1. Historical drama and comedy period: (1590— 1600)
In the first ten years of Shakespeare's drama creation, he wrote nine historical plays. Among these plays, except King John (1589), which describes the internal struggle of the feudal dynasty in the 3rd century, other plays constitute Henry VI's three trilogy series (1590- 159 1). Richard II (1595), Henry IV (1597- 1598) and Henry V (1599).
The artistic achievements of these plays are different. The most talked about are Richard III, Henry IV and Henry V. Richard III is a famous tyrant in English history. With great anger, Shakespeare described the story of how the insidious aristocrat Richard squeezed out six legal heirs to the throne by bloody means, exposed and condemned his fierceness and ignorance, and created a hypocritical, cunning and cruel tyrant image. Henry V describes Henry V's unwillingness to live a rigid court life when he is a prince. He mingled with hooligans in the lower classes and became a wise and ideal monarch after he ascended the throne. These two plays reflect Shakespeare's humanistic thought from both positive and negative aspects: he condemned the civil strife caused by the struggle for power and profit by feudal nobles, and believed that enlightened monarchs could be produced through moral reform, top-down reforms could be implemented, and harmonious social relations and ideal social systems could be established.
While Shakespeare's historical plays are very popular, he also wrote ten comedies: Wrong Comedy (1592), Taming the Shrew (1593), Two Gentlemen in Verona (1594) and Love in vain (/kloc Windsor's wives (1598), much ado about nothing (1599), Happy Everyone (1600), Twelfth Night (1600). Among them, the last three can best express the style of Shakespeare's comedy creation and are called "charming and bright comedy trilogy". Most of these plays are about love, friendship and marriage, but the plots are extremely vivid and rich. With humorous, cheerful brushstrokes and picturesque lyricism, the author reveals people's emotional conflicts and contradictions in real life, and especially creates a group of brave, persistent, humorous, witty and gentle heroines. They pursue their right of free love, fight tenaciously against all kinds of evil forces, and radiate dazzling light on the stage of drama.
The Merchant of Venice is famous for its strong satire and critical attitude towards society. Shakespeare successfully portrayed Shylock as a vivid, complex and extremely selfish usurer. At the same time, Shakespeare speaks for all Jews who are discriminated against by ethnic groups and religions through Shylock, which embodies bourgeois humanism. In the play, vivid court confrontation scenes are used to raise economic issues such as overseas trade and usury, which makes people feel the author's superb ability to control materials.
Romeo and Juliet (1594), written in this period, is a poetic tragedy reflecting the conflict between humanistic love, ideal and feudal oppression. Although it is a tragedy in the plot, the comedy works are also full of love for life, longing for happiness and confidence in the future. Money drama is full of positive and optimistic atmosphere, and it is actually a hymn of youth and love. Although the protagonist paid the price of his life, the gap was eliminated, love and ideal finally won, and Romeo and Juliet became immortal models in world literature. The play is full of rich lyricism, such as Juliet's beautiful monologue waiting for Romeo to come to the appointment:
Come on, night! Come on Romeo. Come on, your dark day! Because you will sleep on the wings of the night, whiter than the new snow on the crow's back. Come on, gentle night! Come on, lovely night, give me my Romeo; After his death, you can take him away, scatter him into countless stars, decorate the sky so beautifully that the whole world will fall in love with the night and stop worshipping the dazzling sun.
According to the development of thought and art, the researchers divided his creation into three periods:
2. Tragic period (1601-1608)
This period is the mature and deepening stage of Shakespeare's thought and art. At the end of Queen Elizabeth's rule, the relationship between monarchy and bourgeoisie began to be tense, and the life of court nobles became increasingly decadent. Shakespeare has clearly seen the insurmountable gap between ideal and reality, but he attributed it to the moral conflict between good and evil. He opposed violence, emphasized the role of reason, created a number of brilliant and gloomy tragic plays, exposed the social evils and bourgeois egoism that had begun to appear in the primitive accumulation period of capitalism, and showed the contradiction between the beautiful ideal of humanitarianism and the cruel reality. The romanticism in the play is getting weaker and weaker, and the realistic description is becoming more and more prominent. The main content of his tragedy is the conflict between man and society, man and man's heart, which is a model of "character tragedy" and "social tragedy".
