The main stages of creativity. Shakespeare's career is divided into three periods Chronicle plays from the history of England

In the early years of the seventeenth century, a marked change took place in Shakespeare's work. Cheerful motives give way to deep reflections on the most painful contradictions of life, and he creates works filled with a tragic worldview.

Such a change of mood in no way means a decline in Shakespeare's work. On the contrary, it is time for his greatest accomplishments as an artist. He creates "Hamlet", "Othello", "King Lear" and "Macbeth" - these four masterpieces, thanks to which Shakespeare was recognized as an artist of world significance, who stepped from the limits of his era into eternity.

The change in Shakespeare's work came about gradually. The chronology of his works shows that there was no sharp line between the second and third periods. Almost simultaneously, Shakespeare creates the cheerful comedies As You Like It and Twelfth Night and the tragedy Julius Caesar. If the dating of The Merry Wives of Windsor, claimed by Chambers (1600-1601), is correct, then, having created Hamlet, Shakespeare was able to write another part of the falstafiada.

Such is the real picture of Shakespeare's work in 1598-1601. The works created by Shakespeare at this time allow us to talk about the gradual transition of the playwright to a new genre and to a new problem.

The third period of Shakespeare's work covers eight to nine years. Its beginning is usually dated by "Hamlet" (1600-1601), and the end is "Timon of Athens" (1607-1608). The works created by the playwright during these years are not homogeneous, and within the third period, at least three stages can be distinguished.

The first one was transitional. The tragic motifs characteristic of this period are already found in Julius Caesar (1599). Therefore, for the purpose of a concentrated consideration of the ideological evolution of Shakespeare, we consider this tragedy together with the tragedies of the third period. In terms of plot, it is close to such plays as Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. It is similar to them in terms of style. These three dramas form a cycle of Shakespeare's Roman tragedies, to which the early "Titus Andronicus" also belongs.

In ideological terms, some motifs make "Julius Caesar" related to "Hamlet" * . Before Brutus, as before the Prince of Denmark, there is the same problem of choosing effective means in the fight against evil. Like Hamlet, Julius Caesar is a socio-philosophical tragedy.

* (For parallel motifs in both tragedies, see: K. Fischer, Shakespeare's Hamlet, M. 1905, pp. 159-162.)

Both tragedies do not have as their subject the depiction of passions, which is the content of other Shakespearean tragedies. Neither Brutus nor Hamlet is driven by the impulses that characterize the behavior of Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Antony, Coriolanus, or Timon. People of reason, not passions, they are faced with the need for an ethical solution to the most acute life issues and are themselves aware of the fundamental nature of their task. These tragedies can rightly be called problematic.

They are followed by three plays that do not belong to the genre of tragedy - "Troilus and Cressida", "The End is the Crown" and "Measure for Measure". The first of them is close in character to tragedy, but it lacks the tragic denouement that is usual for Shakespeare. The hero, who is going through a mental crisis no less profound than Hamlet, however, does not die. Troilus and Cressida can be considered a tragicomedy, but this play is even closer to what later poetics defined as a drama, that is, a play of serious content without a bloody denouement.

The other two plays are formally comedies, but they differ from Shakespeare's other comedies. With the exception of The Merchant of Venice, not a single comedy of the first two periods went beyond the limits of problems belonging to the sphere of personal relations. In "The End is the Crown of Things" the personal theme is put in direct connection with the social problem (Elena's love for Bertram and the inequality of their social status), while in "Measure for Measure" the personal destinies of the characters are directly dependent on a whole range of problems of social morality. The seriousness of the issues raised in them, as well as the secondary importance of the comic elements in the plot, gave reason to call these plays "dark" or "problem" comedies. They really form a special group of plays. They are united by the richness and significance of the ideological content, the social importance of the issues put forward in them. The title of Troubled is therefore best suited to these three plays. Together with the tragedies "Julius Caesar" and "Hamlet" they form a large group of Shakespeare's problematic dramas.

This is the first stage of this period.

The second includes three tragedies - "Othello", "King Lear" and "Macbeth", written in the triennium 1604-1606. These are the greatest tragedies of passion, imbued at the same time with a deep moral-philosophical and social meaning. It has long been recognized that Hamlet and these three dramas are the greatest of Shakespeare's tragedies. "Great Tragedies" is the Shakespearean term for these four plays. It is they who constitute the pinnacle of the tragic in Shakespeare and, at the same time, in the entire world dramaturgy.

