
Dream") successfully synthesize his scholarly pursuits with his philosophical and religious thinking, but are of uncertain literary value. The
cosmological speculations of Hauptmann's later decades distracted him from his spontaneous talent for creating characters that come alive
on the stage and in the imagination of the reader. Nevertheless, Hauptmann's literary reputation in Germany was unequaled until the
ascendancy of Nazism, when he was barely tolerated by the regime and at the same time was denounced by émigrés for staying in
Germany. Though privately out of tune with the Nazi ideology, he was politically naive and tended to be indecisive. He remained in
Germany throughout World War II and died a year after his Silesian environs had been occupied by the Soviet Red Army.
Hauptmann was the most prominent German dramatist of the early 20th century. The unifying element of his vast and varied literary output
is his sympathetic concern for human suffering, as expressed through characters who are generally passive victims of social and other
elementary forces. His plays, the early naturalistic ones especially, are still frequently performed, though not so often as during his lifetime.
Bibliography
Karl Holl, Gerhart Hauptmann, His Life and His Work, 1862-1912 (1913, reprinted 1977), is an early biography, written in the dramatist's lifetime. A short
overview is presented in Hugh F. Garten, Gerhart Hauptmann (1954). A comprehensive survey of Hauptmann's life and an interpretive study of his creative
output is offered in Warren R. Maurer, Gerhart Hauptmann (1982). For general critical analyses, see Leroy R. Shaw, Witness of Deceit: Gerhart Hauptmann
as Critic of Society (1958); and Margaret Sinden, Gerhart Hauptmann: The Prose Plays (1957, reissued 1975). Studies of special themes and features of
Hauptmann's writing include Philip A. Mellen, Gerhart Hauptmann and Utopia (1976), and Gerhart Hauptmann: Religious Syncretism and Eastern
Religions (1984); and Carolyn Thomas Dussère, The Image of Primitive Giant in the Works of Gerhart Hauptmann (1979). K.G. Knight and F. Norman
(eds.), Hauptmann Centenary Lectures (1964); and Peter Sprengel and Philip A. Mellen (eds.), Hauptmann Research: New Directions (1986), are collections
of critical essays. Comparative studies of Hauptmann's place in the background of the 19th- and 20th-century German drama include Leroy R. Shaw, The
Playwright & Historical Change: Dramatic Strategies in Brecht, Hauptmann, Kaiser & Wedekind (1970); and John Osborne, The Naturalist Drama in
Germany (1971).
Hellman, Lillian
b. June 20, 1905, New Orleans, La., U.S., d. June 30, 1984, Vineyard Haven, Martha's Vineyard, Mass.
American playwright and motion-picture screenwriter whose dramas forcefully attacked injustice, exploitation, and selfishness.
Hellman attended New York public schools and New York University and Columbia University. Her marriage (1925-32) to the playwright
Arthur Kober ended in divorce. She had already begun an intimate friendship with the novelist Dashiell Hammett that would continue until
his death in 1961. In the 1930s, after working as book reviewer, press agent, play reader, and Hollywood scenarist, she began writing plays.
Her dramas exposed some of the various forms in which evil appears--a malicious child's lies about two schoolteachers (The Children's
Hour, 1934); a ruthless family's exploitation of fellow townspeople and of one another (The Little Foxes, 1939, and Another Part of the
Forest, 1946); and the irresponsible selfishness of the Versailles-treaty generation (Watch on the Rhine, 1941, and The Searching Wind,
1944). Criticized at times for her doctrinaire views and characters, she nevertheless kept her characters from becoming merely social points
of view by writing credible dialogue and creating a realistic intensity matched by few of her playwriting contemporaries. These plays
exhibit the tight structure and occasional overcontrivance of what is known as the well-made play. In the 1950s she showed her skill in
handling the more subtle structure of Chekhovian drama (The Autumn Garden, 1951) and in translating and adapting (Jean Anouilh's The
Lark, 1955, and Voltaire's Candide, 1957, in a musical version). She returned to the well-made play with Toys in the Attic (1960), which
was followed by another adaptation, My Mother, My Father, and Me (1963; from Burt Blechman's novel How Much?). She also edited
Anton Chekhov's Selected Letters (1955) and a collection of stories and short novels, The Big Knockover (1966), by Hammett.
Her reminiscences, begun in An Unfinished Woman (1969), were continued in Pentimento (1973) and Maybe (1980). After their
publication, certain fabrications were brought to light, notably her reporting in Pentimento of a personal relationship with a courageous
woman she called Julia. The woman on whose actions Hellman's story was based denied acquaintance with the author.
Hellman, a longtime supporter of leftist causes, detailed in Scoundrel Time (1976) her troubles and those of her friends with the House UnAmerican Activities Committee hearings during the 1950s. Hellman refused to give the committee the names of people who had
associations with the Communist Party; she was subsequently blacklisted though not held in contempt of Congress.
Her collected plays, many of which continued to be performed at the turn of the 20th century, were published in 1972.
Bibliography
William Wright, Lillian Hellman (1986); and Joan Mellen, Hellman and Hammett (1996), are biographies. Doris V. Falk, Lillian Hellman (1978); and
Katherine Lederer, Lillian Hellman (1979), offer analyses of her work.
Hughes, Langston
b. Feb. 1, 1902, Joplin, Mo., U.S., d. May 22, 1967, New York City
Black poet and writer who became, through numerous translations, one of the foremost interpreters to the world of the black experience in
the United States. Hughes's parents separated soon after his birth, and young Hughes was raised by his mother and grandmother. After his
grandmother's death, he and his mother moved to half a dozen cities before reaching Cleveland, where they settled. His poem "The Negro
Speaks of Rivers," written the summer after his graduation from high school in Cleveland, was published in Crisis (1921) and brought him
considerable attention.
After attending Columbia University (1921-22), he explored Harlem, forming a permanent attachment to what he called the "great dark
city." He worked as a steward on a freighter bound for Africa. Back from seafaring and sojourning in Europe, he won an Opportunity
magazine poetry prize in 1925. He received the Witter Bynner Undergraduate Poetry Award in 1926.
While working as a busboy in a hotel in Washington, D.C., Hughes put three of his own poems beside the plate of Vachel Lindsay in the
dining room. The next day, newspapers around the country reported that Lindsay had discovered a Negro busboy poet. A scholarship to
Lincoln University in Pennsylvania followed, and before Hughes received his degree in 1929, his first two books had been published.
The Weary Blues (1926) was warmly received. Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927) was criticized harshly for its title and for its frankness, but
Hughes himself felt it represented a step forward. A few months after graduation Not Without Laughter (1930), his first prose work, had a
cordial reception. In the '30s his poetry became preoccupied with political militancy; he travelled widely in the Soviet Union, Haiti, and
Japan and served as a newspaper correspondent (1937) in the Spanish Civil War. He published a collection of short stories, The Ways of
White Folks (1934), and The Big Sea (1940), his autobiography up to the age of 28.
Hughes wrote A Pictorial History of the Negro in America (1956), and the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro (1949) and The Book of
Negro Folklore (1958; with Arna Bontemps). He also wrote numerous works for the stage, including the lyrics for Street Scene, an opera
with music by Kurt Weill. A posthumous book of poems, The Panther and the Lash (1967), reflected the black anger and militancy of the
1960s. Hughes translated the poetry of Federico García Lorca and Gabriela Mistral. He was also widely known for his comic character
Jesse B. Semple, familiarly called Simple, who appeared in Hughes's columns in the Chicago Defender and the New York Post and later in
book form and on the stage. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, ed. by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel, appeared in 1994.
Bibliography
Biographical and critical works include Faith Berry, Langston Hughes, Before and Beyond Harlem (1983, reissued 1992); Arnold Rampersad, The Life of
Langston Hughes, 2 vol. (1986-88); Richard K. Barksdale, Langston Hughes (1977); Edward J. Mullen (ed.), Critical Essays on Langston Hughes (1986); R.
Baxter Miller, The Art and Imagination of Langston Hughes (1989); Hans Ostrom, Langston Hughes: A Study of the Short Fiction (1993); and Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., and K.A. Appiah (eds.), Langston Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and Present (1993).
Ibsen, Henrik
b. March 20, 1828, Skien, Nor., d. May 23, 1906, Kristiania [formerly Christiania; now Oslo]
Major Norwegian playwright of the late 19th century who introduced to the European stage a new order of moral analysis that was placed
against a severely realistic middle-class background and developed with economy of action, penetrating dialogue, and rigorous thought.
Ibsen was born at Skien, a small lumbering town of southern Norway. His father was a respected general merchant in the community until
1836, when he suffered the permanent disgrace of going bankrupt. As a result, he sank into a querulous penury, which his wife's withdrawn
and sombre religiosity did nothing to mitigate. There was no redeeming the family misfortunes; as soon as he could, aged just 15, Henrik
moved to Grimstad, a hamlet of some 800 persons 70 miles (110 km) down the coast. There he supported himself meagerly as an
apothecary's apprentice while studying nights for admission to the university. And during this period he used his few leisure moments to
write a play.
This work, Catilina (1850; Catiline), grew out of the Latin texts Ibsen had to study for his university examinations. Though not a very good
play, it showed a natural bent for the theatre and embodied themes--the rebellious hero, his destructive mistress--that would preoccupy
Ibsen as long as he lived. In 1850 he went to Christiania (known since 1925 by its older name of Oslo), studied for entrance examinations
there, and settled into the student quarter--though not, however, into classes. For the theatre was in his blood, and at the age of only 23 he
got himself appointed director and playwright to a new theatre at Bergen, in which capacity he had to write a new play every year.
This was a wonderful opportunity for a young man eager to work in drama, but it brought Ibsen up against a range of fearsome problems he
was ill-equipped to handle. In the medieval Icelandic sagas Norway possessed a heroic, austere literature of unique magnificence; but the
stage on which these materials had to be set was then dominated by the drawing-room drama of the French playwright Eugène Scribe and
by the actors, acting traditions, and language of Denmark. Out of these materials young Ibsen was asked to create a "national drama."
First at Bergen and then at the Norwegian Theatre in Christiania from 1857 to 1862, Ibsen tried to make palatable dramatic fare out of
incongruous ingredients. In addition to writing plays which were uncongenial to him and unacceptable to audiences, he did a lot of
directing. He was too inhibited to make a forceful director, but too intelligent not to pick up a great deal of practical stage wisdom from his
experience. After he moved to Christiania and after his marriage to Suzannah Thoresen in 1858, he began to develop qualities of
independence and authority that had been hidden before.
Two of the last plays that Ibsen wrote for the Norwegian stage showed signs of new spiritual energy. Kjaerlighedens komedie (1862; Love's
Comedy), a satire on romantic illusions, was violently unpopular, but it expressed an authentic theme of anti-idealism that Ibsen would
soon make his own; and in Kongsemnerne (1863; The Pretenders) he dramatized the mysterious inner authority that makes a man a man, a
king, or a great playwright. This one play was in fact the national drama after which Ibsen had been groping so long, and before long it
would be recognized as such. But it came too late; though the play was good, the theatre in Christiania was bankrupt, and Ibsen's career as a
stage writer was apparently at an end.
But the death of his theatre was the liberation of Ibsen as a playwright. Without regard for a public he thought petty and illiberal, without
care for traditions he found hollow and pretentious, he could now write for himself. He decided to go abroad, and applied for a small state
grant. He was awarded part of it, and in April 1864 he left Norway for Italy. For the next 27 years he lived abroad, mainly in Rome,
Dresden, and Munich, returning to Norway only for short visits in 1874 and 1885. For reasons that he sometimes summarized as "smallmindedness," his homeland had left a very bitter taste in his mouth.
With him into exile Ibsen brought the fragments of a long semi-dramatic poem to be named Brand. Its central figure is a dynamic rural
pastor who takes his religious calling with a blazing sincerity that transcends not only all forms of compromise but all traces of human
sympathy and warmth as well. "All or nothing" is the demand that his god makes of Brand and that Brand in turn makes of others. He is a
moral hero, but he is also a moral monster, and his heart is torn by the anguish that his moral program demands he inflict on his family. He
never hesitates, never ceases to tower over the petty compromisers and spiritual sluggards surrounding him. Yet in the last scene where
Brand stands alone before his god, a voice thunders from an avalanche that, even as it crushes the pastor physically, repudiates his whole
moral life as well: "He is the god of love," says the voice from on high. So the play is not only a denunciation of small-mindedness but a
tragedy of the spirit that would transcend it. The poem faced its readers not just with a choice but with an impasse; the heroic alternative
was also a destructive (and self-destructive) alternative. In Norway Brand was a tremendous popular success, even though (and in part
because) its central meaning was so troubling.
Hard on the heels of Brand (1866) came Peer Gynt (1867), another drama in rhymed couplets presenting an utterly antithetical view of
human nature. If Brand is a moral monolith, Peer Gynt is a capering will-o'-the-wisp, a buoyant and self-centred opportunist who is
aimless, yielding, and wholly unprincipled, yet who remains a lovable and beloved rascal. The wild and mocking poetry of Peer Gynt has
ended by overshadowing Brand in the popular judgment. But these two figures are interdependent and antithetical types who under
different guises run through most of Ibsen's classic work. Like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, they are universal archetypes as well as
unforgettable individuals.
With these two poetic dramas, Ibsen won his battle with the world; he paused now to work out his future. A philosophicalhistorical drama
on the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate had long been on his mind; he finished it in 1873 under the title Kejser og Galilaeer (Emperor
and Galilean), but in a ten-act form too diffuse and discursive for the stage. He wrote a modern satire, De unges forbund (1869; The
League of Youth) and then after many preliminary drafts a prose satire on small-town politics, Samfundets støtter (1877; Pillars of Society).
But Ibsen had not yet found his proper voice; when he did, its effect was not to criticize or reform social life but to blow it up. The
explosion came with Et dukkehjem (1879; A Doll's House).
This play presents a very ordinary family--a bank manager named Torvald Helmer, his wife Nora, and their three little children. Torvald
supposes himself the ethical member of the family, while his wife assumes the role of a pretty irresponsible in order to flatter him. Into this
snug, not to say stifling, arrangement intrude several hard-minded outsiders, one of whom threatens to expose a fraud that Nora had once
committed (without her husband's knowledge) in order to obtain a loan needed to save his life. When Nora's husband finally learns about
this dangerous secret, he reacts with outrage and repudiates her out of concern for his own social reputation. Utterly disillusioned about her
husband, whom she now sees as a hollow fraud, Nora declares her independence of him and their children and leaves them, slamming the
door of the house behind her in the final scene.
Audiences were scandalized at Ibsen's refusal in A Doll's House to scrape together (as any other contemporary playwright would have
done) a "happy ending," however shoddy or contrived. But that was not Ibsen's way; his play was about knowing oneself and being true to
that self. Torvald, who had thought all along that he was a sturdy ethical agent, proves to be a hypocrite and a weak compromiser; his wife
is not only an ethical idealist, but a destructive one, as severe as Brand.
The setting of A Doll's House is ordinary to the point of transparency. Ibsen's plot exploits with cold precision the process known as
"analytic exposition." A secret plan (Nora's forgery) is about to be concluded (she can now finish repaying the loan), but before the last step
can be taken, a bit of the truth must be told, and the whole deception unravels. It is a pattern of stage action at once simple and powerful.
Ibsen used this technique often, and it gained for him an international audience.
Ibsen's next play, Gengangere (1881; Ghosts), created even more dismay and distaste than its predecessor by showing worse consequences
of covering up even more ugly truths. Ostensibly the play's theme is congenital venereal disease, but on another level, it deals with the
power of ingrained moral contamination to undermine the most determined idealism. Even after lecherous Captain Alving is in his grave,
his ghost will not be laid to rest. In the play, the lying memorial that his conventionally-minded widow has erected to his memory burns
down even as his son goes insane from inherited syphilis and his illegitimate daughter advances inexorably toward her destiny in a brothel.
The play is a grim study of contamination spreading through a family under cover of the widowed Mrs. Alving's timidly respectable views.
A play dealing with syphilis on top of one dealing with a wife's abandonment of her family sealed Ibsen's reputation as a Bad Old Man, but
progressive theatres in England and all across the Continent began putting on his plays. His audiences were often small, but there were
many of them, and they took his plays very seriously. So did conventionally-minded critics; they denounced Ibsen as if he had desecrated
all that was sacred and holy. Ibsen's response took the form of a direct dramatic counterattack. Doctor Stockmann, the hero of En
folkefiende (1882; An Enemy of the People), functions as Ibsen's personal spokesman. In the play he is a medical officer, charged with
inspecting the public baths on which the prosperity of his native town depends. When he finds their water to be contaminated, he says so
publicly, though the town officials and townspeople try to silence him. When he still insists on speaking the truth, he is officially declared
an "enemy of the people." Though portrayed as a victim, Doctor Stockmann, like all Ibsen's idealistic truth-tellers after Brand, also carries
within him a deep strain of destructiveness. (His attacks on the baths will, after all, ruin the town; it's just that by comparison with the truth,
he doesn't care about this.) Ibsen's next play would make this minor chord dominant.
In Vildanden (1884; The Wild Duck) Ibsen completely reversed his viewpoint by presenting on stage a gratuitous, destructive truth-teller
whose compulsion visits catastrophic misery on a family of helpless innocents. With the help of a number of comforting delusions, Hjalmar
Ekdal and his little family are living a somewhat squalid but essentially cheerful existence. Upon these helpless weaklings descends an
infatuated truth-teller, Gregers Werle. He cuts away the moral foundations (delusive as they are) on which the family has lived, leaving
them despondent and shattered by the weight of a guilt too heavy to bear. The havoc wrought on the Ekdal family is rather pathetic than
tragic; but the working out of the action achieves a kind of mournful poetry that is quite new in Ibsen's repertoire.
Each of this series of Ibsen's classic modern dramas grows by extension or reversal out of its predecessor; they form an unbroken string.
The last of the sequence is Rosmersholm (1886), in which variants of the destructive saint (Brand) and the all-too-human rogue (Peer) once
more strive to define their identities, but this time on a level of moral sensitivity that gives the play a special air of silver serenity. Exparson Johannes Rosmer is the ethical personality, while the adventuress Rebecca West is his antagonist. Haunting them both out of the
past is the spirit of the parson's late wife, who had committed suicide under the subtle influence, we learn, of Rebecca West, and because of
her husband's high-minded indifference to sex. At issue for the future is a choice between bold, unrestricted freedom and the ancient,
conservative traditions of Rosmer's house. But even as he is persuaded by Rebecca's emancipated spirit, she is touched by his staid,
decorous view of life. Each is contaminated by the other, and for differing but complementary reasons, they tempt one another toward the
fatal millpond in which Rosmer's wife drowned. The play ends with a double suicide in which both Rosmer and Rebecca, each for the
other's reasons, do justice on themselves.
Ibsen's playwriting career by no means ended with Rosmersholm, but thereafter he turned toward a more self-analytic and symbolic mode
of writing that is quite different from the plays that made his world reputation. Among his later plays are Fruen fra havet (1888; The Lady
from the Sea), Hedda Gabler (1890), Bygmester Solness (1892; The Master Builder), Lille Eyolf (1894; Little Eyolf), John Gabriel
Borkman (1896), and Naar vi døde vaagner (1899; When We Dead Awaken). Two of these plays, Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder,
are vitalized by the presence of a demonically idealistic and totally destructive female such as first appeared in Catiline. Another obsessive
personage in these late plays is an aging artist who is bitterly aware of his failing powers. Personal and confessional feelings infuse many of
these last dramas; perhaps these resulted from Ibsen's decision in 1891 to return to Norway, or perhaps from the series of fascinated, fearful
dalliances he had with young women in his later years. After his return to Norway, Ibsen continued to write plays until a stroke in 1900 and
another a year later reduced him to a bedridden invalid. He died in Kristiania in 1906.
Ibsen was in the forefront of those early modern authors whom one could refer to as the great disturbers; he belongs with Fyodor
Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William Blake. Ibsen wrote plays about mostly prosaic and commonplace persons; but from them
he elicited insights of devastating directness, great subtlety, and occasional flashes of rare beauty. His plots are not cleverly contrived
games but deliberate acts of cognition, in which persons are stripped of their accumulated disguises and forced to acknowledge their true
selves, for better or worse. Thus, he made his audiences reexamine with painful earnestness the moral foundation of their being. During the
last half of the 19th century he turned the European stage back from what it had become--a plaything and a distraction for the bored--to
make it what it had been long ago among the ancient Greeks, an instrument for passing doom-judgment on the soul.
Bibliography
The standard biographies are Halvdan Koht, Life of Ibsen (1971); and Michael Meyer, Henrik Ibsen, 3 vol. (1967-71; also published in one vol. as Ibsen,
1971). Both these lives contain bibliographies that can be supplemented by the full-scale bibliographies of Hjalmar Petterson, Henrik Ibsen (1928); and
Ingrid Tedford, Ibsen Bibliography, 1928-57 (1961).
Volumes of critical essays include James McFarlane (comp.), Henrik Ibsen: A Critical Anthology (1970); Michael Egan (comp.), Ibsen: The Critical
Heritage (1972, reissued 1985); Charles R. Lyons (comp.), Critical Essays on Henrik Ibsen (1987); and Rolf Fjelde (ed.), Ibsen: A Collection of Critical
Essays (1965). Among the many full-length critical studies are P.F.D. Tennant, Ibsen's Dramatic Technique (1948, reprinted 1965); M.C. Bradbrook, Ibsen,
the Norwegian: A Revaluation, new ed. (1966); J.L. Wisenthal (ed.), Shaw and Ibsen (1979); and John S. Chamberlain, Ibsen: The Open Vision (1982).
Ionesco, Eugene
b. Nov. 26, 1909, , Slatina, Rom., d. March 28, 1994, Paris, France
Romanian EUGEN IONESCU Romanian-born French dramatist whose one-act "antiplay" La Cantatrice chauve (1949; The Bald Soprano)
inspired a revolution in dramatic techniques and helped inaugurate the Theatre of the Absurd. He was elected to the French Academy in
1970.
Ionesco was taken to France as an infant but returned to Romania in 1925. After obtaining a degree in French at the University of
Bucharest, he worked for a doctorate in Paris (1939), where, after 1945, he made his home. While working as a proofreader, he decided to
learn English; the formal, stilted commonplaces of his textbook inspired the masterly catalog of senseless platitudes that constitutes The
Bald Soprano. In its most famous scene, two strangers--who are exchanging banalities about how the weather is faring, where they live,
and how many children they have--stumble upon the astonishing discovery that they are indeed man and wife; it is a brilliant example of
Ionesco's recurrent themes of self-estrangement and the difficulty of communication.
In rapid succession Ionesco wrote a number of plays, all developing the "antilogical" ideas of The Bald Soprano; these included brief and
violently irrational sketches and also a series of more elaborate one-act plays in which many of his later themes--especially the fear and
horror of death--begin to make their appearance. Among these, La Leçon (1951; The Lesson), Les Chaises (1952; The Chairs), and Le
Nouveau Locataire (1955; The New Tenant) are notable successes. In The Lesson, a timid professor uses the meaning he assigns to words
to establish tyrannical dominance over an eager female pupil. In The Chairs, an elderly couple await the arrival of an audience to hear the
old man's last message to posterity, but only empty chairs accumulate on stage. Feeling confident that his message will be conveyed by an
orator he has hired, the old man and his wife commit a double suicide. The orator turns out to be afflicted with aphasia, however, and can
speak only gibberish.
In contrast to these shorter works, it was only with difficulty that Ionesco mastered the techniques of the full-length play: Amédée (1954),
Tueur sans gages (1959; The Killer), and Le Rhinocéros (1959; Rhinoceros) lack the dramatic unity that he finally achieved with Le Roi se
meurt (1962; Exit the King). This success was followed by Le Piéton de l'air (1963; A Stroll in the Air). With La Soif et la faim (1966;
Thirst and Hunger) he returned to a more fragmented type of construction. In the next decade he wrote Jeux de massacre (1970; Killing
Game); Macbett (1972), a retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth; and Ce formidable bordel (1973; A Hell of a Mess). Rhinoceros, whose
protagonist retains his humanity in a world where humans are mutating into beasts, remains Ionesco's most popular play.
Ionesco's achievement lies in having popularized a wide variety of nonrepresentational and surrealistic techniques and in having made them
acceptable to audiences conditioned to a naturalistic convention in the theatre. His tragicomic farces dramatize the absurdity of bourgeois
life, the meaninglessness of social conventions, and the futile and mechanical nature of modern civilization. His plays build on bizarrely
illogical or fantastic situations using such devices as the humorous multiplication of objects on stage until they overwhelm the actors. The
clichés and tedious maxims of polite conversation surface in improbable or inappropriate contexts to expose the deadening futility of most
human communication. Ionesco's later works show less concern with witty intellectual paradox and more with dreams, visions, and
exploration of the subconscious.
Bibliography
Surveys of Ionesco's life and works include Nancy Lane, Understanding Eugène Ionesco (1994); and Deborah B. Gaensbauer, Eugene Ionesco Revisted
(1996).
Jones, Leroi (Baraka, Amiri)
b. Oct. 7, 1934, Newark, N.J., U.S.
Also called IMAMU AMIRI BARAKA, original name (UNTIL 1968) (EVERETT) LEROI JONES playwright, poet, novelist, and essayist
who wrote of the experiences and anger of black Americans with an affirmation of black life.
A graduate of Howard University (1953), Baraka published his first major collection of poetry, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note,
in 1961. The poems in The Dead Lecturer (1964) are notable for their strong imagery and lyrical treatment of violence. This was followed
by Black Art (1966), Black Magic (1969), and many subsequent verse collections. Some of Baraka's poems reflect his interest in blues and
jazz, which he wrote about in Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963) and Black Music (1967).
In 1964 Baraka's play Dutchman appeared off-Broadway and won critical acclaim. In Dutchman, an encounter between a white woman and
a black intellectual exposes the suppressed anger and hostility of American blacks toward the dominant white culture. Later that year
Baraka's plays The Slave and The Toilet were also produced. He wrote many other plays and published an autobiographical novel, The
System of Dante's Hell (1965); a collection of short stories, Tales (1967); several collections of essays, including Home: Social Essays
(1966); and The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka (1984).
Baraka founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem in 1965. In 1968 he founded the Black Community Development and Defense
Organization, a Muslim group committed to affirming black culture and to gaining political power for blacks. Baraka taught at several
American universities.
Joyce, James
b. Feb. 2, 1882, Dublin, Ire., d. Jan. 13, 1941, Zürich, Switz.
In full JAMES AUGUSTINE ALOYSIUS JOYCE Irish novelist noted for his experimental use of language and exploration of new literary
methods in such large works of fiction as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939).
Ulysses
After World War I Joyce returned for a few months to Trieste, and then--at the invitation of Ezra Pound--in July 1920 he went to Paris. His
novel Ulysses was published there on Feb. 2, 1922, by Sylvia Beach, proprietor of a bookshop called "Shakespeare & Co." Ulysses is
constructed as a modern parallel to Homer's Odyssey. All of the action of the novel takes place in Dublin on a single day (June 16, 1904).
The three central characters--Stephen Dedalus (the hero of Joyce's earlier Portrait of the Artist), Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising
canvasser, and his wife, Molly Bloom--are intended to be modern counterparts of Telemachus, Ulysses, and Penelope. By the use of
interior monologue Joyce reveals the innermost thoughts and feelings of these characters as they live hour by hour, passing from a public
bath to a funeral, library, maternity hospital, and brothel.
The main strength of Ulysses lies in its depth of character portrayal and its breadth of humour. Yet the book is most famous for its use of a
variant of the interior monologue known as the "stream-of-consciousness" technique. Joyce claimed to have taken this technique from a
forgotten French writer, Édouard Dujardin (1861-1949), who had used interior monologues in his novel Les Lauriers sont coupés (1888;
We'll to the Woods No More), but many critics have pointed out that it is at least as old as the novel, though no one before Joyce had used it
so continuously. Joyce's major innovation was to carry the interior monologue one step further by rendering, for the first time in literature,
the myriad flow of impressions, half thoughts, associations, lapses and hesitations, incidental worries, and sudden impulses that form part
of the individual's conscious awareness along with the trend of his rational thoughts. This stream-of-consciousness technique proved
widely influential in much 20th-century fiction.
Sometimes the abundant technical and stylistic devices in Ulysses become too prominent, particularly in the much-praised "Oxen of the
Sun" chapter (II, 11), in which the language goes through every stage in the development of English prose from Anglo-Saxon to the present
day to symbolize the growth of a fetus in the womb. The execution is brilliant, but the process itself seems ill-advised. More often the
effect is to add intensity and depth, as, for example, in the "Aeolus" chapter (II, 4) set in a newspaper office, with rhetoric as the theme.
Joyce inserted into it hundreds of rhetorical figures and many references to winds--something "blows up" instead of happening, people
"raise the wind" when they are getting money--and the reader becomes aware of an unusual liveliness in the very texture of the prose. The
famous last chapter of the novel, in which we follow the stream of consciousness of Molly Bloom as she lies in bed, gains much of its
effect from being written in eight huge unpunctuated paragraphs.
Ulysses, which was already well known because of the censorship troubles, became immediately famous upon publication. Joyce had
prepared for its critical reception by having a lecture given by Valery Larbaud, who pointed out the Homeric correspondences in it and that
"each episode deals with a particular art or science, contains a particular symbol, represents a special organ of the human body, has its
particular colour . . . proper technique, and takes place at a particular time." Joyce never published this scheme; indeed, he even deleted the
chapter titles in the book as printed. It may be that this scheme was more useful to Joyce when he was writing than it is to the reader.
Finnegans Wake
In Paris Joyce worked on Finnegans Wake, the title of which was kept secret, the novel being known simply as "Work in Progress" until it
was published in its entirety in May 1939. In addition to his chronic eye troubles, Joyce suffered great and prolonged anxiety over his
daughter's mental health. What had seemed her slight eccentricity grew into unmistakable and sometimes violent mental disorder that Joyce
tried by every possible means to cure, but it became necessary finally to place her in a mental hospital near Paris. In 1931 he and Nora
visited London, where they were married, his scruples on this point having yielded to his daughter's complaints.
Meanwhile he wrote and rewrote sections of Finnegans Wake; often a passage was revised more than a dozen times before he was
satisfied. Basically the book is, in one sense, the story of a publican in Chapelizod, near Dublin, his wife, and their three children; but Mr.
Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (often designated by variations on his initials, HCE, one form of which is "Here Comes Everybody"), Mrs.
Anna Livia Plurabelle, Kevin, Jerry, and Isabel are every family of mankind, the archetypal family about whom all mankind is dreaming.
The 18th-century Italian Giambattista Vico provides the basic theory that history is cyclic; to demonstrate this the book begins with the end
of a sentence left unfinished on the last page. It is thousands of dreams in one. Languages merge: Anna Livia has "vlossyhair"--wlosy being
Polish for "hair"; "a bad of wind" blows, bâd being Turkish for "wind." Characters from literature and history appear and merge and
disappear as "the intermisunderstanding minds of the anticollaborators" dream on. On another level, the protagonists are the city of Dublin
and the River Liffey--which flows enchantingly through the pages, "leaning with the sloothering slide of her, giddygaddy, grannyma,
gossipaceous Anna Livia"--standing as representatives of the history of Ireland and, by extension, of all human history. And throughout the
book Joyce himself is present, joking, mocking his critics, defending his theories, remembering his father, enjoying himself.
After the fall of France in World War II (1940), Joyce took his family back to Zürich, where he died, still disappointed with the reception
given to his last book.
Bibliography
A standard biography, Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, new and rev. ed. (1982), is reliable and exhaustive, while his The Consciousness of Joyce (1977,
reissued 1981), examines Joyce's thought, especially his political views. Chester G. Anderson, James Joyce and His World (1967, reissued 1978), is a
sympathetic study of his life and works. Harry Blamires, The Bloomsday Book (1966, reprinted 1974), is an excellent guide to Ulysses. Frank Budgen, James
Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, new ed. (1960, reprinted 1972), gives an intimate account of Joyce at work. Hugh Kenner, Joyce's Voices (1978), is a
provocative study of Ulysses. C.H. Peake, James Joyce, the Citizen and the Artist (1977), employs traditional literary values in criticizing Joyce's works. For
the earlier works, both Marvin Magalaner, Time of Apprenticeship: The Fiction of Young James Joyce (1959, reissued 1970); and a collection of critical
essays ed. by Clive Hart, James Joyce's Dubliners (1969), are useful. Zack Bowen and James F. Carens (eds.), A Companion to Joyce Studies (1984), is a
good handbook. Thomas Jackson Rice, James Joyce: A Guide to Research (1982), is indispensable for the serious student of Joyce.
Kazan, Elia
b. Sept. 7, 1909, Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]
Original name ELIA KAZANJOGLOUS, American director and author, noted for his successes on the stage, especially with plays by
Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, and for his critically acclaimed films.
At the age of four, Kazan was brought to the United States with his immigrant Greek family. He attended Williams College, Williamstown,
Mass., and years later he wrote that the lonesome, unhappy years there provoked in him a deep antagonism toward privilege. He attended
the Drama School at Yale University, and from 1932 to 1939 he was an actor with the Group Theatre in New York City led by Lee
Strasberg and Harold Clurman.
Kazan directed his first play in New York City in 1934. He won national notice as a Broadway director with such plays as Thornton
Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (1942); Arthur Miller's All My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949); and Tennessee Williams' A
Streetcar Named Desire (1949), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). Kazan was cofounder (with Robert Lewis
and Cheryl Crawford) of the Actors Studio in 1947.
In 1944 he began to direct motion pictures. His films, many of which incorporate liberal or socially critical themes, include A Tree Grows
in Brooklyn (1945), Gentlemen's Agreement (1947), on anti-Semitism, and Pinky (1949), on racism. His classic films A Streetcar Named
Desire (1951), Viva Zapata! (1952), and On the Waterfront (1954) all starred Marlon Brando. Both Gentlemen's Agreement and On the
Waterfront won him Academy Awards. Other films included East of Eden (1955), starring James Dean, Baby Doll (1956), and Splendour
in the Grass (1960). Kazan was also codirector of the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center in New York City from 1960 to 1964.
The film America, America (1964) was adapted from his own autobiographical novel of 1962. He also wrote The Arrangement (1967; film,
1969), about the experiences of a Greek immigrant to the United States, The Assassins (1972), and The Understudy (1974).
His autobiography, Elia Kazan: A Life, was published in 1988. In it, among other things, he defended his decision to comply with the
House Committee on Un-American Activities' request in 1952 that he give the names of other Group Theatre members who had been secret
members of the Communist Party.
Kean, Edmund
b. March 17?, 1789, London, Eng., d. May 15, 1833, London
One of the greatest of English tragic actors, a turbulent genius noted as much for his megalomania and ungovernable behaviour as for his
portrayals of villains in Shakespearean plays.
Though no official record of his birth exists, it has been well established that he was the bastard son of Ann Carey, who described herself as
an itinerant actress and street hawker, and Edmund Kean, a mentally unbalanced youth who committed suicide at the age of 22. The story
of Kean's upbringing is overladen with legend, much of it the product of his own later fantasies, but during his formative years he was in
the charge of Charlotte Tidswell, mistress of Moses Kean, his father's eldest brother. Tidswell, then a small-part member of the Drury Lane
Theatre Company, was the cast-off mistress of Charles Howard, the 11th Duke of Norfolk. Extremely ambitious for her adopted child, she
gave Edmund both an early stage training and the rudiments of a general education. Her efforts to provide a disciplined home background
were defeated, however, by his willfulness and vagrancy, and for much of his childhood he lived as a waif and stray.
At the age of 15 he was his own master and set out to conquer the stage, the only world he knew. Joining the company of one Samuel
Jerrold at Sheerness, Kent, for 15 shillings a week, he engaged to "play the whole round of tragedy, comedy, opera, farce, interlude and
pantomime." The ensuing 10-year struggle was especially hard for him to endure, not only because of the privations of a strolling player's
existence but also because it prolonged the agony of his frustrated ambition. In 1808 he married Mary Chambers, a fellow member of his
theatrical company.
Kean's long apprenticeship left scars, particularly an addiction to alcohol, which he had come to rely on as a substitute for recognition. But
the experience of adversity may well have been essential to his artistic achievement. By the standards of the time, he was unsuited to the
great tragic roles. The style then in vogue was artificial, declamatory, and statuesque, and its leading exponent, John Philip Kemble, was an
actor of classic good looks, imposing figure, and vocal eloquence. Though Kean had handsome features, notably unusually expressive eyes,
he was small, with a voice that was harsh, forceful, and commanding rather than melodious. He could never have hoped to compete with
Kemble on Kemble's terms, so he had to become an innovator as well as a virtuoso. On Jan. 26, 1814, when he made his Drury Lane debut
as Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the measure of his triumph was not to outshine Kemble but to outmode him.
In his portrayal of Shylock, Kean donned a black beard instead of the traditional comic red beard and wig and played the Jew as a frenzied
and embittered monster of evil armed with a butcher knife. His performance created a sensation, and Kean quickly came to specialize in
other Shakespearean villains, most notably Richard III, Iago, and Macbeth. He also excelled at playing Othello and Hamlet. His great nonShakespearean roles were as Sir Giles Overreach in Philip Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts and as Barabas in Christopher
Marlowe's The Jew of Malta.
As an actor Kean relied on his own forceful and turbulent personality and on sudden transitions of voice and facial expression. There was
nothing improvised about his performances, however. Technically they were carefully planned, and it was said of his portrayal of Othello
that, with its unvarying tones and semitones, rests and breaks, forte and piano, crescendo and diminuendo, it might have been read from a
musical score. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge said that Kean revealed Shakespeare by "flashes of lightning." His range was limited,
however. He excelled at malign roles but usually failed at parts calling for nobility, virtue, tenderness, or comic talent. As the grim
archvillain in A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Kean was so convincing as a rapacious extortioner that he was reputed to have sent the poet
Lord Byron into convulsions; but as Romeo he was almost laughably unpersuasive. Nevertheless, he had a profound and lasting influence
on the art of acting. In magnetic power and domination of the stage he has, possibly, never been equaled.
Though Kean remained a passionately admired actor, as a public figure he became increasingly unpopular. Haunted by his fear of losing
his position as head of the British stage, he was betrayed into displays of jealousy against potential rivals. At the same time, his fame and
fortune (he earned, on the average, £10,000 a year) were insufficient to satisfy his ambitions. The climax came in 1825, when he was
successfully sued for adultery with the wife of a city alderman. This provided the pretext for a virulent press campaign, in which he was
subjected to hostile demonstrations in England and during his second, and last, tour of the United States. The last eight years of his life
were a story of slow suicide by drink and other excesses.
At Covent Garden on March 25, 1833, playing Othello to his son Charles's Iago, he collapsed during the performance--his last. A few
weeks later he died at his house at Richmond, Surrey, leaving his son only his name. The name proved to be a valuable asset, however, for
Charles Kean (1811-68), who established a reputation as the pioneer of representational realism and who in this sense is considered the
forerunner of Sir Henry Irving.
Bibliography
Harold Newcomb Hillebrand, Edmund Kean (1933, reissued 1966), provides the first scholarly examination of the evidence on Kean's parentage, birth, and
upbringing; Giles Playfair, Kean (1939, reprinted 1973), provides fuller documentation. Later works include Maurice Wilson Disher, Mad Genius (1950);
Raymund Fitzsimons, Edmund Kean, Fire from Heaven (1976); and Giles Playfair, The Flash of Lightning: A Portrait of Edmund Kean (1983).
King, Jr., Martin Luther
b. Jan. 15, 1929, Atlanta, Ga., U.S., d. April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tenn.
Eloquent black Baptist minister who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by
assassination in 1968. His leadership was fundamental to that movement's success in ending the legal segregation of blacks in the South
and other portions of the United States. King rose to national prominence through the organization of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, promoting nonviolent tactics such as the massive March on Washington (1963) to achieve civil rights. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964. The U.S. Congress voted to observe a national holiday in his honour, beginning in 1986, on the third
Monday in January.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
While in Boston, King met Coretta Scott, a native Alabamian who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. They were
married in 1953 and had four children. King had been pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, slightly more
than a year when the city's small group of civil-rights advocates decided to contest racial segregation on that city's public bus system. On
December 1, 1955, a black woman named Rosa Parks had refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger and as a consequence had
been arrested for violating the city's segregation law. Black activists formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to boycott the
transit system and chose King as their leader. He had the advantage of being a young, well-trained man who was too new in town to have
made enemies; he was generally respected, and his family connections and professional standing would enable him to find another
pastorate should the boycott fail.
In his first speech to the group as its president, King declared:
We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers
the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with
anything less than freedom and justice.
These words introduced to the nation a fresh voice, a skillful rhetoric, an inspiring personality, and in time a dynamic new doctrine of civil
struggle. Although King's home was dynamited and his family's safety threatened, he continued to lead the boycott until, one year and a
few weeks later, the blacks of Montgomery achieved their goal of desegregation of the city's buses.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Recognizing the need for a mass movement to capitalize on the successful Montgomery action, King set about organizing the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which gave him a base of operation throughout the South, as well as a national platform from
which to speak. King lectured in all parts of the country and discussed problems of blacks with civil-rights and religious leaders at home
and abroad. In February 1959 he and his party were warmly received by India's prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru; as the result of a brief
discussion with followers of Gandhi about the Gandhian concepts of satyagraha ("devotion to truth"), King became more convinced than
ever that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.
In 1960 he moved to his native city of Atlanta, where he became copastor with his father of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. At this post he
devoted most of his time to the SCLC and the civil-rights movement, declaring that the "psychological moment has come when a
concentrated drive against injustice can bring great, tangible gains." His thesis was soon tested as he agreed to support the sit-in
demonstrations undertaken by local black college students. In late October he was arrested with 33 young people protesting segregation at
the lunch counter in an Atlanta department store. Charges were dropped, but King was sentenced to Reidsville State Prison Farm on the
pretext that he had violated his probation on a minor traffic offense committed several months earlier. The case assumed national
proportions, with widespread concern over his safety, outrage at Georgia's flouting of legal forms, and the failure of President Dwight
Eisenhower to intervene. King was released only upon the intercession of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy--an action so
widely publicized in the black community throughout the nation that it was felt to have contributed substantially to Kennedy's slender
election victory eight days later.
In the years from 1960 to 1965 King's influence reached its zenith. The tactics of active nonviolence (sit-ins, protest marches) aroused the
devoted allegiance of many blacks and liberal whites in all parts of the country, as well as support from the administrations of Presidents
Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. There were also notable failures, as at Albany, Georgia (1961-62), when King and his colleagues failed
to achieve their desegregation goals for public parks and other facilities.
The Letter From The Birmingham Jail
In Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963, King's campaign to end segregation at lunch counters and in hiring practices drew
nationwide attention when police turned dogs and fire hoses on the demonstrators. King was jailed along with large numbers of his
supporters, including hundreds of schoolchildren. His supporters did not, however, include all the black clergy of Birmingham, and he was
strongly opposed by some of the white clergy who had issued a statement urging the blacks not to support the demonstrations. From the
Birmingham jail King wrote a letter of great eloquence in which he spelled out his philosophy of nonviolence:
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling
for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a
tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it
can no longer be ignored. . . . We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be
demanded by the oppressed.
Near the end of the Birmingham campaign, in an effort to draw together the multiple forces for peaceful change and to dramatize to the
nation and to the world the importance of solving the U.S. racial problem, King joined other civil-rights leaders in organizing the historic
March on Washington. On August 28, 1963, an interracial assembly of more than 200,000 gathered peaceably in the shadow of the Lincoln
Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. Here the crowds were uplifted by the emotional strength and prophetic
quality of King's famous "I have a dream" speech, in which, using biblical phraseology, King emphasized his faith that all men, someday,
would be brothers.
The rising tide of civil-rights agitation produced, as King had hoped, a strong effect on national opinion and resulted in the passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, authorizing the federal government to enforce desegregation of public accommodations and outlawing
discrimination in publicly owned facilities, as well as in employment. That eventful year was climaxed by the award to King of the Nobel
Prize for Peace at Oslo in December.
Challenges Of The Final Years
The first signs of opposition to King's tactics from within the civil-rights movement surfaced during the March 1965 demonstrations at
Selma, Alabama, which were aimed at dramatizing the need for a federal voting-rights law that would provide legal support for the
enfranchisement of blacks in the South. King organized an initial march from Selma to the state capitol building in Montgomery but did not
lead it himself; the marchers were turned back by state troopers with nightsticks and tear gas. He determined to lead a second march,
despite an injunction by a federal court and efforts from Washington to persuade him to cancel it. Heading a procession of 1,500 marchers,
black and white, he set out across Pettus Bridge outside Selma until the group came to a barricade of state troopers. But, instead of going on
and forcing a confrontation, he led his followers in kneeling in prayer and then unexpectedly turned back. This decision cost King the
support of many young radicals who were already faulting him for being too cautious. The suspicion of an "arrangement" with federal and
local authorities--vigorously but not entirely convincingly denied--clung to the Selma affair. The country was nevertheless aroused,
resulting in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Throughout the nation, impatience with the lack of greater substantive progress encouraged the growth of black militancy. Especially in the
slums of the large Northern cities, King's religious philosophy of nonviolence was increasingly questioned. The rioting in the Watts district
of Los Angeles (August 1965) demonstrated the depth of the urban race problem. In an effort to meet the challenge of the ghetto, King and
his forces initiated a drive against racial discrimination in Chicago at the beginning of the following year. The chief target was to be
segregation in housing. After a spring and summer of rallies, marches, and demonstrations, an agreement was signed between the city and a
coalition of blacks, liberals, and labour organizations, calling for various measures to strengthen the enforcement of existing laws and
regulations with respect to housing. But this agreement was to have little effect; the impression remained that King's Chicago campaign
was nullified partly because of the opposition of that city's powerful mayor, Richard J. Daley, and partly because of the unexpected
complexities of Northern racism.
In Illinois and Mississippi alike, King was now being challenged and even publicly derided by young black power enthusiasts. In the face
of mounting criticism, King's response was to broaden his approach to include concerns other than racism that were equally detrimental to
his people's progress. On April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City and again on the 15th at a mammoth peace rally in that city,
he committed himself irrevocably to opposing the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. Once before, in early January 1966, he
had condemned the war, but official outrage from Washington and strenuous opposition within the black community itself had caused him
to relent. He next sought to widen his base by forming a coalition of the poor of all races that would address itself to such economic
problems as poverty and unemployment. It was a species of populism, seeking to enroll janitors, hospital workers, seasonal labourers, and
the destitute of Appalachia, along with the student militants and pacifist intellectuals. His endeavours along these lines, however, did not
engender much support in any segment of the population.
His plans for a Poor People's March to Washington were interrupted in the spring of 1968 by a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of a
strike by that city's sanitation workers. On April 4 he was killed by a sniper's bullet while standing on the balcony of the motel where he
and his associates were staying. On March 10, 1969, the accused white assassin, James Earl Ray, pleaded guilty to the murder and was
sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Bibliography
King's letters, speeches, sermons, and other documents are collected in Clayborne Carson et al. (eds.), The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1992- ). James
Melvin Washington (ed.), A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1986, reissued 1991), is an anthology.
Biographies include David Levering Lewis, King, 2nd ed. (1978); Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound (1982, reprinted 1994); Frederick L. Downing,
To See the Promised Land (1986), a psychohistorical study; Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters (1988), focusing on King in the history of the American
civil-rights movement, 1954-63; and David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross (1986).
Studies of his intellectual influences and sources are John J. Ansbro, Martin Luther King, Jr. (1982); Peter J. Albert and Ronald Hoffman (eds.), We Shall
Overcome (1990); Lewis V. Baldwin, There Is a Balm in Gilead: The Cultural Roots of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1991); Keith D. Miller, Voice of
Deliverance: The Language of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Its Sources (1992); and James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a
Nightmare (1991). Richard Lischer, The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Word That Moved America (1995), analyzes his spoken sermons.
Littlewood, Joan (Maud)
b. 1914?, London
Influential British theatrical director who rejected the standardized form and innocuous social content of the commercial theatre in favour
of experimental productions of plays concerned with contemporary social issues.
After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Littlewood founded in the 1930s Theatre Union, which specialized in open-air
productions, and the Theatre of Action. In 1945, in Manchester, she founded Theatre Workshop--for working class audiences--which in
1953 moved to the Theatre Royal, Stratford, in the East End of London. The productions were at first mainly of Shakespeare and other
classics, with some topical plays written or adapted by her husband, Ewan MacColl, a folk singer and political dramatist. Gradually the
group developed a more definite style. Influenced by Bertolt Brecht, she encouraged audience participation, allowed onstage improvisation,
altered the text, and used techniques originally developed in the music hall. Her later productions were collective in that the actors shared in
planning the presentations. After the success in 1955 of MacColl's dramatic version of The Good Soldier Schweik, by Jaroslav Hasek, her
influence grew. Oh! What a Lovely War (1963), an original evocation and criticism of World War I using popular songs of the period,
projected newspaper headlines, and other devices to emphasize its message, became perhaps her most famous production. Other
outstanding plays, full of vitality, noisy, and broadly humorous, yet with subtle characterization, include The Quare Fellow (1956) and The
Hostage (1958) by Brendan Behan and A Taste of Honey (1958) by Shelagh Delaney. Her theatre workshop company was disbanded in
1964, and Joan Littlewood afterward became interested in projects less narrowly theatrical. In the early 1970s, however, Theatre Workshop
was reformed under her direction. She was also active in the creation of Children's Environments, Bubble Cities linked with Music Hall
around the Theatre Royal, Stratford (1968-75). Thereafter she left England to work in France.
Macready, William Charles
b. March 3, 1793, London, Eng., d. April 27, 1873, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
English actor, manager, and diarist, a leading figure in the development of acting and production techniques of the 19th century.
Macready was entered at Rugby to prepare for the bar, but financial difficulties and his sense of personal responsibility caused him to
abandon his education and take up--temporarily, he thought--the theatre, a profession for which he always felt an intense dislike. In 1810 he
made his debut in his father's company, as Romeo, at Birmingham and rapidly acquired fame in other roles in provincial theatres. In 1816
he appeared at Covent Garden, London, and played a series of melodramatic villains. He performed with such earnestness and truth that he
became firmly established, and by 1820 he was recognized as one of the finest contemporary English actors, second only to Edmund Kean.
Macready achieved his greatest fame playing such Shakespearean roles as Hamlet, Iago, Lear, Othello, and Richard II.
Macready served as the manager of Covent Garden from 1837 to 1839 and as manager of Drury Lane from 1841 to 1843. Though his
tenures as manager of these theatres were financially unsuccessful, they did allow him to extend his theory of acting to all the elements of
production. He was the first to impose upon the 19th-century theatre the principle of unity: that the actors and all others connected with a
performance were to be guided by the central concepts of the playwright. In an era when leading actors routinely memorized their lines in
private and performed their parts any way they wished, Macready insisted upon thorough rehearsals in which all the roles were well-played
and artistically coherent with each other. Macready instituted the use of accurate costumes in historical dramas and made special efforts to
obtain sets and scenery that harmonized with the plays. And finally, he rejected the corrupted versions of Shakespeare's plays that were
universally used at that time and instead reverted to the original texts. All of these innovations were realized in Macready's notable revivals
of Shakespeare's As You Like It, Macbeth, King Lear, Henry V, and The Tempest. The historical research behind these productions
influenced English stagecraft, and the principle of theatrical unity anticipated practice in the 20th century.
Macready worked tirelessly to persuade leading literary figures of the day to turn to the writing of plays. After 1825 he moved freely in the
highest literary and artistic circles of London, and the pages of his voluminous diary detail that life. Macready made several tours outside
England. In 1828 he performed in Paris, and he visited the United States in 1826, 1843, and 1848-49. During Macready's last visit to
America in 1849 a longstanding feud started by his rival, the American actor Edwin Forrest, erupted into tragedy. During a performance of
Macbeth by Macready at the Astor Place Opera House in New York City, Forrest's partisans tried to storm the theatre and thus started a riot
in which more than 20 persons were killed and from which Macready narrowly escaped with his life. He returned to England for his
farewell performances and retired from the stage in his favourite role, Macbeth, in 1851.
Macready was an intellectual actor and was at his best in such philosophical roles as Hamlet and Richelieu. He was also capable of great
emotional intensity, however. Although he was a lesser actor than David Garrick and perhaps Kean at his best, Macready was more
important than either in his influence on the acting style and production techniques that made possible the art of the modern theatre.
Mamet, David
b. Nov. 30, 1947, Chicago, Ill., U.S.
In full DAVID ALAN MAMET, American playwright, director, and screenwriter noted for his often desperate working-class characters
and for his distinctive and colloquial dialogue that is frequently profane. Mamet's use of the rhythms and rhetoric of everyday speech to
delineate character and to describe intricate relationships is also the chief motor of dramatic development.
Mamet began writing plays while attending Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont (B.A. 1969). Returning to Chicago, where most of his
plays were first staged, he worked at various factory jobs, at a real-estate agency, and as a taxi driver; all these experiences provided
background for his plays. In 1973 he cofounded a theatre company in Chicago. He also taught drama at several American colleges and
universities.
Mamet's plays include Duck Variations (produced 1972), in which two old Jewish men sit on a park bench and trade misinformation on
many subjects. In Sexual Perversity in Chicago (produced 1974; filmed as About Last Night . . . [1986]), a couple's budding sexual and
emotional relationship is destroyed by their friends' interference. American Buffalo (1976; filmed 1996) concerns dishonest business
practices; A Life in the Theatre (1977) explores the teacher-student relationship; and Speed-the-Plow (1987) concerns scriptwriters.
Glengarry Glen Ross (1983; filmed 1992) won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for drama.
Mamet wrote fiction, plays for children, and screenplays for a number of motion pictures, including The Postman Always Rings Twice
(1981), The Verdict (1982), Rising Sun (1993), and Wag the Dog (1998), all adaptations of novels. He both wrote and directed the motion
pictures House of Games (1987), Homicide (1991), Oleanna (1994), and The Spanish Prisoner (1998).
Marlowe, Christopher
(baptized Feb. 26, 1564, Canterbury, Kent, Eng.--d. May 30, 1593, Deptford, near London), Elizabethan poet and Shakespeare's most
important predecessor in English drama, who is noted especially for his establishment of dramatic blank verse.
Last Years And Literary Career
After 1587 Marlowe was in London, writing for the theatres, occasionally getting into trouble with the authorities because of his violent
and disreputable behaviour, and probably also engaging himself from time to time in government service. Marlowe won a dangerous
reputation for "atheism," but this could, in Elizabeth I's time, indicate merely unorthodox religious opinions. In Robert Greene's deathbed
tract, Greenes groats-worth of witte, Marlowe is referred to as a "famous gracer of Tragedians" and is reproved for having said, like Greene
himself, "There is no god" and for having studied "pestilent Machiuilian pollicie." There is further evidence of his unorthodoxy, notably in
the denunciation of him written by the spy Richard Baines and in the letter of Thomas Kyd to the lord keeper in 1593 after Marlowe's
death. Kyd alleged that certain papers "denying the deity of Jesus Christ" that were found in his room belonged to Marlowe, who had
shared the room two years before. Both Baines and Kyd suggested on Marlowe's part atheism in the stricter sense and a persistent delight in
blasphemy. Whatever the case may be, on May 18, 1593, the Privy Council issued an order for Marlowe's arrest; two days later the poet
was ordered to give daily attendance on their lordships "until he shall be licensed to the contrary." On May 30, however, Marlowe was
killed by Ingram Frizer, in the dubious company of Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley, at a lodging house in Deptford, where they had
spent most of the day and where, it was alleged, a fight broke out between them over the bill.
In a playwriting career that spanned little more than six years, Marlowe's achievements were diverse and splendid. Perhaps before leaving
Cambridge he had already written Tamburlaine the Great (in two parts, both performed by the end of 1587; published 1590). Almost
certainly during his later Cambridge years, Marlowe had translated Ovid's Amores (The Loves) and the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia from
the Latin. About this time he also wrote the play Dido, Queen of Carthage (published in 1594 as the joint work of Marlowe and Thomas
Nashe). With the production of Tamburlaine he received recognition and acclaim, and playwriting became his major concern in the few
years that lay ahead. Both parts of Tamburlaine were published anonymously in 1590, and the publisher omitted certain passages that he
found incongruous with the play's serious concern with history; even so, the extant Tamburlaine text can be regarded as substantially
Marlowe's. No other of his plays or poems or translations was published during his life. His unfinished but splendid poem Hero and
Leander--which is almost certainly the finest nondramatic Elizabethan poem apart from those produced by Edmund Spenser--appeared in
1598.
There is argument among scholars concerning the order in which the plays subsequent to Tamburlaine were written. It is not uncommonly
held that Faustus quickly followed Tamburlaine and that then Marlowe turned to a more neutral, more "social" kind of writing in Edward
II and The Massacre at Paris. His last play may have been The Jew of Malta, in which he signally broke new ground. It is known that
Tamburlaine, Faustus, and The Jew of Malta were performed by the Admiral's Men, a company whose outstanding actor was Edward
Alleyn, who most certainly played Tamburlaine, Faustus, and Barabas the Jew.
Works
In the earliest of Marlowe's plays, the two-part Tamburlaine the Great (c. 1587; published 1590), Marlowe's characteristic "mighty line" (as
Ben Jonson called it) established blank verse as the staple medium for later Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic writing. It appears that
originally Marlowe intended to write only the first part, concluding with Tamburlaine's marriage to Zenocrate and his making "truce with
all the world." But the popularity of the first part encouraged Marlowe to continue the story to Tamburlaine's death. This gave him some
difficulty, as he had almost exhausted his historical sources in part I; consequently the sequel has, at first glance, an appearance of padding.
Yet the effort demanded in writing the continuation made the young playwright look more coldly and searchingly at the hero he had
chosen, and thus part II makes explicit certain notions that were below the surface and insufficiently recognized by the dramatist in part I.
The play is based on the life and achievements of Timur (Timurlenk), the bloody 14th-century conqueror of Central Asia and India.
Tamburlaine is a man avid for power and luxury and the possession of beauty: at the beginning of part I he is only an obscure Scythian
shepherd, but he wins the crown of Persia by eloquence and bravery and a readiness to discard loyalty. He then conquers Bajazeth, emperor
of Turkey, he puts the town of Damascus to the sword, and he conquers the sultan of Egypt; but, at the pleas of the sultan's daughter
Zenocrate, the captive whom he loves, he spares him and makes truce. In part II Tamburlaine's conquests are further extended; whenever he
fights a battle, he must win, even when his last illness is upon him. But Zenocrate dies, and their three sons provide a manifestly imperfect
means for ensuring the preservation of his wide dominions; he kills Calyphas, one of these sons, when he refuses to follow his father into
battle. Always, too, there are more battles to fight: when for a moment he has no immediate opponent on earth, he dreams of leading his
army against the powers of heaven, though at other times he glories in seeing himself as "the scourge of God"; he burns the Qur'an, for he
will have no intermediary between God and himself, and there is a hint of doubt whether even God is to be granted recognition. Certainly
Marlowe feels sympathy with his hero, giving him magnificent verse to speak, delighting in his dreams of power and of the possession of
beauty, as seen in the following of Tamburlaine's lines:
Nature, that fram'd us of four elements
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet's course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Wills us to wear ourselves and never rest,
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.
But, especially in part II, there are other strains: the hero can be absurd in his continual striving for more demonstrations of his power; his
cruelty, which is extreme, becomes sickening; his human weakness is increasingly underlined, most notably in the onset of his fatal illness
immediately after his arrogant burning of the Qur'an. In this early play Marlowe already shows the ability to view a tragic hero from more
than one angle, achieving a simultaneous vision of grandeur and impotence.
Marlowe's most famous play is The Tragicall History of Dr. Faustus; but it has survived only in a corrupt form, and its date of composition
has been much-disputed. It was first published in 1604, and another version appeared in 1616. Faustus takes over the dramatic framework
of the morality plays in its presentation of a story of temptation, fall, and damnation and its free use of morality figures such as the good
angel and the bad angel and the seven deadly sins, along with the devils Lucifer and Mephistopheles. In Faustus Marlowe tells the story of
the doctor-turned-necromancer Faustus, who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power. The devil's intermediary in
the play, Mephistopheles, achieves tragic grandeur in his own right as a fallen angel torn between satanic pride and dark despair. The play
gives eloquent expression to this idea of damnation in the lament of Mephistopheles for a lost heaven and in Faustus' final despairing
entreaties to be saved by Christ before his soul is claimed by the devil:
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.
O, I'll leap up to my God!--Who pulls
Me down?-See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop:
ah, my Christ!-Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
Yet will I call on him: O, spare me, Lucifer!-Where is it now? 'tis gone: and see, where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!
Just as in Tamburlaine Marlowe had seen the cruelty and absurdity of his hero as well as his magnificence, so here he can enter into
Faustus' grandiose intellectual ambition, simultaneously viewing those ambitions as futile, self-destructive, and absurd. The text is
problematic in the low comic scenes spuriously introduced by later hack writers, but its more sober and consistent moments are certainly
the uncorrupted work of Marlowe.
In The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta, Marlowe portrays another power-hungry figure in the Jew Barabas, who in the villainous
society of Christian Malta shows no scruple in self-advancement. But this figure is more closely incorporated within his society than either
Tamburlaine, the supreme conqueror, or Faustus, the lonely adventurer against God. In the end Barabas is overcome, not by a divine stroke
but by the concerted action of his human enemies. There is a difficulty in deciding how fully the extant text of The Jew of Malta represents
Marlowe's original play, for it was not published until 1633. But The Jew can be closely associated with The Massacre at Paris (1593), a
dramatic presentation of incidents from contemporary French history, including the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, and with The
Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second (published 1594), Marlowe's great contribution to the Elizabethan plays
on historical themes.
As The Massacre introduces in the duke of Guise a figure unscrupulously avid for power, so in the younger Mortimer of Edward II
Marlowe shows a man developing an appetite for power and increasingly corrupted as power comes to him. In each instance the dramatist
shares in the excitement of the pursuit of glory, but all three plays present such figures within a social framework: the notion of social
responsibility, the notion of corruption through power, and the notion of the suffering that the exercise of power entails are all prominently
the dramatist's concern. Apart from Tamburlaine and the minor work Dido, Queen of Carthage (of uncertain date, published 1594 and
written in collaboration with Thomas Nashe), Edward II is the only one of Marlowe's plays whose extant text can be relied on as
adequately representing the author's manuscript. And certainly Edward II is a major work, not merely one of the first Elizabethan plays on
an English historical theme. The relationships linking the king, his neglected queen, the king's favourite, Gaveston, and the ambitious
Mortimer are studied with detached sympathy and remarkable understanding: no character here is lightly disposed of, and the abdication
and the brutal murder of Edward show the same dark and violent imagination as appeared in Marlowe's presentation of Faustus' last hour.
Though this play, along with The Jew and The Massacre, shows Marlowe's fascinated response to the distorted Elizabethan idea of
Machiavelli, it more importantly shows Marlowe's deeply suggestive awareness of the nature of disaster, the power of society, and the dark
extent of an individual's suffering.
In addition to translations (Ovid's Amores and the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia), Marlowe's nondramatic work includes the poem Hero
and Leander. This work was incomplete at his death and was extended by George Chapman: the joint work of the two poets was published
in 1598.
An authoritative edition of Marlowe's works was edited by Fredson Bowers, The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, 2nd ed., 2 vol.
(1981).
Bibliography
Biographies include Frederick S. Boas, Christopher Marlowe: A Biographical and Critical Study (1940, reprinted 1966); J. Leslie Hotson, The Death of
Christopher Marlowe (1925, reprinted 1967); Calvin Hoffman, The Murder of the Man Who Was "Shakespeare" (also published as The Man Who Was
Shakespeare, 1955); Philip Henderson, Christopher Marlowe, 2nd ed. (1974); and Gerald Pinciss, Christopher Marlowe (1975, reissued 1984). Charles
Nicholl, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (1992), postulates a conspiracy resulting in government complicity in Marlowe's murder.
Works of criticism include Paul H. Kocher, Christopher Marlowe: A Study of His Thought, Learning, and Character (1946, reissued 1974); Harry Levin,
The Overreacher: A Study of Christopher Marlowe (1952, reissued 1974); F.P. Wilson, Marlowe and the Early Shakespeare (1953, reissued 1973); J.B.
Steane, Marlowe: A Critical Study (1964, reprinted 1974); Clifford Leech, Christopher Marlowe: Poet for the Stage (1986); Roger Sales, Christopher
Marlowe (1991); and Douglas Cole, Christopher Marlowe and the Renaissance of Tragedy (1995). Anthologies of critical essays include Clifford Leech
(ed.), Marlowe: A Collection of Critical Essays (1964); Judith O'Neill (comp.), Critics on Marlowe (1969); and Kenneth Friedenreich, Roma Gill, and
Constance B. Kuriyama (eds.), "A Poet and a Filthy Play-Maker" (1987).
Meiningen Company
German MEININGER HOFTHEATERTRUPPE ("Meiningen Court Theatre Troop"), experimental acting group begun in 1866 and
directed by George II, duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and his morganatic wife, the actress Ellen Franz. It was one of the first companies in which
the importance of the director was stressed.
Inspired by the English theatre, particularly by the work of actor Charles Kean, the "Theatre Duke" sought to create a production style that
unified the conception, interpretation, and execution of dramatic works. Assisted by the actor Ludwig Chronegk, who conducted it on tour,
the duke instituted many reforms, among which were an emphasis upon historical accuracy and authenticity in costumes and sets; the use
of steps and platforms to keep the action moving fluidly on many different levels; the division of groups in crowd scenes into organic yet
distinct vocal entities; the introduction of long, carefully planned rehearsals (anticipating Konstantin Stanislavsky's method); and the
displacement of stage scenery (paintings) by settings in which the actor became a natural part of his environment.
The company's first public performance was in 1874 at Berlin. In 1881 the Meiningen Company went to London, where it presented three
plays by Shakespeare and a number of German and non-German classics. Thereafter, the ensemble performed in more than 35 European
cities, including Moscow and Brussels. In 1890, feeling the work of the company had been done, the duke closed it.
Its realistic productions profoundly affected the thinking of the Russian director Stanislavsky and the French director André Antoine, the
two major proponents of stage realism, and provided the impetus for the further exploration and development of naturalistic theatre, which
found its greatest expression and perfection in the work of the Moscow Art Theatre.
Menander
b. c. 342 BC, d. c. 292 BC
Athenian dramatist whom ancient critics considered the supreme poet of Greek New Comedy--i.e., the last flowering of Athenian stage
comedy. During his life, his success was limited; although he wrote more than 100 plays, he won only eight victories at Athenian dramatic
festivals.
Comedy had by his time abandoned public affairs and was concentrating instead on fictitious characters from ordinary life; the role of the
chorus was generally confined to the performance of interludes between acts. Actors' masks were retained but were elaborated to provide
for the wider range of characters required by a comedy of manners and helped an audience without playbills to recognize these characters
for what they were. Menander, who wrote in a refined Attic, by his time the literary language of the Greek-speaking world, was masterly at
presenting such characters as stern fathers, young lovers, greedy demimondaines, intriguing slaves, and others.
Menander's nicety of touch and skill at comedy in a light vein is clearly evident in the Dyscolus in the character of the gruff misanthrope
Knemon, while the subtle clash and contrast of character and ethical principle in such plays as Perikeiromene (interesting for its
sympathetic treatment of the conventionally boastful soldier) and Second Adelphoe constitute perhaps his greatest achievement.
Menander's works were much adapted by the Roman writers Plautus and Terence, and through them he influenced the development of
European comedy from the Renaissance. Their work also supplements much of the lost corpus of his plays, of which no complete text
exists, except that of the Dyscolus, first printed in 1958 from some leaves of a papyrus codex acquired in Egypt.
The known facts of Menander's life are few. He was allegedly rich and of good family, and a pupil of the philosopher Theophrastus, a
follower of Aristotle. In 321 Menander produced his first play, Orge ("Anger"). In 316 he won a prize at a festival with the Dyscolus and
gained his first victory at the Dionysia festival the next year. By 301 Menander had written more than 70 plays. He probably spent most of
his life in Athens and is said to have declined invitations to Macedonia and Egypt. He allegedly drowned while swimming at the Piraeus
(Athens' port).
Meyerhold, Vsevolod Yemilyevich
b. Feb. 9 [Jan. 28, old style], 1874, Penza, Russia, d. Feb. 2, 1940, Moscow
Russian theatrical producer, director, and actor whose provocative experiments in nonrealistic theatre made him one of the seminal forces
in modern theatre.
Meyerhold became a student in 1896 at the Moscow Philharmonic Dramatic School under the guidance of Vladimir NemirovichDanchenko, cofounder of the Moscow Art Theatre. Two years later, Meyerhold joined the Moscow Art Theatre and there began to
formulate his avant-garde theories of symbolic, or "conditional," theatre. In 1906 he became chief producer at the theatre of Vera
Komissarzhevskaya, a distinguished actress of the time, and staged a number of Symbolist plays that employed his radical ideas of
nonrepresentational theatre. For his presentation of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler in 1906, Meyerhold rebelled against the stylized
naturalism popularized by Konstantin Stanislavsky's art theatre and instead directed his actors to behave in puppetlike, mechanistic ways.
This production marked the beginning of an innovative theatre in Russia that became known as biomechanics. Meyerhold's unorthodox
approach to the theatre led him to break with Komissarzhevskaya in 1908. Thereafter, drawing upon the conventions of commedia dell'arte
and Oriental theatre, he went on to stage productions in Petrograd (St. Petersburg). During 1920-35 Meyerhold achieved his greatest artistic
success as a director, beginning with Fernand Crommelynck's Le Cocu magnifique (1920; The Magnificent Cuckold) and ending with his
controversial production in 1935 of Aleksandr Pushkin's story "Pikovaya Dama" ("The Queen of Spades").
Although he embraced the Russian Revolution of 1917, his fiercely individualistic temperament and artistic eccentricity brought reproach
and condemnation from Soviet critics. He was accused of mysticism and neglect of Socialist Realism. Meyerhold refused to submit to the
constraints of artistic uniformity and defended the artist's right to experiment. In 1939 he was arrested and imprisoned. Weeks later, his
actress-wife, Zinaida Raikh, was found brutally murdered in their apartment. Nothing more was heard of him in the West until 1958, when
his death in 1942 was announced in the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia; in a later edition the date was changed to 1940.
Miller, Arthur
b. Oct. 17, 1915, New York City
U.S. playwright who combined social awareness with a searching concern for his characters' inner lives. He is best known for Death of a
Salesman (1949).
Miller was shaped by the Depression, which spelled financial ruin for his father, a small manufacturer, and demonstrated to the young
Miller the insecurity of modern existence. After graduation from high school he worked in a warehouse. With the money he earned he
attended the University of Michigan, where he began to write plays. His first public success was with Focus (1945), a novel about antiSemitism. All My Sons (1947), a drama about a manufacturer of faulty war materials that strongly reflects the influence of Ibsen, was his
first important play. Death of a Salesman became one of the most famous American plays of its period. It is the tragedy of a small man
destroyed by false values that are in large part the values of his society.
The Crucible (1953) was based on the witchcraft trials in Salem, Mass., in 1692, a period Miller considered relevant to the 1950s, when
investigation of subversive activities was widespread. In 1956, when Miller was called before the House Un-American Activities
Committee, he refused to name people he had seen 10 years earlier at an alleged Communist writers' meeting. He was convicted of
contempt but appealed and won.
A Memory of Two Mondays and another short play, A View from the Bridge (a story of an Italian-American longshoreman whose passion
for his niece destroys him), were staged on the same bill in 1955. After the Fall (1964) is concerned with failure in human relationships and
its consequences. The Price (1968) continued Miller's exploration of the theme of guilt and responsibility to oneself and to others by
examining the strained relationship between two brothers. He directed the London production of the play in 1969.
The Archbishop's Ceiling, produced in Washington, D.C., in 1977, dealt with the Soviet treatment of dissident writers. The American
Clock, a series of dramatic vignettes based on Studs Terkel's Hard Times (about the Great Depression), was produced at the 1980 American
Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C.
Miller also wrote a screenplay, The Misfits (1961), for his second wife, the actress Marilyn Monroe (1926-62). I Don't Need You Any More,
a collection of his short stories, appeared in 1967, and a collection of theatre essays in 1977.
Moliere
baptized Jan. 15, 1622, Paris, France, d. Feb. 17, 1673, Paris
Original name JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN, French actor and playwright, the greatest of all writers of French comedy.
Although the sacred and secular authorities of 17th-century France often combined against him, the genius of Molière finally emerged to
win him acclaim. Comedy had a long history before Molière, who employed most of its traditional forms, but he succeeded in inventing a
new style that was based on a double vision of normal and abnormal seen in relation to each other--the comedy of the true opposed to the
specious, the intelligent seen alongside the pedantic. An actor himself, Molière seems to have been incapable of visualizing any situation
without animating and dramatizing it, often beyond the limits of probability; though living in an age of reason, his own good sense led him
not to proselytize but rather to animate the absurd, as in such masterpieces as Tartuffe, L'École des femmes, Le Misanthrope, and many
others. It is testimony to the freshness of his vision that the greatest comic artists working centuries later in other media, such as Charlie
Chaplin, are still compared to Molière.
Scandals And Successes
The first night of L'École des femmes (The School for Wives), December 26, 1662, caused a scandal as if people suspected that here was an
emergence of a comic genius that regarded nothing as sacrosanct. Some good judges have thought this to be Molière's masterpiece, as pure
comedy as he ever attained. Based on Paul Scarron's version (La Précaution inutile, 1655) of a Spanish story, it presents a pedant,
Arnolphe, who is so frightened of femininity that he decides to marry a girl entirely unacquainted with the ways of the world. The delicate
portrayal in this girl of an awakening temperament, all the stronger for its absence of convention, is a marvel of comedy. Molière crowns
his fantasy by showing his pedant falling in love with her, and his elephantine gropings toward lovers' talk are both his punishment and the
audience's delight.
From 1662 onward the Palais-Royal theatre was shared by Italian actors, each company taking three playing days in each week. Molière
also wrote plays that were privately commissioned and thus first performed elsewhere: Les Fâcheux (The Impertinents, 1732) at Vaux in
August 1661; the first version of Tartuffe at Versailles in 1664; Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme at Chambord in 1670; and Psyché in the
Tuileries Palace in 1671.
On February 20, 1662, Molière married Armande Béjart. It is not certain whether she was Madeleine's sister, as the documents state, or her
daughter, as some contemporaries suggest. There were three children of the marriage; only a daughter survived to maturity. It was not a
happy marriage; flirtations of Armande are indicated in hostile pamphlets, but there is almost no reliable information.
Molière cleverly turned the outcry produced by L'École des femmes to the credit of the company by replying to his critics on the stage. La
Critique de L'École des femmes in June 1663 and L'Impromptu de Versailles in October were both single-act discussion plays. In La
Critique Molière allowed himself to express some principles of his new style of comedy, and in the other play he made theatre history by
reproducing with astonishing realism the actual greenroom, or actors' lounge, of the company and the backchat involved in rehearsal.
The quarrel of L'École des femmes was itself outrun in violence and scandal by the presentation of the first version of Tartuffe in May
1664. The history of this great play sheds much light on the conditions in which Molière had to work and bears a quite remarkable
testimony to his persistence and capacity to show fight. He had to wait five years and risk the livelihood of his actors before his reward,
which proved to be the greatest success of his career. Most men would surely have given up the struggle: from the time of the first
performance of what was probably the first three acts of the play as it is now known, many must have feared that the Roman Catholic
Church would never allow its public performance.
Undeterred, Molière made matters worse by staging a version of Dom Juan, ou le festin de Pierre with a spectacular ending in which an
atheist is committed to hell--but only after he had amused and scandalized the audience. Dom Juan was meant to be a quick money raiser,
but it was a costly failure, mysteriously removed after 15 performances and never performed again or published by Molière. It is a priceless
example of his art. The central character, Dom Juan, carries the aristocratic principle to its extreme by disclaiming all types of obligation,
either to parents or doctors or tradesmen or God. Yet he assumes that others will fulfill their obligations to him. His servant, Sganarelle, is
imagined as his opposite in every point, earthy, timorous, superstitious. These two form the perfect French counterpart to Don Quixote and
Sancho.
Harassment By The Authorities
While engaged in his battles against the authorities, Molière continued to hold his company together single-handedly. He made up for lack
of authors by writing more plays himself. He could never be sure either of actors or authors. In 1664 he put on the first play of Jean Racine,
La Thébaïde, but the next year Racine transferred his second play, Alexandre le Grand, to a longer established theatre while Molière's
actors were actually performing it. He was constantly harassed by the authorities. These setbacks may have been offset in part by the royal
favour conferred upon Molière, but royal favour was capricious. Pensions were often promised and not paid. The court wanted more light
plays than great works. The receipts of his theatre were uncertain and fluctuating. In his 14 years in Paris, Molière wrote 31 of the 95 plays
that were presented on his stage. To meet the cumulative misfortunes of his own illness, the closing of the theatre for seven weeks upon the
death of the Queen Mother, and the proscription of Tartuffe and Dom Juan, he wrote five plays in one season (1666-67). Of the five, only
one, Le Médecin malgré lui (The Doctor in Spite of Himself, 1914), was a success.
In the preceding season, however, Le Misanthrope, almost from the start, was treated as a masterpiece by discerning playgoers, if not by
the entire public. It is a drawing-room comedy, without known sources, constructed from the elements of Molière's own company. Molière
himself played the role of Alceste, a fool of a new kind, with high principles and rigid standards, yet by nature a blind critic of everybody
else. Alceste is in love with Célimène (played by Molière's wife, Armande), a superb comic creation, equal to any and every occasion, the
incarnate spirit of society. The structure of the play is as simple as it is poetic. Alceste storms moodily through the play, finding no "honest"
men to agree with him, always ready to see the mote in another's eye, blind to the beam in his own, as ignorant of his real nature as a
Tartuffe.
The church nearly won its battle against Molière: it prevented public performance, both of Tartuffe for five years and of Dom Juan for the
whole of Molière's life. A five-act version of Tartuffe was played in 1667, but once only: it was banned by the President of Police and by
the Archbishop on pain of excommunication. Molière's reply was to lobby the King repeatedly, even in a military camp, and to publish a
defense of his play called Lettre sur la comédie de l'Imposteur. He kept his company together through 1668 with Amphitryon (January 13),
George Dandin (Versailles, July 18), and L'Avare (September 9). Sooner or later so original an author of comedy as Molière was bound to
attempt a modern sketch of the ancient comic figure of the miser. The last of his three 1668 plays, L'Avare, is composed in prose that reads
like verse; the stock situations are all recast, but the spirit is different from Molière's other works and not to everyone's taste. His miser is a
living paradox, inhuman in his worship of money, all too human in his need of respect and affection. In breathtaking scenes his mania is
made to suggest cruelty, pathological loneliness, even insanity. The play is too stark for those who expect laughter from comedy; Goethe
started the dubious fashion of calling it tragic. Yet, as before, forces of mind and will are made to serve inhuman ends and are opposed by
instinct and a very "human" nature. The basic comic suggestion is one of absurdity and incongruity rather than of gaiety.
His second play of 1668, George Dandin, often dismissed as a farce, may be one of Molière's greatest creations. It centres on a fool, who
admits his folly while suggesting that wisdom would not help him because, if things in fact go against us, it is pointless to be wise. As it
happens he is in the right, but he can never prove it. The subject of the play is trivial, the suggestion is limitless; it sketches a new range of
comedy altogether. In 1669, permission was somehow obtained, and the long run of Tartuffe at last began. More than 60 performances
were given that year alone. The theme for this play, which brought Molière more trouble than any other, may have come to him when a
local hypocrite seduced his landlady. Of the three versions of the play, only the last has survived; the first (presented in three acts played
before the King in 1664) probably portrayed a pious crook so firmly established in a bourgeois household that the master promises him his
daughter and disinherits his son. At the time it was common for lay directors of conscience to be placed in families to reprove and reform
conduct. When this "holy" man is caught making love to his employer's wife, he recovers by masterly self-reproach and persuades the
master not only to pardon him but also to urge him to see as much of his wife as possible. Molière must have seen even greater comic
possibilities in this theme, for he made five acts out of it. The final version contains two seduction scenes and a shift of interest to the comic
paradox in Tartuffe himself, posing as an inhuman ascetic while by nature he is an all-too-human lecher. It is difficult to think of a theme
more likely to offend pious minds. Like Arnolphe in L'École des femmes, Tartuffe seems to have come to grief because he trusted in wit
and forgot instinct.
Last Plays
The struggle over Tartuffe probably exhausted Molière to the point that he was unable to stave off repeated illness and supply new plays;
he had, in fact, just four years more to live. Yet he produced in 1669 Monsieur de Pourceaugnac for the King at Chambord and in 1670 Le
Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme treated a contemporary theme--social climbing among the bourgeois, or upper middle class--but it is perhaps
the least dated of all his comedies. The protagonist Jourdain, rather than being an unpleasant sycophant, is as delightful as he is fatuous, as
genuine as he is naïve; his folly is embedded in a bountiful disposition, which he of course despises. This is comedy in Molière's happiest
vein: the fatuity of the masculine master is offset by the common sense of wife and servant.
Continuing to write despite his illness, he produced Psyché and Les Fourberies de Scapin (The Cheats of Scapin, 1677) in 1671. Les
Femmes savantes (The Blue-Stockings, 1927) followed in 1672; in rougher hands this subject would have been (as some have thought it) a
satire on bluestockings, but Molière has imagined a sensible bourgeois who goes in fear of his masterful and learned wife. Le Malade
imaginaire (Eng. trans., The Imaginary Invalid), about a hypochondriac who fears death and doctors, was performed in 1673 and was
Molière's last work. It is a powerful play in its delineation of medical jargon and professionalism, in the fatuity of a would-be doctor with
learning and no sense, in the normality of the young and sensible lovers, as opposed to the superstition, greed, and charlatanry of other
characters. During the fourth performance of the play, on February 17, Molière collapsed on stage and was carried back to his house in the
rue de Richelieu to die. As he had not been given the sacraments or the opportunity of formally renouncing the actor's profession, he was
buried without ceremony and after sunset on February 21.
Molière As Actor And As Playwright
Molière's acting had been both his disappointment and his glory. He aspired to be a tragic actor, but contemporary taste was against him.
His public seemed to favour a tragic style that was pompous, with ranting and roaring, strutting and chanting. Molière had the build, the
elasticity, the india-rubber face, as it has been called, of the born comedian. Offstage he was neither a great talker nor particularly merry,
but he would mime and copy speech to the life. He had the tireless energy of the actor. He was always ready to make a scene out of an
incident, to put himself on a stage. He gave one of his characters his own cough and another his own moods, and he made a play out of
actual rehearsals. The characters of his greatest plays are like the members of his company. It was quite appropriate that he should die
while playing the part of the sick man that he really was.
The actor in him influenced his writing, since he wrote (at speed) what he could most naturally act. He gave himself choleric parts,
servants' parts, a henpecked husband, a foolish bourgeois, and a superstitious old man who cursed "that fellow Molière." (The comparison
with Charlie Chaplin recurs constantly.) Something more than animal energy and a talent for mime was at work in him, a quality that can
only be called intensity of dramatic vision. Here again actors have helped to recover an aspect of his genius that the scholars had missed,
his stage violence. To take his plays as arguments in favour of reason is to miss their vitality. His sense of reason leads him to animate the
absurd. His characters are imagined as excitable and excited to the point of incoherence. He sacrifices plot to drama, vivacity, a sense of
life. He is a classical writer, yet he is ready to defy all rules of writing.
To think of Molière as a cool apostle of reason, sharing the views of the more rational men of his plays, is a heresy that dies hard; but
careful scrutiny of the milieu in which Molière had to work makes it impossible to believe. The comedies are not sermons; such doctrine as
may be extracted from them is incidental and at the opposite pole from didacticism. Ideas are expressed to please a public, not to propagate
the author's view. If asked what he thought of hypocrisy or atheism, he would have marvelled at the question and evaded it with the
observation that the theatre is not the place for "views." There is no documentary evidence that Molière ever tried to convey his own
opinions on marriage, on the church, on hell, or on class distinctions. Strictly speaking, his views of these things are unknown. All that is
known is that he worked for and in the theatre and used his amazing power of dramatic suggestion to vivify any imagined scene. If he has
left a sympathetic picture of an atheist, it was not to recommend free thought: his picture of the earthy serving man is no less vivid, no less
sympathetic. Scholars who have tried to make his plays prove things or to convey lessons have made little sense of his work and have been
blind to its inherent fantasy and imaginative power.
Since the power of Molière's writing seems to lie in its creative vigour of language, the traditional divisions of his works into comedies of
manners, comedies of character, and farce are not helpful: he does not appear to have set out in any instance to write a certain kind of play.
He starts from an occasion in Le Mariage forcé (1664; The Forced Marriage, 1762) from doubts about marriage expressed by Rabelais's
character Panurge, and in Le Médecin malgré lui he starts from a medieval fable, or fabliau, of a woodcutter who, to avoid a beating,
pretends he is a doctor. On such skeleton themes Molière animates figures or arranges discussion in which one character exposes another or
the roles are first expressed and then reversed. It is intellectual rhythm rather than what happens, the discussion more than the story, that
conveys the charm, so that to recount the plot may be to omit the essential.
His Unique Sense Of The Comic
The attacks on Molière gave him the chance in his responses to state some aesthetic home truths. Thus, in La Critique de L'École des
femmes, he states that tragedy might be heroic, but comedy must hold the mirror up to nature: "You haven't achieved anything in comedy
unless your portraits can be seen to be living types . . . making decent people laugh is a strange business." And as for the rules that some
were anxious to impose on writers: "I wonder if the golden rule is not to give pleasure and if a successful play is not on the right track."
The attacks on L'École des femmes were child's play in comparison with the storm raised by Tartuffe and Dom Juan. The attacks on them
also drew from the poet a valuable statement of artistic principle. On Dom Juan he made no public reply since it was never officially
condemned. The documents in defense of Tartuffe are two placets, or petitions, to the King, the preface to the first edition of 1669 (all these
published over Molière's own name), and the Lettre sur la comédie de l'Imposteur of 1667. The placets and preface are aesthetically
disappointing, since Molière was forced to fight on ground chosen by his opponents and to admit that comedy must be didactic. (There is
no other evidence that Molière thought this, so it is not unfair to assume that he used the argument only when forced.) The Lettre is much
more important. It expresses in a few pregnant lines the aesthetic basis not only of Tartuffe but of Molière's new concept of comedy:
The comic is the outward and visible form that nature's bounty has attached to everything unreasonable, so that we should see, and avoid,
it. To know the comic we must know the rational, of which it denotes the absence and we must see wherein the rational consists . . .
incongruity is the heart of the comic . . . it follows that all lying, disguise, cheating, dissimulation, all outward show different from the
reality, all contradiction in fact between actions that proceed from a single source, all this is in essence comic.
Molière seems here to put his finger on what was new in his notion of what is comic: a comedy, only incidentally funny, that is based on a
constant double vision of wise and foolish, right and wrong seen together, side by side. This is his invention and his glory.
A main feature of Molière's technique is a mixing of registers, or of contexts. Characters are made to play a part, then forget it, speak out of
turn, overplay their role, so that those who watch this byplay constantly have the suggestion of mixed registers. The starting point of Le
Médecin malgré lui, the idea of beating a man to make him pretend he is a doctor, is certainly not subtle, but Molière plays with the idea,
makes his woodcutter enjoy his new experience, master the jargon, and then not know what to do with it. He utters inanities about
Hippocrates, is overjoyed to find a patient ignorant of Latin, so that he need not bother about meaning. He looks for the heart on the wrong
side and, undeterred by having his error recognized, sweeps aside the protest with the immortal: "We have changed all that." The miser
robbed of his money is pathetic, but he does not arouse emotions because his language leads him to the absurd " . . . it's all over . . . I'm
dying, I'm dead, I'm buried." He demands justice with such intemperance that his language exceeds all reason and he threatens to put the
courts in the court. Molière's Misanthrope is even more suggestive in his confusion of justice as an ideal and as a social institution: "I have
justice on my side and I lose my case!" What to him is a scandal of world order is to others just proof that he is wrongheaded. Such
concision does Molière's dramatic speech achieve.
A French Genius
When Voltaire described Molière as "the painter of France," he suggested the range of French attitudes found in the plays, and this may
explain why the French have developed a proprietary interest in a writer whom they seem to regard in a special sense as their own. They
stress aspects of his work that others tend to overlook. Three of these are noteworthy.
First, formality permeates all his works. He never gives realism--life as it is--alone, but always within a pattern and a form that fuse light
and movement, music and dance and speech. Modern productions that omit the interludes in his plays stray far from the original effect.
Characters are grouped, scenes and even speeches are arranged, comic repartee is rounded off in defiance of realism.
Second, the French stress the poetry where foreigners see psychology. They take the plays not as studies of social mania but as patterns of
fantasy that take up ideas, only to drop them when a point has been made. Le Misanthrope is not considered as a case study or a French
Hamlet but as a subtly arranged chorus of voices and attitudes that convey a critique of individualism. The play charms by its successive
evocations of its central theme. The tendency to speak one's mind is seen to be many things: idealistic or backbiting or rude or spiteful or
just fatuous. It is in this fantasy playing on the mystery of self-centredness in society that Molière is in the eyes of his own people
unsurpassed.
A third quality admired in France is his intellectual penetration in distinguishing the parts of a man from the whole man. Montaigne, the
16th-century essayist who deeply influenced Molière, divided qualities that are acquired, such as learning or politeness or skills, from those
that are natural, such as humanity or animality, what might be called "human nature" without other attributes. Molière delighted in
opposing his characters in this way; often in his plays a social veneer peels off, revealing a real man. Many of his dialogues start with
politeness and end in open insults.
Molière opposed wit to nature in many forms. His comedy embraces things within the mind and beyond it; reason and fact seldom meet. As
the beaten servant in Amphitryon observes: "That conflicts with common sense. But it is so, for all that."
Major Works
Les Précieuses ridicules (first performed 1659, published 1660; trans. by B.H. Clark, The Affected Young Ladies, 1915); L'École des femmes (1663; trans. by
the Earl of Longford, The School for Wives, 1948; and by M. Malleson, 1954); Le Tartuffe, ou l'imposteur (first version 1664, present version 1669; trans. by
M. Malleson, The Imposter, 1950); Dom Juan, ou le festin de Pierre (1665; trans. by J. Ozell as Don John; or, The Libertine, 1665 and rev. and augmented
by O. Mandell, 1963); Le Misanthrope (first performed 1666, 1667; adapted by W. Wycherly, The Plain-Dealer, 1677; trans. by M. Malleson, 1955);
L'Avare (1669; trans. by H. Fielding as The Miser, 1733; by M. Malleson, 1950; and by K. Cartledge, 1962, with the same title); Le Bourgeois gentilhomme
(1670; trans. by M. Malleson, The Prodigious Snob, 1952); Les Femmes savantes (1672; trans. by V. Beringer and M. Down, The Blue-Stockings, 1927); Le
Malade imaginaire (1674; trans. as The Imaginary Invalid by B.H. Clark, 1925; by M. Malleson, 1959; and B. Briscoe, 1967; and as The Hypochondriac by
H. Baker and J. Miller, 1961).
Editions
Collected editions of Molière's works include those by C. Varlet De La Grange, 8 vol. (1682); by M.A. Jolly, 6 vol. (1734); by Eugène Despois and Paul
Mesnard in the "Grands Écrivains de la France Series," 13 vol. (1873-1900); by René Bray in the "Belles Lettres Series," 8 vol. (1935-52); by Gustave
Michaut, 11 vol. (1949); by Robert Jouanny in the "Garnier Series," 2 vol. (1962); and by Georges Couton in the "Pléiade Series," 2 vol. (1971). Among
editions of particular plays those of L'Avare by Charles Dullin (1946), of Le Malade imaginaire by Pierre Valde (1946), of Tartuffe by Fernand Ledoux
(1953), and of Le Misanthrope by Gustave Rudler (1947) deserve special mention.
Biography
Earlier literature is superseded by Gustave Michaut, La Jeunesse de Molière (1922, reprinted 1968), Les Débuts de Molière à Paris (1923, reissued 1968),
and Les Luttes de Molière (1925, reissued 1968). See also John L. Palmer, Molière: His Life and Works (1930, reprinted 1970); Gustave Michaut (ed.),
Molière: raconté par ceux qui l'ont vu (1932); Georges Mongrédien, La Vie privée de Molière (1950); Gertrud Mander, Moliere (1973; originally published
in German, 1967); and René Bray, Molière, homme de théâtre, new ed. (1963, reissued 1972). Official documents have been collected in Madeleine Jurgens
and Elizabeth Maxfield-Miller, Cent Ans de recherches sur Molière, sur sa famille et sur les comédiens de sa troupe (1963).
Theatrical history
Henry C. Lancaster, A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century, pt. 3 (1936, reprinted 1966); Antoine Adam, Historie de la
littérature française au XVIIe siècle, vol. 3 (1956); Pierre Mélèse, Le Théâtre et le public à Paris sous Louis XIV (1934, reprinted 1976); Theodore Van Vree,
Les Pamphlets et libelles littéraires contre Molière (1933); and Burt E. and Grace P. Young (eds.), Le Registre de La Grange, 2 vol. (1947, reprinted 1977).