Hamlet (160 1) is Shakespeare's most important work, and this tragedy is the richest in terms of its social content and philosophical connotation. It expresses the disillusionment of the hero's humanistic ideal with exquisite artistic form and broad ideological content, and embodies the author's exploration of the value and significance of life. As early as the 12 century, the story of the Danish prince's revenge for his father has been circulated, and playwrights in Britain and France have written plays centered on the revenge of blood relatives in the Middle Ages according to their plots. 160 1 year, Shakespeare adapted it into an outstanding tragedy with fierce contradictions and conflicts, which made this revenge story have extensive social significance.
King Lear (1605) is based on the historical legend of ancient England: the old and groggy King Lear gave the kingdom to the hypocritical eldest daughter Reagan and the second daughter gunman, but expelled the younger daughter Cordelia, who was honest and straightforward and could not please her father. King Lear himself only kept the title of king and 100 attendants, and prepared to take turns to live in the home of his two daughters to enjoy his old age. Unexpectedly, after the two eldest daughters achieved their goal, they showed their true colors and drove their old father out of the house. King Lear suffered from displacement. On a stormy night of thunder and lightning, King Lear, who was driven crazy, rushed to the wilderness and shouted his grief and helplessness to the sky. King Lear's long monologue to the sky under the storm not only shows us a painful soul, but also reveals the awakening process of the king's human nature alienated by power. When the youngest daughter learned of King Lear's experience, she set out to crusade against her two sisters. Unfortunately, she was killed and King Lear died in grief and madness. From the standpoint of humanists, Shakespeare criticized the hypocritical human relations in capitalist society and affirmed the moral principle of sympathy and friendship through the civil strife of the royal family and the ups and downs of King Lear's biography.
Shakespeare lived in the great turning point when the feudal system began to collapse and the emerging bourgeoisie began to rise. At that time, obscurantism represented by religious theology in the Middle Ages was declining, the bourgeois world outlook centered on individualism was deeply rooted in people's hearts, and humanism began to occupy a dominant position in social and cultural thoughts. Shakespeare, on the other hand, boldly criticized the cruelty and darkness of feudal system and the imprisonment of human nature with his plays, which strongly reflected the requirements of the emerging bourgeoisie to establish new social relations and ethical thoughts, and played a great role in promoting the spread of humanism in Britain and Europe. Many of Shakespeare's plays have been lost, and only 37 have survived. According to the development of thought and art, the researchers divided his creation into three periods:
Macbeth (1605) is a masterpiece of psychological description in Shakespeare's plays. Macbeth, a Scottish general, returned home from the battlefield in triumph, and on the way he heard a witch predict that he might become king. Driven by ambition and egged on by his wife, King Duncan took the opportunity to visit and usurp the throne, eventually ending in rebellion, defeat and murder. His wife also died of schizophrenia. The whole play is permeated with a terrible atmosphere of Yin Zhi. Shakespeare criticized the erosion of conscience by ambition by describing the process of Macbeth, the hero who made great achievements, becoming a cruel tyrant. Because of the witch's bewitch and the influence of his wife, Macbeth's original well-intentioned ambition to do something big turned into ambition, and the realization of ambition led to a series of new crimes, which led to abnormal condition and inevitable death. In the atmosphere of superstition, sin and terror, the author often lets the sinners in his works ponder, reflect and analyze their own hearts. The psychological changes of Macbeth and his wife before and after killing the king are distinct, which further increases the depth of the tragedy.
The above four plays are called Shakespeare's "Four Tragedies". In these plays, Shakespeare saw the inherent contradiction of the emerging capitalist social relations, criticized the evil nature of the principle of capitalist interests, and showed the pain brought by class oppression to the working people. However, he attributed the social struggle to the abstract moral problem of good and evil, and only saw the power of thought and the role of individuals, ignoring the people. Therefore, in the face of a cold and sinful society, individualistic heroes who are single-handed are often hit hard, pessimistic, lost and disillusioned, and fall into unavoidable inner contradictions and tragic endings. At the end of the tragedy, no hero can escape the fate of death, so that later generations call the fifth act of Shakespeare's plays "the dead bed". However, the terrible ending of Crash and Burning shows the playwright's hope for the human world: outstanding people die, and careerists who do their best for personal interests can't escape the fate of death, but justice wins the moral victory, justice and virtue are immortal, while evil is spurned and forgotten for a long time, and later heroes are still expected to be reorganized. His sharp criticism, profound revelation of human nature and high generalization of the spirit of the times and social life make Shakespeare's tragedy still powerful and become a monument in the history of drama.