"Hamlet", for the above reason, we consider somewhat apart from the other three great tragedies, closer to each other in terms of dramatic motives and the ideological and emotional impact they produce.

"Othello", "King Lear" and "Macbeth" are truly heartbreaking tragedies, which cannot be said about "Hamlet". The intensity of the heroes' passions reaches the highest limit, their suffering is immeasurable, and if "Hamlet" is a tragedy of grief from the mind *, then "Othello", "King Air" and "Macbeth" are tragedies where the suffering of heroes is caused, on the contrary, by the fact that their mind was darkened and they acted under the influence of passions.

* (See G. Kozintsev, Our contemporary William Shakespeare, L.-M. 1962, pp. 210-270.)

Great tragedies are full of bitter remarks about life. They are the most classic examples of the tragic in art since antiquity. Here Shakespeare achieved the highest synthesis of thought and artistic skill, for he dissolved his vision of the world in images so integral and organic that their vitality is beyond doubt.

At the third stage, "Antony and Cleopatra", "Coriolanus" and "Timon of Athens" were created. About the first of these tragedies, Coleridge said that in terms of artistic merit it is not lower than the four great tragedies. "Coriolanus", always interested in its political issues, did not arouse great enthusiasm, perhaps because the spiritual dryness of the hero did not arouse in anyone the desire to feel into his spiritual world. Timon of Athens was not completed by Shakespeare. Though thought to be a very significant work, it lacks the perfections of Shakespeare's tragic masterpieces.

However, it is not aesthetic assessments that prompt us to single out these three tragedies in a special group. Their peculiarity is that the center of gravity of the tragic action here is somewhat shifted in comparison with the great tragedies. There, the contradictions of life, society, the state, morality were revealed most fully in the characters of the heroes and through their spiritual world. Here the external world becomes the center of tragic contradictions. "Antony and Cleopatra" in this respect occupies an intermediate, transitional position. But already "Coriolanus" and "Timon of Athens" are fully such in their structure. We see here not the psychological process itself, but only its external result. And this applies also to "Antony and Cleopatra", where the variability of the feelings of the triumvir and the Egyptian queen is given by a dotted line, and we are sometimes left to guesswork to establish the motives of their behavior. Coriolanus and Timon are rather characterized by an excessive simplicity of emotional reactions, their elementary extremes. But what art loses here in revealing the dialectic of the human heart is compensated by discoveries in the field of the dialectic of social relations.

The first period of Shakespeare's work (1590 - 1600)

Chronicle plays from the history of England

From the very beginning, Shakespeare's work is characterized by the breadth of the depiction of reality. During the first decade of his dramatic activity, he creates a large series of historical chronicles in which he covers the past of the country for three centuries. The play "King John" depicts events that took place at the beginning of the 13th century. Richard III ends with the establishment of the Tudor monarchy in 1485. Henry VIII depicts the events of the early 16th century.

Using Golinshed's Chronicles of England and Scotland (1577) as his source, Shakespeare reproduces in his chronicle plays some of the most dramatic moments in English history during the period of feudalism. "... The death of former classes, for example, chivalry," wrote Marx, "could provide content for grandiose tragic works of art" * . This theme forms the basis of the entire cycle of Shakespeare's historical dramas in the first period of his work. The chronicles depict the internecine struggle that the feudal lords waged both among themselves and against the royal power. In the second and third parts of "Henry VI", as well as in "Richard III", the period of the wars of the Scarlet and White Roses (second half of the 15th century) is depicted. In "Richard II" and both parts of "Henry IV" shows the struggle between the monarchy and the feudal barons at the beginning of the 15th century. In "King John" the struggle is between the king on the one hand, and the Roman Catholic Church and the feudal lords on the other. The first part of "Henry VI" and "Henry V" depict the two climaxes of the Hundred Years' War between England and France - the period marked by the activities of Joan of Arc, and the Battle of Azincourt.

* (K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. VIII, p. 270.)

All Shakespeare's chronicles are imbued with the idea of ​​the need for state unity; they reflect the process of the formation of the English nation and the formation of the English absolute monarchy. Shakespeare shows the destructive nature of feudal civil strife, their harm to the people.