On particular plays, see Antoine Adam, "La Genèse des 'Précieuses ridicules,' " Revue d'histoire de la philosophie et d'histoire générale da le civilisation,
14-16 (January-March 1939); Jacques Arnavon, Le Misanthrope de Molière (1930, reprinted 1970), and L'École des femmes de Molière (1936); and René
Jasinki, Molière et le Misanthrope (1951, reissued 1970).
General criticism
Paul F. Saintonge and R.W. Christ, Fifty Years of Molière Studies: A Bibliography, 1892-1941 (1942, reissued 1977); Roger Johnson, Editha S. Neumann,
and Guy T. Trail (eds.), Molière and the Commonwealth of Letters (1975), a study that includes Paul Saintonge's "Thirty Years of Molière Studies: A
Bibliography, 1942-1971"; Laurence Romero, Molière: Traditions in Criticism, 1900-1970 (1974); Will G. Moore, Molière: A New Criticism (1949,
reprinted 1973); Jacques Guicharnaud, Molière, une aventure théâtrale. Tartuffe, Dom Juan, Le Misanthrope (1963); Harold C. Knutson, Molière: An
Archetypal Approach (1976); and Nicholas Grene, Shakespeare, Jonson, Molière: The Comic Contract (1980), a comparative study.
Moscow Art Theatre
Also called (UNTIL 1939) MOSCOW ART THEATRE, Russian MOSCOVSKY AKADEMICHESKY KHUDOZHESTVENNY TEATR,
OR MOSCOVSKY KHUDOZHESTVENNY TEATR, abbreviation MKHAT, outstanding Russian theatre of theatrical naturalism founded
in 1898 by two teachers of dramatic art, Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko . Its purpose was to establish a
theatre of new art forms, with a fresh approach to its function. Sharing similar theatrical experience and interests, the cofounders met and it
was agreed that Stanislavsky was to have absolute control over stage direction while Nemirovich-Danchenko was assigned the literary and
administrative duties. The original ensemble was made up of amateur actors from the Society of Art and Literature and from the dramatic
classes of the Moscow Philharmonic Society, where Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko had taught. Influenced by the German
Meiningen Company, Stanislavsky began to develop a system of training for actors that would enable them to perform realistically in any
sort of role and situation.
After some 70 rehearsals, the Moscow Art Theatre opened with Aleksey Tolstoy's Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich in October 1898. For its fifth
production it staged Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, a play that had failed in its first production. With its revival of The Seagull, the Art
Theatre not only achieved its first major success but also began a long artistic association with one of Russia's most celebrated playwrights:
in Chekhov's artistic realism, the Art Theatre discovered a writer suited to its aesthetic sensibilities. In The Seagull, as in all of Chekhov's
plays, the Art Theatre emphasized the subtext, the underlying meaning of the playwright's thought. Artistically, the Art Theatre tried all that
was new. Its repertoire included works of Maksim Gorky, L.N. Andreyev, Leo Tolstoy, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Gerhart Hauptmann,
among others, and it staged works of political and social significance as well as satires, fantasies, and comedies.
After the Russian Revolution it received crucial support from V.I. Lenin and A.V. Lunacharsky, first commissar of education in the Soviet
Union, and in 1922 the Art Theatre toured Europe and the United States, garnering critical acclaim wherever it performed. Returning to
Moscow in 1924, the theatre continued to produce new Soviet plays and Russian classics until its evacuation in 1941. Two successful tours
of London in the late 1950s and early '60s reestablished its preeminence in world theatre. The Art Theatre has exercised a tremendous
influence on theatres all over the world: it fostered a number of experimental studios (e.g., Vakhtangov Theatre, Realistic Theatre, Habima
Theatre, Musical Studio of Nemirovich-Danchenko), and, today, virtually all professional training in acting uses some aspects of
Konstantin Stanislavsky's method.
More on the Moscow Art Theatre
The movement toward Naturalism that was sweeping Europe reached its highest artistic peak in Russia in 1898 with the formation of the
Moscow Art Theatre (later called the Moscow Academy Art Theatre). Its name became synonymous with that of Anton Chekhov, whose
plays about the day-to-day life of the landed gentry achieved a delicate poetic realism that was years ahead of its time. Konstantin
Stanislavsky , its director, became the 20th century's most influential theorist on acting. In the early 19th century Russian theatre had been
one of the most backward in Europe, content to play a repertoire of stock theatrical pieces, mainly French comedies and farces, or Russian
imitations of them. Little time was spent on rehearsal; the plays were so similar that the same performances and sets could be used time and
again. However, the Meiningen Company, which had visited Russia during the late 1880s, had pointed the way to reform with its
exemplary discipline.
During a 17-hour conversation in a Moscow restaurant, Stanislavsky, an amateur actor of considerable experience, and Vladimir
Nemirovich-Danchenko, a playwright, teacher, and drama critic, talked over their vision of an ideal theatre company, its artistic policy, and
its production methods. On the basis of their discussion, they formed a group they called the Moscow Art Theatre Company. No great stir
was made until, later that year, they revived Chekhov's Chayka (1896; The Seagull), which had failed badly in its incompetent first
production in St. Petersburg. An instant success, the new production established the reputation of both Chekhov and Stanislavsky. The
intimacy and truthfulness of the acting were something entirely new. Through his stagings of several of Chekhov's other plays, Dyadya
Vanya (1897; Uncle Vanya ), Tri sestry (1901; Three Sisters), and Vishnyovy sad (1904; The Cherry Orchard), Stanislavsky developed a
style of infinitely detailed production, the result of long and methodical rehearsals, to achieve an almost perfect surface naturalism.
Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladimir Ivanovich
b. Dec. 23 [Dec. 11, old style], 1858, Ozurgety, Russia d. April 25, 1943, Moscow
Russian playwright, novelist, producer, and cofounder of the famous Moscow Art Theatre.
At the age of 13, Nemirovich-Danchenko was directing plays and experimenting with different stage effects. He received his formal
education at Moscow State University, where his talents as a writer and critic began to appear. As a young dramatist, his plays, which were
presented at the Maly Theatre (Moscow), were highly praised and respected, and he received at least two awards for playwriting.
In 1891 he became an instructor of dramatic art at the Moscow Philharmonic Society. Olga Knipper, Vsevolod Meyerhold, and Yevgeny
Vakhtangov were only a few of the actors and directors who came under his influence and who eventually went on to win recognition on
the Russian stage. As a teacher, Nemirovich-Danchenko expounded his ideas on theatrical art, the most important of which, such as the
need for longer, organized rehearsals and a less rigid acting style, were subsequently incorporated by Konstantin Stanislavsky into his
Method system of acting. In 1897, realizing that the Russian stage was in need of drastic reform, Nemirovich-Danchenko called a meeting
with Stanislavsky to outline the aims and policies of a new theatre, an actor's theatre, first named the Moscow Art and Popular Theatre.
Although Stanislavsky was given absolute authority over staging the productions, the contributions of Nemirovich-Danchenko were
considerable. Both as producer and as literary adviser, he was chiefly responsible for the reading and selection of new plays, and he
instructed Stanislavsky on matters of interpretation and staging as well.
Nemirovich-Danchenko encouraged both Anton Chekhov and Maksim Gorky to write for the theatre, and he is credited with the successful
revival of Chekhov's Seagull after it had failed dismally at the Aleksandrinsky Theatre. Applying the dramatic reforms of the Moscow Art
Theatre to light opera, Nemirovich-Danchenko founded the Moscow Art Musical Studio in the early 1920s and achieved outstanding
success with his staging of La Périchole and Lysistrata in New York City (1925). His autobiography was translated as My Life in the
Russian Theater (1936).
O'Casey, Sean
b. March 30, 1880, Dublin, Ire., d. Sept. 18, 1964, Torquay, Devon, Eng.
Original name JOHN CASEY, Irish playwright renowned for realistic dramas of the Dublin slums in war and revolution, in which tragedy
and comedy are juxtaposed in a way new to the theatre of his time.
O'Casey was born into a lower middle-class Irish Protestant family. His father died when John was six, and thereafter the family became
progressively poorer. With only three years of formal schooling, he educated himself by reading. He started work at 14, mostly at manual
labour, including several years with the Irish railways. (O'Casey would later exaggerate the hardships and poverty he had experienced
during childhood.)
O'Casey became caught up in the cause of Irish nationalism, and he changed his name to its Irish form and learned Gaelic. His attitudes
were greatly influenced by the poverty and squalor he witnessed in Dublin's slums and by the teachings of the Irish labour leader Jim
Larkin. O'Casey became active in the labour movement and wrote for the Irish Worker. He also joined the Irish Citizen Army, a
paramilitary arm of the Irish labour unions, and drew up its constitution in 1914. At this time he became disillusioned with the Irish
nationalist movement because its leaders put nationalist ideals before socialist ones. O'Casey did not take part in the 1916 Easter Rising
against the British authorities.
Disgusted with the existing political parties, he turned his energies to drama. His tragicomedies reflect in part his mixed feelings about his
fellow slum dwellers, seeing them as incapable of giving a socialist direction to the Irish cause but at the same time admirable for their
unconquerable spirit.
After several of his plays had been rejected, the Abbey Theatre in Dublin produced The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), set during the
guerrilla strife between the Irish Republican Army and British forces. In 1924 the Abbey staged Juno and the Paycock, his most popular
play, set during the period of civil war over the terms of Irish independence. The Plough and the Stars (1926), with the 1916 Easter Rising
as its background, caused riots at the Abbey by patriots who thought the play denigrated Irish heroes. When first produced in the 1920s,
these plays had an explosive effect on the audiences at the Abbey and helped to enlarge that theatre's reputation.
O'Casey went to England in 1926, met the Irish actress Eileen Carey Reynolds, married her, and henceforth made England his home. His
decision to live outside Ireland was motivated in part by the Abbey's rejection of The Silver Tassie, a partly Expressionist antiwar drama
produced in England in 1929. Another Expressionist play, Within the Gates (1934), followed, in which the modern world is symbolized by
the happenings in a public park. The Star Turns Red (1940) is an antifascist play, and the semiautobiographical Red Roses for Me (1946) is
set in Dublin at the time of the Irish railways strike of 1911.
His later plays, given to fantasy and ritual and directed against the life-denying puritanism he thought had beset Ireland, include Cock-aDoodle Dandy (1949), The Bishop's Bonfire (1955), and The Drums of Father Ned (1958). His last full-length play was a satire on Dublin
intellectuals, Behind the Green Curtains (published 1961).
O'Casey's three indisputably great plays are The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars. All are
tragicomedies set in the slums of Dublin during times of war and revolution. Violent death and the everyday realities of tenement life throw
into relief the blustering rhetoric and patriotic swagger of men caught up in the struggle for Irish independence. The resulting ironic
juxtapositions of the comic and tragic reveal the waste of war and the corrosive effects of poverty. O'Casey's gifts were for vivid
characterization and working-class language, and, though he portrayed war and poverty, he wrote some of the funniest scenes in modern
drama. O'Casey's later plays are not considered as powerful or moving as his earlier realistic plays. In his later plays he tended to abandon
vigorous characterization in favour of expressionism and symbolism, and sometimes the drama is marred by didacticism.
Six volumes of O'Casey's autobiography appeared from 1939 to 1956; they were later collected as Mirror in My House (1956) in the
United States and as Autobiographies (1963) in Great Britain. O'Casey's letters from 1910 to 1941 were edited by David Krause in two
volumes (1975, 1980).
Bibliography
C. Desmond Greaves, Sean O'Casey: Politics and Art (1979), traces O'Casey's social thought. Garry O'Connor, Sean O'Casey: A Life (1988), is a corrective
on biographical points.
Odets, Clifford
b. July 18, 1906, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S., d. Aug. 14, 1963, Hollywood, Calif.
Leading dramatist of the theatre of social protest in the United States during the 1930s. His important affiliation with the celebrated Group
Theatre contributed to that company's considerable influence on the American stage.
From 1923 to 1928 Odets learned his profession as an actor in repertory companies; in 1931 he joined the newly founded Group Theatre as
one of its original members. Odets' Waiting for Lefty (1935), his first great success, used both auditorium and stage for action and was an
effective plea for labour unionism; Awake and Sing (1935) was a naturalistic family situation drama; and Golden Boy (1937) was about an
Italian youth who became a professional prizefighter. Paradise Lost (1935) deals with the tragic life of a middle-class family. In 1936 he
married the Austrian actress Luise Rainer.
Odets moved to Hollywood in the late '30s to write for motion pictures and became a successful director. His later plays include The Big
Knife (1949), The Country Girl (1950; British title Winter Journey), and The Flowering Peach (1954). A musical based on Golden Boy was
made in 1964.
O'Neill, Eugene
b. Oct. 16, 1888, New York, N.Y., U.S., d. Nov. 27, 1953, Boston, Mass.
In full EUGENE GLADSTONE O'NEILL foremost American dramatist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. His
masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night (produced posthumously 1956), is at the apex of a long string of great plays, including Beyond
the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), Strange Interlude (1928), Ah! Wilderness (1933), and The Iceman Cometh (1946).
Early Life
O'Neill was born into the theatre. His father, James O'Neill, was a successful touring actor in the last quarter of the 19th century whose
most famous role was that of the Count of Monte Cristo in a stage adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas père novel. His mother, Ella,
accompanied her husband back and forth across the country, settling down only briefly for the birth of her first son, James, Jr., and of
Eugene.
Eugene, who was born in a hotel, spent his early childhood in hotel rooms, on trains, and backstage. Although he later deplored the
nightmare insecurity of his early years and blamed his father for the difficult, rough-and-tumble life the family led--a life that resulted in
his mother's drug addiction--Eugene had the theatre in his blood. He was also, as a child, steeped in the peasant Irish Catholicism of his
father and the more genteel, mystical piety of his mother, two influences, often in dramatic conflict, which account for the high sense of
drama and the struggle with God and religion that distinguish O'Neill's plays.
O'Neill was educated at boarding schools--Mt. St. Vincent in the Bronx and Betts Academy in Stamford, Conn. His summers were spent at
the family's only permanent home, a modest house overlooking the Thames River in New London, Conn. He attended Princeton University
for one year (1906-07), after which he left school to begin what he later regarded as his real education in "life experience." The next six
years very nearly ended his life. He shipped to sea, lived a derelict's existence on the waterfronts of Buenos Aires, Liverpool, and New
York City, submerged himself in alcohol, and attempted suicide. Recovering briefly at the age of 24, he held a job for a few months as a
reporter and contributor to the poetry column of the New London Telegraph but soon came down with tuberculosis. Confined to the
Gaylord Farm Sanitarium in Wallingford, Conn., for six months (1912-13), he confronted himself soberly and nakedly for the first time and
seized the chance for what he later called his "rebirth." He began to write plays.
Entry Into Theatre
O'Neill's first efforts were awkward melodramas, but they were about people and subjects--prostitutes, derelicts, lonely sailors, God's
injustice to man--that had, up to that time, been in the province of serious novels and were not considered fit subjects for presentation on
the American stage. A theatre critic persuaded his father to send him to Harvard to study with George Pierce Baker in his famous
playwriting course. Although what O'Neill produced during that year (1914-15) owed little to Baker's academic instruction, the chance to
work steadily at writing set him firmly on his chosen path.
O'Neill's first appearance as a playwright came in the summer of 1916, in the quiet fishing village of Provincetown, Mass., where a group
of young writers and painters had launched an experimental theatre. In their tiny, ramshackle playhouse on a wharf, they produced his oneact sea play Bound East for Cardiff. The talent inherent in the play was immediately evident to the group, which that fall formed the
Playwrights' Theater in Greenwich Village. Their first bill, on Nov. 3, 1916, included Bound East for Cardiff--O'Neill's New York debut.
Although he was only one of several writers whose plays were produced by the Playwrights' Theater, his contribution within the next few
years made the group's reputation. Between 1916 and 1920, the group produced all of O'Neill's one-act sea plays, along with a number of
his lesser efforts. By the time his first full-length play, Beyond the Horizon, was produced on Broadway, Feb. 2, 1920, at the Morosco
Theater, the young playwright already had a small reputation.
Beyond the Horizon impressed the critics with its tragic realism, won for O'Neill the first of four Pulitzer prizes in drama--others were for
Anna Christie, Strange Interlude, and Long Day's Journey into Night--and brought him to the attention of a wider theatre public. For the
next 20 years his reputation grew steadily, both in the United States and abroad; after Shakespeare and Shaw, O'Neill became the most
widely translated and produced dramatist.
Period Of The Major Works
O'Neill's capacity for and commitment to work were staggering. Between 1920 and 1943 he completed 20 long plays--several of them
double and triple length--and a number of shorter ones. He wrote and rewrote many of his manuscripts half a dozen times before he was
satisfied, and he filled shelves of notebooks with research notes, outlines, play ideas, and other memoranda. His most-distinguished short
plays include the four early sea plays, Bound East for Cardiff, In the Zone, The Long Voyage Home, and The Moon of the Caribbees, which
were written between 1913 and 1917 and produced in 1924 under the overall title S.S. Glencairn; The Emperor Jones (about the
disintegration of a Pullman porter turned tropical-island dictator); and The Hairy Ape (about the disintegration of a displaced steamship
coal stoker).
O'Neill's plays were written from an intensely personal point of view, deriving directly from the scarring effects of his family's tragic
relationships--his mother and father, who loved and tormented each other; his older brother, who loved and corrupted him and died of
alcoholism in middle age; and O'Neill himself, caught and torn between love for and rage at all three.
Among his most-celebrated long plays is Anna Christie, perhaps the classic American example of the ancient "harlot with a heart of gold"
theme; it became an instant popular success. O'Neill's serious, almost solemn treatment of the struggle of a poor Swedish-American girl to
live down her early, enforced life of prostitution and to find happiness with a likable but unimaginative young sailor is his leastcomplicated tragedy. He himself disliked it from the moment he finished it, for, in his words, it had been "too easy."
The first full-length play in which O'Neill successfully evoked the starkness and inevitability of Greek tragedy that he felt in his own life
was Desire Under the Elms. Drawing on Greek themes of incest, infanticide, and fateful retribution, he framed his story in the context of
his own family's conflicts. This story of a lustful father, a weak son, and an adulterous wife who murders her infant son was told with a fine
disregard for the conventions of the contemporary Broadway theatre. Because of the sparseness of its style, its avoidance of melodrama,
and its total honesty of emotion, the play was acclaimed immediately as a powerful tragedy and has continued to rank among the great
American plays of the 20th century.
In The Great God Brown, O'Neill dealt with a major theme that he expressed more effectively in later plays--the conflict between idealism
and materialism. Although the play was too metaphysically intricate to be staged successfully in 1926, it was significant for its symbolic
use of masks and for the experimentation with expressionistic dialogue and action--devices that since have become commonly accepted
both on the stage and in motion pictures. In spite of its confusing structure, the play is rich in symbolism and poetry, as well as in daring
technique, and it became a forerunner of avant-garde movements in American theatre.
O'Neill's innovative writing continued with Strange Interlude. This play was revolutionary in style and length: when first produced, it
opened in late afternoon, broke for a dinner intermission, and ended at the conventional hour. Techniques new to the modern theatre
included spoken asides or soliloquies to express the characters' hidden thoughts. The play is the saga of Everywoman, who ritualistically
acts out her roles as daughter, wife, mistress, mother, and platonic friend. Although it was innovative and startling in 1928, its obvious
Freudian overtones have rapidly dated the work.
One of O'Neill's enduring masterpieces, Mourning Becomes Electra, represents the playwright's most complete use of Greek forms, themes,
and characters. Based on the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus, it was itself three plays in one. To give the story contemporary credibility,
O'Neill set the play in the New England of the Civil War period, yet he retained the forms and the conflicts of the Greek characters: the
heroic leader returning from war; his adulterous wife, who murders him; his jealous, repressed daughter, who avenges him through the
murder of her mother; and his weak, incestuous son, who is goaded by his sister first to matricide and then to suicide.
Following a long succession of tragic visions, O'Neill's only comedy, Ah, Wilderness!, appeared on Broadway in 1933. Written in a
lighthearted, nostalgic mood, the work was inspired in part by the playwright's mischievous desire to demonstrate that he could portray the
comic as well as the tragic side of life. Significantly, the play is set in the same place and period, a small New England town in the early
1900s, as his later tragic masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night. Dealing with the growing pains of a sensitive, adolescent boy, Ah,
Wilderness! was characterized by O'Neill as "the other side of the coin," meaning that it represented his fantasy of what his own youth
might have been, rather than what he believed it to have been (as dramatized later in Long Day's Journey into Night).
The Iceman Cometh, the most complex and perhaps the finest of the O'Neill tragedies, followed in 1939, although it did not appear on
Broadway until 1946. Laced with subtle religious symbolism, the play is a study of man's need to cling to his hope for a better life, even if
he must delude himself to do so.
Even in his last writings, O'Neill's youth continued to absorb his attention. The posthumous production of Long Day's Journey into Night
brought to light an agonizingly autobiographical play, one of O'Neill's greatest. It is straightforward in style but shattering in its depiction
of the agonized relations between father, mother, and two sons. Spanning one day in the life of a family, the play strips away layer after
layer from each of the four central figures, revealing the mother as a defeated drug addict, the father as a man frustrated in his career and
failed as a husband and father, the older son as a bitter alcoholic, and the younger son as a tubercular, disillusioned youth with only the
slenderest chance for physical and spiritual survival.
O'Neill's tragic view of life was perpetuated in his relationships with the three women he married--two of whom he divorced--and with his
three children. His elder son, Eugene O'Neill, Jr. (by his first wife, Kathleen Jenkins), committed suicide at 40, while his younger son,
Shane (by his second wife, Agnes Boulton), drifted into a life of emotional instability. His daughter, Oona (also by Agnes Boulton), was
cut out of his life when, at 18, she infuriated him by marrying Charlie Chaplin, who was O'Neill's age.
Until some years after his death in 1953, O'Neill, although respected in the United States, was more highly regarded abroad. Sweden, in
particular, always held him in high esteem, partly because of his publicly acknowledged debt to the influence of the Swedish playwright
August Strindberg, whose tragic themes often echo in O'Neill's plays. In 1936 the Swedish Academy gave O'Neill the Nobel Prize for
Literature, the first time the award had been conferred on an American playwright.
O'Neill's most ambitious project for the theatre was one that he never completed. In the late 1930s he conceived of a cycle of 11 plays, to
be performed on 11 consecutive nights, tracing the lives of an American family from the early 1800s to modern times. He wrote scenarios
and outlines for several of the plays and drafts of others but completed only one in the cycle--A Touch of the Poet--before a crippling illness
ended his ability to hold a pencil. An unfinished rough draft of another of the cycle plays, More Stately Mansions, was published in 1964
and produced three years later on Broadway, in spite of written instructions left by O'Neill that the incomplete manuscript be destroyed
after his death.
O'Neill's final years were spent in grim frustration. Unable to work, he longed for his death and sat waiting for it in a Boston hotel, seeing
no one except his doctor, a nurse, and his third wife, Carlotta Monterey. O'Neill died as broken and tragic a figure as any he had created for
the stage.
Major Works
One-Act Plays Of The Sea:
Bound East for Cardiff (performed 1916); The Long Voyage Home (performed 1917), later used as the title of a film version of O'Neill's plays of the sea; Ile
(performed 1917); In the Zone (performed 1917); The Moon of the Caribbees (performed 1918), published in a collection, The Moon of the Caribbees, and
Six Other Plays of the Sea (1919), which included the first book publication of the above plays plus The Rope (performed 1918), and Where the Cross Is
Made (performed 1918). This same collection was published in 1940 as The Long Voyage Home: Seven Plays of the Sea.
Longer Plays:
Beyond the Horizon (performed and published 1920); The Emperor Jones (performed 1920, published 1921); Anna Christie (performed 1921, published
1922); The Hairy Ape (1922); All God's Chillun Got Wings (1924); Desire Under the Elms (performed 1924, published 1925); The Great God Brown (1926);
Marco Millions (performed 1928, published 1927); Strange Interlude (1928), a two-part play in nine acts; Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), a trilogy
comprising Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted; Ah, Wilderness! (1933), O'Neill's only comedy; The Iceman Cometh (written 1939, performed and
published 1946); A Touch of the Poet (written 1935-42; performed and published posthumously, 1957), third of a projected cycle of 11 plays to be
collectively entitled A Tale of the Possessors, Self-Dispossessed; Long Day's Journey into Night (written 1939-41; performed and published posthumously,
1956); A Moon for the Misbegotten (written 1943; performed 1957, published 1952); Hughie (written 1941; performed 1964, published 1959, one of a
projected cycle of one-act plays, to have been collectively entitled By Way of Orbit); More Stately Mansions (unfinished, written 1935-41; performed 1962,
published 1964).
The handiest source for all the plays is "The Library of America" Complete Plays, 3 vol. (1988). Some of the other plays have been published as separate
volumes.
Bibliography
Arthur Gelb and Barbara Gelb, O'Neill, enlarged ed. (1973, reissued 1987); Doris Alexander, The Tempering of Eugene O'Neill (1962); and Louis Shaeffer,
O'Neill, Son and Playwright (1968, reprinted 1989), and O'Neill, Son and Artist (1973, reprinted 1990), are biographies. Critical studies of his works include
Virginia Floyd (ed.), Eugene O'Neill: A World View (1980), and The Plays of Eugene O'Neill: A New Assessment (1985); Frederic I. Carpenter, Eugene
O'Neill, rev. ed. (1979); Travis Bogard, Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene O'Neill, rev. ed. (1988); and Richard F. Moorton, Jr. (ed.), Eugene O'Neill's
Century: Centennial Views on America's Foremost Tragic Dramatist (1991).
Osborne, John
b. Dec. 12, 1929, London, Eng., d. Dec. 24, 1994, Shropshire
In full JOHN JAMES OSBORNE British playwright and film producer whose Look Back in Anger (performed 1956) ushered in a new
movement in British drama and made him known as the first of the "Angry Young Men".
The son of a commercial artist and a barmaid, Osborne used insurance money from his father's death in 1941 for a boarding- school
education at Belmont College, Devon. He hated it and left after striking the headmaster. He went home to his mother in London and briefly
tried trade journalism until a job tutoring a touring company of juvenile actors introduced him to the theatre. He was soon acting himself,
later becoming an actor-manager for various repertory companies in provincial towns and also trying his hand at playwriting. His first play,
The Devil Inside Him, was written in 1950 with his friend and mentor Stella Linden, an actress and one of Osborne's first passions.
Osborne made his first appearance as a London actor in 1956, the same year that Look Back in Anger was produced by the English Stage
Company. Although the form of the play was not revolutionary, its content was unexpected. On stage for the first time were the 20- to 30year-olds of Great Britain who had not participated in World War II and found its aftermath shabby and lacking in promise. The hero,
Jimmy Porter, although the son of a worker, has, through the state educational system, reached an uncomfortably marginal position on the
border of the middle class from which he can see the traditional possessors of privilege holding the better jobs and threatening his upward
climb. Jimmy Porter continues to work in a street-market and vents his rage on his middle-class wife and her middle-class friend. No
solution is proposed for Porter's frustrations, but Osborne makes the audience feel them acutely.
Osborne's next play, The Entertainer (1957), projects a vision of a contemporary Britain diminished from its days of self-confidence. Its
hero is a failing comedian, and Osborne uses the decline of the music-hall tradition as a metaphor for the decline of a nation's vitality. In
1958 Osborne and director Tony Richardson founded Woodfall Film Productions, which produced motion pictures of Look Back in Anger
(1959), The Entertainer (1959), and, from a filmscript by Osborne that won an Academy Award, Tom Jones (1963), based on the novel by
Henry Fielding.
Luther (1961), an epic play about the Reformation leader, again showed Osborne's ability to create an actably rebellious central figure. His
two Plays for England (1962) include The Blood of the Bambergs, a satire on royalty, and Under Plain Cover, a study of an incestuous
couple playing games of dominance and submission.
The tirade of Jimmy Porter is resumed in a different key by a frustrated solicitor in Osborne's Inadmissible Evidence (1964). A Patriot for
Me (1965) portrays a homosexual Austrian officer in the period before World War I, based on the story of Alfred Redl, and shows
Osborne's interests in the decline of empire and the perils of the nonconformist. West of Suez (1971) revealed a measure of sympathy for a
type of British colonizer whose day has waned and antipathy for his ideological opponents, who are made to appear confused and neurotic.
Osborne's last play, Déjàvu (1992), a sequel to Look Back in Anger, revisits Jimmy Porter after a 35-year interval.
As revealed in the first installment of Osborne's autobiography, A Better Class of Person (1981), much of the fire in Look Back in Anger
was drawn from Osborne's own early experience. In it he attacks the mediocrity of lower-middle-class English life personified by his
mother, whom he hated, and discusses his volatile temperament. The second part of his autobiography appeared in 1991 under the title
Almost a Gentleman. Osborne was married five times.
Having come to the stage initially as an actor, Osborne achieved note for his skill in providing actable roles. He is also significant for
restoring the tirade--or passionately scathing speech--to a high place among dramatic elements. Most significantly, however, he reoriented
British drama from well-made plays depicting upper-class life to vigorously realistic drama of contemporary life.
Bibliography
Herbert Goldstone, Coping with Vulnerability: The Achievement of John Osborne (1982); Arnold P. Hinchliffe, John Osborne (1984).
Papp, Joseph
b. June 22, 1921, Brooklyn, New York, N.Y., U.S., d. Oct. 31, 1991, New York, N.Y.
Original name JOSEPH PAPIROFSKY American theatrical producer and director, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival and the
Public Theatre. He was a major innovative force in the American theatre in the second half of the 20th century.
Papp studied acting and directing at the Actor's Laboratory Theatre in Hollywood from 1946 to 1948, when he became its managing
director. Two years later he took a position as assistant stage manager of the national touring company of Arthur Miller's Death of a
Salesman. In 1954, after two years as a stage manager for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) television network in New York City,
Papp founded the New York Shakespeare Festival, which became a unique institution in the New York theatrical milieu. The festival gave
free performances of Shakespearean plays in various locations around the city, including outdoor productions in Central Park. (In 1962 the
company received a newly built, permanent home in the park, the Delacorte Theatre.) Papp worked with little or no pay for several years to
establish the festival, producing and directing the majority of the plays himself. He remained its artistic director until 1991.
In 1967 he founded the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theatre, which concentrated on contemporary and experimental dramas.
Several of its productions eventually traveled to Broadway, including Hair (1967), Sticks and Bones (1971), That Championship Season
(1972), and A Chorus Line (1975). The latter musical became the longest-running show in Broadway's history. (The old Astor Library in
Lower Manhattan was "recycled" into a seven-theatre complex to serve as the Public's physical plant.) Papp was one of the most dynamic
Off-Broadway producers from the 1960s through the 1980s, and he championed many innovative playwrights, including David Rabe and
John Guare, and talented actors, such as George C. Scott and Meryl Streep, who later achieved prominence.
Pinter, Harold
b. Oct. 10, 1930, London, Eng.
English playwright who achieved international renown as one of the most complex and challenging post-World War II dramatists. His
plays are noted for their use of understatement, small talk, reticence--and even silence--to convey the substance of a character's thought,
which often lies several layers beneath, and contradicts, his speech.
The son of a Jewish tailor, Pinter grew up in London's East End in a working-class area. He studied acting at the Royal Academy of
Dramatic Art in 1948 but left after two terms to join a repertory company as a professional actor. Pinter toured Ireland and England with
various acting companies, appearing under the name David Baron in provincial repertory theatres until 1959. After 1956 he began to write
for the stage: The Room (1957) and The Dumbwaiter (1957), his first two plays, are one-act dramas that established the mood of comic
menace that was to figure largely in his early plays. His first full-length play, The Birthday Party (1958; filmed 1968), puzzled the London
audiences and lasted only a week, but later it was televised and revived successfully on the stage.
After Pinter's radio play A Slight Ache (1959) was adapted for the stage, his reputation was secured by his second full-length play, The
Caretaker (1960; filmed 1963), which established him as more than just another practitioner of the then-popular Theatre of the Absurd. His
next major play, The Homecoming (1965), helped establish him as the originator of a unique dramatic idiom. Such later plays as Landscape
(1969), Silence (1969), Night (1969), and Old Times (1971) virtually did away with physical activity on the stage. Pinter's later successes
included No Man's Land (1975) and Betrayal (1978). From the 1970s on, Pinter did much directing, of both his own and others' works. His
Poems and Prose 1941-1977 was published in 1978.
Pinter's plays are ambivalent in their plots, presentation of character, and endings, but they are works of undeniable power and originality.
They typically begin with a pair of characters whose stereotyped relations and role-playing are disrupted by the entrance of a stranger; the
audience sees the psychic stability of the couple break down as their fears, jealousies, hatreds, sexual preoccupations, and loneliness
emerge from beneath a screen of bizarre yet commonplace conversation. In The Caretaker, for instance, a wheedling, garrulous old tramp
comes to live with two neurotic brothers, one of whom underwent electroshock therapy as a mental patient. The tramp's attempts to
establish himself in the household upset the precarious balance of the brothers' lives, and they end up evicting him. The Homecoming
focuses on the return to his London home of a university professor who brings his wife to meet his brothers and father. The woman's
presence exposes a tangle of rage and confused sexuality in this all-male household, but in the end she decides to stay with the father and
his two sons after having accepted their sexual overtures without protest from her overly detached husband.
Dialogue is of central importance in Pinter's plays and is perhaps the key to his originality. His characters' colloquial speech consists of
disjointed and oddly ambivalent conversation that is punctuated by resonant silences. The characters' speech, hesitations, and pauses reveal
not only their own alienation and the difficulties they have in communicating but also the many layers of meaning that can be contained in
even the most innocuous statements.
In addition to works for the stage, Pinter wrote radio and television dramas and a number of successful motion-picture screenplays. Among
the latter are those for three films directed by Joseph Losey, The Servant (1963), Accident (1967), and The Go-Between (1971), as well as
ones for The Last Tycoon (1974), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), and the screen version of Pinter's play Betrayal (1982).
Pirandello, Luigi
b. June 28, 1867, Agrigento, Sicily, Italy, d. Dec. 10, 1936, Rome
Italian playwright, novelist, and short-story writer, winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize for Literature. With his invention of the "theatre within
the theatre" in the play Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (1921; Six Characters in Search of an Author), he became an important innovator
in modern drama.
Pirandello was the son of a sulfur merchant who wanted him to enter commerce. Pirandello, however, was not interested in business; he
wanted to study. He first went to Palermo, the capital of Sicily, and, in 1887, to the University of Rome. After a quarrel with the professor
of classics there, he went in 1888 to the University of Bonn, Ger., where in 1891 he gained his doctorate in philology for a thesis on the
dialect of Agrigento.
In 1894 his father arranged his marriage to Antonietta Portulano, the daughter of a business associate, a wealthy sulfur merchant. This
marriage gave him financial independence, allowing him to live in Rome and to write. He had already published an early volume of verse,
Mal giocondo (1889), which paid tribute to the poetic fashions set by Giosuè Carducci. This was followed by other volumes of verse,
including Pasqua di Gea (1891; dedicated to Jenny Schulz-Lander, the love he had left behind in Bonn) and a translation of J.W. von
Goethe's Roman Elegies (1896; Elegie romane). But his first significant works were short stories, which at first he contributed to
periodicals without payment.
In 1903 a landslide shut down the sulfur mine in which his wife's and his father's capital was invested. Suddenly poor, Pirandello was
forced to earn his living not only by writing but also by teaching Italian at a teacher's college in Rome. As a further result of the financial
disaster, his wife developed a persecution mania, which manifested itself in a frenzied jealousy of her husband. His torment ended only
with her removal to a sanatorium in 1919 (she died in 1959). It was this bitter experience that finally determined the theme of his most
characteristic work, already perceptible in his early short stories--the exploration of the tightly closed world of the forever changeable
human personality.
Pirandello's early narrative style stems from the verismo ("realism") of two Italian novelists of the late 19th century--Luigi Capuana and
Giovanni Verga. The titles of Pirandello's early collections of short stories--Amori senza amore (1894; "Loves Without Love") and Beffe
della morte e della vita (1902-03; "The Jests of Life and Death")--suggest the wry nature of his realism that is seen also in his first novels:
L'esclusa (1901; The Outcast) and Il turno (1902; Eng. trans. The Merry-Go-Round of Love). Success came with his third novel, often
acclaimed as his best, Il fu Mattia Pascal (1904; The Late Mattia Pascal). Although the theme is not typically "Pirandellian," since the
obstacles confronting its hero result from external circumstances, it already shows the acute psychological observation that was later to be
directed toward the exploration of his characters' subconscious.
Pirandello's understanding of psychology was sharpened by reading such works as Les altérations de la personnalité (1892), by the French
experimental psychologist Alfred Binet; and traces of its influence can be seen in the long essay L'umorismo (1908; On Humor), in which
he examines the principles of his art. Common to both books is the theory of the subconscious personality, which postulates that what a
person knows, or thinks he knows, is the least part of what he is. Pirandello had begun to focus his writing on the themes of psychology
even before he knew of the work of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. The psychological themes used by Pirandello found
their most complete expression in the volumes of short stories La trappola (1915; "The Trap") and E domani, lunedì . . . (1917; "And
Tomorrow, Monday . . . "), and in such individual stories as "Una voce," "Pena di vivere così," and "Con altri occhi."
Meanwhile, he had been writing other novels, notably I vecchi e i giovani (1913; The Old and The Young) and Uno, nessuno e centomila
(1925-26; One, None, and a Hundred Thousand). Both are more typical than Il fu Mattia Pascal. The first, a historical novel reflecting the
Sicily of the end of the 19th century and the general bitterness at the loss of the ideals of the Risorgimento (the movement that led to the
unification of Italy), suffers from Pirandello's tendency to "discompose" rather than to "compose" (to use his own terms, in L'umorismo), so
that individual episodes stand out at the expense of the work as a whole. Uno, nessuno e centomila, however, is at once the most original
and the most typical of his novels. It is a surrealistic description of the consequences of the hero's discovery that his wife (and others) see
him with quite different eyes than he does himself. Its exploration of the reality of personality is of a type better known from his plays.
Pirandello wrote over 50 plays. He had first turned to the theatre in 1898 with L'epilogo, but the accidents that prevented its production
until 1910 (when it was retitled La morsa) kept him from other than sporadic attempts at drama until the success of Così è (se vi pare) in
1917. This delay may have been fortunate for the development of his dramatic powers. L'epilogo does not greatly differ from other drama
of its period, but Così è (se vi pare) began the series of plays that were to make him world famous in the 1920s. Its title can be translated as
Right You Are (If You Think You Are). A demonstration, in dramatic terms, of the relativity of truth, and a rejection of the idea of any
objective reality not at the mercy of individual vision, it anticipates Pirandello's two great plays, Six Characters in Search of an Author
(1921) and Enrico IV (1922; Henry IV). Six Characters is the most arresting presentation of the typical Pirandellian contrast between art,
which is unchanging, and life, which is an inconstant flux. Characters that have been rejected by their author materialize on stage,
throbbing with a more intense vitality than the real actors, who, inevitably, distort their drama as they attempt its presentation. And in
Henry IV the theme is madness, which lies just under the skin of ordinary life and is, perhaps, superior to ordinary life in its construction of
a satisfying reality. The play finds dramatic strength in its hero's choice of retirement into unreality in preference to life in the uncertain
world.
The production of Six Characters in Paris in 1923 made Pirandello widely known, and his work became one of the central influences on the
French theatre. French drama from the existentialistic pessimism of Jean Anouilh and Jean-Paul Sartre to the absurdist comedy of Eugène
Ionesco and Samuel Beckett is tinged with "Pirandellianism." His influence can also be detected in the drama of other countries, even in the
religious verse dramas of T.S. Eliot.
In 1920 Pirandello said of his own art:
I think that life is a very sad piece of buffoonery; because we have in ourselves, without being able to know why, wherefore or whence, the
need to deceive ourselves constantly by creating a reality (one for each and never the same for all), which from time to time is discovered
to be vain and illusory . . . My art is full of bitter compassion for all those who deceive themselves; but this compassion cannot fail to be
followed by the ferocious derision of destiny which condemns man to deception.
This despairing outlook attained its most vigorous expression in Pirandello's plays, which were criticized at first for being too "cerebral"
but later recognized for their underlying sensitivity and compassion. The plays' main themes are the necessity and the vanity of illusion,
and the multifarious appearances, all of them unreal, of what is presumed to be the truth. A human being is not what he thinks he is, but
instead is "one, no one and a hundred thousand," according to his appearance to this person or that, which is always different from the
image of himself in his own mind. Pirandello's plays reflect the verismo of Capuana and Verga in dealing mostly with people in modest
circumstances, such as clerks, teachers, and lodging-house keepers, but from whose vicissitudes he draws conclusions of general human
significance.
The universal acclaim that followed Six Characters and Henry IV sent Pirandello touring the world (1925-27) with his own company, the
Teatro d'Arte in Rome. It also emboldened him to disfigure some of his later plays (e.g., Ciascuno a suo modo [1924]) by calling attention
to himself, just as in some of the later short stories it is the surrealistic and fantastic elements that are accentuated.
After the dissolution, because of financial losses, of the Teatro d'Arte in 1928, Pirandello spent his remaining years in frequent and
extensive travel. In his will he requested that there should be no public ceremony marking his death--only "a hearse of the poor, the horse
and the coachman."
Bibliography
Gaspare Giudice, Pirandello (1975), presents the life and work of Pirandello in the setting of his time; it is probably the best general account of the author.
Works of criticism include Walter Starkie, Luigi Pirandello, 1867-1936, 3rd ed. rev. and enlarged (1965), a very personal, critical account, with extracts and
synopses, of Pirandello's work in the context of European literature; Thomas Bishop, Pirandello and the French Theater (1960), a useful discussion of
Pirandello's ideas and an account of his lasting influence on the French theatre; Glauco Cambon (compiler), Pirandello: A Collection of Critical Essays
(1967), a helpful set of discussions of various aspects of Pirandello criticism; Oscar Büdel, Pirandello, 2nd ed. (1969), a brief work that will be more useful
to those who already have some idea of the European background of Pirandello; Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, The Mirror of Our Anguish: A Study of Luigi
Pirandello's Narrative Writings (1978); Olga Ragusa, Luigi Pirandello: An Approach to His Theatre (1980); A. Richard Sogliuzzo, Luigi Pirandello,
Director: The Playwright in the Theatre (1982); and Anthony Caputi, Pirandello and the Crisis of Modern Consciousness (1988).
Piscator, Erwin
b. Dec. 17, 1893, Ulm, Ger.,d. March 30, 1966, Starnberg, W.Ger.
Theatrical producer and director famed for his ingenious Expressionistic staging techniques; the originator of the epic theatre style later
developed by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht.
Having studied at the König school of dramatic art and the university, Piscator began as a volunteer at the Hoft Theater; he became in turn
an actor and director. Working in Berlin during the Weimar Republic (1919-33), Piscator frankly used the theatre to convey radical
political instruction. Though not a communist, he sympathized at the time with the German working-class parties. A bold innovator, he
used films and newsreels to enlarge landscapes and convey mass events, and he employed many optical, acoustical, and mechanical devices
to create an experience of total theatre. His passion for machinery could be self-defeating, for sometimes the blaring loudspeakers, flashing
lights, air-raid sirens, and revolving sets prevented the viewers from getting the message. In exile during World War II, he headed the
Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research in New York City, from 1939 to 1951, when he returned to West Germany as
director of West Berlin's Volksbühne. He continued to produce sensational works, such as Rolf Hochhuth's Deputy, a study of the role of
Pope Pius XII during the Nazi era, and The Investigation by Peter Weiss, dealing with the mass murders at Auschwitz concentration camp.
Bibliography
John Willett's The Theatre of Erwin Piscator: Half a Century of Politics in the Theatre was published in 1979.
Plautus
b. c. 254 BC,, Sarsina, Umbria? [Italy] d. 184
Great Roman comic dramatist, whose works, loosely adapted from Greek plays, established a truly Roman drama in the Latin language.
Approach To Drama
The Roman predecessors of Plautus in both tragedy and comedy borrowed most of their plots and all of their dramatic techniques from
Greece. Even when handling themes taken from Roman life or legend, they presented these in Greek forms, setting, and dress. Plautus, like
them, took the bulk of his plots, if not all of them, from plays written by Greek authors of the late 4th and early 3rd centuries BC (who
represented the "New Comedy," as it was called), notably by Menander and Philemon. Plautus did not, however, borrow slavishly;
although the life represented in his plays is superficially Greek, the flavour is Roman, and Plautus incorporated into his adaptations Roman
concepts, terms, and usages. He referred to towns in Italy; to the gates, streets, and markets of Rome; to Roman laws and the business of
the Roman law courts; to Roman magistrates and their duties; and to such Roman institutions as the Senate.
Not all references, however, were Romanized: Plautus apparently set little store by consistency, despite the fact that some of the Greek
allusions that were left may have been unintelligible to his audiences. Terence, the more studied and polished playwright, mentions Plautus'
carelessness as a translator and upbraids him for omitting an entire scene from one of his adaptations from the Greek (though there is no
criticism of him for borrowing material, such plagiarism being then regarded as wholly commendable). Plautus allowed himself many other
liberties in adapting his material, even combining scenes from two Greek originals into one Latin play (a procedure known as
contaminatio).
Even more important was Plautus' approach to the language in which he wrote. His action was lively and slapstick, and he was able to
marry the action to the word. In his hands, Latin became racy and colloquial, verse varied and choral.
Whether these new characteristics derived from now lost Greek originals--more vigorous than those of Menander--or whether they
stemmed from the established forms and tastes of burlesque traditions native to Italy, cannot be determined with any certainty. The latter is
the more likely. The result, at any rate, is that Plautus' plays read like originals rather than adaptations, such is his witty command of the
Latin tongue--a gift admired by Cicero himself. It has often been said that Plautus' Latin is crude and "vulgar," but it is in fact a literary
idiom based upon the language of the Romans in his day.
The plots of Plautus' plays are sometimes well organized and interestingly developed, but more often they simply provide a frame for
scenes of pure farce, relying heavily on intrigue, mistaken identity, and similar devices. Plautus is a truly popular dramatist, whose comic
effect springs from exaggeration, burlesque and often coarse humour, rapid action, and a deliberately upside-down portrayal of life, in
which slaves give orders to their masters, parents are hoodwinked to the advantage of sons who need money for girls, and the procurer or
braggart soldier is outwitted and fails to secure the seduction or possession of the desired girls. Plautus, however, did also recognize the
virtue of honesty (as in Bacchides), of loyalty (as in Captivi), and of nobility of character (as in the heroine of Amphitruo).
