on the individual makes death the central fact of life, but comedy, with its insistence on the on going process of love and sex and birth, confirms our awareness that life transcends the individual.
A good instance, and an important influence to Shakespeare, was A Mirror for Magistrates, in which the settings range from classical and biblical worlds to recent history. The typical subject of the biographies of this compilation is a villainous tyrant whose fall is amply deserved. Retribution becomes the theme rather than simple inevitability. The ancient plays of Seneca were similar in subject and tone and these works were exploited by 16th century playwrights. The immediate result was the revenge play, pioneered by Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd.
However, the emphasis on evil figures was gradually eroded by an awareness of the dramatic value of virtue. The medieval heritage of the Morality Play was an important influence on this development. Sometimes the good were simply victims as in Titus Andronicus; sometimes virtuous deeds resulted in death or disaster as in The Rape of Lucrece, and sometimes the two motifs combined, in virtuous victims whose deaths are redemptive, spiritually cleansing the world of the play as in Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare's first tragedy, Titus Andronicus, is a simple melodrama, frankly imitative of Seneca. With Romeo and Juliet, the young playwright advances considerably, developing human and credible protagonists. An essential tragic theme is established in Romeo: the superiority of the human spirit to its mortal destiny. It is in Julius Caesar that Shakespeare first achieves the distinctive element of the major tragedies, a protagonist. In Julius Caesar, the protagonist Brutus, who is undone^ precisely by his own virtues, as he pursues a flawed political ideal. A paradoxical sense of the interconnectedness of good and evil permeates the play, as the hero's idealism leads to disaster for both him and his world.
Only with Hamlet does the hero's personal sense of that paradox become the play's central concern. In Hamlet and its three great successors, Shakespeare composes four variations on
the overarching theme that humanity's weaknesses must be recognised as our inevitable human lot, for only by accepting our destiny can we transcend our morality. Hamlet, unable to alter the evil around him because of his fixation on the uncertainties of moral judgement, himself falls- into evil In killing Polonius and rejecting Ophelia but finally recovers his humanity by recognizing his ties to others. He accepts his own fate, knowing that
"readiness is all".
Lear, his world in ruins of his own making, can find salvation only through madness, but in his reconciliation with Cordelia, he too finds that destiny can be identified with, "as if we were God's spies". As Edgar puts it, sounding very like Hamlet, "Ripeness is all".
Othello, drawn into evil by an incapacity for trust, recognizes his failing and kills himself. The power of love-the importance of our bonds to others-is again upheld.
In Macbeth, the same point is made negatively, as the protagonist's rejection of love and loyalty leads to an extreme human isolation, where "Life's but a walking shadow". In each of the 4 major tragedies, a single protagonist grows in self- awareness and knowledge of human nature, though he cannot stop his disaster.
In the later Roman tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus we find the same pattern. But these differ from their predecessors in that the central figures are placed in a complex social and political context, and the plays are strongly concerned with the relationship between the individual and the society, with less focus on the emotional development of the tragic hero.
Timon of Athens is a flawed effort that Shakespeare left incomplete.
Shakespeare's tragedies are disturbing plays. We feel horror at the stories, and pity for the victims. That this pity extends to doers of evil as well - Macbeth, Othello, Lear, Coriolanus - attests
to the dramatist's power. We recognise the nobility of the human spirit, which may err catastrophically but which
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does so through an excess of strength, challenging its own limits.
In a tragic universe, we are all flawed precisely because we are human, and Shakespeare's tragic heroes embody this inexorable feature of life.
III. HISTORY PLAYS . I
Shakespeare's 10 plays deal with events in English history.
(1) Minor Tetralogy - Henry VI 3 Parts, and Richard III
(2) King John
(3) Major Tetralogy - Richard II, Henry IV 2 Parts, and Henry V.
(4) Henry VIII.
The Tetralogies are Shakespeare's major achievement in the histories and deal with English history from 1398 to 1485.
The central theme of the history plays is political - they deal with the gain and loss of power - but Shakespeare transcended this subject. As he wrote his histories, the playwright increasingly pursued the definition of the perfect king. After presenting two distinctly bad rulers, the ineffectual Henry VI and the villainous Richard III, he turned to a consideration of kingly virtues. He began to explore the psychology of political leaders, and these plays are at their best as much psychological as historical.
Not content to deal with the nature of kingship solely from the point of view of the rulers, Shakespeare also focuses on the lives of the common people of England, especially in the major tetralogy. Sometimes fictitious minor figures, such as the Gardener in Richard III, fulfill an important function simply by offering their own interpretation of political events and historical personalities and thus influencing the reader's responses. But many common people are developed as
characters in their own right. Indeed, in the Henry IV plays, often considered the greatest of his histories, Falstaff and a number of fully sketched minor characters offer a sort of national group portrait that is contrasted with political history. The juxtaposition generates a richly stimulating set of relationships.
Those secular accounts of the past, neither legendary nor religious, that were presented on the stage- and were highly popular-reflect the Elizabethan era's intense interest in history.
In the late 16th century, when these plays were written, England was undergoing a great crisis. As a leading Protestant state, it found itself at odds, with the great Catholic powers of counter- Reformation Europe, including its traditional enemy, France, and a new foe, Spain. The latter, at the height of its power, was a very dangerous adversary, and England felt seriously imperiled until the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. This situation sparked a tremendous patriotism among all classes of English society, and with that came an increasing interest in the nation's history, an interest that the theatre was of course delighted to serve.
Written not long after the peak of nationalistic fervour in 1588, the history plays, which were extremely popular, deal with political events of England, like the Wars of the Roses, the significance of which the Elizabethans were very much aware.
Moreover, even though in hindsight the reign of Elizabeth seems very different from those of the troubled 15th century, this was not so clear at the time. A number of threats to the government arose and the people felt a strong fear of civil war and anarchy;
for both moral and practical reasons they valued an orderly society ruled by a strong monarch. The history plays addressed this attitude by presenting a lesson in the evils of national disunity.
This view of English history was held not only by both the playwright and most of his audience, but also by the historians whose works Shakespeare consulted. When the Tudor dynasty came to power, among the policies adopted by King Henry VII was the use of scholarly propaganda-to justify his seizure of the throne. He encouraged and commissioned various works of history and biography to emphasize the faults of earlier rulers and present his own accession as the nation's salvation. Among them was an official history of England by the Italian humanist Polydore Vergil, which was to have a strong influence on subsequent historians including Holinshed and Hall, whose chronicles were Shakespeare's chief sources. Thus Shakespeare saw, and passed on, a story of inevitable progress towards the benevolent reign of the Tudors. The sources available.to Shakespeare were highly unreliable by modern historical standards. In any case, Shakespeare was not writing history; he was concerned with dramatic values more than with historical accuracy.
Other Elizabethan playwrights also wrote histories but only Shakespeare's work has survived. In writing history plays Shakespeare always pursued his own concerns, exploring political values and social relations. Throughout his career he was preoccupied with the value of order in society. Shakespeare believed, as is evident in Henry V, in the need for authority, but he also showed a distrust of those who held authority. Thus the history plays point to an underlying characteristic of human societies-the fact that political power inspires disturbing fears as well as profound ideals.