O wretched spectacle! O time of bloody disasters! Royal lions Fight for their lairs, And the poor frightened sheep Carry all the burden of strife ... ("Henry VI", part 3. Translation by A. Sokolovsky)

The entire cycle of historical chronicles is imbued with the idea of ​​the inevitability of the victory of centralized state power over feudal anarchy.

The cycle of chronicles breaks up, as it were, into two tetralogy, each of which covers a significant period of English history. The first of them - the three parts of "Henry VI" and "Richard III" - shows feudal anarchy reaching its climax, until finally the monarch appears, putting an end to all strife and establishing strong power. A similar picture is drawn by the second tetralogy, which includes the plays "Richard II", "Henry IV" (two parts) and "Henry V". Here, too, the struggle between the feudal barons and the absolute monarchy is crowned with the victory of the latter.

Shakespeare showed great interest in the question of the personality of the monarch. His plays give portraits of various kings. The political problem of power acquired in Shakespeare, as in other humanists, a moral connotation.

Shakespeare condemns the weakness of Henry VI, who is unable to save the country from anarchy. Another weak-willed king, Richard II, is bad because he looks at England as his fiefdom, and uses power as a means of satisfying his private interests. Richard III is the other extreme. He is a strong king, but excessively cruel, and his cruelty does not have state expediency as its justification; he sees in his power only a means of satisfying personal aspirations. King John has the advantage over him that he aims at the destruction of dual power and seeks to get rid of the participation of the church in government affairs. But even he does not correspond to the ideal of the monarch, for he maintains his power with cruel reprisals and murders of possible rivals. Henry IV is already approaching the humanistic ideal. But guilt weighs over him for the murder he committed of his predecessor, Richard II. Therefore, although he acts as the bearer of the principle of centralization and national unity, he does not fully meet the moral ideal of the humanists.

Shakespeare's ideal monarch is Henry V. His goal is the unity of all classes in the struggle for the common interests of the country. In the chronicle of Henry V, Shakespeare put into the mouth of the archbishop a description of a beehive, which is the prototype of an ideal estate monarchy.

The ideal estate monarchy was, of course, an illusion of the humanists. Shakespeare believed in it only for the time being. Yes. and in his chronicles it is not these illusions that are essential, but the real picture that he paints. And this picture is contrary to the ideal. And this was explained not only by the historical material that Shakespeare used when creating his chronicles, but also by the modern reality that he saw around him.

An essential feature of Shakespeare's historical chronicles is that they combined the reproduction of the historical past with the reflection of contemporary reality. Shakespeare was generally faithful to the facts gleaned from history. On the whole, he correctly conveyed the essence of the political conflicts of the depicted era. But even in feudal costumes, his heroes played out dramas that were quite modern for the 16th century. This, in essence, was pointed out by Engels when he wrote: "It is impossible not to consider an artificial attempt to find romantic medieval roots in Corneille, or to approach Shakespeare on a similar scale (with the exception of the raw material that he borrowed from the Middle Ages)" * .

* (K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. II, p. 86.)

Shakespeare chose historical material that allowed him to combine the depiction of the conflicts that took place in the feudal era with the disclosure of the psychology of the people of the Renaissance. Therefore, the heroes of the chronicles are carriers of feudal self-will to the same extent as bourgeois individualism.

An example of this is Richard III, one of the most striking figures in all of Shakespeare's early drama. Richard, Duke of York, is an ugly hunchback; he is full of a burning hatred of people for being deprived of the pleasures of life available to all.

And I am offended by my height and harmony, Disfigured by deceitful nature, Not finished, twisted and ahead of time I am thrown into an agitated world ... ... That's why, having no hope of passing these days in lovers, I cursed our idle amusements And rushed into villainous affairs * .

* (Translation by A. Druzhinin.)

Richard is the son of that age when, having rejected medieval asceticism, some threw themselves into the thick of life to pluck the fruits of luck, wealth, power, while others devoted themselves to creativity, science, creation. Richard is obsessed with the desire to assert his personality, to prove that, despite all his ugliness, he is not only no worse than other people, but even higher than them. The authorities should help him to ensure that people bow before him, recognize his superiority. Richard's boundless ambition is not restrained by any moral principles. All people are enemies for him, and he does not stop at any crime. He litters his path to the throne with the corpses of rivals he has killed and possible contenders for the crown. Richard has a great mind, but all his thoughts are directed towards one goal. By deception, cunning, he achieves that he becomes king. But not only the goal captivates him. He is pleased with the very process of the struggle, when he sharpens his mind with insidious inventions, bold plans. He likes to set himself the most difficult tasks and enjoys his success. So, he achieves that Lady Anna, whose father and husband he killed, agrees to become his wife. Not loving anyone and not trusting anyone, he even kills his favorite Buckingham - a faithful assistant in his bloody deeds.

As a politician, Richard understands the need to support the people. When he has already eliminated all his rivals and the crown is actually in his hands, he wants it to be handed over to him at the request of the people. Pretending that worldly concerns are alien to him, he pretends that he is going to become a monk, but a deputation, sent by himself, comes to him, which begs him to become king. But this is not enough for Richard, he wants the people to welcome his accession to the throne. On his orders, the citizens of London are expelled from their homes, but when Richard III drives through the streets, rare voices of sent persons are heard from the crowd, shouting: "Long live the king!" The people are silent.

Richard's villainy causes general indignation. A revolt is rising against him, led by the Earl of Richmond.

On the night before the decisive battle against the rebels, the ghosts of all the people killed and tortured by him appear in a dream to Richard. But repentance is alien to the cruel soul of Richard. No powers of heaven and hell can stop him. And only one thing depresses him - the feeling of his loneliness.

Despair gnaws at me. No one of all people can love me. I'll die... Who will cry for me?

Even when Richard sees that everyone is up against him, he does not intend to give up. He tries to inspire his troops with a warlike speech. With furious courage Richard fights against his enemies and, having lost his horse, rushes about the battlefield, exclaiming:

Horse! Horse! All kingdom for a horse!

Not reconciled with the world, faithful to his cruel ambition to the last breath, he dies, and the play ends with Richmond becoming king under the name of Henry VII.

Shakespeare's chronicles are included in the general system of his work as the first sketches of those pictures of life that will later be captured with the highest perfection in the tragic works of the second period. We feel in the chronicles the adventurous spirit of the Renaissance, we see in their heroes people who are not shackled by the old feudal morality. Through the feudal veneer, the new, contemporary to Shakespeare, peeps everywhere here. Already here, for the first time, those conflicts are outlined, which will then unfold in a more complete form in Hamlet, Lear and Macbeth. But there are significant qualitative differences between chronicles and tragedies. First of all, the characters in the tragedies are revealed deeper, many-sided. Deeper is Shakespeare's understanding of social contradictions. The struggle of interests of individuals, the clash of nobility and selfishness, honor and treachery - these and other conflicts are resolved in the chronicles in the triumph of the principle of absolute monarchy. The state acts here as a curbing force in relation to the arbitrariness not only of individuals, but also of entire social groups. Therefore, Shakespeare's ideal monarchy is a justly organized power that satisfies and reconciles conflicting private interests. During the writing of the chronicles, Shakespeare harbored illusions about the possibility for an absolutist state to become such a power. Subsequently, he realized that the state of his time could not be an organization that unites all people, nor a moral force that curbs selfishness.

The action of the chronicles covers both individual conflicts and conflicts in which large social forces operate - estates, classes, even entire states fighting each other. The monarchy, the church, the feudal nobility, the nobility, the townspeople, the peasants - all these forces of the society of that time are presented in the chronicles in all their breadth. On the stage there are not loners, but whole groups of people with various personal interests, generally representing a certain estate or class of society. Shakespeare's realism manifests itself with great force in the fact that he depicts not only the "official elements of the then movement," as Engels calls them, but also the "unofficial plebeian and peasant elements" * who participated in the class struggle. In Shakespeare, the popular masses constitute the active background of the conflict between the monarchy and the nobility that is played out in the foreground. In a number of cases, Shakespeare gives a relief image of the struggle of the masses. So, in the second part of "Henry VI" he shows the uprising of artisans and peasants, demanding the destruction of the feudal state and the establishment of such a system when "the state will become common property."

* (K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. XXV, p. 260.)

Shakespeare did not sympathize with the attempts of peasants and artisans to independently resolve issues of social order. However, unlike Greene, who portrayed the relationship between royalty and the people in an idyllic form, Shakespeare saw the special interests of the people and showed in his historical plays that the people themselves are aware of these interests, which put them in opposition to the ruling forces of feudal-noble society.

In his correspondence with Lassalle about his tragedy Franz von Sickingen, Engels, characterizing the social situation of the Renaissance, pointed to the presence of "the then, strikingly motley plebeian public." "What amazingly characteristic images this era of the disintegration of feudal ties does not give in the person of wandering beggar kings, begging landsknechts and all kinds of adventurers - a truly Falstaffian background ..." *

* (K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. XXV, pp. 260 - 261.)

"Falstaff's background" is an essential part of the picture painted by Shakespeare in his chronicles. He is especially expressive in the chronicle "Henry IV" (two parts). While the dramatic struggle between King Henry IV and his recalcitrant feudal lords is being played out at the forefront of historical action, a company of a very motley composition often gathers in the tavern "Boar's Head". It includes the dissolute Crown Prince Henry, fleeing from the stiffness of the court, and the impoverished knight Sir John Falstaff, and the commoners Nim and Bardolph. They rob merchants on the highways, and the money obtained in this way is squandered in taverns. The soul of this company is Falstaff. Pushkin gave a vivid description of this image: "... Nowhere, perhaps, Shakespeare's versatile genius was reflected with such diversity as in Falstaff, whose vices, one with the other, make up a funny, ugly chain, like an ancient bacchanalia. Analyzing the character of Falstaff , we see that his main feature is voluptuousness; from his youth, probably rude, cheap red tape was his first concern, but he is already over fifty, he has grown fat, decrepit; gluttony and wine have noticeably got the better of Venus. Secondly, he a coward, but having spent his life with young rake, constantly exposed to their ridicule and pranks, he covers up his cowardice with evasive and mocking insolence. who has seen good society. He has no rules. He is weak as a woman. He needs strong Spanish wine (the sack), a fat dinner and money for his mistresses; to get them, he is ready for anything, but not for obvious danger " *.

* (A. S. Pushkin, Sobr. cit., vol. VII, p. 517.)

Such types are born at turning points in history. Two centuries later, on the eve of the French bourgeois revolution, Diderot will show us a descendant of Falstaff - Rameau's nephew.

Such is Falstaff in Henry IV. He will meet again in The Gossips of Windsor, but in the comedy he will be somewhat different. Here he is presented striving to adapt to the life of the townspeople. But nothing comes out of his attempt to marry the daughter of a wealthy burgher, nor of his prudent flirting with the naughty townspeople.

Characteristic of Falstaff's behavior in Henry IV is his opposition to "official" society, whose concerns and interests he does not want to share. In The Windsor Gossips, o "puts on the guise of a person belonging to court circles and trumps with his nobility. He needs this in order to be accepted with honor among the townspeople. And here it is clearly revealed that Falstaff is not able to neither to live like a nobleman, for he has no means for this, nor to adapt to the bourgeois environment. And the very attempt to adapt to this world leads to the loss of that inner freedom that was previously characteristic of him. Therefore, if earlier, by virtue of this his freedom could laugh at everything and everyone, now others laugh at him. Having lost his freedom and disgraced, Falstaff loses his humor; repeatedly deceived, he cannot laugh at his ridiculous position, and only at the end of the comedy, realizing the futility of his attempts, he again acquires the gift of humor and participates in the general fun.The image of Falstaff connects Shakespeare's chronicles with comedies.

"The Shakespeare Question".

The extremely poor documentation of Shakespeare's biography gave rise to the so-called "Shakespeare question" - a discussion about the identity of Shakespeare the author and Shakespeare the actor. "Anti-Strettfordians" (researchers who deny the traditional biography of Shakespeare) believe that the true creator of great plays was one of the highly educated Elizabethan nobles who hired Shakespeare's actor as a "front writer". Argumentation: the actor Shakespeare did not have sufficient erudition, outlook and experience to create texts of such comprehensiveness and depth. The “Stretfordians” (supporters of the traditional version) object: Shakespeare is just a case of a self-taught genius typical of the Renaissance: after all, no one considers Leonardo, Dürer or Brueghel to be fictitious creators; so there is no reason to doubt the creative possibilities of Shakespeare.

Periodization of Shakespeare's work.

In Russian Shakespeare studies, it is customary to distinguish three periods in Shakespeare's work, in Anglo-American - four, which is probably more accurate: 1) the period of apprenticeship (1590-1592); 2) "optimistic" period (1592-1601); 3) the period of great tragedies (1601-1608); 4) the period of "romantic dramas" (1608-1612).