Plautus' plays, almost the earliest literary works in Latin that have survived, are written in verse, as were the Greek originals. The metres he
used included the iambic six foot line (senarius) and the trochaic seven foot line (septenarius), which Menander had also employed. But
Plautus varied these with longer iambic and trochaic lines and more elaborate rhythms. The metres are skillfully chosen and handled to
emphasize the mood of the speaker or the action. Again, it is possible that now lost Greek plays inspired this metrical variety and
inventiveness, but it is much more likely that Plautus was responding to features already existing in popular Italian dramatic traditions. The
Senarii (conversational lines) were spoken, but the rest was sung or chanted to the accompaniment of double and fingered reed pipes. It
could indeed be said that, in their metrical and musical liveliness, performances of Plautus' plays somewhat resembled musicals of the mid20th century.
Plautus' original texts did not survive. Even by the time that Roman scholars such as Varro, a contemporary of Cicero, became interested in
the playwright, only acting editions of his plays remained. These had been adapted, modified, cut, expanded, and generally brought up-todate for production purposes. Critics and scholars have ever since attempted to establish a "Plautine" text, but 20th-century editors have
admitted the impossibility of successfully accomplishing such a task. The plays had an active stage life at least until the time of Cicero and
were occasionally performed afterward. Whereas Cicero had praised their language, the poet Horace was a more severe critic and
considered the plays to lack polish. There was renewed scholarly and literary interest in Plautus during the 2nd century AD, but it is
unlikely that this was accompanied by a stage revival, though a performance of Casina is reported to have been given in the early 4th
century. St. Jerome, toward the end of that century, says that after a night of excessive penance he would read Plautus as a relaxation; in the
mid-5th century, Sidonius Apollinaris, a Gallic bishop who was also a poet, found time to read the plays and praise the playwright amid the
alarms of the barbarian invasions.
During the Middle Ages, Plautus was little read--if at all--in contrast to the popular Terence. By the mid-14th century, however, the
Humanist scholar and poet Petrarch knew eight of the comedies. As the remainder came to light, Plautus began to influence European
domestic comedy after the Renaissance poet Ariosto had made the first imitations of Plautine comedy in the Italian vernacular. His
influence was perhaps to be seen at its most sophisticated in the comedies of Molière (whose play L'Avare, for instance, was based on
Aulularia), and it can be traced up to the present day in such adaptations as Jean Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38 (1929), Cole Porter's musical
Out of This World (1950), and the musical and motion picture A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1963). Plautus' stock
character "types" have similarly had a long line of successors: the braggart soldier of Miles Gloriosus, for example, became the "Capitano"
of the Italian commedia dell'arte, is recognizable in Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister (16th century), in Shakespeare's Pistol, and
even in his Falstaff, in Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), and in Bernard Shaw's Sergius in Arms and the Man (1894), while a trace of
the character perhaps remains in Bertolt Brecht's Eilif in Mother Courage and Her Children (1941). Thus, Plautus, in adapting Greek "New
Comedy" to Roman conditions and taste, also significantly affected the course of the European theatre.
Major Works
Twenty-one comedies (most dates uncertain) have survived: Amphitruo (Amphitryon); Asinaria (The Comedy of Asses); Aulularia (The Pot of Gold);
Bacchides (The Two Bacchuses); Captivi (The Captives); Casina; Cistellaria (The Casket Comedy); Curculio; Epidicus; Menaechmi (The Two
Menaechmuses); Mercator (The Merchant); Miles Gloriosus (The Braggart Warrior); Mostellaria (The Haunted House); Persa (The Persian); Poenulus
(The Little Carthaginian); Pseudolus (first produced 191 BC); Rudens (The Rope); Stichus (first produced 200 BC); Trinummus (Three Bob Day);
Truculentus; Vidularia (fragmentary; The Tale of a Travelling Bag).
There is an English translation of all the extant plays in the "Loeb Series" (1916-38) and a French translation in the "Budé Series" (1932-40). Several of the
plays have been translated in the "Penguin Classics Series." Many other translations of specific plays are available.
Bibliography
Full bibliography is in G.E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy, pp. 447-464 (1952); a more recent but selective one may be found in Mason
Hammond, Arthur M. Mack, and Walter Moskalew, Plautus: Miles Gloriosus, rev. ed., pp. 59-66 (1970). Still fundamental are the collections of ancient
evidence and the discussions in Martin Schanz, 4th ed. by Carl Hosius, Geschichte der römische Literatur I: Die römischen Literatur in der Zeit der
Republik, pp. 55-86 (1927); and the article "Maccius" by A.F. Sonnenberg in Pauly-Wissowa Realencyclopädie, vol. 14, col. 95-126 (1928). Useful is the
briefer article "Plautus" by G.W. Williams in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed., pp. 843-844 (1970). In addition to Duckworth (above), a good
account is in William Beare, The Roman Stage, 3rd ed. (1964). A standard text is that by M.W. Lindsay, 2 vol. (1904 and reprints). The Loeb edition with
English translation by Paul Nixon, 5 vol. (1916-38 and reprints), unfortunately used the text of Friedrich Leo, 2nd ed. (1895-96).
Poor Theatre
In terms of furthering the actor's technique, the Polish director Jerzy Grotowski, together with Stanislavsky and Brecht (see above), are the
key figures of the 20th century. Grotowski first became internationally known when his Laboratory Theatre, established in Opole, Pol., in
1959, triumphantly toured Europe and the United States during the mid-1960s. His influence was further enhanced by the publication of his
theoretical pronouncements in Towards a Poor Theatre (1968). Grotowski shared many ideas with Artaud (though the connection was
initially coincidental), especially in the conception of the performer as a "holy actor" and the theatre as a "secular religion." Theatre was to
go beyond mere entertainment or illustration; it was to be an intense confrontation with the audience (usually limited to fewer than 60). The
actors sought spontaneity within a rigid discipline achieved through the most rigorous physical training. Rejecting the paraphernalia of the
"rich theatre," Grotowski stripped away all nonessential scenery, costumes, and props to create the so-called poor theatre, where the only
focus was the unadorned actor. His productions included adaptations of Calderón's Príncipe constante (1629; The Constant Prince) and the
Polish writer Stanislaw Wyspianski's Akropolis (1904; Acropolis ).
The poor theatre became a worldwide fashion during the late 1960s and early 1970s, even though most groups who attempted it produced
only self-indulgent imitations that tended to exclude the audience. Significantly, this sense of reduction was evident in Grotowski's own
work: from 1976 he excluded the audience altogether, preferring to work behind closed doors. The spirit of poor theatre has been more
theatrically conveyed by Peter Brook. After leaving England in 1968 to establish the International Centre of Theatre Research in Paris,
Brook created a series of vivid productions that included Ubu roi (1977), a scaled-down version of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen (1982),
and Le Mahabharata (1985), a nine-hour version of the Hindu epic MahabhaIata.
Rattigan, Sir Terence (Mervyn)
b. June 10, 1911, London, d. Nov. 30, 1977, Hamilton, Bermuda
English playwright, a master of the well-made play.
Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Oxford, Rattigan had early success with two farces, French Without Tears (performed 1936) and
While the Sun Shines (performed 1943). The Winslow Boy (performed 1946), a drama based on a real-life case in which a young boy at the
Royal Naval College was unjustly accused of theft, won a New York Critics award. Separate Tables (performed 1945), perhaps his best
known work, took as its theme the isolation and frustration that result from rigidly imposed social conventions. Ross (performed 1960)
explored the life of T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) and was less traditional in its structure. A Bequest to the Nation (performed 1970) reviewed
the intimate, personal aspects of Lord Nelson's life. His last play was Cause Celebre (performed 1977).
Rattigan's works were treated coldly by some critics who saw them as unadventurous and catering to undemanding, middle-class taste.
Several of his plays do seriously explore social or psychological themes, however, and his plays consistently demonstrate solid
craftsmanship. Rattigan was knighted in 1971 for his services to the theatre. He had many screenplays to his credit, including the film
versions of The Winslow Boy (1948) and Separate Tables (1958), among others, and The Yellow Rolls Royce (1965) and Goodbye Mr.
Chips (1968).
Reinhardt, Max
b. Sept. 9, 1873, Baden, near Vienna, Austria, d. Oct. 31, 1943, New York, N.Y., U.S.
Original name MAX GOLDMANN, one of the first theatrical directors to achieve widespread recognition as a major creative artist,
working in Berlin, Salzburg, New York City, and Hollywood. He helped found the annual Salzburg Festival.
Discovery Of The Theatre
Reinhardt was the oldest of the seven children born to Wilhelm and Rose Goldmann, an Orthodox Jewish couple. With his equally
introverted only brother, Edmund, young Max played long hours with puppets and from their balcony watched the real puppets in the
streets.
Though his parents were remote from theatrical life, they were sympathetic to his fascination with the actors of the Vienna Burgtheater,
and, at the urging of one of these, they allowed their son to exchange his boredom as a bank clerk for the excitement of drama school.
Although he proved to be an inhibited actor, needing a beard and heavy makeup to release his talents, Reinhardt won local fame and friends
in Salzburg. In 1894 he succumbed to an invitation from Otto Brahm, who had brought the drama of Henrik Ibsen to Germany, to join his
Deutsches Theater in Berlin. He had assumed the stage name Reinhardt some time prior to moving to Berlin.
Reinhardt learned much from Brahm but was never wholeheartedly committed to the naturalism of his productions. He tired of "sticking a
beard . . . and eating noodles and sauerkraut on stage every night," which latter activity was required by Brahm's notion of realism, in
which nothing was to be simulated. This was not to be his direction in theatre. Quick to make friends despite his shyness, he met other
young artists in cafés. From their gatherings there emerged a lighthearted revue, Schall und Rauch (Sound and Smoke), to which Reinhardt
contributed sketches. Playing before invited audiences, it was so successful that it was transformed into a serious work and settled into the
Kleines Theater in 1902. He planned a full season and directed his first play, Oscar Wilde's Salome.
Career In Full Flower
Reinhardt exhibited his ability to make the right contact at the right time when he produced 14,000 marks to placate Brahm, who was
furious over his breach of contract. He took over the Neues Theater in 1903, and his career moved ahead rapidly. By the end of 1904, he
had directed 42 plays, but his early landmark of genius was the production in 1905 of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Reinhardt's staging was swift, light, and joyous, capturing for audiences the theatrical brilliance that had been buried for so long beneath
productions devoted to a ponderous, reverent delivery of Shakespeare's words.
The young director became famous overnight. Offered the artistic directorship of the Deutsches Theater, he would settle for nothing less
than ownership. He purchased it for 1,000,000 marks, and at age 32 he had reached the pinnacle of his profession. He completely rebuilt
the theatre, introducing the latest technological innovations in scenic design, and started a school. Purchasing a tavern next door, Reinhardt
remodeled it into a small theatre for plays that needed intimacy with the audience. He summarized his new concept in theatre with the word
Kammerspiele, "chamber plays."
In his success, Reinhardt remained close to his family. He brought his brother, Edmund, who suffered from depressions, to Berlin and acted
almost as his psychiatrist, setting him to work in the theatre to regain his confidence.Beginning in 1907, the Deutsches Theater toured
throughout Europe and the United States. The production of The Miracle, which premiered in 1911 in London and played subsequently in
New York City and European cities, was Reinhardt's most spectacular work and, at the same time, probably the most characteristic.
Reinhardt was fascinated by the sensuous quality of Roman Catholic rites and Gregorian chants. The Miracle, a work involving more than
2,000 actors, musicians, dancers, and other personnel and without dramatic dialogue, was a modern-day reunification of drama and ritual. It
was pure theatre in the most archetypal sense.
If in The Miracle he re-created an ancient unity, Reinhardt was equally important in giving new life to many of the great dramas from the
theatre's past. His staging of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex in 1910 initiated the first large-scale revival of classical Greek drama in more than
2,000 years. During the 1913-14 season he mounted new productions of 10 of the 22 Shakespearean plays he had directed, using few or no
settings and creating a major Shakespearean revival. In 1911 he brought a modern point of view to opera with his direction of the premiere
of Richard Strauss's Rosenkavalier, with a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. After many years he succeeded in helping to establish the
Salzburg Festival, staging Hofmannsthal's Jedermann (Everyman) in the city's cathedral square in 1920. With his support the Salzburg
Festival became an annual event, bringing about a new interest in the dramas of the Middle Ages from which Jedermann was adapted.
Return Home And Exile
Reinhardt had continued his work throughout World War I with no lessened sense of duty toward his art and his audience. In 1920, save for
occasional engagements, he gave up direction of the Deutsches Theater. Retiring to a castle that he had purchased in Austria, he attempted
to find in his native country the regard he had been accorded abroad. His home was a meeting place for international celebrities, but
enemies prevented him from feeling at home in his hometown. He commuted in a circuit of Berlin, Vienna, and Salzburg. When the Nazis
assumed power in Germany in 1933, Reinhardt was luckily abroad. In a letter to the Nazi government that was a typical blend of conceit,
irony, rejection of politics, and prophetic perception, he left his theatrical empire to the German people. The era of private management of
such institutions as the theatre is past, he wrote, and he foresaw that in the future it would be impossible to manage any such cultural
undertakings without state backing.
After further work in Europe, Reinhardt moved to the United States in 1938. He opened a workshop in Hollywood, where he had made a
film of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1934-35. His staging of Everyman in modern dress was followed by an unrealized plan for an allblack production of it. The final years of his life were filled with lesser fortunes and poor health, and he died speechless.
Bibliography
Huntly Carter, The Theatre of Max Reinhardt (1914, reissued 1964), attempts to define the nature of Reinhardt's work. Oliver M. Sayler (ed.), Max
Reinhardt and His Theatre (1924, reprinted 1968), contains personal accounts, profusely illustrated, and a chronology of his productions. Gottfried
Reinhardt, The Genius: A Memoir of Max Reinhardt (1979; originally published in German, 1973), by his son, offers both personal recollections and a look
at the contemporary cultural milieu. J.L. Styan, Max Reinhardt (1982), surveys his work.
Sartre, Jean-Paul
b. June 21, 1905, Paris, France, d. April 15, 1980, Paris
French novelist, playwright, and exponent of Existentialism--a philosophy acclaiming the freedom of the individual human being. He was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, but he declined it.
Post-World War II Work
Having written his defense of individual freedom and human dignity, Sartre turned his attention to the concept of social responsibility. For
many years he had shown great concern for the poor and the disinherited of all kinds. While a teacher, he had refused to wear a tie, as if he
could shed his social class with his tie and thus come closer to the worker. Freedom itself, which at times in his previous writings appeared
to be a gratuitous activity that needed no particular aim or purpose to be of value, became a tool for human struggle in his brochure
L'Existentialisme est un humanisme (1946; Existentialism and Humanism, 1948). Freedom now implied social responsibility. In his novels
and plays Sartre began to bring his ethical message to the world at large. He started a four-volume novel in 1945 under the title Les
Chemins de la liberté, of which three were eventually written: L'Âge de raison (1945; The Age of Reason, 1947), Le Sursis (1945; The
Reprieve, 1947), and La Mort dans l'âme (1949; Iron in the Soul, 1950; U.S. title, Troubled Sleep, 1950). After the publication of the third
volume, Sartre changed his mind concerning the usefulness of the novel as a medium of communication and turned back to plays.
What a writer must attempt, said Sartre, is to show man as he is. Nowhere is man more man than when he is in action, and this is exactly
what drama portrays. He had already written in this medium during the war, and now one play followed another: Les Mouches (produced
1943; The Flies, 1946), Huis-clos (1944; In Camera, 1946; U.S. title, No Exit, 1946), Les Mains sales (1948; Crime passionel, 1949; U.S.
title, Dirty Hands, 1949; acting version, Red Gloves), Le Diable et le bon dieu (1951; Lucifer and the Lord, 1953), Nekrassov (1955), and
Les Séquestrés d'Altona (1959; Loser Wins, 1959; U.S. title, The Condemned of Altona, 1960). All the plays, in their emphasis upon the
raw hostility of man toward man, seem to be predominantly pessimistic; yet, according to Sartre's own confession, their content does not
exclude the possibility of a morality of salvation. Other publications of the same period include a book, Baudelaire (1947), a vaguely
ethical study on the French writer and poet Jean Genet entitled Saint Genet, comédien et martyr (1952; Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr,
1963), and innumerable articles that were published in Les Temps Modernes, the monthly review that Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir
founded and edited. These articles were later collected in several volumes under the title Situations.
Last Years
From 1960 until 1971 most of Sartre's attention went into the writing of a four-volume study called Flaubert. Two volumes with a total of
some 2,130 pages appeared in the spring of 1971. This huge enterprise aimed at presenting the reader with a "total biography" of Gustave
Flaubert, the famous French novelist, through the use of a double tool: on the one hand, Karl Marx's concept of history and class and, on
the other, Sigmund Freud's illuminations of the dark recesses of the human soul through explorations into his childhood and family
relations. Although at times Sartre's genius comes through and his fecundity is truly unbelievable, the sheer volume of the work and the
minutely detailed analysis of even the slightest Flaubertian dictum hamper full enjoyment. As if he himself were saturated by the prodigal
abundance of his writings, Sartre moved away from his desk during 1971 and did very little writing. Under the motto that "commitment is
an act, not a word," Sartre often went into the streets to participate in rioting, in the sale of left-wing literature, and in other activities that in
his opinion were the way to promote "the revolution." Paradoxically enough, this same radical Socialist published in 1972 the third volume
of the work on Flaubert, L'Idiot de la famille, another book of such density that only the bourgeois intellectual can read it.
The enormous productivity of Sartre came herewith to a close. His mind, still alert and active, came through in interviews and in the
writing of scripts for motion pictures. He also worked on a book of ethics. However, his was no longer the power of a genius in full
productivity. Sartre became blind and his health deteriorated. In April 1980 he died of a lung tumour. His very impressive funeral, attended
by some 25,000 people, was reminiscent of the burial of Victor Hugo, but without the official recognition that his illustrious predecessor
had received. Those who were there were ordinary people, those whose rights his pen had always defended.
Biographies include Kenneth Thompson and Margaret Thompson, Sartre: Life and Works (1984); Ronald Hayman, Sartre (1987, reissued 1992); John
Gerassi, Jean-Paul Sartre: Hated Conscience of His Century (1989- ); and Kate Fullbrook and Edward Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul
Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend (1993).
Among numerous critical works on Sartre's writings and thought are Iris Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953, reissued 1989); Maurice William
Cranston, Sartre (1962, reissued 1970); Norman N. Greene, Jean-Paul Sartre: The Existentialist Ethic (1960, reprinted 1980); R.D. Laing and D.G. Cooper,
Reason & Violence: A Decade of Sartre's Philosophy, 1950-1960 (1964, reissued 1983); Philip Thody, Jean-Paul Sartre: A Literary and Political Study
(1960), and Jean-Paul Sartre (1992), on his novels; Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka (compilers), The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, 2 vol. (1974;
originally published in French, 1970); Joseph H. McMahon, Humans Being: The World of Jean-Paul Sartre (1971); Dominick La Capra, A Preface to Sartre
(1978); Thomas C. Anderson, The Foundation and Structure of Sartrean Ethics (1979), and Sartre's Two Ethics: From Authenticity to Integral Humanity
(1993); Hugh J. Silverman and Frederick A. Elliston (eds.), Jean-Paul Sartre: Contemporary Approaches to His Philosophy (1980); Michael Scriven,
Sartre's Existential Biographies (1984); and David Detmer, Freedom as a Value: A Critique of the Ethical Theory of Jean-Paul Sartre (1988). Christina
Howells (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Sartre (1992), covers his work chronologically.
Saxe-Meiningen (George II)
b. April 2, 1826, Meiningen, Saxe-Meiningen [now in Germany], d. June 25, 1914, Bad Wildungen, Waldeck
Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, theatrical director and designer who developed many of the basic principles of modern acting and stage design.
A wealthy aristocrat and head of a small German principality, Saxe-Meiningen early studied art and in 1866 established his own court
theatre group, which he served as producer, director, financial backer, and costume and scenery designer. Influenced by the contemporary
English theatre, he insisted on realistic lighting, speech, and stage mechanics and historically accurate costumes and sets. He also replaced
virtuoso solo performances on a flat stage with ensemble acting on a multilevel stage that greatly facilitated the handling of crowd scenes.
When the group was disbanded in 1890, it had toured 36 European cities. The Meiningen troupe's methods had their effect upon the
younger generation of European stage directors, particularly André Antoine, who founded the first theatre of naturalism (Théâtre-Libre,
Paris, 1887), and Konstantin Stanislavsky, an influential proponent of realism in the Russian theatre.
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus
b. c. 4 BC, Corduba, Spain, d. AD 65,, Rome
Byname SENECA THE YOUNGER Roman philosopher, statesman, orator, and tragedian. He was Rome's leading intellectual figure in the
mid-1st century AD and was virtual ruler with his friends of the Roman world between 54 and 62 during the first phase of the emperor
Nero's reign.
Philosophical Works And Tragedies
The Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii (The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius) stands apart from the rest of Seneca's surviving works. A
political skit, witty and unscrupulous, its theme is the deification--or "pumpkinification"--of Claudius. The rest divide into philosophical
works and the tragedies. The former expound an eclectic version of "Middle" Stoicism, adapted for the Roman market by Panaetius of
Rhodes (2nd century BC), and developed by his compatriot Poseidonius in the 1st century BC. Poseidonius lies behind the books on natural
science, Naturales quaestiones, where lofty generalities on the investigation of nature are offset by a jejune exposition of the facts. Of the
Consolationes, Ad Marciam consoles a lady on the loss of a son; Ad Helviam matrem, Seneca's mother on his exile; Ad Polybium, the
powerful freedman Polybius on the loss of a son but with a sycophantic plea for recall from Corsica. The De ira deals at length with the
passion of anger, its consequences, and control. The De clementia, an exhortatory address to Nero, commends mercy as the sovereign
quality for a Roman emperor. De tranquillitate animi, De constantia sapientis, De vita beata, and De otio consider various aspects of the
life and qualities of the Stoic wise man. De beneficiis is a diffuse treatment of benefits as seen by giver and recipient. De brevitate vitae
demonstrates that our human span is long enough if time is properly employed--which it seldom is. Best written and most compelling are
the Epistulae morales, addressed to Lucilius. Those 124 brilliant essays treat a range of moral problems not easily reduced to a single
formula.
Of the 10 "Senecan" tragedies, Octavia is certainly, and Hercules Oetaeus is probably, spurious. The others handle familiar Greek tragic
themes, with some originality of detail. Attempts to arrange them as a schematic treatment of Stoic "vices" seem too subtle. Intended for
playreadings rather than public presentation, the pitch is a high monotone, emphasizing the lurid and the supernatural. There are impressive
set speeches and choral passages, but the characters are static, and they rant. The principal representatives of classical tragedy known to the
Renaissance world, these plays had a great influence, notably in England. Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, John Webster's The Duchess of
Malfi, and Cyril Tourneur's Revengers Tragaedie, with their ghosts, witches, cruel tyrants, and dominant theme of vengeance, are the
progeny of Seneca's tragedies.
Stature And Influence
Hostile propaganda pursued Seneca's memory. Quintilian, the 1st-century AD rhetorician, criticized his educational influence; Tacitus was
ambivalent on Seneca's place in history. But his views on monarchy and its duties contributed to the humane and liberal temper of the age
of the Antonines (Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Commodus; AD 138-192). Meanwhile, the spread of Stoicism kept his philosophy
alive: new horizons opened when it was found to have Christian affinities. There was a belief that he knew St. Paul and a spurious
collection of letters to substantiate it. Studied by Augustine and Jerome, Seneca's works consoled Boethius in prison. His thought was a
component of the Latin culture of the Middle Ages, often filtered through anthologies. Known to Dante, Chaucer, and Petrarch, his moral
treatises were edited by Erasmus; the first complete English translation appeared in 1614. In the 16th to 18th century Senecan prose, in
content and style, served the vernacular literatures as a model for essays, sermons, and moralizing. Calvin, Montaigne, and Rousseau are
instances. As the first of "Spanish" thinkers, his influence in Spain was always powerful. Nineteenth-century specialization brought him
under fire from philosophers, scientists, historians, and students of literature. But later scholarly work and the interest aroused by the
bimillenary commemorations of his death in Spain in 1965 suggested that a Senecan revival might be under way. In his 40 surviving books
the thoughts of a versatile but unoriginal mind are expressed and amplified by the resources of an individual style.
Bibliography
Text and commentaries (Dialogi): A. Bourgery and R. Walty, 4 vol. (1922-42). (Epistulae morales): L.D. Reynolds, 2 vol. (1965). (Naturales quaestiones):
P. Oltramare, 2 vol. (1929).
General works.
C.W. Mendell, Our Seneca (1941), is good on Seneca the writer. A.L. Motto, Seneca Sourcebook (1970), is a guide to Seneca's thought as reflected in his
extant prose works; F.L. Lucas, Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy (1922), is a good introduction to the subject, although written before recent advances in
Senecan studies. C.D.N. Costa (ed.), Seneca (1974), contains seven essays by British scholars. Miriam T. Griffin, Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (1976),
is definitive.
Shakespeare, William
Baptized April 26, 1564, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, Eng., d. April 23, 1616, Stratford-upon-Avon
Shakespeare also spelled SHAKSPERE, byname BARD OF AVON, or SWAN OF AVON, English poet, dramatist, and actor, often called
the English national poet and considered by many to be the greatest dramatist of all time.
Shakespeare occupies a position unique in world literature. Other poets, such as Homer and Dante, and novelists, such as Leo Tolstoy and
Charles Dickens, have transcended national barriers; but no writer's living reputation can compare with that of Shakespeare, whose plays,
written in the late 16th and early 17th centuries for a small repertory theatre, are now performed and read more often and in more countries
than ever before. The prophecy of his great contemporary, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson, that Shakespeare "was not of an age, but for
all time," has been fulfilled.
It may be audacious even to attempt a definition of his greatness, but it is not so difficult to describe the gifts that enabled him to create
imaginative visions of pathos and mirth that, whether read or witnessed in the theatre, fill the mind and linger there. He is a writer of great
intellectual rapidity, perceptiveness, and poetic power. Other writers have had these qualities, but with Shakespeare the keenness of mind
was applied not to abstruse or remote subjects but to human beings and their complete range of emotions and conflicts. Other writers have
applied their keenness of mind in this way, but Shakespeare is astonishingly clever with words and images, so that his mental energy, when
applied to intelligible human situations, finds full and memorable expression, convincing and imaginatively stimulating. As if this were not
enough, the art form into which his creative energies went was not remote and bookish but involved the vivid stage impersonation of
human beings, commanding sympathy and inviting vicarious participation. Thus Shakespeare's merits can survive translation into other
languages and into cultures remote from that of Elizabethan England.
Shakespeare The Man
Life
Although the amount of factual knowledge available about Shakespeare is surprisingly large for one of his station in life, many find it a
little disappointing, for it is mostly gleaned from documents of an official character. Dates of baptisms, marriages, deaths, and burials;
wills, conveyances, legal processes, and payments by the court--these are the dusty details. There is, however, a fair number of
contemporary allusions to him as a writer, and these add a reasonable amount of flesh and blood to the biographical skeleton.
Early Life In Stratford
The parish register of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon shows that Shakespeare was baptized there on April 26, 1564, but his
birthday is traditionally celebrated on April 23. His father, John Shakespeare, was a burgess of the borough, who in 1565 was chosen an
alderman and in 1568 bailiff (the position corresponding to mayor, before the grant of a further charter to Stratford in 1664). He was
engaged in various kinds of trade and appears to have suffered some fluctuations in prosperity. His wife, Mary Arden, of Wilmcote,
Warwickshire, came from an ancient family and was the heiress to some land. (Given the somewhat rigid social distinctions of the 16th
century, this marriage must have been a step up the social scale for John Shakespeare.)
Stratford enjoyed a grammar school of good quality, and the education there was free, the schoolmaster's salary being paid by the borough.
No lists of the pupils who were at the school in the 16th century have survived, but it would be absurd to suppose the bailiff of the town did
not send his son there. The boy's education would consist mostly of Latin studies--learning to read, write, and speak the language fairly
well and studying some of the classical historians, moralists, and poets. Shakespeare did not go on to the university, and indeed it is
unlikely that the tedious round of logic, rhetoric, and other studies then followed there would have interested him.
Instead, at the age of 18 he married. Where and exactly when are not known, but the episcopal registry at Worcester preserves a bond dated
November 28, 1582, and executed by two yeomen of Stratford, named Sandells and Richardson, as a security to the bishop for the issue of
a license for the marriage of William Shakespeare and "Anne Hathaway of Stratford," upon the consent of her friends and upon once asking
of the banns. (Anne died in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare. There is good evidence to associate her with a family of Hathaways who
inhabited a beautiful farmhouse, now much visited, two miles from Stratford.) The next date of interest is found in the records of the
Stratford church, where a daughter, named Susanna, born to William Shakespeare, was baptized on May 26, 1583. On February 2, 1585,
twins were baptized, Hamnet and Judith. (The boy Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died 11 years later.)
How Shakespeare spent the next eight years or so, until his name begins to appear in London theatre records, is not known. There are
stories--given currency long after his death--of stealing deer and getting into trouble with a local magnate, Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote,
near Stratford; of earning his living as a schoolmaster in the country; of going to London and gaining entry to the world of theatre by
minding the horses of theatregoers; it has also been conjectured that Shakespeare spent some time as a member of a great household and
that he was a soldier, perhaps in the Low Countries. In lieu of external evidence, such extrapolations about Shakespeare's life have often
been made from the internal "evidence" of his writings. But this method is unsatisfactory: one cannot conclude, for example, from his
allusions to the law that Shakespeare was a lawyer; for he was clearly a writer, who without difficulty could get whatever knowledge he
needed for the composition of his plays.
Career In The Theatre
The first reference to Shakespeare in the literary world of London comes in 1592, when a fellow dramatist, Robert Greene, declared in a
pamphlet written on his deathbed:
There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide supposes he is as well able to
bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a
country.
It is difficult to be certain what these words mean; but it is clear that they are insulting and that Shakespeare is the object of the sarcasms.
When the book in which they appear (Greenes, groats-worth of witte, bought with a million of Repentance, 1592) was published after
Greene's death, a mutual acquaintance wrote a preface offering an apology to Shakespeare and testifying to his worth. This preface also
indicates that Shakespeare was by then making important friends. For, although the puritanical city of London was generally hostile to the
theatre, many of the nobility were good patrons of the drama and friends of actors. Shakespeare seems to have attracted the attention of the
young Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd earl of Southampton; and to this nobleman were dedicated his first published poems, Venus and Adonis
and The Rape of Lucrece.
One striking piece of evidence that Shakespeare began to prosper early and tried to retrieve the family fortunes and establish its gentility is
the fact that a coat of arms was granted to John Shakespeare in 1596. Rough drafts of this grant have been preserved in the College of
Arms, London, though the final document, which must have been handed to the Shakespeares, has not survived. It can scarcely be doubted
that it was William who took the initiative and paid the fees. The coat of arms appears on Shakespeare's monument (constructed before
1623) in the Stratford church. Equally interesting as evidence of Shakespeare's worldly success was his purchase in 1597 of New Place, a
large house in Stratford, which as a boy he must have passed every day in walking to school.
It is not clear how his career in the theatre began; but from about 1594 onward he was an important member of the Lord Chamberlain's
Company of players (called the King's Men after the accession of James I in 1603). They had the best actor, Richard Burbage; they had the
best theatre, the Globe; they had the best dramatist, Shakespeare. It is no wonder that the company prospered. Shakespeare became a fulltime professional man of his own theatre, sharing in a cooperative enterprise and intimately concerned with the financial success of the
plays he wrote.
Unfortunately, written records give little indication of the way in which Shakespeare's professional life molded his marvellous artistry. All
that can be deduced is that for 20 years Shakespeare devoted himself assiduously to his art, writing more than a million words of poetic
drama of the highest quality.
Private Life
Shakespeare had little contact with officialdom, apart from walking--dressed in the royal livery as a member of the King's Men--at the
coronation of King James I in 1604. He continued to look after his financial interests. He bought properties in London and in Stratford. In
1605 he purchased a share (about one-fifth) of the Stratford tithes--a fact that explains why he was eventually buried in the chancel of its
parish church. For some time he lodged with a French Huguenot family called Mountjoy, who lived near St. Olave's Church, Cripplegate,
London. The records of a lawsuit in May 1612, due to a Mountjoy family quarrel, show Shakespeare as giving evidence in a genial way
(though unable to remember certain important facts that would have decided the case) and as interesting himself generally in the family's
affairs.
No letters written by Shakespeare have survived, but a private letter to him happened to get caught up with some official transactions of the
town of Stratford and so has been preserved in the borough archives. It was written by one Richard Quiney and addressed by him from the
Bell Inn in Carter Lane, London, whither he had gone from Stratford upon business. On one side of the paper is inscribed: "To my loving
good friend and countryman, Mr. Wm. Shakespeare, deliver these." Apparently Quiney thought his fellow Stratfordian a person to whom
he could apply for the loan of £30--a large sum in Elizabethan money. Nothing further is known about the transaction, but, because so few
opportunities of seeing into Shakespeare's private life present themselves, this begging letter becomes a touching document. It is of some
interest, moreover, that 18 years later Quiney's son Thomas became the husband of Judith, Shakespeare's second daughter.
Shakespeare's will, which was made on March 25, 1616, is a long and detailed document. It entailed his quite ample property on the male
heirs of his elder daughter, Susanna. (Both his daughters were then married, one to the aforementioned Thomas Quiney and the other to
John Hall, a respected physician of Stratford.) As an afterthought, he bequeathed his "second-best bed" to his wife; but no one can be
certain what this notorious legacy means. The testator's signatures to the will are apparently in a shaky hand. Perhaps Shakespeare was
already ill. He died on April 23. No name was inscribed on his gravestone in the chancel of the parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Instead these lines, possibly his own, appeared:
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
Early Posthumous Documentation
Shakespeare's family or friends, however, were not content with a simple gravestone, and, within a few years, a monument was erected on
the chancel wall. It seems to have existed by 1623. Its epitaph, written in Latin and inscribed immediately below the bust, attributes to
Shakespeare the worldly wisdom of Nestor, the genius of Socrates, and the poetic art of Virgil. This apparently was how his
contemporaries in Stratford-on-Avon wished their fellow citizen to be remembered.
The Tributes Of His Colleagues
The memory of Shakespeare survived long in theatrical circles, for his plays remained a major part of the repertory of the King's Men until
the closing of the theatres in 1642. The greatest of Shakespeare's great contemporaries in the theatre, Ben Jonson, had a good deal to say
about him. To William Drummond of Hawthornden in 1619 he said that Shakespeare "wanted art." But, when he came to write his splendid
poem prefixed to the Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays in 1623, he rose to the occasion with stirring words of praise:
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
Besides almost retracting his earlier gibe about Shakespeare's lack of art, he gives testimony that Shakespeare's personality was to be felt,
by those who knew him, in his poetry--that the style was the man. Jonson also reminded his readers of the strong impression the plays had
made upon Queen Elizabeth I and King James I at court performances:
Sweet Swan of Avon, what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza and our James!
Shakespeare seems to have been on affectionate terms with his theatre colleagues. His fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell
(who, with Burbage, were remembered in his will) dedicated the First Folio of 1623 to the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Montgomery,
explaining that they had collected the plays " . . . without ambition either of self-profit or fame; only to keep the memory of so worthy a
friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare, . . . "
Anecdotes And Documents
Seventeenth-century antiquaries began to collect anecdotes about Shakespeare, but no serious life was written until 1709, when Nicholas
Rowe tried to assemble information from all available sources with the aim of producing a connected narrative. There were local traditions
at Stratford: witticisms and lampoons of local characters; scandalous stories of drunkenness and sexual escapades. About 1661 the Vicar of
Stratford wrote in his diary: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and it seems drank too hard; for Shakespeare
died of a fever there contracted." On the other hand, the antiquary John Aubrey wrote in some notes about Shakespeare: "He was not a
company keeper; lived in Shoreditch; wouldn't be debauched, and, if invited to, writ he was in pain." Richard Davies, archdeacon of
Lichfield, reported, "He died a papist." How much trust can be put in such a story is uncertain. In the early 18th century, a story appeared
that Queen Elizabeth had obliged Shakespeare "to write a play of Sir John Falstaff in love" and that he had performed the task (The Merry
Wives of Windsor) in a fortnight. There are other stories, all of uncertain authenticity and some mere fabrications.
When serious scholarship began in the 18th century, it was too late to gain anything from traditions. But documents began to be discovered.
Shakespeare's will was found in 1747 and his marriage license in 1836. The documents relating to the Mountjoy lawsuit already mentioned
were found and printed in 1910. It is possible that further documents of a legal nature may yet be discovered, but as time passes the hope
becomes more remote. Modern scholarship is more concerned to study Shakespeare in relation to his social environment, both in Stratford
and in London. This is not easy, because the author and actor lived a somewhat detached life: a respected tithe-owning country gentleman
in Stratford, perhaps, but a rather rootless artist in London.
The Poet And Dramatist
The Intellectual Background
Shakespeare lived at a time when ideas and social structures established in the Middle Ages still informed men's thought and behaviour.
Queen Elizabeth I was God's deputy on earth, and lords and commons had their due places in society under her, with responsibilities up
through her to God and down to those of more humble rank. The order of things, however, did not go unquestioned. Atheism was still
considered a challenge to the beliefs and way of life of a majority of Elizabethans, but the Christian faith was no longer single--Rome's
authority had been challenged by Martin Luther, John Calvin, a multitude of small religious sects, and, indeed, the English church itself.
Royal prerogative was challenged in Parliament; the economic and social orders were disturbed by the rise of capitalism, by the
redistribution of monastic lands under Henry VIII, by the expansion of education, and by the influx of new wealth from discovery of new
lands.
An interplay of new and old ideas was typical of the time: official homilies exhorted the people to obedience, the Italian political theorist
Niccolò Machiavelli was expounding a new practical code of politics that caused Englishmen to fear the Italian "Machiavillain" and yet
prompted them to ask what men do, rather than what they should do. In Hamlet, disquisitions--on man, belief, a "rotten" state, and times
"out of joint"--clearly reflect a growing disquiet and skepticism. The translation of Montaigne's Essays in 1603 gave further currency,
range, and finesse to such thought, and Shakespeare was one of many who read them, making direct and significant quotations in The
Tempest. In philosophical inquiry the question "how?" became the impulse for advance, rather than the traditional "why?" of Aristotle.
Shakespeare's plays written between 1603 and 1606 unmistakably reflect a new, Jacobean distrust. James I, who, like Elizabeth, claimed
divine authority, was far less able than she to maintain the authority of the throne. The so-called Gunpowder Plot (1605) showed a
determined challenge by a small minority in the state; James's struggles with the House of Commons in successive Parliaments, in addition
to indicating the strength of the "new men," also revealed the inadequacies of the administration.
Poetic Conventions And Dramatic Traditions
The Latin comedies of Plautus and Terence were familiar in Elizabethan schools and universities, and English translations or adaptations of
them were occasionally performed by students. Seneca's rhetorical and sensational tragedies, too, had been translated and often imitated,
both in structure and rhetoric. But there was also a strong native dramatic tradition deriving from the medieval miracle plays, which had
continued to be performed in various towns until forbidden during Elizabeth's reign. This native drama had been able to assimilate French
popular farce, clerically inspired morality plays on abstract themes, and interludes or short entertainments that made use of the "turns" of
individual clowns and actors. Although Shakespeare's immediate predecessors were known as "university wits," their plays were seldom
structured in the manner of those they had studied at Oxford or Cambridge; instead, they used and developed the more popular narrative
forms. Their subplots, for example, amplified the main action and theme with a freedom and awareness of hierarchical correspondences
that are medieval rather than classical. (See Senecan tragedy, revenge tragedy, morality play, liturgical drama, University wit.)
Changes In Language
The English language at this time was changing and extending its range. The poet Edmund Spenser led with the restoration of old words,
and schoolmasters, poets, sophisticated courtiers, and travellers all brought further contributions from France, Italy, and the Roman
classics, as well as from farther afield. Helped by the growing availability of cheaper, printed books, the language began to become
standardized in grammar and vocabulary and, more slowly, in spelling. Ambitious for a European and permanent reputation, the essayist
and philosopher Francis Bacon wrote in Latin as well as in English; but, if he had lived only a few decades later, even he might have had
total confidence in his own tongue.
Shakespeare's Literary Debts
In Shakespeare's earlier works his debts stand out clearly: to Plautus for the structure of The Comedy of Errors; to the poet Ovid and to
Seneca for rhetoric and incident in Titus Andronicus; to morality drama for a scene in which a father mourns his dead son, and a son his
father, in Henry VI; to Marlowe for sentiments and characterization in Richard III and The Merchant of Venice; to the Italian popular
tradition of commedia dell'arte for characterization and dramatic style in The Taming of the Shrew; and so on. But he did not then reject
these influences; rather, he made them his own, so that soon there was no line between their effects and his. In The Tempest (which is
perhaps the most original of all his plays in form, theme, language, and setting) folk influences may also be traced, together with a newer
and more obvious debt to a courtly diversion known as the masque, as developed by Ben Jonson and others at the court of King James.
Theatrical Conditions
The Globe and its predecessor, the Theatre, were public playhouses run by the Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men), a leading theatre
company of which Shakespeare was a member. To these playhouses almost all classes of citizens, except the Puritans, came for afternoon
entertainment. The players were also summoned to court, to perform before the monarch and assembled nobility. In the summer they
toured the provinces, and on occasion they performed at London's Inns of Court (associations of law students), at universities, and in great
houses. Popularity led to an insatiable demand for plays: repertories were always changing, so that early in 1613 the King's Men could
present "fourteen several plays." The theatre soon became fashionable too, and in 1608-09 the King's Men started to perform on a regular
basis at the Blackfriars, a "private" indoor theatre where high admission charges assured the company a more select and sophisticated
audience for their performances.
Shakespeare's first associations with the Chamberlain's Men seem to have been as an actor. He is not known to have acted after 1603, and
tradition gives him only secondary roles, such as the ghost in Hamlet and Adam in As You Like It, but his continuous association must have
given him direct working knowledge of all aspects of theatre: like Aeschylus, Molière, Bertolt Brecht, or Harold Pinter, Shakespeare was
able to work with his plays in rehearsal and performance and to know his actors and his audiences and all the different potentialities of
theatres and their equipment. Numerous passages in Shakespeare's plays show conscious concern for theatre arts and audience reactions.
Prospero in The Tempest speaks of the whole of life as a kind of "revels," or theatrical show, that, like a dream, will soon be over. The
Duke of York in Richard II is conscious of how . . . in a theatre, the eyes of men, “After a well-graced actor leaves the stage Are idly bent
on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious.” And Hamlet gives expert advice to visiting actors in the art of playing.
In Shakespeare's day, there was little time for group rehearsals, and actors were given the words of only their own parts. The crucial scenes
in Shakespeare's plays, therefore, are between two or three characters only, or else are played with one character dominating a crowded
stage. Female parts were written for young male actors or boys, so Shakespeare did not often write big roles for them or keep them actively
engaged on stage for lengthy periods. Writing for the clowns of the company--who were important popular attractions in any play-presented the problem of allowing them to use their comic personalities and tricks and yet have them serve the immediate interests of
theme and action.
Theatre is a collaborative art, only occasionally yielding the right conditions for individual genius to flourish and develop, and
Shakespeare's achievement must at least in part be due to his continuous association with the Chamberlain's and King's Men, who were as
practiced in acting together as he was to become in writing with their ensemble skills in mind.
Chronology Of Shakespeare's Plays
Despite much scholarly argument, it is often impossible to date a given play precisely. But there is a general consensus, especially for plays
written 1585-1601, 1605-07, and 1609 onward. The following list of first performances is based on external and internal evidence, on
general stylistic and thematic considerations, and on the observation that an output of no more than two plays a year seems to have been
established in those periods when dating is rather clearer than others.
1589-921 Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI
1592-93Richard III, The Comedy of Errors
1593-94Titus Andronicus, The Taming of the Shrew
1594-95The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, Romeo and Juliet
1595-96Richard II, A Midsummer Night's Dream
1596-97King John, The Merchant of Venice
1597-981 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV
1598-99Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V
1599-1600Julius Caesar, As You Like It
1600-01Hamlet, The Merry Wives of Windsor
1601-02Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida
1602-03All's Well That Ends Well
1604-05Measure For Measure, Othello
1605-06King Lear, Macbeth
1606-07Antony and Cleopatra
1607-08Coriolanus, Timon of Athens
1608-09Pericles
1609-10Cymbeline
1610-11Winter's Tale (See "Winter's Tale, The".)
1611-12The Tempest
1612-13Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen
Shakespeare's two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, can be dated with certainty to the years when the Plague
stopped dramatic performances in London, in 1592 and 1593-94, respectively, just before their publication. But the sonnets offer many and
various problems; they cannot have been written all at one time, and most scholars set them within the period 1593-1600. "The Phoenix
and the Turtle" can be dated 1600-01.
Poetic And Dramatic Powers
The Early Poems
Shakespeare dedicated the poem Venus and Adonis to his patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd earl of Southampton, whom he further promised
to honour with "some graver labour"--perhaps The Rape of Lucrece, which appeared a year later and was also dedicated to Southampton.
As these two poems were something on which Shakespeare was intending to base his reputation with the public and to establish himself
with his patron, they were displays of his virtuosity--diploma pieces. They were certainly the most popular of his writings with the reading
public and impressed them with his poetic genius. Seven editions of Venus and Adonis had appeared by 1602 and 16 by 1640; Lucrece, a
more serious poem, went through eight editions by 1640; and there are numerous allusions to them in the literature of the time. But after
that, until the 19th century, they were little regarded. Even then the critics did not know what to make of them: on the one hand, Venus and
Adonis is licentiously erotic (though its sensuality is often rather comic); while Lucrece may seem to be tragic enough, the treatment of the
poem is yet somewhat cold and distant. In both cases the poet seems to be displaying dexterity rather than being "sincere." But
Shakespeare's detachment from his subjects has come to be admired in more recent assessments.
Above all, the poems give evidence for the growth of Shakespeare's imagination. Venus and Adonis is full of vivid imagery of the
countryside; birds, beasts, the hunt, the sky, and the weather, the overflowing Avon--these give freshness to the poem and contrast
strangely with the sensuous love scenes. Lucrece is more rhetorical and elaborate than Venus and Adonis and also aims higher. Its
disquisitions (upon night, time, opportunity, and lust, for example) anticipate brilliant speeches on general themes in the plays--on mercy in
The Merchant of Venice, suicide in Hamlet, and "degree" in Troilus and Cressida.
There are a few other poems attributed to Shakespeare. When the Sonnets were printed in 1609, a 329-line poem, "A Lovers complaint,"
was added at the end of the volume, plainly ascribed by the publisher to Shakespeare. There has been a good deal of discussion about the
authorship of this poem. Only the evidence of style, however, could call into question the publisher's ascription, and this is conflicting.