Apart from the "Four Tragedy", Shakespeare also wrote Julius Caesar (160 1), Timon of Athens (1605) and Anthony and Cleopatra (168) according to Plutarch's Who's Who. "Timon of Athens" wrote that Timon, an Athenian aristocrat, was generous and hospitable, charitable and lavish, and his home was full of guests every day. Although he helped many people out of trouble, he couldn't distinguish flatterers from friends, and most of his money was spent on villains and parasites. Once his gold was gone, his creditors were all money. When he sent people to ask for help from his elders, nobles and people who had benefited from him, those little people who were obedient in every way were as afraid as avoiding the plague, making him cry every day and the ground was ineffective. Timon left the crowd with indignation and lived alone in a cave outside the city. One day, when he was digging up roots to feed his hunger, he accidentally found a lot of gold, which made him see through the hypocrisy of this world. Ding Man couldn't help cursing angrily:
Gold! Yellow, shiny and precious gold ... This little thing is enough to reverse black and white, the ugly becomes beautiful, the wrong becomes right, the humble becomes noble, the old man becomes a teenager, the coward becomes a warrior, ... This yellow slave can engage in pagan alliances, split the country and bless sinners; Lepers are regarded as lovers; With him at the Senate meeting, robbers can be knighted, bowed and praised; With him, the widow with yellow skin and chicken face can be a bride.
The exposure of capitalist monetary principle is really incisive! Marx quoted this passage in Capitalism to illustrate the essence of money. Athens in the play was later besieged, and nobles and elders came to Timon, who was brave and good at fighting, and gave him money, power and status, but Timon was cold-hearted and finally became a world-weary, leaving this world with hatred for hypocritical human beings.
3. In the later period of the legendary drama (1609- 16 13), Shakespeare's creation showed a tendency to be divorced from reality and turned to a dreamy world, the contradiction between reality and fantasy was solved, the style changed, and it was full of fairy-tale imagination and lively rhythm. His works include cymbeline (1609), The Story of Winter (16 10) and The Tempest (161). The plots of these dramas are similar. The protagonists first encounter disasters and misfortunes, and then come to the rescue by chance. Even every dark cloud has a glimmer of hope. Although the dark reality is exposed, the spirit of forgiveness and understanding runs through the whole play, which advocates healing old wounds with love and emphasizes that repentance and reform can generate new hope. The characters and background of the script are legendary, and the motives of the characters are almost absurd, highlighting a lot of coincidences and accidents.
The important work of this period is The Tempest. Mysterious fantasy, magnificent description, vivid image and poetic background make this play a representative of Shakespeare's late drama art.
Shakespeare's plays are an unattainable peak in the history of western drama art. In his plays, such a broad picture of life is unfolded: from princes and nobles to poor people living at the bottom of society, people from all walks of life dance in the plays, everyone has his own love, hate, sadness and joy, and everyone has distinct personality characteristics. Both are insidious and extremely selfish. Macbeth and Iago are different, both of them have the courage to die for ideals and justice. Othello is different from Hamlet. Different characters live in their own typical environments.
Shakespeare is an unparalleled master of drama structure. Although his plays are divided into tragicomedy, they break the boundaries of tragicomedy in creative practice and are not restricted by strict traditional genre division, thus showing richer human nature and spiritual world of characters. He is good at describing several parallel and interlaced clues to promote the development of vivid and complicated plots. Writing skills show a wonderful sense of drama urgency, and the gradually accelerated pace of plot development often has ingenious pens, which amazes the audience.
The language of Shakespeare's plays is completely poetic, soft and gentle like running water, stirring like stormy waves, which is memorable. According to the statistics of later generations, Shakespeare used more than 15,000 words and was good at using metaphors, metaphors and puns. Many languages in Shakespeare's plays have become idioms and allusions in English, greatly enriching English vocabulary. The language form is mainly blank poetry, but also mixed with ancient poetry, folk songs, slang and light and funny prose dialogue, which can be described as diverse, rich and vivid and has become the basic material of Shakespeare's drama art building.
Shakespeare also wrote 154 sonnets, which are generally believed to have been completed in the six years from 1592 to 1598. One to one hundred and twenty-six poems reveal the poet's love for a "black woman", which is vivid and rhythmic and shows the truth, goodness and beauty of humanists.
Shakespeare did not enjoy much honor before his death, and it was not universally recognized 200 years after his death. By the middle of19th century, people had rediscovered Shakespeare and formed a new discipline-Shakespeare. However, due to Shakespeare's commoner background, lack of higher education and biographical materials, some people have doubts about his career in drama creation, and even try their best to find the "real" author of Shakespeare's plays. In fact, there is not enough evidence and materials to overturn Shakespeare's copyright. Shakespeare's position as a great writer and playwright is unshakable.