24. The universal character of the tragic conflict in King Lear.

Evil is punished in King Lear, but who dares deny that King Lear is a tragedy. Evil is punished, but good does not triumph either, the conflict of the king and Gloucester with the children ended in a collective grave, and chaos reigns in the country. It's the same in Hamlet. The prince takes revenge on the killer of his father, but at the same time not only dies himself, but also "pulls" his mother, his beloved, yesterday's friends into the grave. Here, conflicts are also not resolved, their carriers simply die. Probably because the author himself does not know how to solve them. Is it possible to reconcile Hamlet with himself and Claudius, re-educate Arbenin, force Cyrano to open up to Roxana, Mary Stuart and Elizabeth to forgive each other?

Apparently, there is a certain doom of the tragic hero - to fate, the inevitable and always wrong choice, hopeless confrontation, suffering. And in a situation of doom, the conflict cannot be exhausted. The comic hero is most often doomed to life and happiness. Tragic - death, madness or endless suffering. This is a tragedy of human dignity in an unjust society.

The essence and evolution of Lear’s character was very accurately defined by N. A. Dobrolyubov: “Lear has a really strong nature, and general servility to him only develops it in a one-sided way - not for great deeds of love and common good, but only for the satisfaction of one’s own, personal whims. This is perfectly understandable in a person who is accustomed to consider himself the source of all joy and sorrow, the beginning and end of all life in his kingdom.

Here, with the external scope of actions, with the ease of fulfilling all desires, there is nothing to express his spiritual strength. But now his self-adoration goes beyond all limits of common sense: he transfers directly to his personality all that brilliance, all that respect that he enjoyed for his dignity; he decides to throw off power, confident that even after that people will not stop trembling at him. This insane conviction makes him give his kingdom to his daughters and, through that, from his barbarously senseless position, move into the simple title of an ordinary person and experience all the sorrows associated with human life. “Looking at him, we first feel hatred for this dissolute despot; but, following the development of the drama, we become more and more reconciled with him as with a man and end up filled with indignation and burning malice no longer towards him, but for him and for the whole world - to that wild, inhuman situation that can lead to such debauchery even of men like Lear"

"King Lear" is a social tragedy. It shows the delimitation of different social groups in society. The representatives of the old knightly honor are Lear, Gloucester, Kent, Albany; the world of bourgeois predation is represented by Goneril, Regan, Edmond, Cornwall. Between these worlds there is a sharp struggle. Society is in a state of deep crisis. Gloucester characterizes the destruction of social foundations as follows: “Love is cooling, friendship is weakening, fratricidal strife is everywhere. There are riots in the cities, in the villages of discord, in the palaces of treason, and the family bond between parents and children is crumbling ... Our best time has passed. Bitterness, betrayal, disastrous unrest will accompany us to the grave ”(Translated by B. Pasternak).

It is against this broad social background that the tragic story of King Lear unfolds. At the beginning of the play, Lear is a king with power, commanding the fate of people. Shakespeare in this tragedy (where he penetrates more deeply into the social relations of the time than in his other plays) showed that Lear's power is not in his kingship, but in the fact that he owns riches and lands. As soon as Lear divided his kingdom between his daughters Goneril and Regan, leaving himself only the kingship, he lost his power. Without his possessions, the king found himself in the position of a beggar. Ownership in society has destroyed patriarchal kinship human relations. Goneril and Regan swore their love for their father when he was in power, and turned their backs on him when he lost his possessions.

Having gone through tragic trials, through a storm in his own soul, Lear becomes a man. He recognized the hard lot of the poor, joined the life of the people and understood what was going on around him. King Lear gains wisdom. In the emergence of a new view of the world, a meeting in the steppe, during a storm, with a homeless unfortunate Poor Tom played a big role. (It was Edgar Gloucester, who was hiding from the persecution of his brother Edmond.) In the shocked mind of Lear, society appears in a new light, and he subjects it to merciless criticism. Lear's madness becomes epiphany. Lear sympathizes with the poor and reproaches the rich:

Homeless, naked unfortunates,

Where are you now? How do you reflect

The blows of this fierce weather -

In rags, with bare head

And a skinny belly? How little I thought

About this before! Here's a lesson for you

The rich man is arrogant! Take the place of the poor

Feel what they feel

And give them some of your excess

As a sign of the highest justice of heaven.

(Translated by B. Pasternak)

Lear speaks indignantly about a society dominated by arbitrariness. Power appears to him in the form of a symbolic image of a dog chasing a beggar who runs away from him. Lear calls the judge a thief, a politician who pretends to understand what others do not understand - a scoundrel.

The noble Kent and the jester remain loyal to Lear to the end. The image of the jester plays a very important role in this tragedy. His witticisms, paradoxical jokes boldly reveal the essence of relations between people. The tragicomic jester tells the bitter truth; expressed in his witty remarks

People's point of view on what is happening.

The storyline connected with the fate of the Earl of Gloucester, the father of two sons, sets off the fate of Lear, gives it a generalizing meaning. Gloucester also experiences the tragedy of ingratitude. He is opposed by his illegitimate son, Edmond.

The humanistic ideal is embodied in the image of Cordelia. It does not accept both the old knightly world and the new Machiavellian world. In her character, a sense of human dignity is emphasized with special force. Unlike her hypocritical sisters, she is sincere and truthful, does not fear the despotic temper of her father and tells him what she thinks. Despite the restraint in the manifestation of feelings, Cordelia truly loves her father and courageously accepts his disfavor. Subsequently, when Lear, having gone through severe trials, gained human dignity and a sense of justice, Cordelia was next to him. These two beautiful people are dying in a cruel society.

At the end of the tragedy, good triumphs over evil. The noble Edgar will become king. As a ruler, he will turn to the wisdom that Lear found in his tragic fate.

And the result, and the pinnacle of the development of the theater. The philosophical basis is Renaissance humanism. Since the whole revival fit into a person's life, he experiences both optimism and crisis. For the first time he raises the question "What is bourgeois morality?". Shakespeare did not solve this problem. Its end is connected with utopia. The personality of Shakespeare is legendary. Shakespeare's question - was he, did he write. Born in Stratford-on-Avon, married. Mass biographies of Shakespeare, but nothing significant, we know more about his father. Father John kept a glove factory, but was not a nobleman. Mother is an impoverished noblewoman. There is no regular education, a grammar school in Stratford. Shakespeare's information about antiquity is very fragmentary. Marries Anna Hathaway, 8 years older, lived for three years, children, Shakespeare disappears. 1587-1588 approximately. 1592 - information about him, he is already a famous playwright. The share of Shakespeare's income in theater troupes is known. First professional playwright. The state attitude to the theater was very dismissive. They could move only if they obeyed. 2Servants of the Lord Chamberlain. The quality of plays prior to Shakespeare was low, except for "university minds". Either the rich wrote and paid for the production, or the acting troupes themselves. Low quality.

Shakespeare was an immediate success. In 1592 articles for and against him. Green "For a penny of a mind bought for a million remorse", "Upstart, crow, adorned with our feathers, the heart of a tiger in the shell of an actor." The history of Hamlet was developed by the CU, but of very low quality. The ability to use the material of others. He wrote plays, counting on a certain audience.

After the emergence of the first theater, a decree of the Puritans arose, who believed that theaters had no right to be located within the city. London-Thames border. There are 30 wooden theaters in London, at first there were no floors and roofs. The theater was based on different figures: a circle, a square, a hexagon. The stage is completely open to the viewer. Trapeze. People were sitting on the floor. There was a jester on the front stage - he distracted the audience. They are smart. The costumes did not match the era. Tragedy - the black flag was raised, the blue comedy. The troupe is 8-12 people, rarely 14. There were no actresses. 1667 women appeared on the scene. The first play is Othello. Shakespeare wrote for this particular scene. He also took into account the fact that there was no stable text of the play, there is no copyright, we know many plays from pirated records. The first edition of Shakespeare's plays appeared 14 years after his death. 36 plays, not all set exactly.

Several theories of the Shakespearean question. One of them connects Shakespeare with Christopher Marlowe. He was killed shortly before the appearance of Shakespeare. He also has tragedies and historical chronicles. The type of hero is a titanic personality, amazing abilities, abilities, etc. He does not know where to apply all this, there are no criteria for good and evil.

"Tamerlane the Great". A simple shepherd, he achieved everything himself. Shakespeare will find criteria for goodness and activity. KM was a scammer, then he stopped. Fight in the tavern. The legend of his hiding place. Francis Bacon, theory, still lives on. It is believed that FB encrypted his biography in Shakespeare's plays. The main cipher is "Storm". Shakespeare is uneducated, unlike Bacon. In 1613 the Globe burned down. Shakespeare's handwriting is a testament drawn up by a very petty person. The story continues into the 19th century, with Delia Bacon in America claiming her ancestor's rights to all of Shakespeare's works. DB is crazy. 1888 - Donelly's book, which tells in a fascinating way that he found the key to Shakespeare's plays. At first, everyone reacted with interest, and then they laughed at the pamphlet.