Parts of the poem and some lines are brilliant, but other parts seem poor in a way that is not like Shakespeare's careless writing. Its
narrative structure is remarkable, however, and the poem deserves more attention than it usually receives. It is now generally thought to be
from Shakespeare's pen, possibly an early poem revised by him at a more mature stage of his poetical style. Whether the poem in its extant
form is later or earlier than Venus and Adonis and Lucrece cannot be decided. No one could doubt the authenticity of "The Phoenix and the
Turtle," a 67-line poem that appeared with other "poetical essays" (by John Marston, George Chapman, and Ben Jonson) appended to
Robert Chester's poem Loves Martyr in 1601. The poem is attractive and memorable, but very obscure, partly because of its style and partly
because it contains allusions to real persons and situations whose identity can now only be guessed at.
The Sonnets
In 1609 appeared SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS. Never before Imprinted. At this date Shakespeare was already a successful author, a
country gentleman, and an affluent member of the most important theatrical enterprise in London. How long before 1609 the sonnets were
written is unknown. The phrase "never before imprinted" may imply that they had existed for some time but were now at last printed. Two
of them (nos. 138 and 144) had in fact already appeared (in a slightly different form) in an anthology, The Passionate Pilgrime (1599).
Shakespeare had certainly written some sonnets by 1598, for in that year Francis Meres, in a "survey" of literature, made reference to "his
sugared sonnets among his private friends," but whether these "sugared sonnets" were those eventually published in 1609 cannot be
ascertained--Shakespeare may have written other sets of sonnets, now lost. Nevertheless, the sonnets included in The Passionate Pilgrime
are among his most striking and mature, so it is likely that most of the 154 sonnets that appeared in the 1609 printing belong to
Shakespeare's early 30s rather than to his 40s--to the time when he was writing Richard II and Romeo and Juliet rather than when he was
writing King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra. But, of course, some of them may belong to any year of Shakespeare's life as a poet before
1609.
The Order Of The Poems
Elizabethan sonnet sequences (following the example of their Italian and French models) were generally in some kind of narrative order.
Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, moreover, and Edmund Spenser's Amoretti each tells a reasonably well authenticated story.
Shakespeare's sonnets, however, do not give the impression of an ordered sequence as it exists in Sidney, Spenser, and others. It is only at
times that a narrative can be sensed, frequently breaking off, then resuming later or reverting to an earlier stage of the "story." It is therefore
often argued that there was an original order, which has been lost, and many efforts have been made to recover, by ingenious analysis,
Shakespeare's "intended" order. Although some interesting observations about associations between widely separated sonnets have been the
result, none of the schemes carries any conviction. Most critics feel that it is hopeless to try to replace the order of the 1609 edition with
anything convincingly better, arguing that the sonnets have no pretensions to be complete or adequate as a narrative. They are mixed in
mood, in quality, and in distinction. Some seem open, addressed to all the world. Some seem too cryptic and personal ever to be
intelligible.
It is equally uncertain whether the 1609 arrangement bears any relation to the order in which the sonnets were actually written. It may
reasonably be supposed that the printer followed, more or less, the order in which the sonnets appeared in manuscript (or manuscripts). It is
quite likely, however, that single leaves of the manuscript got out of order (for the numbers attached to each poem could well be a printer's
addition), which, if so, might explain why some groups or pairs of sonnets seem to be oddly separated.
Sonnets 1 to 17 are variations on one theme. A handsome young man is being persuaded to marry and beget offspring who will preserve his
beauty in a new generation, though he himself will lose it as he grows old. Gradually this theme gives place to the idea that the beloved will
survive through the poet's verse. (There is no discussion of the relative merits of the two kinds of immortality.)
Sonnets 18 to 126 are on a variety of themes associated with a handsome young man (who is presumably, but not necessarily, the youth of
1 to 17). The poet enjoys his friendship and is full of admiration, promising to bestow immortality on the young man by the poems he
writes in his honour. But sometimes the young man seems cold. Sometimes he provokes jealousy by his admiration of another poet. The
climax of the series comes when the young man seduces the poet's woman. But eventually the poet reconciles himself to the situation and
realizes that his love for his friend is greater than his desire to keep the woman.
Sonnet 126 seems a kind of concluding poem (and is not in sonnet form). Then begins a new series, principally about a dark lady by whom
the poet is enthralled, though well aware of her faults. At one point, she is stolen from him by his best friend. This faithlessness of both
friend and woman wounds the poet deeply. He nevertheless tries to rise above his disappointment. (The two concluding sonnets are
impersonal translations of a familiar Renaissance theme about Cupid.)
Artistic Invention Or Real Experience
Various persons are addressed or referred to in the poems, though whether they are real people or fictions of Shakespeare's dramatic
imagination is not entirely clear. But if the "story" of the sonnets is an invention, then it is badly invented, showing nothing of the skill in
storytelling that Shakespeare elsewhere reveals. The relationships between "characters," moreover, are so obscure, so irritatingly cryptic,
that it is difficult to believe Shakespeare was devising the story for artistic purposes. The very clumsiness and obscurity of the narrative, if
it is considered a fiction, are a strong argument that the sonnets are close to real experience; yet a degree of fictionalization in the sonnets
would be in accord with Shakespeare's lifelong devotion to writing plays and with the pervasive "impersonality" of his art as a dramatist.
Some critics have been tempted to declare that it does not matter who the young man and the dark lady were--that the poetry is the
important thing. Though as a gesture of impatience this mood is understandable, the world will continue to be curious about the
circumstances of these poems, and, if historical documents should be discovered bringing hard facts to bear on the matter, the sonnets
would surely be reinterpreted in the light of those facts. But for now, the sonnets on the whole retain an obstinate privacy that is a bar to
enjoyment and therefore must be judged a fault, one that would hinder altogether the appreciation of any poems less brilliant. The sonnets
do not quite "create a world" within which they can be apprehended. There is the sense of a missing (or unascertainable) body of
experience and reference that falls short of poetical mystery.
Human Experience In The Poems
From the beginning of the 19th century, explorations of Shakespeare's personality have constantly been made by studying the sonnets.
William Wordsworth proclaimed that "with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart." But many readers feel that Shakespeare the man is
elusive in the sonnets, just as he is in the plays. It has been natural to look in the poems for "personal details" about the author. One can
observe allusions to his insomnia, to his disapproval of false hair and painted cheeks, to his love of music, and, according to some, to his
bisexuality. It does not amount to very much.
The experiences of love and friendship, as related in the sonnets, must be described as disheartening and disenchanted. On the plane of
human experience, they are full of disappointment, separation, anxiety, estrangement, self-accusation, and failure. The triumph, or near
triumph, of death and of time is deeply felt. Only on the transcendental plane and in the faith in the permanence of poetry does a positive or
affirmative attitude assert itself and compensate for the outcast state of the poet and the dateless night of death. On the whole they are
quieter and closer to normal human experience than are the plays. The storms of passion are absent. Instead, there is a refined analysis of
feeling, somehow more characteristic of the method of Jane Austen and Henry James than of Shakespeare the playwright. There are, of
course, many moments of comparable moral scrupulousness in the plays, but they come incidentally and sometimes a little irrelevantly,
perhaps, or awkwardly. In the sonnets Shakespeare brilliantly controls the shifting texture of the words in accordance with the variations in
mood and tone. Generally, a careful analysis of the words reveals the tone in which a sonnet should be read, though, it must be admitted,
this can be ambiguous.
The attractions of the sonnets are indeed very great. They win the admiration of readers by a variety of virtues. They express strong feeling,
but they preserve artistic control. They have a density of thought and imagery that makes them seem the quintessence of the poetical
experience. They delight by a felicity of phrase and verse movement, no less memorable than that familiar in the plays. They have, in
recent years, received more exegesis than any of Shakespeare's plays, except perhaps Hamlet and King Lear. This is not necessarily a
testimony to their value, for they have a tantalizing quality that encourages continued commentary. But it would be ungenerous not to relate
this keen interest in the sonnets to an appreciation of their poetic power, of their unembarrassed exploration of intimate human
relationships, and of their sensitivity to the tragedy of human aspirations and the triumph of time.
The Early Plays
Although the record of Shakespeare's early theatrical success is obscure, clearly the newcomer soon made himself felt. His brilliant twopart play on the Wars of the Roses, The Whole Contention between the two Famous Houses, Lancaster and Yorke, was among his earliest
achievements. He showed, in The Comedy of Errors, how hilariously comic situations could be shot through with wonder and sentiment. In
Titus Andronicus he scored a popular success with tragedy in the high Roman fashion. The Two Gentlemen of Verona was a new kind of
romantic comedy. The world has never ceased to enjoy The Taming of the Shrew. Love's Labour's Lost is an experiment in witty and
satirical observation of society. Romeo and Juliet combines and interconnects a tragic situation with comedy and gaiety. All this represents
the probable achievement of Shakespeare's first half-dozen years as a writer for the London stage, perhaps by the time he had reached 30. It
shows astonishing versatility and originality.
Henry VI, 1, 2, and 3
In The Contention, a two-part chronicle play (called in the First Folio 2 Henry VI; 3 Henry VI), Shakespeare seems to have discovered the
theatrical excitement that can be generated by representing recent history on the stage--events just beyond living memory but of great
moment in the lives of present generations. The civil wars (popularly known as the Wars of the Roses) resulted from the struggle of two
families, York and Lancaster, for the English throne. They had ended in 1485 with Richard III's defeat at the Battle of Bosworth, when
Henry Tudor, as Henry VII, established a secure dynasty. Queen Elizabeth I was the granddaughter of Henry VII, so the story of York and
Lancaster was of great interest to Shakespeare's contemporaries. In 2 Henry VI the power struggle turns around the ineffective King Henry
VI, until gradually the Duke of York emerges as contender for the throne. The climaxes of 3 Henry VI include the murder of the Duke of
York by the Lancastrians and, in the final scene, the murder of King Henry by Richard (York's son and the future Richard III). Shakespeare
already showed himself a master of tragic poetry, notably in the speech of the captured York (wounded, mocked by a paper crown on his
head, and awaiting death under the cruel taunts of Queen Margaret) and in the meditation of the King on the miseries of civil war. The
vigorous and comic scenes with Jack Cade, a rebel leader, and his followers anticipate the kind of political comment that Shakespeare
handled with greater subtlety in introducing the mobs of plebeians in Julius Caesar and Coriolanus. (See "Henry VI, Part 2".)
A third play, 1 Henry VI, about the early part of the reign of King Henry VI, concerns events preceding the opening of the first part of The
Contention. This is less successful, and it is uncertain whether it was a first effort at a historical play, written before The Contention, or a
preparatory supplement to it, written subsequently and less inspired. It was printed in the 1623 Folio as the first part of King Henry VI; The
Contention appeared as the second and third parts of King Henry VI, on what authority is not known.
The Comedy of Errors
The title of this, Shakespeare's shortest play, speaks for itself (though the opening scene is, unexpectedly, full of pathos). The play is based
on Plautus' Menaechmi, a play of the comic confusions deriving from the presence of twin brothers, unknown to each other, in the same
town; but Shakespeare has added twin servants, and he fills the play with suspense, surprise, expectation, and exhilaration as the two pairs
weave their way through quadruple misunderstandings. The play already reveals Shakespeare's mastery of construction.
Titus Andronicus
This play was highly popular and held the stage for many years. Its crude story, its many savage incidents, and its poetic style have led
some critics to think it not by Shakespeare. But the tendency of recent criticism is to regard the play as wholly or essentially his, and,
indeed, when considered on its own terms as a "Roman tragedy," it displays a uniformity of tone and reveals a consistency of dramatic
structure as a picture of the decline of the ancient world (though, by the standards of Shakespeare's later Roman plays, this picture is much
confused).
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Shakespeare took this play's story from a long Spanish prose romance called Diana, by Jorge de Montemayor. He added new characters-including Valentine, one of the "Two Gentlemen," whose "ideal" friendship with Proteus is so developed that the plot is more than a love
story; indeed, the play glorifies friendship to an extent that, by modern conventions, is absurd. The abrupt last scene suggests that
something has gone wrong with the text, and certainly Shakespeare was never again so ready to abandon common sense in motivating the
behaviour of his lovers. But it is also clear that Shakespeare is here feeling his way toward a new kind of high comedy, later to find
expression in The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night.
The Taming of the Shrew
Often played as a boisterous farce, this play is actually a comedy of character, with implications beyond the story of the wooing, wedding,
and taming of Katharina, the "shrew," by Petruchio, a man with a stronger will than her own. Shakespeare arouses more interest in these
two than farce permits. They gain, for example, by contrast with the tepid, silly, or infatuated lovers (Bianca, Lucentio, Hortensio, and
Gremio), and their relationship is given an admirable vitality and energy; while in the play's last scene Katharina's discourse on wifely
submission--if spoken with sincerity and genuine tenderness and without irony--has a moving quality in performance. The Italianate play
about the shrew taming is set inside another play (concerning a trick played upon Christopher Sly, a drunken tinker), which gave
Shakespeare an opportunity for some brilliant English country scenes. Originally, Sly was made the "audience" of the shrew play, a device
that is abandoned after a little while (that is, in the text of the 1623 Folio). Probably the players' company came to abandon the Christopher
Sly framing because the Katharina and Petruchio story was too strong not to be acted directly at the real audience in a theatre.
Love's Labour's Lost
Once regarded as obsolete, depending too much upon temporary and irrecoverable allusions, this play has come to life in the theatre only
during the past 50 years. Its rejection by the theatre was a background for 18th- and 19th-century critics such as John Dryden, Dr. Johnson,
and William Hazlitt, all of whom had severe things to say about it. But, once the play had been recovered for the theatre, it was discovered
that it is full of humanity, exploring the consequences of man being made of flesh and blood. The central comic device is that of four young
men, dedicated to study and to the renunciation of women, meeting four young women; inevitably they abandon their absurd principles.
For variety, and as an escape from the pretty, gay, young royalty and courtiers, there is an entertaining band of eccentrics who are allowed
their "vaudeville" turns: Sir Nathaniel the curate, Holofernes the schoolmaster, Dull the constable, Costard the clown, and Jaquenetta the
country girl; linking both groups is Don Adriano de Armado the ineffable (who begins by being a bore but becomes interesting as he
becomes pathetic). Toward the end, the play takes on a new dramatic vitality through a brilliant coup de théâtre: the sudden arrival of
Mercade as the messenger of death and the herald of responsibility. The deliberate abstention from the customary conclusion of comedy is
remarkable: "Jack hath not Jill," but he will have her after a twelvemonth, when he has done something to deserve her. Thus the play ends
with hope--perhaps the best kind of happy ending.
Romeo and Juliet
The most complex work of art among these early plays of Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet is far more than "a play of young love" or "the
world's typical love-tragedy." Weaving together a large number of related impressions and judgments, it is as much about hate as love. It
tells of a family and its home as well as a feud and a tragic marriage. The public life of Verona and the private lives of the Veronese make
up the setting for the love of Juliet and Romeo and provide the background against which their love can be assessed. It is not the deaths of
the lovers that conclude the play but the public revelation of what has happened, with the admonitions of the Prince and the reconciliation
of the two families.
Shakespeare enriched an already old story by surrounding the guileless mutual passion of Romeo and Juliet with the mature bawdry of the
other characters--the Capulet servants Sampson and Gregory open the play with their fantasies of exploits with the Montague women; the
tongues of the Nurse and Mercutio are seldom free from sexual matters--but the innocence of the lovers is unimpaired.
Romeo and Juliet made a strong impression on contemporary audiences. It was also one of Shakespeare's first plays to be pirated; a very
bad text appeared in 1597. Detestable though it is, this version does derive from a performance of the play, and a good deal of what was
seen on stage was recorded. Two years later another version of the play appeared, issued by a different, more respectable publisher, and this
is essentially the play known today, for the printer was working from a manuscript fairly close to Shakespeare's own. Yet in neither edition
did Shakespeare's name appear on the title page, and it was only with the publication of Love's Labour's Lost that publishers had come to
feel that the name of Shakespeare as a dramatist, as well as the public esteem of the company of actors to which he belonged, could make
an impression on potential purchasers of playbooks.
The Histories
For his plays on subjects from English history, Shakespeare primarily drew upon Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, which appeared in 1587,
and on Edward Hall's earlier account of The union of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre and York (1548). From these and
numerous secondary sources he inherited traditional themes: the divine right of royal succession, the need for unity and order in the realm,
the evil of dissension and treason, the cruelty and hardship of war, the power of money to corrupt, the strength of family ties, the need for
human understanding and careful calculation, and the power of God's providence, which protected his followers, punished evil, and led
England toward the stability of Tudor rule.
The Tragedy of King Richard III
In this play, the first history to have a self-contained narrative unity, Shakespeare accentuated the moment of death as a crisis of conscience
in which man judges himself and is capable of true prophecy. He centred the drama on a single figure who commits himself to murder,
treason, and dissimulation with an inventive imagination that an audience can relish even as it must condemn it; and in defeat Richard
discovers a valiant fury that carries him beyond nightmare fear and guilt to unrepentant, crazed defiance.
The Tragedy of King Richard II
In the group of histories written in the late 1590s, Shakespeare developed themes similar to those of Richard III but introduced counterstatements, challenging contrasts, and more deeply realized characters. The first of this group, Richard II, concentrates on the life and death
of the King, but Bolingbroke, his adversary, is made far more prominent than Richmond had been as Richard III's adversary. The rightful
king is isolated and defeated by Act III, and in prison he hammers out the meaning of his life in sustained soliloquy and comes to recognize
his guilt and responsibility. From this moment of truth, he rediscovers pride, trust, and courage, so that he dies with an access of strength
and an aspiring spirit. After the death of Richard, a scene shows Bolingbroke, now Henry IV, with the corpse of his rival in a coffin; and
then Bolingbroke, too, recognizes his own guilt, as he sits in power among his silent nobles.
1 Henry IV; 2 Henry IV
In the two plays that bear his name, Henry IV is often in the background. The stage is chiefly dominated by his son, Prince Hal (later Henry
V), by Hotspur the young rebel, and by Sir John Falstaff. The secondary characters are numerous, varying from prostitutes and country
bumpkins to a Lord Chief Justice and country gentlemen. There is a tension underlying the two-part play that sounds in the King's opening
lines:
(See "Henry IV, Part 1".)
So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in stronds afar remote.
When the Earl of Warwick counsels hope, the King sees how "chances mock, and changes fill the cup of alteration":
O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils passed, what crosses to ensue,
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.
(Pt. 2, Act III, scene 1, 51-56)
Yet the two plays of Henry IV are full of energy. In Falstaff--that "reverend vice . . . that father ruffian, that vanity in years"--Shakespeare
has created a character who becomes a substitute father of license and good fellowship for Prince Hal and who comments on the political
situation with inglorious, reckless, egotistical good sense. Falstaff is Shakespeare's major introduction into English history. His
characterization is wholly original, for, although Shakespeare uses something of the earlier "vice" figure from early tragedies and comedies,
something of the glutton and coward from allegorical, or morality, plays, something of the braggart soldier and the impotent old lecher
from neoclassical comedy, he also studied life for this character of an out-of-work soldier, a knight without lands or alliances, a childless
man whose imagination far outruns his achievement.
King John
Already in King John, Shakespeare had developed a subsidiary character to offset kings and princes. Here the Bastard, the son of Sir
Robert Faulconbridge, is a supporter of the King and yet has soliloquies, asides, and speeches that mock political and moral pretensions.
King John provides the central focus of the play, which ends with his death, but Shakespeare presents him on a rapidly changing course,
surrounded by many contrasting characters--each able to influence him, each bringing irresolvable and individual problems into dramatic
focus--so that the King's unsteady mind seems no more than one small element in an almost comic jumble of events.
Henry V
Henry V is the last of this group of history plays and the last until Henry VIII at the end of Shakespeare's career. Structurally the King is
again central and dominant, but the subsidiary characters far outnumber those of the earlier plays. In the first two acts Henry is shown in
peace and war, politic, angry, confident, sarcastic, and then vowing to weep for another man's revolt. There is an account of Falstaff's
death, and, after scenes of military achievement, there is a nervous watch before the Battle of Agincourt when the King walks disguised
among his fearful soldiers and prays for victory while acknowledging his own worthless repentance for his father's treason. The
presentation of the battle avoids almost all fighting on stage, but recruits, professional soldiers, and dukes and princes are all shown making
preparation for meeting defeat or victory. The King's speech to his troops before battle on St. Crispin's Day is famous for its evocation of a
brotherhood in arms, but Shakespeare has placed it in a context full of ironies and challenging contrasts. The picture of two nations at war
is full of deeply felt individual responses: a boy comes to realize that his masters are cowards; a herald is almost at a loss for words; a
common soldier has to justify his heart before his king. Just before the conclusion, the King woos the French princess; she knows almost no
English, and so he is forced to plead on the merits only of his simplest words, a kiss, and the plain fact of himself and his "heart." There is
no doubt that Kate marries Henry because he has won a battle and peace is necessary, but Shakespeare has developed the comedy and
earnestness of their wooing so that the need for human trust and acceptance is also evident. This play is presented by a chorus, which
speaks in terms of heroism, pride, excitement, fear, and national glory. But at the end, when the King prays that the oaths of marriage and
peace may "well kept and prosperous be," the chorus speaks for the last time, reminding the audience that England was to be plunged into
civil war during the reign of Henry V's son. The last of a great series of history plays thus concludes with a reminder that no man's story
can bring lasting success.
The Roman Plays
Julius Caesar. After the last group of English history plays, Shakespeare chose to write about Julius Caesar, who held particular fascination
for the Elizabethans. He was soldier, scholar, and politician (Francis Bacon held him in special regard for the universality of his genius); he
had been killed by his greatest friend (Shakespeare alluded to the "bastard hand" of Brutus in 2 Henry VI); and he was seen as the first
Roman to perceive and, in part, to achieve the benefits of a monarchical state. His biography had appeared in Sir Thomas North's
translation, via a French version, of Plutarch's Parallel Lives, published as The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes in 1579, which
Shakespeare certainly read. To all of this, Shakespeare's response was surprising: Caesar appears in three scenes and then is murdered
before the play is half finished. But a variety of characters respond to and reflect upon the central fact of the great man. This is the dramatic
strategy of an ironist, or of a writer who wishes to question human behaviour and to observe interactions and consequences. In fact, Caesar
influences the whole play, for he appears after his death as a bloodstained corpse and as a ghost before battle. Both Brutus and Cassius die
conscious of Caesar and even speak to him as if he were present. And then his heir takes command, to "part the glories" of what is for him
a "happy day."
In other ways Julius Caesar is shaped differently from the histories and tragedies that precede it, as if in manner as in subject matter
Shakespeare was making decisive changes. The scene moves only from Rome to the battlefield, and with this new setting language
becomes more restrained, firmer, and sharper. Extensive descriptive images are few, and single words such as "Roman," "honour," "love,"
"friend," and proper names are repeated as if to enforce contrasts and ironies. In performance this sharp verbal edge, linked with
commanding performances and the various excitements of debate, conspiracy, private crises, political eloquence, mob violence,
supernatural portents, personal antagonisms, battle, and deaths, holds attention. The play has popular appeal and intellectual fascination.
For six or seven years Shakespeare did not return to a Roman theme, but, after completing Macbeth and King Lear, he again used Plutarch
as a source for two more Roman plays, both tragedies that seem as much concerned to depict the broad context of history as to present
tragic heroes.
Antony and Cleopatra
The language of Antony and Cleopatra is sensuous, imaginative, and vigorous. "Feliciter audax ["happily bold"] is the motto for its style
comparatively with his other works," said the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Almost every character seems to talk of kingdoms and to
envision heroic deeds: Dolabella, the Roman soldier, says that his "love makes religion to obey" Cleopatra in her last imprisonment;
Antony's servant is called Eros, who kills himself before his "great chief"; his soldiers have seen his eyes "glow like plated Mars"; his
enemies say that, even in defeat, he "continues still a Jove." Octavius knows, as he closes for the kill, that great issues are at stake. Yet,
while the issues are thus enlarged (or inflated), the protagonists do not reveal themselves to an audience as they do in Hamlet, Othello, King
Lear, or Macbeth. Antony has soliloquies only in defeat, and then he addresses the sun or fortune, false hearts or his queen, rather than
seeking to hammer out his thoughts or to explore his own response. In the last scene, however, the focus concentrates intensely on a single
character, when Cleopatra, prepared for death in robe and crown, believing in immortality, and hearing the dead Antony mock "the luck of
Caesar," seems indeed to be transfigured:
. . . Husband, I come:
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire, and air; my other elements
I give to baser life. . . .
(Act V, scene 2, 290 ff.)
Coriolanus
The hero of Coriolanus has still fewer soliloquies: one in rhyme as he arrives, a renegade in Antium, and another of a few sentences when
he stands alone in the marketplace waiting for the citizens to express their choice of him for consul. Through many guises, the audience
sees the same man: as a young nobleman in peacetime, as a soldier going to battle, as bloodstained fighter and then victor, as candidate for
consul in the "napless garment of humility," as a banished renegade, and then as leader of the Volscians, enemies of Rome.
In this play Shakespeare's customary contrasts and ironies, which lead an audience to discover meanings for themselves, are replaced by
repetitions within the single narrative line: there are three Forum scenes, four family scenes, a succession of fights, four scenes of mob
violence, and continual attempts to argue with Coriolanus and deflect him from his chosen course. The language is sometimes elaborate,
but it does not have the poetic richness of Antony and Cleopatra; images are compact, sharply effective. Those moments when the audience
is drawn most intently into the drama are strangely silent or understated. The citizens "steal away" instead of volunteering to fight for their
country; their tribunes stay behind to organize their own responses. When the banished Coriolanus returns at the head of an opposing army,
he says little to Menenius, the trusted family friend and politician, or to Volumnia, his mother, who have come to plead for Rome. His
mother's argument is long and sustained, and for more than 50 lines he listens silently, until his resolution is broken from within: then, as a
stage direction in the original edition testifies, he "holds her by the hand, silent." In his own words, he has "obeyed instinct" and betrayed
his dependence; he cannot
. . . stand,
As if a man were author of himself
And knew no other kin.
(Act V, scene 3, 35 ff.)
His desire for revenge is defeated, and the army retreats. Volumnia is hailed as "patronness and life of Rome," but she is silent while the
drums, trumpets, and voices greet her. Coriolanus is seen only once more, in the enemy city where he is accused of treachery and is
assassinated in the kind of mob violence he has previously withstood. So Coriolanus finishes with the audience observing a hero helpless to
prevent his own death and with patterns of political, social, and personal behaviour repeated without hope of change. Nowhere has
Shakespeare shown an aspect so severe as in the silent moments of this Roman tragedy, during which the actor is at a loss for words.
The "Great," Or "Middle," Comedies
The comedies written between 1596 and 1602 have much in common and are as well considered together as individually. With the
exception of The Merry Wives of Windsor, all are set in some "imaginary" country. Whether called Illyria, Messina, Venice and Belmont,
Athens, or the Forest of Arden, the sun shines as the dramatist wills. A lioness, snakes, magic caskets, fairy spells, identical twins, disguise
of sex, the sudden conversion of a tyrannous duke or the defeat offstage of a treacherous brother can all change the course of the plot and
bring the characters to a conclusion in which almost all are happy and just deserts are found. Lovers are young and witty and almost always
rich. The action concerns wooing; and its conclusion is marriage, beyond which the audience is scarcely concerned. Whether Shakespeare's
source was an Italian novel (The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing), an English pastoral tale (As You Like It), an Italian
comedy (the Malvolio story in Twelfth Night), or something of his own invention (probably A Midsummer Night's Dream, and parts of
each), always in his hands story and sentiments are instinct with idealism and capable of magic transformations. The Merry Wives of
Windsor differs from the other comedies in that it is set not in an imaginary country but in Windsor and the rural life of Shakespeare's own
day. Fantasy occurs at the end, however, when the characters enter a land of make-believe around the folk fertility symbol of Herne, the
Hunter's oak in the forest; and, as they leave to "laugh this sport o'er by a country fire," quarrels are forgotten. The more overtly fantastic
plays, in their turn, contain observations of ordinary and (usually) country life.
Much Ado About Nothing is distinctive in many ways, for there is no obvious magic or disguise of sex. But many misunderstandings arise
in a masked dance, and the play concludes with a pretended death and a simulated resurrection from behind yet another mask; moreover,
the two main characters, Beatrice and Benedick, are transformed from within by what is called "Cupid, the only matchmaker."
In some ways these are intellectual plays. Each comedy has a multiple plot and moves from one set of characters to another, between whom
Shakespeare invites his audience to seek connections and explanations. Despite very different classes of people (or immortals) in different
strands of the narrative, the plays are unified by Shakespeare's idealistic vision and by an implicit judgment of human relationships, and all
their characters are brought together--with certain significant exceptions--at, or near, the end.
The "Outsider"
The plays affirm truth, good order, and generosity, without any direct statement; they are shapely and complicated like a dance or like a
game of chess. Yet at the general resolution all is not harmony: some characters are held back from full participation. At the end of A
Midsummer Night's Dream, for example, the lovers' more callow comments on the rustics' play of Pyramus and Thisbe mark them as
irresponsive to the imaginative world of Bottom and his fellows, who project themselves into their play's heroics almost without fear of
failure; they are also distinct from the duke, Theseus, who says of the amateur performers:
The best in this kind are but shadows: and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.
In The Merchant of Venice, most of the unresolved elements in the comedy are concentrated in the person of Shylock, a Jew who attempts
to use justice to enforce a terrible, murderous revenge on Antonio, the Christian merchant, but is foiled by Portia, in disguise as a lawyer,
who turns the tables on the Jew by a legal quibble and has him at the mercy of the court. This strange tale is realized with exceptionally
credible detail: Shylock is a money-lender, like many in Shakespeare's London, and a Jew of pride and deep religious instincts; the
Christians treat him with contempt and distrust, and, when one of them causes his daughter to elope and steal his money and jewels, he
suffers with an intensity equalled only by that of his murderous hatred of all Christians. In a scene written in prose that gives at one time
both histrionic power and sensitive, personal feeling, Shylock identifies his cause with basic human rights:
I am a Jew . . . Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt
with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a
Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laught? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall
we not revenge?
(Act III, scene 1, 50 ff.)
The happiness that follows the thwarting of his revenge, however, cannot be celebrated with full unison while there are reminders that he
never reached "the beautiful mountain," Belmont.
In As You Like It, the melancholy character Jaques leaves the play before the concluding dances. He has seen, and voiced, the limitations of
each of the pairs of lovers and is determined to hear more and learn more from the tyrant duke, so mysteriously converted to a "religious
life." In Twelfth Night, Malvolio the steward is gulled by practical jokes that take advantage of his self-esteem; he is the last character to
come onstage in the final scene, and he refuses reconciliation; he leaves after a noticeable silence with only these words: "I'll be revenged
on the whole pack of you." This comedy has yet other "outsiders"; alone at the end, Feste the fool sings a strange song in which the whole
of life is reduced to a melancholy tale sung by a knowing idiot. Twelfth Night is probably the last of the "great" comedies, and it is the
saddest.
Wit And Ambiguity
Incidental images, too, strike deep into the audience's remembrance of pain, fear, and suffering. In Twelfth Night, barren mountains, salt
sea, and the smoke of war, storms, imprisonment, death, and madness are all invoked. When the king and queen of fairies quarrel in A
Midsummer Night's Dream, Titania's speech evokes a world of chaos:
The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain,
The plowman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard:
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock . . .
(Act II, scene 1, 81 ff.)
Yet the poetry also celebrates happiness and joy with a clearer note and quicker interplay of thought than had been achieved in English
before. So, in Twelfth Night, from Orsino:
Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent:
For women are as roses, whose fair flower,
Being once displayed doth fall that very hour.
From Olivia:
Cesario, by the roses of spring,
By maidhood, honour, truth, and everything,
I love thee so that, maugre all thy pride,
Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.
And from Viola:
And all those sayings will I over-swear,
And all those swearings keep as true in soul,
As doth that orbed continent the fire
That severs day from night.
The wit and ambiguity through which the apparent meanings are laced with further indications of love, yearning, sexuality, unrest, and
happiness glance continuously through the dialogue, especially perhaps in Much Ado About Nothing. Often the disguise of identity or sex
or else misunderstandings or intentional counterfeiting serve to accentuate the varying levels of consciousness expressed; moments of near
unmasking, or of recognition, hold the attention firmly. Witty debates between lovers were not unfamiliar; they had held the stage more
than 10 years earlier in John Lyly's fantastic comedies that had been played at court by very young child actors. But never before had
sharpness of wit been so matched by gentleness or fineness of sentiment.
Perhaps the most extraordinary achievement of these comedies--which change in mood so rapidly, which are so funny and yet sometimes
dangerous and sad, which deal both with fantasy and eloquence--is that the recurrent moments of lifelike feeling are so expressed in words
or action that an audience shares in the very moment of discovery. Sometimes this is a second thought, as in Viola's
I am all the daughters of my father's house,
And all the brothers too . . . and yet I know not . . .
Sometimes it is a single phrase--Sir Andrew Aguecheek's "I was adored once too"--and on several climactic occasions it is held in a song,
whether of happiness, sorrow or peace, or of the "good life":
O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear, your true-love's coming,
That can sing both high and low.
The structure of these comedies can be explained, their stage devices and language analyzed; but essentially they remain on the wing, alive
with the "fancy" of art and sentiment. Puck's epilogue to the Dream is often quoted as their characteristic note:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbred here
While these visions did appear . . .
But Rosalind's epilogue to As You Like It is also apposite:
. . . I am not furnished like a beggar; therefore to
beg will not become me: my way is to conjure you . . .
The Great Tragedies
It is a usual and reasonable opinion that Shakespeare's greatness is nowhere more visible than in the series of tragedies--Hamlet, Othello,
King Lear, and Macbeth. Julius Caesar, which was written before these, and Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, which were written
after, have many links with the four. But, because of their rather strict relationship with the historical materials, they are best dealt with in a
group by themselves. Timon of Athens, probably written after the above-named seven plays, shows signs of having been unfinished or
abandoned by Shakespeare. It has its own splendours but has rarely been considered equal in achievement to the other tragedies of
Shakespeare's maturity.
Hamlet
Judged by its reception by the civilized world, Hamlet must be regarded as Shakespeare's most successful play. It has unceasing theatrical
vitality, and the character of Hamlet himself has become a figure of literary mythology. Yet King Lear became for a time the fashionable
play in 20th-century criticism, with many critics arguing that in Hamlet Shakespeare did not make a psychologically consistent play out of
a plot that retained much of the crudity of an earlier kind of "revenge" drama--that he was trying to transform a barbaric "revenge" hero into
a subtle Renaissance prince but did not succeed.
Even if this opinion has become unacceptable, it nevertheless taught critics to look for elements other than psychological consistency. In
particular, it is worth concentrating not on Elizabethan attitudes toward revenge but on Shakespeare's artistic balance in presenting the
play's moral problems. It is likely that an artist will make his work more interesting if he leaves a dilemma morally ambiguous rather than
explicit. The revenge situation in Hamlet, moreover, is one charged with emotional excitement as well as moral interest. Simply put, the
good man (Hamlet) is weak, and the bad man (Claudius) is strong. The good man has suffered a deep injury from the bad man, and he
cannot obtain justice because justice is in the hand of the strong bad man. Therefore the weak good man must go around and around in
order to achieve a kind of natural justice; and the audience watches in suspense while the weak good man by subtlety attacks and gets his
own back upon the strong bad man and the strong bad man spends his time evading the weak good man. Hamlet is given a formidable
opponent: Claudius is a hypocrite, but he is a successful one. He achieves his desired effect on everybody. His hypocrisy is that of a skilled
politician. He is not dramatically shown as being in any way unworthy of his station--he upholds his part with dignity. He is a "smiling
villain" and is not exposed until the final catastrophe. The jealous Hamlet heaps abuse upon him, but Shakespeare makes Claudius the
murderer self-controlled. Thus, theatrically, the situation is much more exciting.
Against this powerful opponent is pitted Hamlet, the witty intellectual. He shares his wit with the audience (and a few favoured characters
such as Horatio), who thus share his superiority over most other personages in the play. His first words are a punning aside to the audience,
and his first reply to the King is a cryptic retort. His sardonic witticisms are unforgettable ("The funeral baked meats/Did coldly furnish
forth the marriage tables"; and "More honoured in the breach than the observance"). Hamlet is an actor in many parts of the play. The range
of language in the roles he affects shows that his mimetic powers are considerable. He is skillful in putting on "an antic disposition" and
gives a very funny performance in talking to Polonius. He condescends to talk the silly bawdry of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He can
mimic Osric's style to perfection. He quarrels with Laertes beside Ophelia's grave in a display of verbosity that exceeds the modesty of
nature in much the same way as does that of Laertes.
Besides Claudius, set off against Hamlet is Polonius. He is wrong in his judgments, one after another, and this leads to the audience's
rejection of his political and human values. In all circumstances he seems slightly ridiculous--a foil for Claudius as he is for Hamlet. His
astuteness suffers by comparison with that of the King. His philosophical view of life is hollow compared with Hamlet's. Hamlet has as
many general maxims as Polonius; but his seem to be the product of a far more refined sensibility and of an ability to respond truthfully to
experience. It is these qualities in the somewhat enigmatic characterization of Hamlet that have won him the fascinated admiration of the
world.
Othello
Trusting to false appearances and allowing one's reason to be guided by one's passions had been a theme of many of Shakespeare's
comedies. In Othello he showed that the consequences of so doing can be tragic rather than comic. Shakespeare adapted the story from an
Italian model. His principal innovation consisted in developing the character of Iago, the villain, whose motives are represented as complex
and ambiguous. Clearly Shakespeare was keenly interested in a villain who could successfully preserve an appearance of honesty; the bad
as well as the good can be "the lords and owners of their faces" (Sonnet 94). Iago is made a plausible villain by being so interesting. He is
an actor who enjoys playing his role of "honesty." Shakespeare makes him take the audience into his confidence at every stage of his
plotting, and, as a consequence, they have a kind of non-moral participation in his villainy.
The pure and deep love between Desdemona and Othello is stressed from the beginning. Again and again the moral and intellectual stature
of Othello is elevated by Shakespeare. He quells tumults in the streets with a few words; he bears himself with dignity before the Venetian
council, defending himself compellingly from bitter accusations by Brabantio and accepting his military burden with quiet confidence.
Even Iago, in the opening scene of the play, grudgingly admits the dependence of the Venetians on his valour. After his terrible murder of
Desdemona, Othello's contrition is agonizing enough to swing the sympathies of the audience back to him.
King Lear
For Shakespeare's contemporaries, Lear, king of Britain, was thought to have been a historical monarch. For Shakespeare, however,
although he gave the play something of a chronicle structure, the interest lay not in political events but in the personal character of the
King. The main theme of the play is put into the mouth of the evil Regan, speaking to the pitiful Gloucester:
O sir, to wilful men
The injuries that they themselves procure
Must be their schoolmasters.
(Act II, scene 4, 301)
The various stages of Lear's spiritual progress (a kind of "conversion") are carefully marked. He learns the value of patience and the worth
of "unaccommodated man." He begins to realize his own faults as a king and almost understands his failure as a father. He begins to feel
for the "poor naked wretches" and confesses, "O I have ta'en too little care of this." His initial instability of mind, almost a predisposition to
madness, is shown from the beginning. His terrible rages and curses, first upon Cordelia and later upon Goneril and Regan, and his ranting
and tyrannical language all foreshadow his breakdown. His faithful counsellor is plain with him: "Be Kent unmannerly/When Lear is mad";
and his daughters shrewdly judge him: "he hath ever but slenderly known himself." He is painfully conscious of approaching madness, but
gradually the bombast of his sanity gives place to a remarkable kind of eloquence, flowing easily and never incoherent. His "ravings" are
intelligible to the audience, however perturbing they may seem to the other characters on the stage. They express a point of view that, had
he understood it earlier, would have saved him from many errors of judgment. The mode of speech of the mad King contrasts strongly with
the congenital inconsequentiality of his fool and the assumed madness of Edgar as "Poor Tom."
King Lear has a distinct underplot, a separable story of the fortunes of Gloucester--another father suffering from "filial ingratitude" and
from his false judgment of the characters of his children. This underplot is introduced in the opening scene, in some detail, as if it were of
as much importance as the main plot. The stages by which Gloucester similarly learns by suffering are clearly indicated. He begins by
being the cheerful sinner, but gradually his sense of pity and duty become stronger, and he reveals himself to Edmund: "If I die for it (as no
less is threatened me), the King my master must be relieved." This revelation of his good intentions to the treacherous Edmund leads
directly to his downfall and to his being blinded.
Two of the "good" characters, Edgar and Albany, also grow in moral stature and strength in the course of the play. At first, Edgar seems
rather ineffectual, quite unable to cope with the villainy of his half brother Edmund; but eventually he emerges as a strong character,
confirmed by suffering and by compassion, able to fight and overcome Edmund in the ordeal at arms; and eventually, as one of the
survivors, he is entrusted, along with Albany, with the future of the kingdom. Albany, too, is gradually built up, from being the weak
husband of Goneril to being the spokesman of virtue and justice, with an authority able to cope with the force of Edmund's malignant
energy.
Yet the representatives of goodness and of hope in King Lear do not emerge dynamically, and it has been difficult for champions of
Shakespeare's moral and religious orthodoxy to combat the pessimism and nihilism that most readers experience when reading the play-precisely the qualities that have made it a favourite in the 20th century.
Macbeth
Macbeth is the only play of Shakespeare's that seems, to a large extent, to be related to the contemporary historical situation. It was
intended to interest the new monarch, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England. This was a matter of professional
importance; for Shakespeare's company of actors had been taken over by the King on his accession, entitled to wear the royal livery as his
retainers (as they did when they walked in the procession at his coronation). But more important than the flattering of the King was the way
Macbeth satisfied public interest. For its subject was regicide, commonly regarded as the supreme crime. And the public had been
profoundly moved by an attempted regicide in November 1605--the famous "Gunpowder Plot"--which the English people, even after three
and a half centuries, have still not forgotten. The reign of Macbeth, king of Scotland, belonged, for Shakespeare and his audiences, to
Scottish history of many centuries past. But the play of Macbeth, both in its treatment of the events of the story and in its details, was
devised by Shakespeare with a very clear consciousness of the mood of his own times.
It is the first task of criticism to interpret the success of Macbeth, to explain how Shakespeare transformed a crude and horrible story of
murderous ambition into a satisfying imaginative vision of good and evil. There are two principal artistic methods by which he effected this
transformation. First, he made his play highly poetical; it is audacious in style, relying upon concentrated, brilliant brevity of phrase. So
great is the imaginative verbal vigour that some critics, sensitive to poetry but unsympathetic to the theatre, have almost forgotten that
Macbeth is a play and have encouraged readers to treat it rather as a poem. Second, Shakespeare has consistently humanized the two
murderers, so that they almost become sympathetic--and, by making them husband and wife, their human relationship is as interesting as
their motives for evil actions. This humanizing process is the key to Shakespeare's success in the play. His control of the reactions of an
audience is an achievement of theatrical art, not of intellectual or moral subtlety.
Timon of Athens
Timon of Athens is yet another of Shakespeare's experiments--the exploration of a new kind of tragic form. Certain usual elements of
Shakespearean tragedy are reduced in importance or eliminated from the structure of the play: the story, or "plot," is simple and lacks
development. There is no maturing of characters--the only change is the single one of Timon, who moves from a fixed character of
universal generosity to one of universal hatred. In the first half of the play, there is a consistent effort to build up a world around Timon in
terms of which his behaviour can be judged. As he perceives characters and situations unrealistically and responds to them
disproportionately, it becomes clear that his is a dream world. Into that world--as the audience watches, with some pain--reality intrudes.
The second half of the play, however, is simply a series of interviews between Timon and his visitors, seemingly arranged solely to bring
them under his curses; Timon's frenzied vituperation of his fellowmen becomes almost unbroken monotone. Eventually Timon rages
himself to death, leaving Alcibiades to lament his death and punish his enemies.
Of the various explanations put forward for the uneven quality of the writing in Timon of Athens (collaboration; incomplete revision;
completion by an inferior dramatist), much the most probable is that this is Shakespeare's rough draft of a play. It certainly has close
analogies with the great plays of the few years to which its composition belongs (iterative words and iterative imagery, ironic preparation
and anticipation, "chorus" statements by disinterested observers, plot and subplot parallel, both complementary and contrasted). If it is a
rough draft, then it presents a unique opportunity of getting close to Shakespeare's method of writing. It would prove that he put structure
before composition; that he went straight ahead drafting the structure of a play, unifying it by means of theme, imagery, and ironic
preparation, and paying less attention to prose-verse form and to the characterization of minor personages. It would indicate that his pen
wrote speeches quickly, not wasting much time at first about verse form, putting down the gist of what the character had to say, sometimes
with imagery that came to him on the spur of the moment, incorporating lines or half lines of blank verse and even occasionally rhymed
couplets--all to be "worked up" later. Nor, by judging the play "unfinished," are its worth and importance diminished: certain parts may be
roughly written, but the imaginative conception has a wholeness that imperfect composition does not obscure.
The "Dark" Comedies
Before the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 the country was ill at ease: the House of Commons became more outspoken about
monopolies and royal prerogative, and uncertainty about the succession to the throne made the future of the realm unsettled. In 1603 the
Plague again struck London, closing the theatres. In 1601 Shakespeare's patron, the Earl of Southampton, was arrested on charges of
treason; he was subsequently released, but such scares did not betoken confidence in the new reign. About Shakespeare's private reaction to
these events there can be only speculation, but three of the five plays usually assigned to these years have become known as "dark"
comedies for their distempered vision of the world.
Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida may never have been performed in Shakespeare's lifetime, and it fits no single category. Based on Homer (as
translated by George Chapman) and on 15th-century accounts of the Trojan War by John Lydgate and William Caxton, it explores the
causes of strife between and within the Greek and Trojan armies and might well have been a history play of a newly questioning and ironic
kind. But Shakespeare was also influenced by Geoffrey Chaucer's love poem, Troilus and Criseyde, and for the first time portrayed sexual
encounters outside the expectation of marriage. Cressida desires Troilus (and later Diomedes) with physical as well as idealistic longing;
she considers love frankly as a chase and acts on the principle
That she was never yet that ever knew
Love got so sweet as when desire did sue.
As in Shakespeare's earlier comedies, these lovers are contrasted with others--but with a difference, for they are set beside the shallow and
jaded routine of Helen's life with Paris and the assembled Trojans and beside the jealous humours of Achilles, lounging in his tent with
Patroclus. Into Cressida's last scene, when she begs Diomedes to come to her tent, Shakespeare has further introduced three lookers-on who
comment directly: the enslaved Troilus watching with the politically wily Ulysses and, at another corner of the stage, Thersites. The
audience cannot identify simply with any one of the five characters but, instead, must take note of each varying discord.
