William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

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The great English playwright and poet William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 in the small town of Stradford-upon-Avon, about seventy-five miles from London. He was the son of a tradesman. When a boy he went to Stradford Grammar School, where Latin and Greek were almost the only subjects. Life itself and contact with people gave him more than scholastic methods used at school. In those days Stradford-upon-Avon was often visited by travelling groups of actors. It is possible that Shakespeare saw some plays performed by such actors and was impressed by them.

Shakespeare lived in Stradford-upon-Avon until he was twenty-one. By that time he was married and had three children. At twenty-one he left his native town for London where he joined a theatrical company and worked as an actor and a playwright.

In the late 1590s a new theatre called The Globe was built and Shakespeare became one of its owners. Most of Shakespeare’s plays were staged there at that time.

In 1613 he left London and returned to Stradford-upon-Avon. Three years later, on April 23, 1616 he died and was buried there.

Shakespeare is the author of 2 poems, 37 plays and 154 sonnets. His creative work is usually divided into three periods.

The first period which lasted from 1590 to 1600 was marked by the optimism so characteristic of all humanist literature. It is best reflected in his nine brilliant comedies: The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love’s Labour Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merry Wives of Winsdor, As You Like It, Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will.

The comedies describe the adventures of young men and women, their friendship and love, their search for happiness. The comedies are usually based on some misunderstanding that creates comic situations. They are full of fun. But the laughter is not directed against the people and their vices. He laughs with people, but not at them. His comedies are filled with humanist love for people and the belief in the nobility and kindness of human nature.

The historical chronicles form another group of plays written by Shakespeare in the first period. They are: King Henry,The Tragedy of King Richard III, The Life and Death fo King John, etc.

However, the main subjects of the chronicles are not lives and fates of kings but history itself and the development of the country. One of his great achievements was that in his chronicles he showed not only the kings, nobles and churchmen but men of the lower classes too.

The drama The Merchant of Venice and the two early tragedies Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar, also written in the 1590s, show a change in the playwright’s outlook which becomes more pessimistic.

The main works written by Shakespeare during the second period (1601 – 1608) are his four tragedies: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; Othello, the Moor of Venice; King Lear; Macbeth.

The tragedies are also based on real events but there is a difference between the two genres. The playwright raised great problems of Good and Evil. But in the chronicles they are mostly linked with political themes. In the tragedies Shakespeare touched on the moral problems of universal significance – honesty, cruelty, kindness, love, vanity and others.

The plays of the third period (1609 – 1612) differ from everything Shakespeare wrote before. He still touches upon most important social and moral problems, but now suggests Utopian solutions to them. He introduces romantic and fantastic elements. The works of this period – Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest – are called romantic dramas.

LITERATURE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT (18^th century)

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The 17^th and 18^th centuries are known in the history of European culture as the period of Enlightenment. The Enlighteners defended the interests of the common people – craftsmen, tradesmen and peasants. The central philosophical problem of the Enlightenment was that of man and his nature. The Enlighteners believed in the great educational power of art and considered it their duty to enlighten people, to help them see the roots of evil and the means of social reform.

Some of the English Enlighteners spoke in defence of the existing order. They were the moderates, represented in literature by Daniel Defoe, Richard Steele and Samuel Richardson. Others, the radicals, defended the interests of the exploited masses. The most outstanding representatives of the radicals were Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Oliver Goldsmith.

In the period of Enlightenment the poetic forms of the Renaissance were replaced by prose. The didactic novel was born and became the leading genre of the period. Ordinary people, mostly representatives of the middle class, became the heroes of these novels. The characters, either good or bad, were accordingly, either rewarded or punished at the end of the navel.

The Enlightenment epoch in English literature may be divided into threeperiods: