Shakespeare: riassunto in inglese

Materie:	Riassunto
Categoria:	Inglese
Voto:	2.5 (2)
Download:	1918
Data:	18.07.2005
Numero di pagine:	4
Formato di file:	.doc (Microsoft Word)

SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)
He is considered the most important playwright in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. He didn’t frequent the group of University Wits: for this reason they think that he wasn’t learned enough to have written his plays. According to some people, works attributed to Shakespeare, were written by other cultured men, like Francis Bacon, a politic man and philosopher, or the dramatist Marlowe, who wouldn’t be killed in the tavern, but would have continued writing. These theories are only suppositions.In fact, when he was in London, he improved his limited education received at school, reading authors as Plutarch, Seneca and others. Shakespeare began writing, really when the theatre had already developed into a perfect structure: in this way the story of theatre got ready to welcome his art and his many-sides genius. However the poems and plays which have come down to us with his name are the most important thing, because provide of the most wonderful pages in world of literature.
PLAYS
During Shakespeare’s time, it was possibile to copy the works of other writers without legal consequences for the absence of copyright. Even Shakespeare borrowed the plots of his works from different kinds of sources. In spite of that the original material was transformed with his poetry, assuming new values and meanings.
Since Shakespeare’s plays weren’t published, they often circulated in versions not authorized, called “bad quartos”. These quartos presented many mistake, and for this reason two friends of Shakespeare decided to publish the first collected editino of Shakespeare’s plays called “ First Folio”. This collection was printed and divided into three sections as “Comedies, Histories and Tragedies”.
The plays of the Folio edition weren’t grouped chronologically: for this reason the critics take three types of evidence into consideration , trying to go back to dates of each play:
-Internal references – passages or sentences of the plays referring to contemporary events.
-External references- references to Shakespeare’s plays container in the works of the other writers.
-Literary evidence – the style, the characterization, the plot and the metrical skill of the different plays.
It is possibile to identify 4 periods in his artistic production. This 4 group division is probably imperfect. It is quite impossible to sum up the characteristics of Shakespeare’s drama. Certainly his works present common features with other playwrights of his time,such as the tendency to mix tragic and comic elements, the failure to respect the three unities.
JULIUS CAESAR
This play is based on Plutarch’s Lives, and tells how, on the Ides of March of 44 B.C. after returning from the successful campaign against Pompey, Julius Caesar was killed by a group of conspirators including Brutus. After the murder, Brutus speaks to the crowd to justify his deed, and manages to obtain their approval. He then allows Mark Antony, Caesar’s trusted friend and yellow consul, to deliver the funeral oration, without realizing how dangerous Antony may be. The latter’s eloquence and the sight of Caesar’s body marred with wounds stir the mob to mutino and the conspirators are compelled to flee from Rome. Encamped near Sardis, Brutus is visited by Caesar’s ghost, who predicts his future death. He finally meets Antony at Philippi where, disastrously defeated, he kills himself by running upon a sword held by a servant. The turning point of the play is the Third Act, when Brutus and Antony speak to the mob, each one in his own way and accordino to his own personalità.
HAMLET
Some critics tend to compare the character of Hamlet with that of Britus, even if according to another modern interpretation Hamlet is considered a colder and more skilful politician than Brutus.
The features very important of this work are the depth and complexity. This Shakespeare’s masterpiece is certainly the one that has been most analyzed and debated in every country and period. The interpretations of Hamlet are different, in fact the Danish prince has been represented as irresolute and unpredictable, dominated by moral conflicts, oppressed by melancholy, hindered by too much thinking, etc. All these points of view are considered valid in themselves as Hamlet is all this and something more. Jan Kott sustains that this work is a political drama.
MACBETH
While in Julius Caesar and in Hamlet Shakespeare focuses his attention on one individual in particolar, the dramatist in Macbeth concentrates on a couple and analyses the relationship between them.
The plot of Macbeth, the shortest of Shakespeare’s plays, was taken from the second edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles. The tragic history of Macbeth, which some interpreted as a homage to James I, was a pretext to inquire once more into the human soul and analyse another of its facets: the force of ambition. The turning point of the tragedy is obviously the murder of Duncan, king of Scotland, in the second act. In this work Shakespeare combines psychological insight and technical skill, mixing tragic and comic elements together.
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
The artistic greatness of Shakespeare depend on his tragedies and on his comedies, of which one of the best importantis certainly The Merchant of Venice. This work is based in part on Ser Giovanni Fiorentino’s Il Pecorone, and in part on a story from Richard Robinson’s version of the Gesta Romanorum: the play is actually the result of two interwoven plots.
POEMS
From 1592 to about 1594, when all theatres were closed for the diffusion of the plague, Shakespeare wrote two narrative poems, “Venus and Adonis” and “ The rape of Lucrece”, which were dedicated to his patron, the Earl of Southampton. In these two erotic poems the poet shows his talent for sweet versification, for the language,and for his particolar wit. They are the work of a great verse-maker.
During the same period, Shakespeare wrote a collection of 154 sonnets, considered by critics some of the finest of the period. Many scholars have tried to solve the difficult question of interpretation, considerino them as the poetical revelation of personal emotions andexperiences.
The firstgroup of sonnets is dedicated to “a fair youth”, probabily the Earl of Southampton, or the Earl of Pembroke, who were his friends and patrons. The sonnets of the second group are dedicaed to a mysterious “Dark Lady”, a lady whom the poet loved at first with passionate devotion, realizing later that she had only taken a fancy to him. The form used by Shakespeare in his sonnets wasn’t the Italian form, but consisted of three decasyllabic quatrains, rhyming alternately and a concludine rhyming couplet.