In his ubiquitous commentary, Thersites, perhaps the most notable single invention in the play, expresses revulsion against the pursuit of
both honour and love. When the lovers have left the stage he has the last word:
Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would croak
like a raven; I would bode, I would bode. . . . Lechery,
lechery! Still wars and lechery! Nothing else holds
fashion. A burning devil take them!
He proclaims Agamemnon "both ass and ox"; Ajax he would scratch from head to foot, to make the "loathsomest scab in Greece"; and as
Menelaus and Paris fight in the last battle, he sees them as "bull" and "dog," cuckold and cuckold maker--and then he saves his own life by
cowardice. Yet he is not the only commentator in the play. Priam sits on his throne, between his disputing sons; Ulysses arouses Achilles
by praising Ajax; and Cassandra cries out from a supernatural certainty of doom. Pandarus describes the handsome warriors as food for
love and hurries forward to take prurient pleasure in Cressida's excitement.
Pandarus also speaks the epilogue, and something of the play's irony may be gauged by contrasting his weak and broken appearance as he
speaks the last words with that of Prologue, who, dressed in armour, had announced the scene of Troy, the "princes orgulous," and all the
brave and massy consequences of war. No history play by Shakespeare had run such a gamut from the heroic to the petty and familiar.
Although the earlier comedies sometimes start with tyrannies and loss, they all conclude with a dance or, at their least hopeful, with a
procession offstage until a "golden time convents." Nor could this play be called a tragedy, for, despite the death of Hector and the loss of
all Troilus' hopes beyond those of hatred and revenge, there is no scope in the last disordered and inglorious battle for the intensity of
tragedy. The stature of every character has been progressively diminished.
All's Well That Ends Well; Measure for Measure
The other two comedies of 1601-04, are less completely original. Both All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure centre on
stories of love that lead to marriage, and both end with complicated denouements superintended by a benevolent king or duke. The fantasy
of the earlier comedies, however, is largely missing, and, although there are clowns, they haunt brothels or a prison, or they "love as an old
man loves money, with no stomach." Subplots are about cowardice in battle or fornication. Only Measure for Measure has a song, and that
"pleases" the woe of Mariana deserted by her unworthy Angelo.
Perhaps the most important element in both comedies is a new intensity. In All's Well, Helena's soliloquies of frustrated love and,
sometimes, the brevity of her speech reveal her inner struggles; and a few words from her graceless husband indicate his new loss of
assurance. In Measure for Measure, Isabella pleading for her brother's life and defending her chastity or the Duke disguised as a friar
persuading Claudio to disdain life both carry their arguments fiercely and finely; and Angelo is shown twice in soliloquy, tempted to what
he knows is evil by Isabella, who he knows is good:
When I would pray and think, I think and pray
To several subjects. . . .
(Act II, scene 4, 1 ff.)
In this comedy the intensity of much of the dialogue, the overt religious and legal concerns, and the variety of plot and subplot in
Shakespeare's earlier manner all combine to make a searching, unsettling, and, in the opinion of most judges, precarious play, a comedy
that reaches its general conclusion only with difficulty, with adroitness, compromise, or dramatic necessity.
Although such issues are present in All's Well, they are more in the background, and Shakespeare ostensibly considers other themes-inherited virtue opposed to virtue achieved by oneself, the wisdom of age over and against the impressionability of youth, and the need for
each man to make his own choice, even if wrongly.
Only during the 20th century have the three "dark" comedies been frequently performed in anything like Shakespeare's texts, an indication
that their questioning, satiric, intense, and shifting comedy could not please earlier audiences.
The Late Plays
Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, and Henry VIII, written between 1608 and 1612, are commonly known as
Shakespeare's "late plays," or his "last plays," and sometimes, with reference to their tragicomic form, they are called his "romances."
Works written by an author in his 40s hardly deserve to be classified as "late" in any critical sense, yet these plays are often discussed as if
they had been written by a venerable old author, tottering on the edge of a well-earned grave. On the contrary, Shakespeare must have
believed that plenty of writing years lay before him, and indeed the theatrical effectiveness and experimental nature of Cymbeline, The
Winter's Tale, and The Tempest in particular make them very unlike the fatigued work of a writer about to break his staff and drown his
book.
One of the common characteristics of these plays is that, although they portray a wide range of tragic or pathetic emotions, events move
toward a resolution of difficulties in which reconciliations and reunions are prominent. They differ from earlier comedies in their structural
emphasis on a renewal of hope that comes from penitence and forgiveness, together with a faith in the younger generation, who by love
will heal or obliterate the wounds inflicted in the past.
There is also an extravagance of story and an unreality of motivation, both prompting the use of the label "romances." From Coriolanus,
the most austere of his tragedies, Shakespeare turned immediately to Pericles, a fantastically episodic play set in a vaguely pre-Christian
world. He no longer saw antiquity through the eyes of a historian like Plutarch but through the bright fictions of the imitators of late Greek
romances, Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius. In The Winter's Tale, for instance, where events are determined by the god Apollo from his
oracle on the island of Delphos, the kingdoms of Bohemia and Sicilia nevertheless contain Warwickshire country festivals and
conycatchers; and Queen Hermione boldy asserts: "The Emperor of Russia was my father."
Some critics have attributed this change in theatrical manner to Shakespeare's boredom with everything except poetry; others have pointed
to a revival of interest in romantic tragicomedy (in Phylaste, by Beaumont and Fletcher, many characteristics of Shakespeare's latest plays
are discernible, but the precise date of this play is questioned, and thus it is difficult to decide whether the fashion was set by Beaumont and
Fletcher with their play or by Shakespeare with Pericles). It is at least likely, however, that Shakespeare himself was the pioneer and
originator of a new style. The King's Men took over the Blackfriars Theatre in 1608. It was a more expensive theatre, and it has reasonably
been conjectured that its facilities influenced Shakespeare to produce a new kind of play for a sophisticated audience more responsive to
imaginative experiment in drama.
Pericles
The first scenes of Pericles are often feeble in expression, frequently unsyntactical, and sometimes scarcely intelligible. The second half is
splendidly written, in Shakespeare's mature style. It is now generally supposed that the inadequate parts of the play are due to its being a
reconstruction of the text from the actors' imperfect memories. For the second half of the play, either the printer had a manuscript of good
quality or the actors' memories were more accurate. Ben Jonson called it "a mouldy tale." Certainly it was a very old one. There was a
Greek prose fiction on the story, which survives in a Latin translation. Versions of it are found in many European languages. John Gower,
Chaucer's friend and contemporary, had included the story in his poem Confessio amantis, and there were two separate prose renderings in
Shakespeare's time.
Cymbeline
The main theme of Cymbeline--Posthumus' wager on the chastity of his wife, Imogen--Shakespeare derived from a story in Boccaccio's
Decameron. But he put this Italianate intrigue into a setting that, for his audience, was authentic. Cymbeline, king of Britain, and his two
sons, Guiderius and Arviragus, who succeeded him, were, for Shakespeare's audience, historical monarchs. The play is carefully set in the
pre-Christian Roman world. The Romans who invade Britain are recognizably derived from the same kind of exploration of the antique
world that had produced Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus.
Shakespeare shows great dramatic skill in weaving together many different elements of plot, period, and place. The open-air scenes in
Wales, Iachimo's concealment in a trunk in Imogen's bedchamber, the supposed deaths of Posthumus and of Imogen disguised as Fidele,
the battle between the Britons and Romans, the vision of the eagle-borne Jupiter--all these in preparation for the amazing complications of
the final scene of the play, where (it has been calculated) there are 24 distinct "revelations" in 455 lines.
The Winter's Tale
In The Winter's Tale Shakespeare's audacity had increased. He introduced a similar combination of heterogeneous civilizations. But he also
abandoned a unity of development in the story: he made a break of 16 years in the middle of the play, introducing the figure of Time to
persuade the audience to accept the rapid shift of dramatic time. Shakespeare similarly challenged their confidence by the pathos of the
deaths of the little boy Mamillius and, seemingly, of his mother Hermione, followed by the repentance of her jealous husband Leontes. He
also allows Antigonus, a most attractive character, to be eaten by a bear. Shakespeare clearly intended the audience to become involved
only at certain moments of the play, by intensifying particular episodes without allowing emotional commitment to the whole plot. Three
times his characters use the phrase "like an old tale," as if they were themselves commenting on its incredibility. What might have been the
most moving scene or series of scenes in this group of plays--the revelation of Perdita's true birth--is related only at second hand by a
number of anonymous gentlemen. Presumably, Shakespeare did not wish to anticipate or reduce the theatrical effect of the final scene, in
which the "statue" of Hermione comes to life. Or perhaps, having already shown a similar scene of recognition of father and long-lost
daughter in Pericles, he did not wish to repeat himself.
The Tempest
The Tempest shows even greater excellence in the variety of its ingredients. There is story enough, including two assassination plots. There
is a group of quickly differentiated characters; there is elaborate dancing and singing; there is an inset entertainment, a marriage masque
performed by the goddesses Iris, Ceres, and Juno; there is a theatrical "quaint device," the introduction and vanishing of a banquet; there is
a tender love affair; there are marvellous comic turns. Yet a mood of seriousness is felt throughout the play; questions about freedom, about
the instinct for revenge, and the conflicting claims of generosity are being asked; there is a sense of subtle seriousness when Prospero
speaks his cryptic epilogue as an actor appealing for the good opinion of his audience.
Most of the action of the plot has taken place in the past; only the climax of reconciliation and the events immediately leading up to it are
represented. But, although the "unity of time" is almost preserved, the amount of mental progress, the number of mental events, is large.
The newcomers to Prospero's island grope their way toward repentance; the Prince finds his way to true love, after his previous tentative
explorations; and Miranda awakens to womanhood. Caliban, the subhuman creature, rebels and then comes to learn the error of his ways;
Ariel, the supernatural sprite, finds the means of regaining his freedom. Prospero resumes his political authority as duke and pardons all.
The play has a most interesting double focus, geographically speaking. Openly it is a story of Naples and Milan, a world of usurpations,
tributes, homages, and political marriages that is familiar in Jacobean tragedy. At the same time the contemporary excitement of the New
World permeates the play--a world of Indians and the plantations of the colonies, of the wonders and terrors and credulities of a newly
discovered land. A lesser dramatist would surely have set his play far away in the west of the Atlantic to take advantage of this
contemporary excitement. Perhaps with a surer theatrical instinct, Shakespeare offered his audience a familiar Italianate fictional world,
which then became shot through with glimpses of the New World, too exciting to be fictional.
Henry VIII
Henry VIII is a play that has offered many difficulties to criticism. It has had a long and interesting stage history, but, from the mid-19th
century, judgment has been confused by doubts about Shakespeare's sole authorship of the play, for many scenes and splendid speeches are
written in a style very close to that of John Fletcher (see below Collaborative and attributed plays). The best of recent criticism, however, is
inclined to restrict itself to consideration of the play as it stands. Although a story of English history, it differs from the "histories" that
Shakespeare had written earlier, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. It is more episodic--more of a pageant and a series of loosely
connected crises--than a skillfully plotted drama. It has a different sort of unity: three tragic episodes involving the deaths of Buckingham,
Wolsey, and Queen Katharine led to the prophecy of a new age. For Anne Boleyn's infant, whose christening closes the play, inspires
Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, to a marvelous speech about the glories of her future reign as the first Elizabeth. Thus Henry
VIII, in spite of many differences, resembles Shakespeare's other late plays in its emphasis on the way in which past tragic events lead to
reconciliation and to hope for the new generation.
Collaborative And Attributed Plays
The busy competition of Elizabethan theatre encouraged collaboration between authors and was almost the rule in some companies.
Naturally, therefore, scholars have sought "other hands" in Shakespeare's plays, but, following the magisterial arguments of the
distinguished scholar Sir Edmund Chambers, critical opinion has held that each play in the Folio edition of 1623 is substantially
Shakespeare's. The possibility remains that parts of the earliest plays, especially 1 Henry VI and The Taming of the Shrew, may derive from
earlier plays by other hands. Stronger than this, however, are arguments that parts of Henry VIII were written by John Fletcher, who from
1608 onward wrote frequently for the King's Men. Fletcher's name has been linked with Shakespeare's elsewhere, most notably in the play
The Two Noble Kinsmen, published as their joint work in 1634. Internal evidence of style and structure suggests that Shakespeare planned
the whole work and wrote Act I; that then a need for haste arose and Fletcher took over responsibility for Acts II, III and IV, leaving
Shakespeare to complete Act V. Some such story could account for a curious lack of cohesion in the writing and also for the closeness of
the theme to interests apparent in Shakespeare's latest plays.
In his own lifetime and in later ages, several plays were attributed to Shakespeare (often with no justification at all). In his own
handwriting, however, are 147 lines of a scene in The Booke of Sir Thomas More, a play written in about 1595 by a group of five authors
(probably including Thomas Dekker, Anthony Munday, and Henry Chettle) and then suppressed by the censor. The attempts of Sir Thomas
to quell the anti-alien riots are linked in sentiment to Shylock episodes from The Merchant of Venice and echo the plays of the 1590s in
imagery and versification. Among the printed texts that have been ascribed to Shakespeare is the anonymous Edward III (1596); the
stylistic evidence adduced for his authorship of an episode in which the King woos the Countess of Salisbury might, however, be the work
of an imitator. Several plays were added to his works in the third edition of the Folio (1664): Locrine (1595), Sir John Oldcastle (1600),
Thomas Lord Cromwell (1602), The London Prodigal (1605), The Puritan (1607), and A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608). None is now
considered to be of his authorship. Other plays, too, were printed as Shakespeare's, indicating the extent of his prestige--a brand name that
could sell even rotten fish. No other dramatist of his time was so misused.
Shakespeare's reading
With a few exceptions, Shakespeare did not invent the plots of his plays. Sometimes he used old stories (Hamlet, Pericles). Sometimes he
worked from the stories of comparatively recent Italian writers, such as Boccaccio--using both well-known stories (Romeo and Juliet,
Much Ado About Nothing) and little-known ones (Othello). He used the popular prose fictions of his contemporaries in As You Like It and
The Winter's Tale. In writing his historical plays, he drew largely from Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans for the Roman
plays and the chronicles of Edward Hall and Ralph Holinshed for the plays based upon English history. Some plays deal with rather remote
and legendary history (King Lear, Cymbeline, Macbeth)--though it seemed more genuinely historical to Shakespeare's contemporaries than
it does today. Earlier dramatists had occasionally used the same material (there were, for example, earlier plays called The Famous
Victories of Henry the fifth and King Leir). But, because many plays of Shakespeare's time have been lost, it is impossible to be sure of the
relation between an earlier, lost play and Shakespeare's surviving one: in the case of Hamlet it has been plausibly argued that an "old play,"
known to have existed, was merely an early version of Shakespeare's own.
Shakespeare was probably too busy for prolonged study. He had to read what books he could, when he needed them. His enormous
vocabulary could only be derived from a mind of great celerity, responding to the literary as well as the spoken language. It is not known
what libraries were available to him. The Huguenot family of Mountjoys, with whom he lodged in London, presumably possessed French
books. There was, moreover, a very interesting connection between Shakespeare and the book trade. For there survives the record of
apprenticeship of one Richard Field, who published Shakespeare's two poems Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, describing him as the "son of
Henry Field of Stratford-upon-Avon in the County of Warwick, tanner." When Henry Field the tanner died in 1592, John Shakespeare the
glover was one of the three appointed to value his goods and chattels. Field's son, bound apprentice in 1579, was probably about the same
age as Shakespeare. From 1587 he steadily established himself as a printer of serious literature--notably of Sir Thomas North's translation
of Plutarch (1595, reprinted in 1603 and 1610). There is no direct evidence of any close friendship between Field and Shakespeare. But it
cannot escape notice that one of the important printer-publishers in London at the time was an exact contemporary of Shakespeare at
Stratford, that he can hardly have been other than a schoolfellow, that he was the son of a close associate of John Shakespeare, and that he
published Shakespeare's first poems. Clearly, a considerable number of literary contacts were available to Shakespeare, and many books
were accessible.
That Shakespeare's plays had "sources" was already apparent in his own time. An interesting contemporary description of a performance is
to be found in the diary of a young lawyer of the Middle Temple, John Manningham, who kept a record of his experiences in 1602 and
1603. On February 2, 1602, he wrote:
At our feast we had a play called Twelfth Night, or What You Will, much like The Comedy of Errors, or Menaechmi in Plautus, but most
like and near to that in Italian called Inganni. . . .
The first collection of information about sources of Elizabethan plays was published in the 17th century--Gerard Langbaine's Account of
the English Dramatick Poets (1691) briefly indicated where Shakespeare found materials for some plays. But, during the course of the 17th
century, it came to be felt that Shakespeare was an outstandingly "natural" writer, whose intellectual background was of comparatively
little significance: "he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature," said John Dryden in 1668. It was
nevertheless obvious that the intellectual quality of Shakespeare's writings was high and revealed a remarkably perceptive mind. The
Roman plays, in particular, gave evidence of careful reconstruction of the ancient world.
The first collection of source materials, arranged so that they could be read and closely compared with Shakespeare's plays, was made by
Mrs. Charlotte Lennox in the 18th century. More complete collections appeared later, notably those of John Payne Collier (Shakespeare's
Library, 1843; revised by W. Carew Hazlitt, 1875). These earlier collections have been superseded by one edited by Geoffrey Bullough as
Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (7 vol., 1957-72).
It has become steadily more possible to see what was original in Shakespeare's dramatic art. He achieved compression and economy by the
exclusion of undramatic material. He developed characters from brief suggestions in his source (Mercutio, Touchstone, Falstaff, Pandarus),
and he developed entirely new characters (the Dromio brothers, Beatrice and Benedick, Sir Toby Belch, Malvolio, Paulina, Roderigo,
Lear's fool). He rearranged the plot with a view to more effective contrasts of character, climaxes, and conclusions (Macbeth, Othello, The
Winter's Tale, As You Like It). A wider philosophical outlook was introduced (Hamlet, Coriolanus, All's Well That Ends Well, Troilus and
Cressida). And everywhere an intensification of the dialogue and an altogether higher level of imaginative writing together transformed the
older work.
But, quite apart from evidence of the sources of his plays, it is not difficult to get a fair impression of Shakespeare as a reader, feeding his
own imagination by a moderate acquaintance with the literary achievements of other men and of other ages. He quotes his contemporary
Christopher Marlowe in As You Like It. He casually refers to the Aethiopica ("Ethiopian History") of Heliodorus (which had been translated
by Thomas Underdown in 1569) in Twelfth Night. He read the translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses by Arthur Golding, which went
through seven editions between 1567 and 1612. Chapman's vigorous translation of Homer's Iliad impressed him, though he used some of
the material rather sardonically in Troilus and Cressida. He derived the ironical account of an ideal republic in The Tempest from one of
Montaigne's essays. He read (in part, at least) Samuel Harsnett's Declaration of egregious popish impostors and remembered lively
passages from it when he was writing King Lear. The beginning lines of one sonnet (106) indicate that he had read Edmund Spenser's
poem The Faerie Queene or comparable romantic literature.
He was acutely aware of the varieties of poetic style that characterized the work of other authors. A brilliant little poem he composed for
Prince Hamlet (Act II, scene 2, line 115) shows how ironically he perceived the qualities of poetry in the last years of the 16th century,
when poets such as John Donne were writing love poems uniting astronomical and cosmogenic imagery with skepticism and moral
paradoxes. The eight-syllable lines in an archaic mode written for the 14th-century poet John Gower in Pericles show his reading of that
poet's Confessio amantis. The influence of the great figure of Sir Philip Sidney, whose Arcadia was first printed in 1590 and was widely
read for generations, is frequently felt in Shakespeare's writings. Finally, the importance of the Bible for Shakespeare's style and range of
allusion is not to be underestimated. His works show a pervasive familiarity with the passages appointed to be read in church on each
Sunday throughout the year, and a large number of allusions to passages in Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach) indicates a
personal interest in one of the uncanonical books.
Understanding Shakespeare
Sympathetic Exploration Of The Texts
On opening the works of Shakespeare, a reader can be held by a few lines of verse or a sentence or one complex, glittering, or telling word.
Indeed, Shakespeare's supreme mastery of words and images, of sound, rhythm, metre, and texture, as well as the point, neatness, and
lyricism of his lines, has enslaved countless people.
The next step in understanding, for most readers, is an appreciation of individual characters. Many of the early books on Shakespeare were
about his "characters," and controversy about them still continues. Appreciation of the argument of the plays usually comes on insensibly,
for Shakespeare is not a didactic playwright. But most persistent readers gain an increasing sense of a unity of inspiration, of an alert moral
judgment and idealistic vision, both in the individual plays and in the works as a whole.
When the plays are seen in performance, they are further revealed in a new, three-dimensional, flesh and blood reality, which can grow in
the minds of individual playgoers and readers as they become more experienced in response to the plays' many suggestions.
But, while various skills and learned guidance are needed for a developed understanding of Shakespeare, the directness of his appeal
remains--the editors of the First Folio commended the plays to everyone "how odd soever your brains be, or your wisdoms." Perhaps most
essentially, the plays will continually yield their secrets only to imaginative exploration.
Causes Of Difficulty
Questions Of Authorship
The idea that Shakespeare's plays and poems were not actually written by William Shakespeare of Stratford has been the subject of many
books and is widely regarded as at least an interesting possibility. The source of all doubts about the authorship of the plays lies in the
disparity between the greatness of Shakespeare's literary achievement and his comparatively humble origin, the supposed inadequacy of his
education, and the obscurity of his life. In Shakespeare's writings, people have claimed to discover a familiarity with languages and
literature, with such subjects as law, history, politics, and geography, and with the manners and speech of courts, which they regard as
inconceivable in a common player, the son of a provincial tradesman. This range of knowledge, it is said, is to be expected at that period
only in a man of extensive education, one who was familiar with such royal and noble personages as figure largely in Shakespeare's plays.
And the dearth of contemporary records has been regarded as incompatible with Shakespeare's eminence and as therefore suggestive of
mystery. That none of his manuscripts has survived has been taken as evidence that they were destroyed to conceal the identity of their
author.
The Claims Put Forward For Bacon
The first suggestion that the author of Shakespeare's plays might be Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans, seems to have been made in the
middle of the 19th century, inquiry at first centring on textual comparison between Bacon's known writings and the plays. A discovery was
made that references to the Bible, the law, and the classics were given similar treatment in both canons. In the later 19th century a search
was made for ciphered messages embedded in the dramatic texts. In Love's Labour's Lost, for example, it was found that the Latin word
"honorificabilitudinitatibus" is an anagram of Hi ludi F. Baconis nati tuiti orbi ("These plays, the offspring of F. Bacon, are preserved for
the world."). Professional cryptographers of the 20th century, however, examining all the Baconian ciphers, have rejected them as invalid,
and interest in the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy has diminished.
Other Candidates
A theory that the author of the plays was Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford, receives some circumstantial support from the coincidence
that Oxford's known poems apparently ceased just before Shakespeare's work began to appear. It is argued that Oxford assumed a
pseudonym in order to protect his family from the social stigma then attached to the stage and also because extravagance had brought him
into disrepute at court. Another candidate is William Stanley, 6th earl of Derby, who was keenly interested in the theatre and was patron of
his own company of actors. Several poems, written in the 1580s and exhibiting signs of an immature Shakespearean style, cannot well have
been written by Shakespeare himself. One of these is in Derby's handwriting, and three of them are signed "W.S." These initials are thought
by some to have been a concealment for Derby's identity (for some such motives as were attributed to Oxford) and to have been later
expanded into "William Shakespeare."
Shakespeare has also been identified with Christopher Marlowe, one theory even going so far as to assert that Marlowe was not killed in a
tavern brawl in 1593 (the corpse of another being represented as his own) but was smuggled to France and thence to Italy where he
continued to write in exile--his plays being fathered on Shakespeare, who was paid to keep silent.
The Case For Shakespeare
In spite of recorded allusions to Shakespeare as the author of many plays in the canon, made by about 50 men during his lifetime, it is
arguable that his greatness was not as clearly recognized in his own day as one might expect. But on the other hand, the difficulties are not
so great as many disbelievers have held, and their proposals have all too often raised larger problems than they have resolved.
Shakespeare's contemporaries, after all, wrote of him unequivocally as the author of the plays. Ben Jonson, who knew him well,
contributed verses to the First Folio of 1623, where (as elsewhere) he criticizes and praises Shakespeare as the author. John Heminge and
Henry Condell, fellow actors and theatre owners with Shakespeare, signed the dedication and a foreword to the First Folio and described
their methods as editors. In his own day, therefore, he was accepted as the author of the plays. Throughout his lifetime, and for long after,
no person is known to have questioned his authorship. In an age that loved gossip and mystery as much as any, it seems hardly conceivable
that Jonson and Shakespeare's theatrical associates shared the secret of a gigantic literary hoax without a single leak or that they could have
been imposed upon without suspicion. Unsupported assertions that the author of the plays was a man of great learning and that Shakespeare
of Stratford was an illiterate rustic no longer carry weight, and only when a believer in Bacon or Oxford or Marlowe produces sound
evidence will scholars pay close attention to it and to him.
Linguistic And Historical Problems
Since the days of Shakespeare, the English language has changed, and so have audiences, theatres, actors, and customary patterns of
thought and feeling. Time has placed an ever-increasing cloud before the mirror he held up to life, and it is here that scholarship can help.
Problems are most obvious in single words. In the 20th century, "presently," for instance, does not mean "immediately," as it usually did
for Shakespeare, or "will" mean "lust" or "rage" mean "folly" or "silly" denote "innocence" and "purity." In Shakespeare's day, words
sounded different, too, so that "ably" could rhyme with "eye" or "tomb" with "dumb." Syntax was often different, and, far more difficult to
define, so was response to metre and phrase. What sounds formal and stiff to a modern hearer might have sounded fresh and gay to an
Elizabethan.
Ideas have changed, too, most obviously political ones. Shakespeare's contemporaries almost unanimously believed in authoritarian
monarchy and recognized divine intervention in history. Most of them would have agreed that a man should be burned for ultimate
religious heresies. It is the office of linguistic and historical scholarship to aid the understanding of the multitude of factors that have
significantly affected the impressions made by Shakespeare's plays.
Textual And Editorial Problems
None of Shakespeare's plays has survived in his handwritten manuscript, and, in the printed texts of some plays, notably King Lear and
Richard III, there are passages manifestly corrupt, with no clue to the words Shakespeare once wrote. Even if the printer received a good
manuscript, small errors could still be introduced. Compositors were less than perfect; they often "regularized" the readings of their copy,
altered punctuation because they lacked the necessary pieces of type, or made mistakes because they had to work too hurriedly. Even the
correction of proof sheets in the printing house could further corrupt the text, since such correction was usually effected without reference
to the author or to the manuscript copy; when both corrected and uncorrected states are still available, it is often the uncorrected version
that is preferable. Correctors are undoubtedly responsible for many errors now impossible to right.
Overcoming Some Difficulties
The Contribution Of Textual Criticism
The early editors of Shakespeare saw their task chiefly as one of correction and regularization of the faulty printing and imperfect texts of
the original editions or their reprints. Many changes in the text of the quartos and folios that are now accepted derive from Nicholas Rowe
(1709) and Alexander Pope (1723-25), but these editors also introduced many thousands of small changes that have since been rejected.
Later in the 18th century, editors compiled collations of alternative and rejected readings. Samuel Johnson (1765), Edward Capell (176768), and Edmond Malone (1790) were notable pioneers. Their work reached its most comprehensive form in the Cambridge edition in nine
volumes by W.G. Clark, J. Glover, and W.A. Wright, published in 1863-66. A famous one-volume Globe edition of 1864 was based on this
Cambridge text.
Each major editor had added to the great number of annotations on textual problems and on linguistic and historical difficulties, and in
1871 was published the first of a series of large volumes, one or two for each play, called "A New Variorum Edition," which aimed at
bringing all previous textual scholarship together. The series remains incomplete, but A.W. Pollard published his Shakespeare Folios and
Quartos in 1909 and, together with R.B. McKerrow, Sir Walter Greg, and Charles Sisson, began a concerted study of the manuscript plays
surviving from Elizabethan theatres and the practice of Elizabethan printers. Their work was summed up in Greg's study The Shakespeare
First Folio (1955) and Fredson Bowers' On Editing Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Dramatists (1955). By this time a new phase of
bibliographic and textual inquiry had begun, and Bowers, with Alice Walker, Charlton Hinman, and others, began studying the minutiae of
each substantive early edition. Computers will analyze the huge mass of their detailed information and make available the full results of
their investigations. Also, individual compositors who set in type the early editions are being identified, and already something of their
work habits and habitual errors is known. Processes of correction in the Elizabethan printing houses are also being studied more
intensively. Before the end of the 20th century, a new edition of Shakespeare may appear in which a multitude of small errors have been
removed. But even then, nothing will compensate for the loss of Shakespeare's manuscripts, and numerous important readings and details
of presentation will still have to be supplied by educated guesses.
Historical, Linguistic, And Dramatic Studies
Since the end of the 19th century, many other problems that hinder the understanding of Shakespeare's texts have been at least partly
overcome thanks to extensive investigation into, for example, his syntax, vocabulary, and word usage--especially with regard to other
Elizabethan and Jacobean literature. Such technical works, as well as studies of current theories of composition (the use of rhetoric,
metaphor, and simile), have provided material for critical analysis, as have works that examine the ideas and life-style of Shakespeare's
contemporaries. An increasingly large proportion of research is devoted to an investigation of contemporary literary and dramatic
conventions.
Literary Criticism
Literary Critics And The Theatre
Shakespeare criticism must take into account the certainty that Shakespeare intended his plays to be acted, that he was the professional
playwright of a repertory company, that the success of a play in performance by his company was what determined his income, and that
during his lifetime he apparently made no effort (or perhaps was too busy) to gain a "literary" reputation from his plays. Yet, his
contemporaries had no doubt about his literary eminence. Heminge and Condell, his fellow players, and Ben Jonson, his fellow playwright,
commended the great Folio of 1623 to "the great variety of readers."
The situation has been complicated by the fact that the history of Shakespeare criticism and the stage history of his plays have run parallel
but separate courses. It is fair to say that, from about the mid-18th century onward, there has been a constant tension between the critics and
the theatres regarding treatment of Shakespeare. Although Dr. Johnson was the contemporary of David Garrick, Coleridge and Hazlitt the
contemporaries of Edmund Kean, Dowden of Sir Henry Irving, and Bradley of Beerbohm Tree, the links between these critics and actors
were not notably strong. Theatregoers were usually impressed by character impersonations rendered by virtuoso actors, while readers
became more and more impressed by an awareness and admiration of the special artistic form of the plays. Rather than by stage
performances, Shakespeare criticism was influenced by the dominant literary forms of each age: by the self-revelatory poem of the
Romantic period, the psychological and ethical novel of the Victorians, the fragmentary revelations of the human condition in 20th-century
poetry. It is a platitude that each age finds what it wants to find in Shakespeare. It will only see what it can. It can only see what it must.
But Shakespeare critics, if criticism is to be in a healthy condition, must pay more than lip service to that fact. However deeply embedded
in its contemporary situation, good criticism, like all intellectual feats, is a leaping out of the situation. The history of Shakespeare criticism
is a subject of more than scholarly interest. It is a cautionary tale. Sometimes it is an awful warning.
The Progress Of Shakespeare Criticism
As a basis for the criticism of an author's work, it is reasonable to begin by inquiring how his contemporaries assessed his achievement. But
contemporary literary criticism was surprisingly silent about the plays actually being written (though critics were reasonably articulate
about the plays they thought ought to be written). Collections of references made to Shakespeare later, during the 17th century, show that
many important writers paid little attention to him. Ben Jonson's reputation was, for a variety of reasons, probably superior for the first half
of the century. He was, moreover, the most vocal literary critic of the early 17th century, and he thought of Shakespeare as a naturally
gifted writer, who failed to discipline himself. From his criticism derived the distinction between "nature" and "art" that for long proved to
be a pertinacious and unproductive theme of Shakespeare criticism. It was further encouraged by John Milton, when he contrasted Jonson's
"learned sock" with Shakespeare's "native wood-notes wild" (which refers to the comedies but came to be treated as a general statement,
especially the epithet "wild"). A good deal of the spirit of Ben Jonson's cavillings, rather than his magnificent praise in the poem prefixed
to the Folio of 1623, was continued by later 17th-century and 18th-century critics, censuring Shakespeare's carelessness, his artistic
"faults."
John Dryden (died 1700) was the first great critic of Shakespeare. Much concerned with his own art as a dramatist, he judged Shakespeare
in a practical spirit. For 100 years after him, the best literary criticism of Shakespeare was an elaboration and clarification of his opinions.
Dryden on some occasions praised Shakespeare in the highest terms and boldly defended the English tradition of the theatre, maintaining
that, if it was contrary to the revered classical precepts of Aristotle, it was only because Aristotle had not seen English plays; had he seen
them, his precepts would have been different. Dryden nevertheless at times attributes artistic "faults" to Shakespeare, judging him
according to Neoclassical principles of taste that derived from France and soon prevailed throughout Europe. Shakespeare's dramatic art
was so different from that of the admired tragedy of the times (that of Corneille and Racine) that it was difficult for a critic to defend or
interpret it in reasonable terms. The gravest charge was the absence of "poetical justice" in Shakespeare's plays. Although some of the
better 18th-century critics, such as Joseph Addison and Dr. Johnson, saw the limitations of "poetical justice" as an artistic theory, they
nevertheless generally felt that the ending of King Lear, especially, was intolerable, offending all sense of natural justice by the death of
Cordelia. The play was thus given a "happy ending"--one congruent with "poetical justice"--by the poet and playwright Nahum Tate: Lear
was restored to his authority, and Cordelia and Edgar were to be married and could look forward to a prosperous reign over a united
Britain. This change was approved by Dr. Johnson, and the revised play held the stage for generations and was the only form of King Lear
performed on the stage until the mid-19th century.
In the early 18th century the cumbrous folio editions were replaced by more convenient editions, prepared for the reader. Nicholas Rowe,
in a six-volume edition of 1709, tidied up the text of the plays, adding scene divisions, lists of dramatis personae, indications of locality,
and so on. Rowe was himself a practicing and successful dramatist, and on the whole he gave a good lead to the dramatic criticism of the
plays. The preface to Alexander Pope's edition of 1725, however, had an unhappy influence on criticism. Shakespeare's natural genius, he
felt, was hampered by his association with a working theatre. Pope fully accepted the artistic form of Shakespeare's writings as due to their
being stage plays. But he regarded this as a grave disadvantage and the source of their artistic defectiveness. Lewis Theobald took the
opposing view to Pope's, claiming that it was an advantage of Shakespeare that he belonged to the theatrical profession. Dr. Johnson
similarly realized that methods of producing the plays on the stage influenced the kind of illusion created. In the splendid preface to his
edition (1765), Johnson dismissed, once and for all in English criticism, the Neoclassical theories of "decorum," the "unities," and the
mutual exclusiveness of tragedy and comedy--theories now seen as irrelevant to Shakespeare's art and as having confused the discussion of
it. In many ways Johnson was the source of the notion of Shakespeare as a realistic dramatist, whose mingling of tragic and comic scenes
was justified as "exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature," in which laughter and tears, rejoicing and misery, are found side by side.
Johnson censured Shakespeare as a dramatic artist for his lack of morality. Shakespeare, he wrote, "sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is
so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose." Later critics have felt compelled to
controvert or to circumvent such a judgment. But Johnson's preface, if it did not give the discussion of Shakespeare's artistry a fresh start,
cleared away some of the dead or irrelevant doctrines.
During the rest of the 18th century, after Johnson, it was scholarship rather than criticism that advanced in England. The best of literary
criticism of the time was in the discovery of new subtleties in Shakespeare, especially in characterization; indeed, the acceptance of
Shakespeare as a dramatic artist largely came about through his evident powers of characterization (to which probably the growth of the
realistic novel in the 18th century had made readers more sensitive), and inadequate attention was paid to other aspects of his dramatic
craftsmanship. There was nothing in England comparable to the brilliant Shakespeare criticism of Lessing, Goethe, and August von
Schlegel in Germany. The latter's essay on Romeo and Juliet of 1797 demonstrated that, apart from a few witticisms, nothing could be
taken away from the play, nothing added, nothing rearranged without mutilating the work of art and confusing the author's intentions. Here
modern Shakespeare criticism begins. Indeed, from the time of Lessing, in the 18th century, to the mid-19th century, German critics and
scholars made substantial and original contributions to the interpretation of Shakespeare, indicating Shakespeare's superlative artistry, at a
time when in England he was admired more as a great poet and a brilliant observer of mankind than as a disciplined artist.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the greatest English critic of Shakespeare, vigorously denied that he had been affected by Schlegel (though he
acknowledged the influence of Lessing), but there are many similarities between the two. His criticism--which has to be put together from
reports of his lectures, from his notebooks, and from memories of his conversation, for he never succeeded in writing an organized book on
Shakespeare--at first censured Shakespeare's lack of artistry, but in his lectures, given from 1810 onward, and in his Biographia Literaria
(1817), he demonstrated that Shakespeare's "irregularities" were in fact the manifestations of a subtle intelligence. It was the purpose of
criticism to reveal the reasons why the plays are as they are. Shakespeare was a penetrating psychologist and a profound philosopher; but
Coleridge claimed that he was an even greater artist, and his artistry was seen to be "unconscious" or "organic," not contrived. Thus the
dominant literary forms of Coleridge's age, which were those of self-revelatory poetry, influenced the criticism of the age: Hamlet was felt
to speak with the voice and feeling of Shakespeare, and, as for the sonnets, William Wordsworth, whose greatest achievement was writing
a long poem on the growth of his own mind, explained that Shakespeare "unlocked his heart" in his sonnets.
These critical opinions were inclined to degenerate in inferior hands in the course of the 19th century: the belief in Shakespeare's allpervading artistry led to over-subtle interpretations; the enthusiasm for character analysis led to excessive biography writing outside the
strictly dramatic framework; and the acknowledged assessment of Shakespeare's keen intelligence led to his being associated with almost
every school of thought in religion, politics, morals, psychology, and metaphysics. Nevertheless, it was the great achievement of the
Romantics to have freed criticism from preoccupation with the "beauties" and "faults" in Shakespeare and to have devoted themselves
instead to interpreting the delight that people had always felt in the plays, whether as readers or theatregoers. Shakespeare's "faults" now
became "problems," and it was regarded an achievement in literary criticism to have found an explanation for some hitherto difficult or
irreconcilable detail in a play. Many of the most brilliant writers of Europe were critics of Shakespeare; and their utterances (whether or not
they may be regarded as having correctly interpreted Shakespeare) are notable as recording the impressions he made upon great minds.
Shakespeare's Influence
Today Shakespeare's plays are performed throughout the world, and all kinds of new, experimental work finds inspiration in them: " . . . in
the second half of the twentieth century in England," wrote the innovative theatre director Peter Brook, "we are faced with the infuriating
fact that Shakespeare is still our model."
Shakespeare's influence on English theatre was evident from the start. John Webster, Philip Massinger, and John Ford are among the better
known dramatists who borrowed openly from his plays. His influence is evident on Restoration dramatists, especially Thomas Otway, John
Dryden, and William Congreve. John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and George Bernard Shaw are among 20th-century writers
in whose works Shakespearean echoes are to be found. Many writers have taken over Shakespeare's plots and characters: Shaw rewrote the
last act of Cymbeline, Tom Stoppard invented characters to set against parts of Hamlet in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1968),
and Edward Bond used King Lear as the starting point for his own Lear (1971).
Shakespeare has also influenced dramatists and theatre directors outside his own country. In Germany, English acting troupes were
welcomed early in the 17th century, and the German version of Hamlet, Der bestrafte Brudermord ("Fratricide Punished"), testifes to the
immediate influence of that play. His influence on later European dramatists ranges from a running allusion to Hamlet in Anton Chekhov's
play The Seagull to imitation and parody of Richard III in Bertolt Brecht's Arturo Ui, adaptation of King John by Max Frisch, and André
Gide's translation and simplification of Hamlet.
Shakespeare's influence on actors since his own day has been almost as widespread. Many European and American actors have had their
greatest successes in Shakespearean roles. In England very few actors or actresses reach pre-eminence without acting in his plays. Each
player has the opportunity to make a part his own. This is not because Shakespeare has created only outlines for others to fill but because
he left so many and varied invitations for the actor to call upon his deepest, most personal resources.
Theatre directors and designers after Shakespeare's time, with every technical stage resource at their command, have returned repeatedly to
his plays, which give opportunity for spectacle and finesse, ritual and realism, music and controlled quietness. Their intrinsic theatricality,
too, has led to adaptations into very different media: into opera (as Verdi's Otello) and ballet (as versions of Romeo and Juliet from several
nations); into sound recordings, television programs, and films. Musicals have been made of the comedies (as Kiss Me Kate from The
Taming of the Shrew); even a tragedy, Othello, was the inspiration of a "rock" musical in 1971 called Catch My Soul, while Macbeth has
yielded a political-satire show called Macbird! (1967).
Shakespeare has Hamlet say that the aim of theatre performance is to "hold the mirror up to nature," and this is what the history of his
plays, from their first production to the latest, shows that he has, preeminently, achieved.
Plays
(probable dates of performance given): 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI (1589-91); 1 Henry VI (1591-92); Richard III, The Comedy of Errors (1592-93); Titus
Andronicus, The Taming of the Shrew (1593-94); The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, Romeo and Juliet (1594-95); Richard II, A
Midsummer Night's Dream (1595-96); King John, The Merchant of Venice (1596-97); 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV (1597-98); Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V
(1598-99); Julius Caesar, As You Like It (1599-1600); Hamlet, The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600-01); Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida (1601-02); All's
Well That Ends Well (1602-03); Measure for Measure, Othello (1604-05); King Lear, Macbeth (1605-06); Antony and Cleopatra (1606-07); Coriolanus,
Timon of Athens (1607-08); Pericles (1608-09); Cymbeline (1609-10); The Winter's Tale (1610-11); The Tempest (1611-12); Henry VIII (1612-13).
Poems
(dates of publication given): Venus and Adonis (1593); The Rape of Lucrece (1594); "The Phoenix and the Turtle" (1601); Sonnets with "A Lovers
complaint" (1609).
Modern Editions
Collections of Shakespeare's works include Horace Howard Furness (ed.), A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, 27 vol. (1871-1955), with extensive
textual apparatus and notes; Arthur T. Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson (eds.), The Works of Shakespeare, 39 vol. (1921-66), although the early
publications of the comedies and some histories are now considered eccentric; Una Ellis-Fermor (ed.), The Arden Edition of the Works of Shakespeare, new
ed. (1951- ); Charles Jasper Sisson (ed.), Complete Works (1954); Alfred Harbage (ed.), The Pelican Shakespeare, rev. ed. (1969, reprinted 1981); Irving
Ribner and George Lyman Kittredge (eds.), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (1971); Sylvan Barnet (ed.), The Complete Signet Classic
Shakespeare (1972); G. Blakemore Evans (ed.), The Riverside Shakespeare (1974); Peter Alexander (ed.), The Complete Works, new ed. (1983); Stanley
Wells and Gary Taylor (eds.), William Shakespeare, the Complete Works (1986), the first Oxford University Press edition since 1891, with a companion
volume, Stanley Wells et al., William Shakespeare, a Textual Companion (1987); and David Bevington (ed.), The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 4th ed.
(1992).
Bibliographies
Walter Ebisch and Levin L. Schücking, A Shakespeare Bibliography (1931, reprinted 1968), and a supplement for the years 1930-35 (1937, reissued 1968),
are comprehensive. They are updated by Gordon Ross Smith, A Classified Shakespeare Bibliography, 1936-1958 (1963). James G. McManaway, A Selective
Bibliography of Shakespeare: Editions, Textual Studies, Commentary (1975), covers more than 4,500 items published between 1930 and 1970, mainly in
English. Larry S. Champion, The Essential Shakespeare: An Annotated Bibliography of Major Modern Studies, 2nd ed. (1993), includes works in English
published from 1900 through 1984. Stanley Wells (ed.), Shakespeare, new ed. (1990), provides bibliographies on topics ranging from the poet to the text to
the performances. The Shakespeare Quarterly publishes an annual classified bibliography. The Shakespeare Survey (quarterly) publishes annual accounts of
"Contributions to Shakespearian Study," as well as retrospective articles on work done on particular aspects. A selection of important scholarly essays
published during the previous year is collected in Shakespearean Criticism (annual).
Textual Studies
John Bartlett, A New and Complete Concordance or Verbal Index to Words, Phrases & Passages in the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare (1894, reprinted
1937); and C.T. Onions, A Shakespeare Glossary, enlarged and rev. by Robert D. Eagleson (1986), are both still most useful reference works. The following
works represent modern thinking and practice on textual criticism as applied to Shakespeare: Fredson Bowers, Bibliography and Textual Criticism (1964),
and On Editing Shakespeare (1966); W.W. Greg, The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare, 3rd ed. (1954, reissued 1967), and The Shakespeare First Folio
(1955, reprinted 1969); Charlton Hinman, The Printing and Proof-Reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare, 2 vol. (1963); E.A.J. Honigmann, The Stability
of Shakespeare's Text (1965); Ronald Brunlees McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1927, reissued 1967); Alfred W. Pollard,
Shakespeare Folios and Quartos: A Study in the Bibliography of Shakespeare's Plays, 1594-1685 (1909, reprinted 1970); Alice Walker, Textual Problems of
the First Folio (1953, reprinted 1976); and F.P. Wilson, Shakespeare and the New Bibliography, new ed., rev. and edited by Helen Gardner (1970).
Facsimile editions of quartos and folios, which are necessary for any close work on textual problems, are available in Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles
(irregular); and Charlton Hinman, The First Folio of Shakespeare (1968).
Biographies And Background Studies
A lively account of the various efforts that have been made to write a biography of Shakespeare from the available materials, with the help of imaginative
interpretation, is S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare's Lives, new ed. (1991). Also of interest are Schoenbaum's collections of documents, paintings, and other
records: William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life (1975), Shakespeare, the Globe, and the World (1979), and William Shakespeare: Records and Images
(1981). The first detailed life of Shakespeare was written by Nicholas Rowe, Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709, reprinted 1967).
Edmond Malone, The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare, 21 vol. (1821), includes an account of his life with much new material. The best of the 19thcentury biographies are J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed., 2 vol. (1887, reissued 2 vol. in 1, 1966); and Sidney Lee, A Life
of William Shakespeare, 14th ed. (1931, reprinted 1968), first published in 1898. A standard work is E.K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts
and Problems, 2 vol. (1930, reprinted 1988), also available in an abridged version by Charles Williams, A Short Life of Shakespeare, with the Sources (1933,
reissued 1965). Additional biographical works are Edgar I. Fripp, Shakespeare, Man and Artist, 2 vol. (1938, reissued 1964); Peter Alexander, Shakespeare's
Life and Art (1939, reprinted 1979); Hazelton Spencer, The Art and Life of William Shakespeare (1940, reissued 1970); M.M. Reese, Shakespeare: His
World and His Work, rev. ed. (1980); Gerald Eades Bentley, Shakespeare: A Biographical Handbook (1961, reprinted 1986); Peter Quennell, Shakespeare
(1963); E.A.J. Honigmann, Shakespeare, the Lost Years (1985), discussing his early development; Russell Fraser, Young Shakespeare (1988), continued in
Shakespeare, the Later Years (1992); A.L. Rowse, Shakespeare the Man, rev. ed. (1988); Richard Dutton, William Shakespeare: A Literary Life (1989); and
Dennis Kay, Ahakespeare: His Life, Work, and Era (1992), providing a chronological study of Shakespeare's writings.
Studies of special aspects of his life and environment include John Leslie Hotson, Shakespeare Versus Shallow (1931, reprinted 1970); T.W. Baldwin,
William Shakspere's Petty School (1943), and William Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke, 2 vol. (1944); Mark Eccles, Shakespeare in Warwickshire
(1961); M.C. Bradbrook, Shakespeare: The Poet in His World (1978), with emphasis on the plays; and Emrys Jones, The Origins of Shakespeare (1977), a
study of mid-Tudor influences on Shakespeare.
A valuable collection of background material is contained in Sidney Lee and C.T. Onions (eds.), Shakespeare's England: An Account of the Life & Manners
of His Age, 2 vol. (1916, reissued 1970). Also helpful are E.M.W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (1943, reissued 1973); Allardyce Nicoll (ed.),
Shakespeare in His Own Age (1964, reissued 1976); Levi Fox (ed.), The Shakespeare Handbook (1987), including essays on topics ranging from the
Elizabethan world and Shakespeare's life to the theatre and music; and Jo McMurtry, Understanding Shakespeare's England: A Companion for the American
Reader (1989).
Standard works on the theatre of Shakespeare's professional life are E.K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vol. (1923, reprinted 1974); and Glynne
Wickham, Early English Stages, 1300-1660, vol. 2, 1576-1660, 2 parts (1963-72). Other studies are Alfred Harbage, Shakespeare's Audience (1941, reissued
1969); Gerald Eades Bentley, Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare's Time, 1590-1642 (1971, reissued 1986); Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare's
London (1987), which describes the playhouses of Shakespeare's time and the people who went to them; A.M. Nagler, Shakespeare's Stage, enlarged ed.
(1981); and Bernard Beckerman, Shakespeare at the Globe, 1599-1609 (1962).
Special aspects of the environment that throw light on the mentality of the dramatist are Richmond Noble, Shakespeare's Biblical Knowledge and Use of the
Book of Common Prayer (1935, reprinted 1977); Roland Mushat Frye, Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine (1963); Cynthia Marshall, Last Things and Last
Plays: Shakespearean Eschatology (1991), reviewing the changing apocalyptic concerns of post-Elizabethan England in relation to Shakespeare's characters;
James L. Calderwood, Shakespeare & the Denial of Death (1987), discussing how Shakespeare's characters try to escape mortality; Paul A. Jorgensen,
Shakespeare's Military World (1956, reissued 1973); George W. Keeton, Shakespeare's Legal and Political Background (1967); Alexander Leggatt,
Shakespeare's Political Drama: The History Plays and the Roman Plays (1988), analyzing Shakespeare's political focus; Katharine Mary Briggs, The
Anatomy of Puck (1959, reprinted 1977), and Pale Hecate's Team (1962, reprinted 1977), on belief in fairies and witchcraft; and Ann Jennalie Cook, Making
a Match: Courtship in Shakespeare and His Society (1991).
A survey of the theories that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the author of the plays published under his name has
been written by H.N. Gibson, The Shakespeare Claimants: A Critical Survey of the Four Principal Theories Concerning the Authorship of the
Shakespearean Plays (1962, reissued 1971). The same theme is treated by R.C. Churchill, Shakespeare and His Betters: A History and a Criticism of the
Attempts Which Have Been Made to Prove That Shakespeare's Works Were Written by Others (1958); and Frank W. Wadsworth, The Poacher from
Stratford: A Partial Account of the Controversy Over the Authorship of Shakespeare's Plays (1958). The following are some of the principal exponents of
the alternate authors: on Bacon, Edwin Durning-Lawrence, Bacon Is Shake-speare (1910, reissued 1971); Arthur Bradford Cornwall, Francis the First,
Unacknowledged King of Great Britain and Ireland (1936); and J.M. Robertson, The Baconian Heresy (1913, reissued 1971); on Edward de Vere, 17th Earl
of Oxford, J. Thomas Looney, "Shakespeare" Identified, 3rd ed. (1975); Percy Allen, The Case for Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as "Shakespeare"
(1930); H. Amphlett, Who Was Shakespeare? (1955, reissued 1970); and Gilbert Slater, Seven Shakespeares (1931, reprinted 1978), which proposes Oxford
and a group of his collaborators; on William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, Abel Lefranc, Under the Mask of William Shakespeare (1988; originally published
in French, 2 vol., 1918-19), and À la découverte de Shakespeare, 2 vol. (1945-50); and on Marlowe, Calvin Hoffman, The Murder of the Man Who Was
Shakespeare (also published as The Man Who Was Shakespeare, 1955). The possibility of cryptic messages in the plays was conclusively investigated in
William F. Friedman and Elizabeth S. Friedman, The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined (1957).
Critical Studies
Current critical opinion may be found in two collections: John F. Andrews (ed.), William Shakespeare: His World, His Work, His Influence, 3 vol. (1985), 60
interpretive essays; and Stanley Wells (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies (1986), essays on contemporary Shakespearean knowledge.
Opinion about Shakespeare up to 1700 is collected in John Munro (ed.), The Shakspere Allusion-Book, rev. by E.K. Chambers, 2 vol. (1932, reprinted 1970);
and in Gerald Eades Bentley, Shakespeare & Jonson: Their Reputations in the Seventeenth Century Compared (1945, reissued 1965). Eighteenth-century
criticism is surveyed in David Nichol Smith, Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century (1928, reprinted 1978), Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare, 2nd
ed. (1963), a collection, and Shakespeare Criticism: A Selection (1916, reissued 1939), an anthology that includes work up to about 1825. Brian Vickers,
Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage, 6 vol. (1974-81), is an anthology covering the years 1623 to 1801. Jonathan Bate, Shakespearean Constitutions:
Politics, Theatre, Criticism, 1730-1830 (1989), relates how Shakespeare was understood in 18th- and early 19th-century England. Dr. Johnson's criticism has
been conveniently excerpted in Samuel Johnson, Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. by Walter Raleigh (1908, reissued 1965), and Samuel Johnson on
Shakespeare, ed. by W.k. Wimsatt, Jr. (1960). Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shakespearean Criticism, ed. by Thomas Middleton Raysor, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1960),
is the standard edition, and another useful compilation is Coleridge on Shakespeare, ed. and compiled by Terence Hawkes (1969)--these can be
supplemented by Coleridge on Shakespeare: The Text of the Lectures of 1811-12, ed. by R.A. Foakes (1971).
General surveys of the development of criticism are given by Louis Marder, His Exits and His Entrances (1963); Alfred Harbage, Conceptions of
Shakespeare (1966); Arthur M. Eastman, A Short History of Shakespearean Criticism (1968, reprinted 1985); and Raymond Powell, Shakespeare and the
Critics' Debate (1980). The situation outside Britain may be studied in Oswald Lewinter (ed.), Shakespeare in Europe (1963). Patrick Murray, The
Shakespearian Scene: Some Twentieth-Century Perspectives (1969), gives a shrewd survey of modern criticism. Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the
Problem of Meaning (1981), discusses the inevitably differing interpretations of the plays. Maurice Charney (ed.), "Bad" Shakespeare: Revaluations of the
Shakespeare Canon (1988), questions traditional assumptions concerning Shakespeare's life and work. E.A.J. Honigmann, Myriad-Minded Shakespeare:
Essays, Chiefly on the Tragedies and Problem Comedies (1989), offers essays for the general reader on many critical theories. Philip Edwards, Shakespeare:
A Writer's Progress (1986), studies the interrelationship of all Shakespeare's writings. Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare, rev. ed., 2 vol.
(1972), sets the plays firmly in their theatrical environment. Robert Hapgood, Shakespeare the Theatre-Poet (1988), explores the idea of interpreting
Shakespeare's plays through their performance. Enquiries into the artistic conventions of Shakespeare's time are the basis of the criticism of Leven L.
Schücking, Character Problems in Shakespeare's Plays (1922, reissued 1959; originally published in German, 1919); Elmer Edgar Stoll, Art and Artifice in
Shakespeare (1933, reissued 1968); Oscar James Campbell, Shakespeare's Satire (1943, reissued 1971); and William Witherle Lawrence, Shakespeare's
Problem Comedies, 2nd ed. (1969).
G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire, 4th rev. and enlarged ed. (1949, reissued 1983), The Imperial Theme, 3rd ed. (1953, reprinted 1972), The
Shakespearian Tempest, 3rd ed. (1953, reissued 1971), and later books; and L.C. Knights, How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth? (1933, reprinted 1973),
show how Shakespeare achieved poetical and symbolic effects. George T. Wright, Shakespeare's Metrical Art (1988), studies the metrical methods
Shakespeare used. Keir Elam, Shakespeare's Universe of Discourse: Language-Games in the Comedies (1984), focuses on Love's Labour's Lost. The study
of Shakespeare's imagery is well represented by the pioneer work of Caroline F.E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us (1935, reissued
1984); Wolfgang Clemen, The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery, 2nd ed. (1977; originally published in German, 1936); and Robert B. Heilman, This
Great Stage: Image and Structure in King Lear (1948, reprinted 1976), and Magic in the Web: Action and Language in Othello (1956, reprinted 1977). S.
Viswanathan, The Shakespeare Play As Poem: A Critical Tradition in Perspective (1980), concentrates on the work of the critics Knight, Knights, and
Spurgeon cited above.
An understanding of the intellectual and social background of the plays was advanced by Willard Farnham, The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy
(1936, reissued 1970), and Shakespeare's Tragic Frontier (1950, reprinted 1973); Hardin Craig, The Enchanted Glass: The Elizabethan Mind in Literature
(1935, reissued 1975); C.L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (1959, reissued 1972); Theodore Spencer, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man, 2nd ed.
(1949, reissued 1974); Lily B. Campbell, Shakespeare's "Histories": Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy (1947, reissued 1978); Sukanta Chaudhuri, Infirm Glory:
Shakespeare and the Renaissance Image of Man (1981); and Robert Kimbrough, Shakespeare and the Art of Human Kindness: The Essay Toward
Androgyny (1990), exploring the Elizabethan idea that both male and female qualities are within each person's mind.
Some of the notable explorations of the artistry of the plays are Madeleine Doran, Endeavors of Art (1954, reissued 1972); Bertrand Evans, Shakespeare's
Comedies (1960); and Anne Righter, Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play (1964). Jan Kott, Shakespeare, Our Contemporary, 2nd ed. rev. (1967, reprinted
1988; originally published in Polish, 1962), has been influential on theatrical productions.
Shaw, George Bernard
b. July 26, 1856, Dublin, Ire., Nov. 2, 1950, Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, Eng.
Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, and Socialist propagandist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.
First Plays
When Shaw began writing for the English stage, its most prominent dramatists were Sir A.W. Pinero and H.A. Jones. Both men were trying
to develop a modern realistic drama, but neither had the power to break away from the type of artificial plots and conventional character
types expected by theatregoers. The poverty of this sort of drama had become apparent with the introduction of several of Henrik Ibsen's
plays onto the London stage around 1890, when A Doll's House was played in London; his Ghosts followed in 1891, and the possibility of
a new freedom and seriousness on the English stage was introduced. Shaw, who was about to publish The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891),
rapidly refurbished an abortive comedy, Widowers' Houses, as a play recognizably "Ibsenite" in tone, making it turn on the notorious
scandal of slum landlordism in London. The result (performed 1892) flouted the threadbare romantic conventions that were still being
exploited even by the most daring new playwrights. In the play a well-intentioned young Englishman falls in love and then discovers that
his prospective father-in-law's fortune and his own private income derive from exploitation of the poor. Potentially this is a tragic situation,
but Shaw seems to have been always determined to avoid tragedy. The unamiable lovers do not attract sympathy; it is the social evil and
not the romantic predicament on which attention is concentrated, and the action is kept well within the key of ironic comedy.
The same dramatic predispositions control Mrs. Warren's Profession, written in 1893 but not performed until 1902 because the lord
chamberlain, the censor of plays, refused it a license. Its subject is organized prostitution, and its action turns on the discovery by a welleducated young woman that her mother has graduated through the "profession" to become a part-proprietor of brothels throughout Europe.
Again, the economic determinants of the situation are emphasized, and the subject is treated remorselessly and without the titillation of
fashionable comedies about "fallen women." As with many of Shaw's works, the play is, within limits, a drama of ideas, but the vehicle by
which these are presented is essentially one of high comedy.
Shaw called these first plays "unpleasant," because "their dramatic power is used to force the spectator to face unpleasant facts." He
followed them with four "pleasant" plays in an effort to find the producers and audiences that his mordant comedies had offended. Both
groups of plays were revised and published in Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898). The first of the second group, Arms and the Man
(performed 1894), has a Balkan setting and makes lighthearted, though sometimes mordant, fun of romantic falsifications of both love and
warfare. The second, Candida (performed 1897), was important for English theatrical history, for its successful production at the Royal
Court Theatre in 1904 encouraged Harley Granville-Barker and J.E. Vedrenne to form a partnership that resulted in a series of brilliant
productions there. The play represents its heroine as forced to choose between her clerical husband--a worthy but obtuse Christian
Socialist--and a young poet who has fallen wildly in love with her. She chooses her confident-seeming husband because she discerns that
he is actually the weaker. The poet is immature and hysterical but, as an artist, has a capacity to renounce personal happiness in the interest
of some large creative purpose. This is a significant theme for Shaw; it leads on to that of the conflict between man as spiritual creator and
woman as guardian of the biological continuity of the human race that is basic to Man and Superman. In Candida such speculative issues
are only lightly touched on, and this is true also of You Never Can Tell (performed 1899), in which the hero and heroine, who believe
themselves to be respectively an accomplished amorist and an utterly rational and emancipated woman, find themselves in the grip of a
vital force that takes little account of these notions.
The strain of writing these plays, while his critical and political work went on unabated, so sapped Shaw's strength that a minor illness
became a major one. In 1898, during the process of recuperation, he married his unofficial nurse, Charlotte Payne-Townshend, an Irish
heiress and friend of Beatrice and Sidney Webb. The apparently celibate marriage lasted all their lives, Shaw satisfying his emotional needs
in paper-passion correspondences with Ellen Terry, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and others.
Shaw's next collection of plays, Three Plays for Puritans (1901), continued what became the traditional Shavian preface--an introductory
essay in an electric prose style dealing as much with the themes suggested by the plays as the plays themselves. The Devil's Disciple
(performed 1897) is a play set in New Hampshire during the American Revolution and is an inversion of traditional melodrama. Caesar
and Cleopatra (performed 1901) is Shaw's first great play. In the play Cleopatra is a spoiled and vicious 16-year-old child rather than the
38-year-old temptress of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. The play depicts Caesar as a lonely and austere man who is as much a
philosopher as he is a soldier. The play's outstanding success rests upon its treatment of Caesar as a credible study in magnanimity and
"original morality" rather than as a superhuman hero on a stage pedestal. The third play, Captain Brassbound's Conversion (performed
1900), is a sermon against various kinds of folly masquerading as duty and justice.
International Importance
In Man and Superman (performed 1905) Shaw expounded his philosophy that humanity is the latest stage in a purposeful and eternal
evolutionary movement of the "life force" toward ever-higher life forms. The play's hero, Jack Tanner, is bent on pursuing his own spiritual
development in accordance with this philosophy as he flees the determined marital pursuit of the heroine, Ann Whitefield. In the end Jack
ruefully allows himself to be captured in marriage by Ann upon recognizing that she herself is a powerful instrument of the "life force,"
since the continuation and thus the destiny of the human race lies ultimately in her and other women's reproductive capacity. The play's
nonrealistic third act, the "Don Juan in Hell" dream scene, is spoken theatre at its most operatic and is often performed independently as a
separate piece.
Shaw had already become established as a major playwright on the Continent by the performance of his plays there, but, curiously, his
reputation lagged in England. It was only with the production of John Bull's Other Island (performed 1904) in London, with a special
performance for Edward VII, that Shaw's stage reputation was belatedly made in England.
Shaw continued, through high comedy, to explore religious consciousness and to point out society's complicity in its own evils. In Major
Barbara (performed 1905), Shaw has his heroine, a major in the Salvation Army, discover that her estranged father, a munitions
manufacturer, may be a dealer in death but that his principles and practice, however unorthodox, are religious in the highest sense, while
those of the Salvation Army require the hypocrisies of often-false public confession and the donations of the distillers and the armourers
against which it inveighs. In The Doctor's Dilemma (performed 1906), Shaw produced a satire upon the medical profession (representing
the self-protection of professions in general) and upon both the artistic temperament and the public's inability to separate it from the artist's
achievement. In Androcles and the Lion (performed 1912), Shaw dealt with true and false religious exaltation in a philosophical play about
early Christianity. Its central theme, examined through a group of early Christians condemned to the arena, is that one must have something
worth dying for--an end outside oneself--in order to make life worth living.
Possibly Shaw's comedic masterpiece, and certainly his funniest and most popular play, is Pygmalion (performed 1913). It was claimed by
Shaw to be a didactic drama about phonetics, and its antiheroic hero, Henry Higgins, is a phonetician, but the play is a humane comedy
about love and the English class system. The play is about the training Higgins gives to a Cockney flower girl to enable her to pass as a
lady and is also about the repercussions of the experiment's success. The scene in which Eliza Doolittle appears in high society when she
has acquired a correct accent but no notion of polite conversation is one of the funniest in English drama. Pygmalion has been both filmed
(1938), winning an Academy Award for Shaw for his screenplay, and adapted into an immensely popular musical, My Fair Lady (1956;
motion-picture version, 1964).
Works After World War I
World War I was a watershed for Shaw. At first he ceased writing plays, publishing instead a controversial pamphlet, "Common Sense
About the War," which called Great Britain and its Allies equally culpable with the Germans and argued for negotiation and peace. His
antiwar speeches made him notorious and the target of much criticism. In Heartbreak House (performed 1920), Shaw exposed, in a
country-house setting on the eve of war, the spiritual bankruptcy of the generation responsible for the war's bloodshed. Attempting to keep
from falling into "the bottomless pit of an utterly discouraging pessimism," Shaw wrote five linked plays under the collective title Back to
Methuselah (1922). They expound his philosophy of creative evolution in an extended dramatic parable that progresses through time from
the Garden of Eden to AD 31,920.
The canonization of Joan of Arc in 1920 reawakened within Shaw ideas for a chronicle play about her. In the resulting masterpiece, Saint
Joan (performed 1923), the Maid is treated not only as a Catholic saint and martyr but as a combination of practical mystic, heretical saint,
and inspired genius. Joan, as the superior being "crushed between those mighty forces, the Church and the Law," is the personification of
the tragic heroine; her death embodies the paradox that humankind fears--and often kills--its saints and heroes and will go on doing so until
the very higher moral qualities it fears become the general condition of man through a process of evolutionary change. Acclaim for Saint
Joan led to the awarding of the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature to Shaw (he refused the award).
In his later plays Shaw intensified his explorations into tragicomic and nonrealistic symbolism. For the next five years, he wrote nothing for
the theatre but worked on his collected edition of 1930-38 and the encyclopaedic political tract "The Intelligent Woman's Guide to
Socialism and Capitalism" (1928). Then he produced The Apple Cart (performed 1929), a futuristic high comedy that emphasized Shaw's
inner conflicts between his lifetime of radical politics and his essentially conservative mistrust of the common man's ability to govern
himself. Shaw's later, minor plays included Too True to Be Good (performed 1932), On The Rocks (performed 1933), The Simpleton of the
Unexpected Isles (performed 1935), Geneva (performed 1938), and In Good King Charles's Golden Days (1939). After a wartime hiatus,
Shaw, now in his 90s, produced several more plays, including Farfetched Fables (performed 1950), Shakes Versus Shav (performed 1949),
and Why She Would Not (1956), which is a fantasy with only flashes of the earlier Shaw.
Impudent, irreverent, and always a showman, Shaw used his buoyant wit to keep himself in the public eye to the end of his 94 years; his
wiry figure, bristling beard, and dandyish cane were as well-known throughout the world as his plays. When his wife, Charlotte, died of a
lingering illness in 1943, in the midst of World War II, Shaw, frail and feeling the effects of wartime privations, made permanent his retreat
from his London apartment to his country home at Ayot St. Lawrence, a Hertfordshire village in which he had lived since 1906. He died
there in 1950.
The most significant British playwright since the 17th century, George Bernard Shaw was more than merely the best comic dramatist of his
time, for some of his greatest works for the stage--Caesar and Cleopatra, the "Don Juan in Hell" episode of Man and Superman, Major
Barbara, Heartbreak House, and Saint Joan--have a high seriousness and prose beauty unmatched by his stage contemporaries. His
development of a drama of moral passion and of intellectual conflict and debate, his revivifying the comedy of manners, his ventures into
symbolic farce and into a theatre of disbelief helped shape the theatre of his time and after. A visionary and mystic whose philosophy of
moral passion permeates his plays, Shaw was also the most trenchant pamphleteer since Swift; the most readable music critic in English;
the best theatre critic of his generation; a prodigious lecturer and essayist on politics, economics, and sociological subjects; and one of the
most prolific letter writers in literature. By bringing a bold critical intelligence to his many other areas of interest, he helped mold the
political, economic, and sociological thought of three generations.
Bibliography
Works that are primarily biography include Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw, Man of the Century (1956, reissued in 2 vol., 1972); Frank Harris,
Bernard Shaw (1931); Hesketh Pearson, Bernard Shaw (1942, reissued 1987; also published as G.B.S., 1942, reissued 1952, and as George Bernard Shaw,
1963); William Irvine, The Universe of G.B.S. (1949); St. John Greer Ervine, Bernard Shaw (1956); Allan Chappelow (ed.), Shaw the Villager and Human
Being (1961); B.C. Rosset, Shaw of Dublin: The Formative Years (1964); J. Percy Smith, The Unrepentant Pilgrim (1965), a study of Shaw's twenties and
thirties; Margot Peters, Bernard Shaw and the Actresses (1980); Arnold Silver, Bernard Shaw: The Darker Side (1982), a psychological study; and Michael
Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 4 vol. (1988-92). Early works of criticism include Henry L. Mencken, George Bernard Shaw: His Plays (1905, reprinted 1977);
and G.K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw, new ed. (1935, reissued 1961). T.F. Evans (ed.), Shaw: The Critical Heritage (1976), collects contemporary
criticism, 1892-1951. Later criticism includes E. Strauss, Bernard Shaw: Art and Socialism (1942, reprinted 1978); Eric Bentley, Bernard Shaw (1947,
reissued 1976); Alick West, George Bernard Shaw: "A Good Man Fallen Among Fabians" (1950); Arthur H. Nethercot, Men and Supermen, 2nd ed. (1966),
an analysis of Shaw's characters; Julian B. Kaye, Bernard Shaw and the Nineteenth-Century Tradition (1958); Martin Meisel, Shaw and the NineteenthCentury Theater (1963, reprinted 1984); Bernard F. Dukore, Bernard Shaw, Playwright: Aspects of Shavian Drama (1973); Eldon C. Hill, George Bernard
Shaw (1978), an introductory study; Michael Holroyd (ed.), The Genius of Shaw: A Symposium (1979); Stanley Weintraub, The Unexpected Shaw:
Biographical Approaches to G.B.S. and His Work (1982); Warren Sylvester Smith, Bishop of Everywhere: Bernard Shaw and the Life Force (1982),
exploring aspects of Shaw's religiosity; A.M. Gibbs, The Art and Mind of Shaw (1983); and Nicholas Grene, Bernard Shaw, a Critical View (1984). Current
criticism may be found in the journal Shaw (annual).
Shepard, Sam
b. Nov. 5, 1943, Fort Sheridan, Ill., U.S.
Byname of SAMUEL SHEPARD ROGERS, American playwright and actor whose plays adroitly blend images of the American West, Pop
motifs, science fiction, and other elements of popular and youth culture.
As the son of a career Army father, Shepard spent his childhood on military bases across the United States and in Guam before his family
settled on a farm in Duarte, Calif. After a year of agricultural studies in college, he joined a touring company of actors and, in 1963, moved
to New York City to pursue his theatrical interests. His earliest attempts at playwriting, a rapid succession of one-act plays, found a
receptive audience in Off-Off-Broadway productions. In the 1965-66 season, Shepard won Obie awards (presented by the Village Voice
newspaper) for his plays Chicago, Icarus's Mother, and Red Cross.
Shepard lived in England from 1971 to 1974, and two notable plays of this period--The Tooth of Crime (1972) and Geography of a Horse
Dreamer (1974)--premiered in London. In late 1974, he became playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, where
most of his subsequent plays were first produced.
Shepard's works of the mid-1970s showed a heightening of earlier techniques and themes. In Killer's Head (1975), for example, the
rambling monologue, a Shepard stock-in-trade, blends horror and banality in a murderer's last thoughts before electrocution; Angel City
(1976) depicts the destructive machinery of the Hollywood entertainment industry; and Suicide in B-Flat (1976) exploits the potentials of
music as an expression of character.
Beginning in the late 1970s, Shepard applied his unconventional dramatic vision to a more conventional dramatic form, the family tragedy.
Curse of the Starving Class (1976), the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child (1978), and True West (1980) are linked thematically in their
examination of troubled and tempestuous blood relationships in a fragmented society.
Shepard returned to acting in the late 1970s, winning critical accolades for his performances in such films as Days of Heaven (1978),
Resurrection (1980), The Right Stuff (1983), and Fool for Love (1985), which was written by Shepard and based on his 1983 play of the
same name.
His other plays include La Turista (1966), Operation Sidewinder (1970), The Unseen Hand (1970), Seduced (1979), and A Lie of the Mind
(1986).
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley
(baptized Nov. 4, 1751, Dublin, Ire.--d. July 7, 1816, London, Eng.), Irish-born playwright, impresario, orator, and Whig politician. His
plays, notably The School for Scandal (1777), form a link in the history of the comedy of manners between the end of the 17th century and
Oscar Wilde in the 19th century.
Theatrical Career
After his marriage Sheridan turned to the theatre for a livelihood. His comedy The Rivals opened at Covent Garden Theatre, London, in
January 1775. It ran an hour longer than was usual, and, because of the offensive nature and poor acting of the character of Sir Lucius
O'Trigger, it was hardly a success. Drastically revised and with a new actor as Sir Lucius, its second performance 11 days later won
immediate applause. The situations and characters were not entirely new, but Sheridan gave them freshness by his rich wit, and the whole
play reveals Sheridan's remarkable sense of theatrical effect. The play is characteristic of Sheridan's work in its genial mockery of the
affectation displayed by some of the characters. Even the malapropisms that slow down the play give a proper sense of caricature to the
character of Mrs. Malaprop.
Some of the play's success was due to the acting of Lawrence Clinch as Sir Lucius. Sheridan showed his gratitude by writing the amusing
little farce St. Patrick's Day; Or, The Scheming Lieutenant for the benefit performance given for Clinch in May 1775. Another example of
his ability to weave an interesting plot from well-worn materials is seen in The Duenna, produced the following November. The characters
are generally undeveloped, but the intrigue of the plot and charming lyrics and the music by his father-in-law, Thomas Linley, and his son
gave this ballad opera great popularity. Its 75 performances exceeded the 62, a record for that time, credited to John Gay's The Beggar's
Opera (1728), and it is still revived.
Thus, in less than a year Sheridan had brought himself to the forefront of contemporary dramatists. David Garrick, looking for someone to
succeed him as manager and proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre, saw in Sheridan a young man with energy, shrewdness, and a real sense of
theatre. A successful physician, James Ford, agreed with Garrick's estimate and increased his investment in the playhouse. In 1776,
Sheridan and Linley became partners with Ford in a half-share of Drury Lane Theatre. Two years later they bought the other half from
Willoughby Lacy, Garrick's partner.
In fact, Sheridan's interest in his theatre soon began to seem rather fitful. Nevertheless, he was responsible for the renewed appreciation of
Restoration comedy that followed the revival of the plays of William Congreve at Drury Lane. In February 1777 he brought out his version
of Sir John Vanbrugh's The Relapse (1696) as A Trip to Scarborough, again showing his talent for revision. He gave the rambling plot a
neater shape and removed much indelicacy from the dialogue, but the result was disappointing, probably because of the loss of much of the
earlier play's gusto.
What Sheridan learned from the Restoration dramatists can be seen in The School for Scandal, produced at Drury Lane in May 1777. That
play earned him the title of "the modern Congreve." Although resembling Congreve in that its satirical wit is so brilliant and so general that
it does not always distinguish one character from another, The School for Scandal does contain two subtle portraits in Joseph Surface and
Lady Teazle. There were several Restoration models (e.g., Mrs. Pinchwife in William Wycherley's The Country-Wife and Miss Hoyden in
Vanbrugh's The Relapse) for the portrayal of a country girl amazed and delighted by the sexual freedom of high society. Sheridan softened
his Lady Teazle, however, to suit the more refined taste of his day. The part combined innocence and sophistication and was incomparably
acted. The other parts were written with equal care to suit the members of the company, and the whole work was a triumph of intelligence
and imaginative calculation. With its spirited ridicule of affectation and pretentiousness, it is often considered the greatest comedy of
manners in English.
Sheridan's flair for stage effect, exquisitely demonstrated in scenes in The School for Scandal, was again demonstrated in his delightful
satire on stage conventions, The Critic, which since its first performance in October 1779 has been thought much funnier than its model,
The Rehearsal (1671), by George Villiers, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham. Sheridan himself considered the first act to be his finest piece of
writing. Although Puff is little more than a type, Sir Fretful Plagiary is not only a caricature of the dramatist Richard Cumberland but also
an epitome of the vanity of authors in every age.
Last Years
Sheridan's financial difficulties were largely brought about by his own extravagance and procrastination, as well as by the destruction of
Drury Lane Theatre by fire in February 1809. With the loss of his parliamentary seat and his income from the theatre, he became a prey to
his many creditors. His last years were beset by these and other worries--his circulatory complaints and the cancer that afflicted his second
wife, Esther Jane Ogle. She was the daughter of the dean of Winchester and was married to Sheridan in April 1795, three years after
Elizabeth's death. Pestered by bailiffs to the end, Sheridan made a strong impression on the poet Lord Byron, who wrote a Monody on the
Death of the Right Honourable R.B. Sheridan (1816), to be spoken at the rebuilt Drury Lane Theatre.
Assessment. Though best remembered as the author of brilliant comedies of manners, Sheridan was also a significant politician and orator.
His genius both as dramatist and politician lay in humorous criticism and the ability to size up situations and relate them effectively. These
gifts were often exercised in the House of Commons on other men's speeches and at Drury Lane Theatre in the revision of other men's
plays. They are seen at their best in The School for Scandal, in which he shaped a plot and dialogue of unusual brilliance from two
mediocre draft plays of his own. In person Sheridan was often drunken, moody, and indiscreet, but he possessed great charm and powers of
persuasion. As a wit he delivered his sallies against the follies of society with a polish that makes him the natural link in the history of the
British comedy of manners between Congreve and Wilde.
Bibliography
Thomas Moore, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 5th ed., 2 vol. (1827, reprinted 1971), is indispensable. William
Smyth, A Memoir of Mr. Sheridan (1840), is a brief but vivid account from personal acquaintance. W. Fraser Rae, Sheridan, 2 vol. (1896); and W. Sichel,
Sheridan, 2 vol. (1909), are full accounts, printing much new material, but are not altogether reliable. R.C. Rhodes, Harlequin Sheridan (1933, reprinted
1969), provides a scholarly review of evidence about disputed passages in Sheridan's life; Lewis Gibbs, Sheridan (1947, reprinted 1970), gives a useful
summary of accepted material. The Letters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, ed. by C.J.L. Price, 3 vol. (1966), are mainly concerned with his life in politics and
the theatre, but they also include some delightful ones to his second wife. Mark S. Auburn, Sheridan's Comedies: Their Contexts and Achievements (1978),
analyzes the plays closely and discusses their writing and production.
Sophocles
b. c. 496 BC, Colonus, near Athens [Greece], d. 406, Athens
With Aeschylus and Euripides, one of classical Athens' three great tragic playwrights. The best known of his 123 dramas is Oedipus the
King.
Life And Career
Sophocles was the younger contemporary of Aeschylus and the older contemporary of Euripides. He was born at Colonus, a village outside
the walls of Athens, where his father, Sophillus, was a wealthy manufacturer of armour. Sophocles himself received a good education.
Because of his beauty of physique, his athletic prowess, and his skill in music, he was chosen in 480, when he was 16, to lead the paean
(choral chant to a god) celebrating the decisive Greek sea victory over the Persians at the Battle of Salamis. The relatively meagre
information about Sophocles' civic life suggests that he was a popular favourite who participated actively in his community and exercised
outstanding artistic talents. In 442 he served as one of the treasurers responsible for receiving and managing tribute money from Athens'
subject-allies in the Delian League. In 440 he was elected one of the 10 strategoi (high executive officials who commanded the armed
forces) as a junior colleague of Pericles. Sophocles later served as strategos perhaps twice again. In 413, then aged about 83, Sophocles
was a proboulos, one of 10 advisory commissioners who were granted special powers and were entrusted with organizing Athens' financial
and domestic recovery after its terrible defeat at Syracuse in Sicily. Sophocles' last recorded act was to lead a chorus in public mourning for
his deceased rival, Euripides, before the festival of 406. He died that same year.
These few facts are about all that is known of Sophocles' life. They imply steady and distinguished attachment to Athens, its government,
religion, and social forms. Sophocles was wealthy from birth, highly educated, noted for his grace and charm, on easy terms with the
leading families, a personal friend of prominent statesmen, and in many ways fortunate to have died before the final surrender of Athens to
Sparta in 404. In one of his last plays, Oedipus at Colonus, he still affectionately praises both his own birthplace and the great city itself.
Sophocles won his first victory at the Dionysian dramatic festival in 468, however, defeating the great Aeschylus in the process. This began
a career of unparalleled success and longevity. In total, Sophocles wrote 123 dramas for the festivals. Since each author who was chosen to
enter the competition usually presented four plays, this means he must have competed about 30 times. Sophocles won perhaps as many as
24 victories, compared to 13 for Aeschylus and four for Euripides, and indeed he may have never received lower than second place in the
competitions he entered.
Dramatic And Literary Achievements
Ancient authorities credit Sophocles with several major and minor dramatic innovations. Among the latter is his invention of some type of
"scene paintings" or other pictorial prop to establish locale or atmosphere. He also may have increased the size of the chorus from 12 to 15
members. Sophocles' major innovation was his introduction of a third actor into the dramatic performance. It had previously been
permissible for two actors to "double" (i.e., assume other roles during a play), but the addition of a third actor onstage enabled the dramatist
both to increase the number of his characters and widen the variety of their interactions. The scope of the dramatic conflict was thereby
extended, plots could be more fluid, and situations could be more complex.
The typical Sophoclean drama presents a few characters, impressive in their determination and power and possessing a few strongly drawn
qualities or faults that combine with a particular set of circumstances to lead them inevitably to a tragic fate. Sophocles develops his
characters' rush to tragedy with great economy, concentration, and dramatic effectiveness, creating a coherent, suspenseful situation whose
sustained and inexorable onrush came to epitomize the tragic form to the classical world. Sophocles emphasizes that most people lack
wisdom, and he presents truth in collision with ignorance, delusion, and folly. Many scenes dramatize flaws or failure in thinking
(deceptive reports and rumours, false optimism, hasty judgment, madness). The chief character does something involving grave error; this
affects others, each of whom reacts in his own way, thereby causing the chief agent to take another step toward ruin--his own and that of
others as well. Equally important, those who are to suffer from the tragic error usually are present at the time or belong to the same
generation. It was this more complex type of tragedy that demanded a third actor. Sophocles thus abandoned the spacious Aeschylean
framework of the connected trilogy and instead comprised the entire action in a single play. From his time onward, "trilogy" usually meant
no more than three separate tragedies written by the same author and presented at the same festival.
Sophocles' language responds flexibly to the dramatic needs of the moment; it can be ponderously weighty or swift-moving, emotionally
intense or easygoing, highly decorative or perfectly plain and simple. His mastery of form and diction was highly respected by his
contemporaries. Sophocles has also been universally admired for the sympathy and vividness with which he delineates his characters;
especially notable are his tragic women, such as Electra and Antigone. Few dramatists have been able to handle situation and plot with
more power and certainty; the frequent references in the Poetics to Sophocles' Oedipus the King show that Aristotle regarded this play as a
masterpiece of construction, and few later critics have dissented. Sophocles is also unsurpassed in his moments of high dramatic tension
and in his revealing use of tragic irony.
The criticism has been made that Sophocles was a superb artist and nothing more; he grappled neither with religious problems as
Aeschylus had nor with intellectual ones as Euripides had done. He accepted the gods of Greek religion in a spirit of unreflecting
orthodoxy, and he contented himself with presenting human characters and human conflicts. But it should be stressed that to Sophocles
"the gods" appear to have represented the natural forces of the universe to which human beings are unwittingly or unwillingly subject. To
Sophocles, human beings live for the most part in dark ignorance because they are cut off from these permanent, unchanging forces and
structures of reality. Yet it is pain, suffering, and the endurance of tragic crisis that can bring people into valid contact with the universal
order of things. In the process, a person can become more genuinely human, more genuinely himself.
The Plays
Only seven of Sophocles' tragedies survive in their entirety, along with 400 lines of a satyr play, numerous fragments of plays now lost, and
90 titles. All seven of the complete plays are works of Sophocles' maturity, but only two of them, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus, have
fairly certain dates. Ajax is generally regarded as the earliest of the extant plays. Some evidence suggests that Antigone was first performed
in 442 or 441 BC. Philoctetes was first performed in 409, when Sophocles was 90 years old, and Oedipus at Colonus was said to have been
produced after Sophocles' death by his grandson.
Ajax
The entire plot of Ajax (Greek Aias mastigophoros) is constructed around Ajax, the mighty hero of the Trojan War whose pride drives him
to treachery and finally to his own ruin and suicide some two-thirds of the way through the play. Ajax is deeply offended at the award of
the prize of valour (the dead Achilles' armour) not to himself but to Odysseus. Ajax thereupon attempts to assassinate Odysseus and the
contest's judges, the Greek commanders Agamemnon and Menelaus, but is frustrated by the intervention of the goddess Athena. He cannot
bear his humiliation and throws himself on his own sword. Agamemnon and Menelaus order that Ajax' corpse be left unburied as
punishment. But the wise Odysseus persuades the commanders to relent and grant Ajax an honourable burial. In the end Odysseus is the
only person who seems truly aware of the changeability of human fortune.
Antigone
Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus, the former king of Thebes. She is willing to face the capital punishment that has been decreed by her
uncle Creon, the new king, as the penalty for anyone burying her brother Polyneices. (Polyneices has just been killed attacking Thebes, and
it is as posthumous punishment for this attack that Creon has forbidden the burial of his corpse.) Obeying all her instincts of love, loyalty,
and humanity, Antigone defies Creon and dutifully buries her brother's corpse. Creon, from conviction that reasons of state outweigh
family ties, refuses to commute Antigone's death sentence. By the time Creon is finally persuaded by the prophet Tiresias to relent and free
Antigone, she has killed herself in her prison cell. Creon's son, Haemon, kills himself out of love and sympathy for the dead Antigone, and
Creon's wife, Eurydice, then kills herself out of grief over these tragic events. At the play's end Creon is left desolate and broken in spirit.
In his narrow and unduly rigid adherence to his civic duties, Creon has defied the gods through his denial of humanity's common
obligations toward the dead. The play thus concerns the conflicting obligations of civic versus personal loyalties and religious mores.
Trachinian Women
This play centres on the efforts of Deianeira to win back the wandering affections of her husband, Heracles, who is away on one of his
heroic missions and who has sent back his latest concubine, Iole, to live with his wife at their home in Trachis. The love charm Deianeira
uses on Heracles turns out to be poisonous, and she kills herself upon learning of the agony she has caused her husband. Thus, in
Trachinian Women (Greek Trachiniai) Heracles' insensitivity (in sending his mistress to share his wife's home) and Deianeira's ignorance
result in domestic tragedy.
Oedipus the King
The plot of Oedipus the King (Greek Oidipous Tyrannos; Latin Oedipus Rex) is a structural marvel that marks the summit of classical
Greek drama's formal achievements. The play's main character, Oedipus, is the wise, happy, and beloved ruler of Thebes. Though hottempered, impatient, and arrogant at times of crisis, he otherwise seems to enjoy every good fortune. But Oedipus mistakenly believes that
he is the son of King Polybus of Corinth and his queen. He became the ruler of Thebes because he rescued the city from the Sphinx by
answering its riddle correctly, and so was awarded the city's widowed queen, Jocasta. Before overcoming the Sphinx, Oedipus left Corinth
forever because the Delphic oracle had prophesied to him that he would kill his father and marry his mother. While journeying to Thebes
from Corinth, Oedipus encountered at a crossroads an old man accompanied by five servants. Oedipus got into an argument with him and
in a fit of arrogance and bad temper killed the old man and four of his servants.
The play opens with the city of Thebes stricken by a plague and its citizens begging Oedipus to find a remedy. He consults the Delphic
oracle, which declares that the plague will cease only when the murderer of Jocasta's first husband, King Laius, has been found and
punished for his deed. Oedipus resolves to find Laius' killer, and much of the rest of the play centres upon the investigation he conducts in
this regard. In a series of tense, gripping, and ominous scenes Oedipus' investigation turns into an obsessive reconstruction of his own
hidden past as he begins to suspect that the old man he killed at the crossroads was none other than Laius. Finally, Oedipus learns that he
himself was abandoned to die as a baby by Laius and Jocasta because they feared a prophecy that their infant son would kill his father; that
he survived and was adopted by the ruler of Corinth, but in his maturity he has unwittingly fulfilled the Delphic oracle's prophecy of him;
that he has indeed killed his true father, married his own mother, and begot children who are also his own siblings.
Jocasta hangs herself when she sees this shameful web of incest, parricide, and attempted child murder, and the guilt-stricken Oedipus then
sticks needles into his eyes, blinding himself. Sightless and alone, he is now blind to the world around him but finally cognizant of the
terrible truth of his own life.
Electra
As in Aeschylus' Libation Bearers, the action in Electra (Greek Elektra) follows the return of Orestes to kill his mother, Clytemnestra, and
her lover Aegisthus in retribution for their murder of Orestes' father, Agamemnon. In this play, however, the main focus is on Orestes'
sister Electra and her anguished participation in her brother's plans. To gain admittance to the palace and thus be able to execute his
revenge, Orestes spreads false news of his own death. Believing this report, the despairing Electra unsuccessfully tries to enlist her sister
Chrysothemis in an attempt to murder their mother. In a dramatic scene, Orestes then enters in disguise and hands Electra the urn that is
supposed to contain his own ashes. Moved by his sister's display of grief, Orestes reveals his true identity to her and then strikes down his
mother and her lover. Electra's triumph is thus complete. In the play Electra is seen passing through the whole range of human emotions-from passionate love to cruel hatred, from numb despair to wild joy. There is debate over whether the play depicts virtue triumphant or,
rather, portrays a young woman incurably twisted by years of hatred and resentment.
Philoctetes
In Philoctetes (Greek Philoktetes) the Greeks on their way to Troy have cast away the play's main character, Philoctetes, on the desert
island of Lemnos because he has a loathsome and incurable ulcer on his foot. But the Greeks have discovered that they cannot win victory
over Troy without Philoctetes and his wonderful bow, which formerly belonged to Heracles. The crafty Odysseus is given the task of
fetching Philoctetes by any means possible. Odysseus knows that the resentful Philoctetes will kill him if he can, so he uses the young and
impressionable soldier Neoptolemus, son of the dead Achilles, as his agent. Neoptolemus is thus caught between the devious manipulations
of Odysseus and the unsuspecting integrity of Philoctetes, who is ready to do anything rather than help the Greeks who abandoned him. For
much of the play Neoptolemus sticks to Odysseus' policy of deceit, despite his better nature, but eventually he renounces duplicity to join
in friendship with Philoctetes. A supernatural appearance by Heracles then convinces Philoctetes to go to Troy to both win victory and be
healed of his disease.
Oedipus at Colonus
In Oedipus at Colonus (Greek Oidipous epi Kolono) the old, blind Oedipus has spent many years wandering in exile after being rejected by
his sons and the city of Thebes. Oedipus has been cared for only by his daughters Antigone and Ismene. He arrives at a sacred grove at
Colonus, a village close by Athens (and the home of Sophocles himself). There Oedipus is guaranteed protection by Theseus, the noble
king of Athens. Theseus does indeed protect Oedipus from the importunate pleadings of his brother-in-law, Creon, for Oedipus to protect
Thebes. Oedipus himself rejects the entreaties of his son Polyneices, who is bent on attacking Thebes and whom Oedipus solemnly curses.
Finally Oedipus departs to a mysterious death; he is apparently swallowed into the earth of Colonus, where he will become a benevolent
power and a mysterious source of defense to the land that has given him final refuge. The play is remarkable for the melancholy, beauty,
and power of its lyric odes and for the spiritual and moral authority with which it invests the figure of Oedipus.
Trackers
Four hundred lines of this satyr play survive. The plot of Trackers (Greek Ichneutai) is based on two stories about the miraculous early
deeds of the god Hermes: that the infant, growing to maturity in a few days, stole cattle from Apollo, baffling discovery by reversing the
animals' hoof marks, and that he invented the lyre by fitting strings to a tortoise shell. In this play the trackers are the chorus of satyrs, who
are looking for the cattle; they are amusingly dumbfounded at the sound of the new instrument Hermes has invented. Enough of the play
survives to give an impression of its style; it is a genial, uncomplicated travesty of the tragic manner, and the antics of the chorus were
apparently the chief source of amusement.
Works
Aias mastigophoros (probably before 441 BC; Ajax); Antigone (c. 442-441 BC); Oidipous Tyrannos (soon after 430 BC; Latin trans., Oedipus Rex; Eng.
trans., Oedipus the King); Trachiniai (possibly after 430 BC; Trachinian Women); Elektra (between 418 and 410 BC; Electra); Philoktetes (409 BC;
Philoctetes); Oidipous epi Kolono (produced posthumously in 401 BC; Oedipus at Colonus); Ichneutai (sizable fragments; date uncertain; Trackers).
Texts
The Greek text is available in A.C. Pearson (ed.), Sophoclis fabulae (1924, reprinted 1975), in the Oxford Classical Text series; and R.D. Dawe (ed.),
Sophoclis tragoediae, vol. 1 and 2 (1975-79), part of the Teubner series. Greek text with English translation is presented in R.C. Jebb (ed. and trans.),
Sophocles, 7 vol. (1883-96, reprinted from various editions, 1976).
Recommended Editions
Sophocles, 2 vol. (1954-69), contains translations of all the plays and is part of The Complete Greek Tragedies series, ed. by Richmond Lattimore and David
Grene. See also Robert Fagles (trans.), The Three Theban Plays (1982, reissued 1984), which includes Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus.
Bibliography
Greek tragedy in general is treated in H.D.F. Kitto, Greek Tragedy: A Literary Study, 3rd ed. (1961, reissued 1976), a lively survey but becoming dated;
Richmond Lattimore, Story Patterns in Greek Tragedy (1964, reissued 1969); Arthur Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd ed. rev. by
John Gould and D.M. Lewis (1968), a standard work on the practical arrangements; H.C. Baldry, The Greek Tragic Theatre (1971), a simple, orthodox
introduction; Albin Lesky, Greek Tragic Poetry (1983; originally published in German, 3rd rev. ed., 1972); Erika Simon, The Ancient Theatre (1982;
originally published in German, 2nd ed., 1981), a concise and expert introduction to staging; Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Tragedy and
Myth in Ancient Greece (1981; originally published in French, 1972), stimulating structuralist essays; Brian Vickers, Towards Greek Tragedy: Drama, Myth,
Society (1973, reprinted 1979), long but thought-provoking; Oliver Taplin, Greek Tragedy in Action (1978), emphasis on the significance of performance;
Bernard Knox, Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater (1979), a collection of important essays; Donald J. Mastronarde, Contact and Discontinuity:
Some Conventions of Speech and Action on the Greek Tragic Stage (1979), a specialist study of dialogue; R.G.A. Buxton, Persuasion in Greek Tragedy: A
Study of Peitho (1982); and Erich Segal (ed.), Greek Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism (U.K. title, Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy, 1983), a wellchosen and varied selection of articles.
Influential interpretations of Sophocles' life and works are T.B.L. Webster, An Introduction to Sophocles, 2nd ed. (1969, reprinted 1979); G.H. Gellie,
Sophocles: A Reading (1972); R.P. Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles: An Interpretation (1980), an important study; Charles Segal, Tragedy and Civilization:
An Interpretation of Sophocles (1981), a structuralist approach; Bernard M.W. Knox, The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (1964, reprinted
1983), an important study of Sophocles' stubborn "heroes"; Karl Reinhardt, Sophocles (1979; originally published in German, 3rd ed., 1947), a great classic;
G.M. Kirkwood, A Study of Sophoclean Drama (1958, reprinted 1967); R.W.B. Burton, The Chorus in Sophocles' Tragedies (1980); and David Seale,
Vision and Stagecraft in Sophocles (1982).
Stanislavsky, Konstantin Sergeyevich
b. Jan. 5 [Jan. 17, New Style], 1863, Moscow, Russia, d. Aug. 7, 1938, Moscow
Stanislavsky also spelled STANISLAVSKI, ORIGINAL NAME KONSTANTIN SERGEYEVICH ALEKSEYEV, Russian actor, director,
and producer, founder of the Moscow Art Theatre (opened 1898). He is best known for developing the system or theory of acting called the
Stanislavsky system, or the …
Stanislavsky Method
Early Influences
Stanislavsky's father was a manufacturer, and his mother was the daughter of a French actress. Stanislavsky first appeared on his parents'
amateur stage at the age of 14 and subsequently joined the dramatic group that was organized by his family and called the Alekseyev
Circle. Although initially an awkward performer, Stanislavsky obsessively worked on his shortcomings of voice, diction, and body
movement. His thoroughness and his preoccupation with all aspects of a production came to distinguish him from other members of the
Alekseyev Circle, and he gradually became its central figure. Stanislavsky also performed in other groups as theatre came to absorb his life.
He adopted the pseudonym Stanislavsky in 1885, and in 1888 he married Maria Perevoshchikova, a schoolteacher, who became his
devoted disciple and lifelong companion, as well as an outstanding actress under the name Lilina.
Stanislavsky regarded the theatre as an art of social significance. Theatre was a powerful influence on people, he believed, and the actor
must serve as the people's educator. Stanislavsky concluded that only a permanent theatrical company could ensure a high level of acting
skill. In 1888 he and others established the Society of Art and Literature with a permanent amateur company. Endowed with great talent,
musicality, a striking appearance, a vivid imagination, and a subtle intuition, Stanislavsky began to develop the plasticity of his body and a
greater range of voice. Praise came from famous foreign actors, and great Russian actresses invited him to perform with them. Thus
encouraged, Stanislavsky staged his first independent production, Aleksey K. Tolstoy's The Fruits of Enlightenment, in 1891, a major
Moscow theatrical event. Most significantly, it impressed a promising writer and director, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858-1943),
whose later association with Stanislavsky was to have a paramount influence on the theatre.
Nemirovich-Danchenko followed Stanislavsky's activities until their historic meeting in 1897, when they outlined a plan for a people's
theatre. It was to consist of the most talented amateurs of Stanislavsky's society and of the students of the Philharmonic Music and Drama
School, which Nemirovich-Danchenko directed. As the Moscow Art Theatre, it became the arena for Stanislavsky's reforms. NemirovichDanchenko undertook responsibility for literary and administrative matters, while Stanislavsky was responsible for staging and production.
The Moscow Art Theatre opened on Oct. 14 (Oct. 26, New Style), 1898, with a performance of Aleksey K. Tolstoy's Tsar Fyodor
Ioannovich. But Stanislavsky was disappointed in the acting that night. He found it to be merely imitative of the gestures, intonations, and
conceptions of the director. To project important thoughts and to affect the spectators, he reflected, there must be living characters on stage,
and the mere external behaviour of the actors is insufficient to create a character's unique inner world. To seek knowledge about human
behaviour, Stanislavsky turned to science. He began experimenting in developing the first elements of what became known as the
Stanislavsky method. He turned sharply from the purely external approach to the purely psychological. A play was discussed around the
table for months. He became strict and uncompromising in educating actors. He insisted on the integrity and authenticity of performance on
stage, repeating for hours during rehearsal his dreaded criticism, "I do not believe you."
Stanislavsky's successful experience with Anton Chekhov's The Seagull confirmed his developing convictions about the theatre. With
difficulty Stanislavsky had obtained Chekhov's permission to restage The Seagull after its original production in St. Petersburg in 1896 had
been a failure. Directed by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko in 1898, The Seagull became a triumph, heralding the birth of the
Moscow Art Theatre as a new force in world theatre. Chekhov, who had resolved never to write another play after his initial failure, was
acclaimed a great playwright, and he later wrote The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1903) specially for the Moscow Art
Theatre.
Staging Chekhov's play, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko discovered a new manner of performing: they emphasized the ensemble
and the subordination of each individual actor to the whole, and they subordinated the director's and actors' interpretations to the dramatist's
intent. Actors, Stanislavsky felt, had to have a common training and be capable of an intense inner identification with the characters that
they played, while still remaining independent of the role in order to subordinate it to the needs of the play as a whole. Fighting against the
artificial and highly stylized theatrical conventions of the late 19th century, Stanislavsky sought instead the reproduction of authentic
emotions at every performance.
In 1902 Stanislavsky successfully staged both Maksim Gorky's The Petty Bourgeois and The Lower Depths, codirecting the latter with
Nemirovich-Danchenko. Among the numerous powerful roles performed by Stanislavsky were Astrov in Uncle Vanya in 1899 and Gayev
in The Cherry Orchard in 1904, by Chekhov; Doctor Stockman in Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People in 1900; and Satin in The Lower
Depths. Both as an actor and as a director, Stanislavsky demonstrated a remarkable subtlety in rendering psychological patterns and an
exceptional talent for satirical characterization. Commanding respect from followers and adversaries alike, he became a dominant influence
on the Russian intellectuals of the time. He formed the First Studio in 1912, where his innovations were adopted by many young actors. In
1918 he undertook the guidance of the Bolshoi Opera Studio, which was later named for him. There he staged Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's
Eugene Onegin in 1922, which was acclaimed as a major reform in opera.
In 1922-24 the Moscow Art Theatre toured Europe and the United States with Stanislavsky as its administrator, director, and leading actor.
A great interest was stirred in his system. During this period he wrote his autobiography, My Life in Art. Ever preoccupied in it with content
and form, Stanislavsky acknowledged that the "theatre of representation," which he had disparaged, nonetheless produced brilliant actors.
Recognizing that theatre was at its best when deep content harmonized with vivid theatrical form, Stanislavsky supervised the First Studio's
production of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in 1917 and Nikolay Gogol's The Government Inspector in 1921, encouraging the actor
Michael Chekhov in a brilliantly grotesque characterization. His staging of Aleksandr Ostrovsky's An Ardent Heart (1926) and of PierreAugustin Caron de Beaumarchais's The Marriage of Figaro (1927) demonstrated increasingly bold attempts at theatricality. His
monumental Armoured Train 14-69, V.V. Ivanov's play about the Russian Revolution, was a milestone in Soviet theatre in 1927, and his
Dead Souls was a brilliant incarnation of Gogol's masterpiece.
While acting in The Three Sisters during the Moscow Art Theatre's 30th anniversary presentation on Oct. 29, 1928, Stanislavsky suffered a
heart attack. Abandoning acting, he concentrated for the rest of his life on directing and educating actors and directors.
The Stanislavsky method, or system, developed over 40 long years. He tried various experiments, focusing much of the time on what he
considered the most important attribute of an actor's work--bringing an actor's own past emotions into play in a role. But he was frequently
disappointed and dissatisfied with the results of his experiments. He continued nonetheless his search for "conscious means to the
subconscious"--i.e., the search for the actor's emotions. In 1935 he was taken by the modern scientific conception of the interaction of brain
and body and started developing a final technique that he called the "method of physical actions." It taught emotional creativity; it
encouraged actors to feel physically and psychologically the emotions of the characters that they portrayed at any given moment. The
method also aimed at influencing the playwright's construction of plays. (S.M.)
Bibliography
David Magarshack, Stanislavsky (1950, reprinted 1986); and Jean Benedetti, Stanislavski, 2nd ed. (1990), are biographies. Discussions of the Stanislavsky
method include Nikolai M. Gorchakov, Stanislavsky Directs (1954, reprinted 1985); Sonia Moore, The Stanislavski System, 2nd rev. ed. (1965); and
Training an Actor: The Stanislavski System in Class, rev. ed. (1979), a work based on class tape recordings demonstrating the Stanislavsky technique in
practice.
Stanislavsky Method
Also called THE METHOD, OR STANISLAVSKY SYSTEM, highly influential system of dramatic training developed over years of trial
and error by the Russian actor, producer, and theoretician Konstantin Stanislavsky. He began with attempts to find a style of acting more
appropriate to the greater realism of 20th-century drama than the histrionic acting styles of the 19th century. He never intended, however,
to develop a new style of acting but rather to codify in teaching and performing regimens the ways in which great actors always have
achieved success in their work, regardless of prevailing acting styles.
The method requires that an actor utilize, among other things, his emotional memory (i.e., his recall of past experiences and emotions). The
actor's entrance onto the stage is not considered to be a beginning of the action or of his life as the character but a continuation of the set of
preceding circumstances. The actor has trained his concentration and his senses so that he may respond freely to the total stage
environment. Through empathic observation of people in many different situations, he attempts to develop a wide emotional range so that
his onstage actions and reactions appear as if they were a part of the real world rather than a make-believe one.
A risk in the Stanislavsky method is that, when role interpretation is based on the inner impulses of the performer, a scene may
unexpectedly take on new directions. (This temptation was opposed by Stanislavsky himself, who demanded that the actor subordinate
himself to the play.) Some directors are disposed against the method, seeing in it a threat to their control of a production. Many, however,
find it especially useful during rehearsals in uncovering unsuspected nuances of character or of dramatic action.
The method was widely practiced in the Soviet Union and in the United States, where experiments in its use began in the 1920s and
continued in many schools and professional workshops, such as the prestigious Actors Studio in New York City.
Stanislavsky's Contribution
It is in this context that the enormous contribution in the early 20th century of the great Russian actor and theorist Konstantin Stanislavsky
can be appreciated. Stanislavsky was not an aesthetician but was primarily concerned with the problem of developing a workable
technique. He applied himself to the very problems that Diderot and others had believed insoluble: the recapture and repetition of moments
of spontaneity or inspiration, which could not be controlled and repeated at will even by many of the greatest actors. In his work as director
of the Moscow Art Theatre, he often experienced those flashes of intuition or inspiration that stimulate the imagination and turn something
that one understands with the mind into an emotional reality and experience. Stanislavsky described such a moment occurring at a low
point in the rehearsals for Chekhov's Three Sisters, when "the actors stopped in the middle of the play, ceased to act, seeing no sense in
their work." Suddenly something incomprehensible happened: an accidental sound, of someone nervously scratching his fingernails on the
bench on which he sat, reminded Stanislavsky of a scratching mouse, setting off an entire sequence of previously unconscious memories
that put the work at hand into a new spiritual context.
Later, in examining parts he had played, Stanislavsky became aware of how much his characterizations had been based unconsciously on
his memories. With the passing of time, however, the memories and the feelings aroused by them were lost, and he began to repeat
mechanically the fixed appurtenances of the role--the movements of the muscles, the mimetics of the face, eyes, arms, and body, and the
physical signs of absent emotion. This led him to the perception that creativeness on stage demands a condition that he called "the creative
mood." To the genius on stage, this condition almost always comes of itself, and less talented people receive it less often. Although
everyone on stage received the creative mood sometimes, none seemed able to control it with his own will.
Stanislavsky's description of the problem thus far had reached the point at which all previous examinations had stopped. By going further
and inquiring into technical means for controlling the creative mood, Stanislavsky laid the foundation for the modern approach to the
actor's problem. Stanislavsky had no intention of creating inspiration by artificial means; rather, he wanted to learn how to create
favourable conditions for the appearance of inspiration by means of the will. He emphasized that other artists may create whenever they are
of a mind or feel inspired, but that "the artist of the stage must be the master of his own inspiration and must know how to call it forth when
it is announced on the poster of the theatre." If he is unable to find a conscious path to unconscious creativeness, the actor is forced to rely
on the superficial aspects of scenic craft and theatrical cliches.
Stanislavsky believed that the problem could be solved through advanced psychology, especially the concept of "affective memory"
described by the French psychologist Théodule Ribot in the 1890s. Although there has been confusion and misunderstanding about it, and
its very existence has been questioned, the concept of affective memory is of prime importance for the understanding of how spontaneous
and emotional experiences occur and can be repeated on the stage.
Affective memory is the reliving of a past experience--with the accompanying positive or negative response--triggered by an analogous
experience in the present. Something that has brought pain is anticipated with displeasure the second time. This displeasure, which is felt
immediately, rather than remembered, is like a residue of previous appraisals. Affective memory may be linked directly to the memory of a
traumatic experience, as the same situation or a similar one recurs, or to an experience that bears little apparent relation to the original, if
the memory has been repressed. Of course, affective memories may stem from pleasant experiences as well as unpleasant ones. The
concept of affective memory has found a place in several schools of psychology, including the Freudian and the Pavlovian, though different
explanations have been offered.
The concept of affective memory is essential to an understanding of how the actor functions and the faculties that have to be trained to
develop his talent. It is his unusually sensitive affective memory that enables the actor to respond to events that must be imagined on the
stage and to repeat performances. This point was stressed by Stanislavsky's great pupil Yevgeny Vakhtangov, who emphasized that literal
emotion--emotion that derives from the presence of an object that actually stimulates it--cannot be controlled and cannot be relied upon to
provide the level of response that is required in every performance.
The use of affective memory is not limited only to acting. Wordsworth defined poetry as originating from "emotion recollected in
tranquility." Marcel Proust, in a long passage in Swann's Way, brilliantly described the working of affective memory and illustrated
precisely the way in which it can be recalled. Instances of its presence can be multiplied from all the arts--literary, visual, or musical. But,
though in the other arts it can function unconsciously, the actor must learn to use it consciously to satisfy the unique conditions under
which he must create.
The "Method" is the name by which the totality of Stanislavsky's ideas have become most widely known in the United States, where they
were chiefly promulgated by the director, actor, and teacher Lee Strasberg, first through the Group Theatre, established in the 1930s, and
later through the Actors Studio in New York City. The Method represents a development of Stanislavsky's procedures based not only on
his writings but also on his actual achievement in his major productions. It includes the work of Vakhtangov, who demonstrated that
Stanislavsky's ideas apply to the essential problems of the actor in any style and not only to the realistic style most often associated with
them. The Method became widely known in the mid-20th century largely through the work in films of actors such as Marlon Brando, Rod
Steiger, and Geraldine Page, who had studied at the Actors Studio. These actors made a powerful impression and showed a remarkable
ability to bridge the gap between stage, screen, and television to an extent that aroused excitement and interest in the rest of the world. So
strong was the fusion of performer and role that many of the traits of the character were confused with those of the actor, which led to
serious misunderstanding. But at mid-20th century an American style of acting was being born.
Critics who feel that the Method was only one of Stanislavsky's continually developing theories now generally refer to the more complete
tradition of Stanislavsky's thought and work as the "System." While the term Method can apply to Stanislavsky's work up to the early
1920s, it largely ignores his later developments--in particular, his embrace of the "method of physical action" in the 1930s. This was a
technique that put greater emphasis on the body, with the reasoning that there is a physical aspect to thought and a mental aspect to action;
by concentrating on the physical requirements of a part, an actor would become aware of a character's reasoning. In regard to rehearsal,
Stanislavsky described his intentions thusly: "Start bravely, not to reason but to act. As soon as you begin to act you will immediately
become aware of the necessity of justifying your actions."
The lesson of the Method seemed to be that a character could best be built from the inside out, using, among other techniques, affective
memory, which would allow the actor consciously to draw upon genuine emotions from the past. In practice, however, the development of
the "method of physical action" arose from Stanislavsky's continued questioning of his own research and was founded on the various
discoveries of his own career. The System as it evolved is far from its popular image as a simple technique for introspective character
development dependent for success on the personality of the actor; it is rather a process designed for the constant renewal of the actor
through the renewal of the Method itself.
Stoppard, Tom
b. July 3, 1937, Zlín, Czech. [now in Czech Republic]
Original name TOMAS STRAUSSLER, Czech-born British playwright whose work is marked by verbal brilliance, ingenious action, and
structural dexterity.
Stoppard's father, Eugene Straussler, was a company physician whose Czech company sent him (with his family) to a branch factory in
Singapore in 1938/39. After the Japanese invasion, his father stayed on (and was killed), but Mrs. Straussler and her two sons escaped to
India, where in 1946 she married a British officer, Kenneth Stoppard. Soon afterward the family went to live in England. Tom Stoppard (he
had assumed his stepfather's surname) quit school and started his career as a journalist in Bristol in 1954. He began to write plays in 1960
after moving to London. In 1965 Stoppard was one of five new writers whose short stories were anthologized in Introduction 2 (1964).
His first play, A Walk on the Water (1960), was televised in 1963. A stage version was produced in Berlin and Vienna in 1964; and, with
some additions and a new title, Enter a Free Man, it reached London in 1968. His play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1964-65)
was given an amateur performance at the Edinburgh Festival (1966), then entered the repertory of Britain's National Theatre in 1967. The
irony and brilliance of this work derive from placing two minor characters of Hamlet into the centre of dramatic action, driving home
Stoppard's theme that man is but a minor character in the greater scheme of things, controlled by incomprehensible forces. It became a
sensational success, appearing on Broadway and in theatres as far apart as Tokyo and Buenos Aires.
Jumpers, a witty view of the academic world in crisis, was a popular and critical success of the 1972-73 London season, as was Every
Good Boy Deserves Favour, with music by André Previn, in 1978-79. Night and Day was produced in 1978, and Undiscovered Country
(1980), an adaptation of a play by Arthur Schnitzler, was produced in 1979. The Real Thing (1982), Stoppard's first romantic comedy, deals
with art and reality and features a playwright as protagonist. Arcadia, set in a Derbyshire country house, premiered in 1993. Stoppard also
wrote a number of radio plays and screenplays: among the latter were The Romantic Englishwoman (1975), Despair (1978), and Brazil
(1985). He directed the film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1991), for which he also wrote the screenplay.
Strasberg, Lee
b. Nov. 17, 1901, Budzanów, Pol., Austria-Hungary [now Budanov, Ukraine], d. Feb. 17, 1982, New York, N.Y., U.S.
Theatre director, teacher, and actor, known as the chief American exponent of "method acting," or the Stanislavsky method, in which the
actor is encouraged to use his emotional experience and memory in preparing to "live" a role.
Strasberg's family emigrated to the United States when he was seven, and he grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City. By the age
of 15 he had begun acting in plays at the Christie Street Settlement House. He later took lessons at the American Laboratory Theatre,
whose instructors, Richard Boleslavski and Maria Ouspenskaya, had studied in Moscow under Konstantin Stanislavsky. Strasberg began
his professional career, as actor and stage manager, in the 1920s with the Theatre Guild. In 1931 he joined with Harold Clurman and Cheryl
Crawford to form the Group Theatre, which for 10 years staged a number of brilliant experimental plays, including the Pulitzer Prizewinning Men in White (1934).
From 1941 to 1948 Strasberg was in Hollywood for what he later called "an unfruitful but nevertheless educational experience." In 1948 he
was back in Manhattan, having joined the Actors Studio, Inc., which had been founded the previous year by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford,
and Robert Lewis, all former associates of the Group Theatre. Strasberg was artistic director of the Actors Studio from 1948 until his death,
over the years counseling such students in "The Method" as Julie Harris, Geraldine Page, Marlon Brando, Anne Bancroft, Rod Steiger, Eli
Wallach, Patricia Neal, Sidney Poitier, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert DeNiro and developing such noted plays as A Hatful of Rain, Any
Wednesday, and The Night of the Iguana.
Strasberg made his film acting debut in The Godfather, Part II (1974) and subsequently appeared in The Cassandra Crossing (1977), And
Justice for All (1979), Boardwalk (1979), and Going in Style (1979).
Strindberg, August
b. Jan. 22, 1849, Stockholm, d. May 14, 1912, Stockholm
Swedish playwright, novelist, and short-story writer, who combined psychology and Naturalism in a new kind of European drama that
evolved into Expressionist drama. His chief works include The Father (1887), Miss Julie (1888), Creditors (1888), A Dream Play (1902),
and The Ghost Sonata (1907).
Late Years
His new faith, coloured by mysticism, re-created him as a writer. The immediate result was a drama in three parts, To Damascus, in which
he depicts himself as "the Stranger," a wanderer seeking spiritual peace and finding it with another character, "the Lady," who resembles
both Siri and Frida.
By this time Strindberg had again returned to Sweden, settling first in Lund and then, in 1899, in Stockholm, where he lived until his death.
The summers he often spent among his beloved skerries. His view that life is ruled by the "Powers," punitive but righteous, was reflected in
a series of historical plays that he began in 1889. Of these, Gustav Vasa is the best, masterly in its firmness of construction,
characterization, and its vigorous dialogue. In 1901 he married the young Norwegian actress Harriet Bosse; in 1904 they parted, and again
Strindberg lost the child, his fifth.
Yet his last marriage, this "spring in winter," as he called it, inspired, among other works, the plays The Dance of Death and A Dream Play,
as well as the charming autobiography Ensam ("Alone") and some lyrical poems. Renewed bitterness after his parting from his last wife
provoked the grotesquely satirical novel Svarta Fanor (1907; "Black Banners"), which attacked the vices and follies of Stockholm's literary
coteries, as Strindberg saw them. Kammarspel ("Chamber Plays"), written for the little Intima Theatre, which Strindberg ran for a time with
a young producer, August Falck, embody further developments of his dramatic technique: of these, The Ghost Sonata is the most fantastic,
anticipating much in later European drama. His last play, The Great Highway, a symbolic presentation of his own life, appeared in 1909.
Assessment
To the end, Strindberg debated current social and political ideas (returning to the radical views of his youth) in polemical articles, while his
philosophy was expounded in the aphoristic Zones of the Spirit (1907-12). He was ignored in death, as in life, by the Swedish Academy but
mourned by his countrymen as their greatest writer. On Swedish life and letters he has exercised a lasting influence and is admired for his
originality, his extraordinary vitality, and his powerful imagination, which enabled him to transform autobiographic material into dramatic
dialogue of exceptional brilliance.
The pregnant, colloquial style of Strindberg's early novels and, especially, of his short stories, brought about a long-overdue regeneration of
Swedish prose style, and The Son of a Servant gave perhaps the strongest impulse since Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions to the
publication of discreditable self-revelations. His greatest influence, however, was exerted in the theatre, through his critical writings (such
as the introduction to Miss Julie), his plays, and the production devices that their staging dictated. The continuous, brutal action and the
extreme realism of the dialogue of Miss Julie and other plays written between 1887 and 1893 reached the ne plus ultra of naturalistic
drama.
With the later phantasmagoric plays, such as To Damascus, A Dream Play, and The Ghost Sonata, Strindberg led that section of the revolt
against stage realism that issued in the Expressionist drama, which was developed mainly in Germany after 1912 and which influenced
such modern playwrights as Sean O'Casey, Elmer Rice, Eugene O'Neill, Luigi Pirandello, and Pär Lagerkvist.
Plays
Den fredlöse (first performed 1871, published 1881; The Outlaw, 1912); Mäster Olof (poetic version published 1878, performed 1890; Master Olof, 1915);
Lycko-Pers resa (published 1881, performed 1883; Lucky Peter's Travels, 1930); Fadren (published and performed 1887; The Father, 1899); Kamraterna
(published 1888, performed 1905; Comrades, 1912); Fröken Julie (published 1888, performed 1889; Countess Julie, 1912; Miss Julie, 1918);
Fordringsägare (first published in Danish trans., 1888; Creditörer, published and performed 1890; Creditors, 1914); Paria (performed 1889, published
1890; Pariah, 1913); Till Damascus (parts 1 and 2 published 1898, performed 1900; part 3 published 1904, performed 1916; To Damascus, 1913);
Folkungasagan (published 1899, performed 1901; The Saga of the Folkungs, 1931); Gustav Vasa and Erik XIV (published and performed 1899; Eng. trans.
1931); Påsk (published and performed 1901; Easter, 1912 and 1929); Dödsdansen (published 1901, performed 1905; The Dance of Death, 1912);
Kronbruden (published 1902, performed 1906); Ett Drömspel (published 1902, performed 1907; A Dream Play, 1929); Brända tomten (performed and
published 1907; After the Fire, 1913); Spöksonaten (published 1907, performed 1908; The Spook [or Ghost] Sonata, 1916); Stora landsvägen (published
1909, performed 1910; The Great Highway, 1954).
Novels
Röda rummet (1879; The Red Room, 1913); Hemsöborna (1887; The People of Hemsö, 1959); I havsbandet (1890; By the Open Sea, 1913).
Short Stories
Giftas, 2 vol. (1884-85; Married, 1913); Fagervik och skamsund (1902; Fair Haven and Foul Strand, 1913); Sagor (1903; Tales, 1930).
Autobiography
Tjänstekvinnans son (1886-87; The Son of a Servant, 1913); Le Plaidoyer d'un fou (first published in French, 1888; enlarged, 1893; The Confession of a
Fool, 1912); Inferno (1898; Eng. trans. 1912); Legender (1898; Legends, 1912); Ensam (1903).
Translations
There is no English-language edition of the complete works of Strindberg. Individual works are, however, readily available. Recommended modern
translations include Twelve Plays by Elizabeth Sprigge (1963); The Plays of Strindberg by Michael Meyer (1964); and the series begun by Walter Johnson in
1955.
Bibliography
Editions
Samlade Skrifter, ed. by John Landquist, 55 vol. (1911-21); several collections of letters (Brev, ed. by Torsten Eklund, 1948); Legends, Autobiographical
Sketches (1912, reprinted 1973); Letters of Strindberg to Harriet Bosse (1959); and The Cloister (Eng. trans. 1969); Inferno and from an Occult Diary
(1979).
Criticism And Biography
Axel Johan Uppvall, August Strindberg (1920, reprinted 1970), a psychoanalytic study; Erik Hedén, Strindberg en ledtråd vid studient av hans verk (1921);
Martin Lamm, Strindbergs dramer, 2 vol. (1924-26), August Strindberg, 2 vol. (1940-42; Eng. trans. 1971); Vivian Jerauld, August Strindberg, the Bedeviled
Viking (1930, reprinted 1965); George A. Campbell, Strindberg (1933, reprinted 1973); Torsten Eklund, Tjänstekvinnans son (1948); Gunnar Ollén,
Strindbergs dramatik (1948); Gunnar Brandell, Strindbergs Infernokris (1950); S. Ahlstrom and Torsten Eklund (eds.), August Strindberg, 2 vol. (1959-61);
Joan Bulman, Strindberg and Shakespeare (1933, reprinted 1971); Elizabeth Sprigge, The Strange Life of August Strindberg (1949, reprinted 1972); Maurice
Gravier, Strindberg et le théâtre moderne (1949); B.M. Mortensen and B.W. Downs, Strindberg: An Introduction to His Life and Works (1949, reprinted
1966); F.L. Lucas, The Drama of Ibsen and Strindberg (1962), inimical to Strindberg; Elie Poulenard, August Strindberg, romancier et nouvelliste (1962);
Walter Johnson, Strindberg and the Historical Drama (1963), and August Strindberg (1976); C.R. Smedmark (ed.), Essays on Strindberg (1966); E.O.
Johannesson, The Novels of August Strindberg (1968); Goran Lindstrom, "Strindberg Studies 1915-1962," Scandinavica, 2:27-50 (1963); Lizzy Lind-afHageby, August Strindberg, a Study (1970); Carl Gustaf Uddgren, Strindberg the Man (1972); Karl Jaspers, Strindberg and Van Gogh (1977).
Inge, William
b. May 3, 1913, Independence, Kan., U.S., d. June 10, 1973, Hollywood Hills, Calif.
American playwright best known for his plays Come Back, Little Sheba (1950; filmed 1952); Picnic (1953; filmed 1956), for which he won
a Pulitzer Prize; and Bus Stop (1955; filmed 1956).
Inge was educated at the University of Kansas at Lawrence and at the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tenn. He taught
school from 1937 to 1949, also serving as drama editor of the Star-Times in St. Louis, Mo., from 1943 to 1946. His first play, Farther Off
from Heaven (1947), was produced in Dallas, Texas, at the recommendation of Tennessee Williams, to whom Inge had sent the script; 10
years later it was revised for Broadway as The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (filmed 1960).
Inge was one of the first American dramatists to deal with the quality of life in the small towns of the Midwest, and he achieved notable
success throughout the 1950s. His later plays--A Loss of Roses (1960; filmed as The Stripper, 1963), Natural Affection (1963), Where's
Daddy? (1966), and The Last Pad (1970)--were less successful. Inge received an Academy Award for his original screenplay Splendor in
the Grass (1961). His shorter works included Glory in the Flower (1958), To Bobolink, for Her Spirit (1962), The Boy in the Basement
(1962), and Bus Riley's Back in Town (1962).
Theatre of Cruelty
During the early 1930s, the French dramatist and actor Antonin Artaud put forth a theory for a Surrealist theatre called the Theatre of
Cruelty. Based on ritual and fantasy, this form of theatre launches an attack on the spectators' subconscious in an attempt to release deeprooted fears and anxieties that are normally suppressed, forcing people to view themselves and their natures without the shield of
civilization. In order to shock the audience and thus evoke the necessary response, the extremes of human nature (often madness and
perversion) are graphically portrayed on stage. Essentially an antiliterary revolt, the Theatre of Cruelty usually minimizes the text by
emphasizing screams, inarticulate cries, and symbolic gestures. Artaud tried to achieve these ideals in his production of Les Cenci (1935),
but his real influence lay in his theoretical writings, notably Le Théâtre et son double (1938; The Theatre and Its Double ). Only after
World War II did the Theatre of Cruelty achieve a more tangible form, first in the French director Jean-Louis Barrault's adaptation of Franz
Kafka's Prozess (The Trial), produced in 1947, and later through the plays of Jean Genet and Fernando Arrabal. The movement was
particularly popular during the 1960s, in part due to the success of Peter Brook's 1964 production of Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade for the
Royal Shakespeare Company.
Williams, Tennessee
b. March 26, 1911, Columbus, Miss., U.S., d. Feb. 25, 1983, New York City
Original name THOMAS LANIER WILLIAMS, U.S. dramatist whose plays reveal a world of human frustration in which sex and violence
underlie an atmosphere of romantic gentility.
Williams became interested in playwriting while at the University of Missouri (Columbia) and Washington University (St. Louis) and
worked at it even during the Depression while employed in a St. Louis shoe factory. Little theatre groups produced some of his work,
encouraging him to study dramatic writing at the University of Iowa, where he earned a B.A. in 1938.
His first recognition came when American Blues (1939), a group of one-act plays, won a Group Theatre award. Williams, however,
continued to work at jobs ranging from theatre usher to Hollywood scriptwriter until success came with The Glass Menagerie (1944). In it,
Williams portrayed a declassed Southern family living in a tenement. The play is about the failure of a domineering mother, Amanda,
living upon her delusions of a romantic past, and her cynical son, Tom, to secure a suitor for Tom's crippled and painfully shy sister, Laura,
who lives in a fantasy world with a collection of glass animals.
Williams' next major play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), won a Pulitzer Prize. It is a study of the mental and moral ruin of Blanche Du
Bois, another former Southern belle, whose genteel pretensions are no match for the harsh realities symbolized by her brutish brother-inlaw, Stanley Kowalski.
In 1953, Camino Real, a complex and bizarre work set in a mythical, microcosmic town whose inhabitants include Lord Byron and Don
Quixote, was a commercial failure, but his Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), which exposes the emotional lies governing relationships in the
family of a wealthy Southern planter, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and was successfully filmed, as was The Night of the Iguana (1961), the
story of a defrocked minister turned sleazy tour guide, who finds God in a cheap Mexican hotel. Suddenly Last Summer (1958) deals with
lobotomy, pederasty, and cannibalism, and in Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), the gigolo hero is castrated for having infected a Southern
politician's daughter with venereal disease.
Williams was in ill-health frequently during the 1960s, compounded by years of addiction to sleeping pills and liquor, problems that he
struggled to overcome after a severe mental and physical breakdown in 1969. His later plays were unsuccessful, closing soon to poor
reviews. They include Vieux Carré (1977), about down-and-outs in New Orleans; A Lovely Sunday for Crève Coeur (1978-79), about a
fading belle in St. Louis during the Great Depression; and Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980), centring on Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of
novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, and on the people they knew.
Williams also wrote two novels, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950) and Moise and the World of Reason (1975), essays, poetry, film
scripts, short stories, and an autobiography, Memoirs (1975). His works won four Drama Critics' awards and were widely translated and
performed around the world.
Wilde, Oscar (Fingal O'Flahertie Wills)
b. , Oct. 16, 1854, Dublin, Ire., d. Nov. 30, 1900, Paris, Fr.
Irish wit, poet, and dramatist whose reputation rests on his comic masterpieces Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) and The Importance of
Being Earnest (1895). He was a spokesman for the late 19th-century Aesthetic movement in England, which advocated art for art's sake;
and he was the object of celebrated civil and criminal suits involving homosexuality and ending in his imprisonment (1895-97).
Wilde was born of professional and literary parents. His father, Sir William Wilde, was Ireland's leading ear and eye surgeon, who also
published books on archaeology, folklore, and the satirist Jonathan Swift; his mother was a revolutionary poet and an authority on Celtic
myth and folklore.
After attending Portora Royal School, Enniskillen (1864-71), Wilde went, on successive scholarships, to Trinity College, Dublin (1871-74),
and Magdalen College, Oxford (1874-78), which awarded him a degree with honours. During these four years, he distinguished himself not
only as a classical scholar, a poseur, and a wit but also as a poet by winning the coveted Newdigate Prize in 1878 with a long poem,
Ravenna. He was deeply impressed by the teachings of the English writers John Ruskin and Walter Pater on the central importance of art in
life and particularly by the latter's stress on the aesthetic intensity by which life should be lived. Like many in his generation, Wilde was
determined to follow Pater's urging "to burn always with [a] hard, gemlike flame." But Wilde also delighted in affecting an aesthetic pose;
this, combined with rooms at Oxford decorated with objets d'art, resulted in his famous remark: "Oh, would that I could live up to my blue
china!"
In the early 1880s, when Aestheticism was the rage and despair of literary London, Wilde established himself in social and artistic circles
by his wit and flamboyance. Soon the periodical Punch made him the satiric object of its antagonism to the Aesthetes for what was
considered their unmasculine devotion to art; and in their comic opera Patience, Gilbert and Sullivan based the character Bunthorne, a
"fleshly poet," partly on Wilde. Wishing to reinforce the association, Wilde published, at his own expense, Poems (1881), which echoed,
too faithfully, his discipleship to the poets Algernon Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Keats. Eager for further acclaim, Wilde
agreed to lecture in the United States and Canada in 1882, announcing on his arrival in New York City that he had "nothing to declare but
his genius." Despite widespread hostility in the press to his languid poses and aesthetic costume of velvet jacket, knee breeches, and black
silk stockings, Wilde for 12 months exhorted the Americans to love beauty and art; then he returned to Great Britain to lecture on his
impressions of America.
In 1884 Wilde married Constance Lloyd, daughter of a prominent Irish barrister; two children, Cyril and Vyvyan, were born, in 1885 and
1886. Meanwhile, Wilde was a reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette and then became editor of Woman's World (1887-89). During this period
of apprenticeship as a writer, he published The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888), which reveals his gift for romantic allegory in the
form of the fairy tale.
In the final decade of his life, Wilde wrote and published nearly all of his major work. In his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray
(published in Lippincott's Magazine, 1890, and in book form, revised and expanded by six chapters, 1891), Wilde combined the
supernatural elements of the Gothic novel with the unspeakable sins of French decadent fiction. Critics charged immorality despite Dorian's
self-destruction; Wilde, however, insisted on the amoral nature of art regardless of an apparently moral ending. Intentions (1891),
consisting of previously published essays, restated his aesthetic attitude toward art by borrowing ideas from the French poets Théophile
Gautier and Charles Baudelaire and the American painter James McNeill Whistler. In the same year, two volumes of stories and fairy tales
also appeared, testifying to his extraordinary creative inventiveness: Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, and Other Stories and A House of
Pomegranates.
But Wilde's greatest successes were his society comedies. Within the conventions of the French " well-made play" (with its social intrigues
and artificial devices to resolve conflict), he employed his paradoxical, epigrammatic wit to create a form of comedy new to the 19thcentury English theatre. His first success, Lady Windermere's Fan, demonstrated that this wit could revitalize the rusty machinery of
French drama. In the same year, rehearsals of his macabre play Salomé, written in French and designed, as he said, to make his audience
shudder by its depiction of unnatural passion, were halted by the censor because it contained biblical characters. It was published in 1893,
and an English translation appeared in 1894 with Aubrey Beardsley's celebrated illustrations.
A second society comedy, A Woman of No Importance (produced 1893), convinced the critic William Archer that Wilde's plays "must be
taken on the very highest plane of modern English drama." In rapid succession, Wilde's final plays, An Ideal Husband and The Importance
of Being Earnest, were produced early in 1895. In the latter, his greatest achievement, the conventional elements of farce are transformed
into satiric epigrams--seemingly trivial but mercilessly exposing Victorian hypocrisies.
I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
In many of his works, exposure of a secret sin or indiscretion and consequent disgrace is a central design. If life imitated art, as Wilde
insisted in his essay "The Decay of Lying" (1889), he was himself approximating the pattern in his reckless pursuit of pleasure. In addition,
his close friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas, whom he had met in 1891, infuriated the Marquess of Queensberry, Douglas' father.
Accused, finally, by the marquess of being a sodomite, Wilde, urged by Douglas, sued for criminal libel. Wilde's case collapsed, however,
when the evidence went against him, and he dropped the suit. Urged to flee to France by his friends, Wilde refused, unable to believe that
his world was at an end. He was arrested and ordered to stand trial.
Wilde testified brilliantly, but the jury failed to reach a verdict. In the retrial he was found guilty and sentenced, in May 1895, to two years
at hard labour. Most of his sentence was served at Reading Gaol, where he wrote a long letter to Douglas (published in 1905 in a drastically
cut version as De Profundis) filled with recriminations against the younger man for encouraging him in dissipation and distracting him
from his work.
In May 1897 Wilde was released, a bankrupt, and immediately went to France, hoping to regenerate himself as a writer. His only remaining
work, however, was The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), revealing his concern for inhumane prison conditions. Despite constant money
problems he maintained, as George Bernard Shaw said, "an unconquerable gaiety of soul" that sustained him, and he was visited by such
loyal friends as Max Beerbohm and Robert Ross, later his literary executor; he was also reunited with Douglas. He died suddenly of acute
meningitis brought on by an ear infection. In his semiconscious final moments, he was received into the Roman Catholic church, which he
had long admired.
Bibliography
Biographical information can be found in Vincent O'Sullivan, Aspects of Wilde (1936, reprinted 1977); Hesketh Pearson, The Life of Oscar Wilde, rev. ed.
(1954, reprinted 1978); Vyvyan B. Holland, Oscar Wilde (1960, reissued 1988), by Wilde's son; Philippe Jullian, Oscar Wilde (1969); Martin Fido, Oscar
Wilde (1973, reissued 1988); H. Montgomery Hyde, Oscar Wilde (1975, reprinted 1981); Louis Kronenberger, Oscar Wilde (1976); Sheridan Morley, Oscar
Wilde (1976); and Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (1988). Important critical studies include Edouard Roditi, Oscar Wilde (1947, reissued 1986); Epifanio San
Juan, Jr., The Art of Oscar Wilde (1967, reprinted 1978); Richard Ellmann (ed.), Oscar Wilde: A Collection of Critical Essays (1969); Karl Beckson (ed.),
Oscar Wilde: The Critical Heritage (1970); Alan Bird, The Plays of Oscar Wilde (1977); Donald H. Ericksen, Oscar Wilde (1977); Rodney Shewan, Oscar
Wilde: Art and Egotism (1977); Robert Keith Miller, Oscar Wilde (1982); Katharine Worth, Oscar Wilde (1983), a reassessment; and Regenia Gagnier,
Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public (1986).
Wilson, August
b. April 27, 1945, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.
American playwright, author of a cycle of plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, about black American life. He won
Pulitzer Prizes for Fences (1986) and for The Piano Lesson (1990).
Largely self-educated, Wilson grew up in poverty and quit school at age 15. He joined the black aesthetic movement in the late 1960s,
became the cofounder and director of Black Horizons Theatre in Pittsburgh (1968), and published poetry in such journals as Black World
(1971) and Black Lines (1972). In 1978 he moved to St. Paul, Minn., and in the early 1980s he wrote several unpublished plays, including
Jitney and Fullerton Street.
Wilson's first major play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1985), opened on Broadway in 1984. Set in Chicago in 1927, the play centres on a
verbally abusive blues singer, her fellow black musicians, and their white manager. Fences, first produced in 1985, is about a conflict
between a father and son in the 1950s.
Wilson's chronicle of the black American experience continued with Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988), a play about the lives of
residents of a Pittsburgh boardinghouse in 1911; The Piano Lesson, set in the 1930s and concerning a family's ambivalence about selling an
heirloom; and Two Trains Running (1992), whose action takes place in a Pittsburgh coffeehouse in the 1960s. Seven Guitars (1996), the
sixth play of the cycle, is set among a group of friends who reunite following the death of a local blues guitarist. Music, particularly jazz
and blues, was a recurrent theme in Wilson's works, and its cadence was echoed in the lyrical, vernacular nature of his dialogue.
Wilson, Lanford
b. April 13, 1937, Lebanon, Mo., U.S.
In full LANFORD EUGENE WILSON American playwright, a pioneer of the Off-Off-Broadway and regional theatre movements. His
plays are known for experimental staging, simultaneous dialogue, and deferred character exposition. He won a 1980 Pulitzer Prize for
Talley's Folly (1979).
Wilson attended schools in Missouri, San Diego, California, and Chicago before moving to New York City in 1962. From 1963 his plays
were produced regularly at Off-Off-Broadway theatres such as Caffe Cino and La Mama Experimental Theatre Company. Home Free! and
The Madness of Lady Bright (published together in 1968) are two one-act plays first performed in 1964; the former involves a pair of
incestuous siblings, and the latter features an aging transvestite. Balm in Gilead (1965), Wilson's first full-length play, is set in a crowded
world of hustlers and junkies. The Rimers of Eldritch (1967) examines life in a small town.
In 1969, along with longtime associate Marshall W. Mason and others, he founded the Circle Theatre (later Circle Repertory Company), a
regional theatre in New York City. Wilson achieved commercial success with The Great Nebula in Orion (1971), The Hot l Baltimore
(1973), and The Mound Builders (1975). He also wrote a cycle of plays about the effects of war on a family from Missouri; these include
The 5th of July (1978; televised 1982), Talley's Folly, A Tale Told (1981), and Talley and Son (1985). His other plays include The Gingham
Dog (1969), Lemon Sky (1970; televised 1987), Burn This (1987), and Redwood Curtain (1993; televised 1995), about a young adopted
woman's search for information about the Vietnamese woman and American GI who are her real parents. Some of Wilson's plays are
gathered in Four Short Plays (1994) and Collected Plays, 1965-1970 (1996).
WPA Federal Theatre Project
National theatre project sponsored and funded by the U.S. government as part of the Works Projects Administration (WPA). The purpose
was to create jobs for unemployed theatrical people in the Great Depression years of 1935-39.
Ten thousand professionals were employed in all facets of the theatre. About 1,000 productions were mounted in four years in 40 states,
often presented free to the public. These productions included classical and modern drama, children's plays, puppet shows, musical
comedies, and documentary theatre known as Living Newspaper. Other projects included producing plays by young, unknown American
playwrights, establishing black American theatre, and presenting radio broadcasts of dramatic works. Following a series of controversial
investigations by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and Subcommittee on Appropriations regarding the Federal Theatre's
outspoken leftist commentary on social and economic issues, the Federal Theatre Project was terminated in 1939 by congressional action.