Another Shakespeare candidate. Galilov "A Game about William Shakespeare" - Lord Rutland. His wife, Mary Rutland, is also in the circle. Shakespeare was, as it were, on a salary, there are documents. In Hamlet, reminiscences, names, etc. Shakespeare's sonnets too. After the death of the Rutlands, Shakespeare stops writing and leaves for Stratford. It is believed that there is one lifetime portrait of Shakespeare. Galilov believes that he is a figment of the imagination, because he is unrealistic. Before us is a mask with empty eye sockets, half of the camisole is given from the back.

Periodization of Shakespeare's work. In Russian Shakespeare studies, it is customary to distinguish three periods in Shakespeare's work, in Anglo-American - four, which is probably more accurate: 1) the period of apprenticeship (1590-1592); 2) "optimistic" period (1592-1601); 3) the period of great tragedies (1601-1608); 4) the period of "romantic dramas" (1608-1612). L.E. Pinsky about the peculiarities of the poetics of Shakespeare's plays. The well-known domestic Shakespeare scholar L.E. Pinsky singled out several elements of poetics common to all the main genres of Shakespearean drama - chronicles, comedy and tragedy. Among them, Pinsky attributed the main plot, the dominant reality of the action and the type of relationship the characters have with the dominant reality. The main plot is the initial situation for all works of this genre, varying in each of them. There is a main plot of chronicles, comedies and tragedies. dominant reality. In a number of Shakespearean plays, the source of action is not a conflict in the relationships of the characters, but a certain factor behind and above them. He endows the actors with functions that determine their stage behavior. This dependence is true for chronicles and comedies, but does not apply to the protagonists of tragedies.

1. Optimistic, since it coincides with the period of the early revival, and the early revival is associated with humanism. Everything leads to good, humanists believe in the triumph of harmony. Historical chronicles and comedies predominate. At the turn of the 1-2 period, the only tragedy "Romeo and Juliet" is created. This tragedy is not entirely grim. The setting is sunny, bright atmosphere of universal joy. What happened to the heroes happened by accident - the murder of Mercutio, Romeo kills Tybalt. When R and D are secretly married, the messenger accidentally arrives late. Shakespeare shows how a series of accidents leads to the death of heroes. The main thing is that the world's evil does not come into the souls of the heroes, they die clean. Shakespeare means to say that they died as the last victims of the Middle Ages.

Historical chronicles: "Henry 6", "Richard 3.2", "King John", "Henry 4, 5". Chronicles are very voluminous. Although the darkest events take place in them, the basis is optimistic. Triumph over the Middle Ages. Shakespeare is a supporter of the monarchy and in the chronicles he tries to create the image of a strong, intelligent and moral monarch. Historians and Shakespeare paid attention to personality in history.

In Henry 4, Henry is fair, honest, but comes to power by throwing off the monarch, in a bloody way. But there is no peace in the state. He thinks about it and comes to the conclusion that it is because he came to power dishonestly. Heinrich hopes that everything will be fine with his sons. In Richard 3, when Richard is worried, he needs the support of the people, but the backgammon is silent. A positive image appears in the chronicles.

The image that determines the positive program of the chronicles is time. The off-stage image of time is present in all chronicles. Shakespeare was the first to speak of the connection between past, present and future. Time will put everything in its place.

Life, the history of England does not provide an opportunity to create the image of an ideal monarch. The audience sympathizes with Richard 3 because he is an active hero. When creating Richard 3, Shakespeare approached the concept of the tragic and contemplation of the state by a new hero. Richard 3 does evil. Scholars debate whether Shakespeare created the chronicles according to a single plan or spontaneously. When Shakespeare created the first chronicles, there was no plan, but later he created consciously. All chronicles can be considered as a multi-act play. With the death of one hero, the plot is not exhausted, but moves on to the next play. Henry 5 is an ideal monarch, it is impossible to watch and read, because he is fictional. Heinrich 4 is interesting to watch.

2. Comedies. Shakespeare is ahead of his time. Shakespeare's comedies are a special thing, they are created on other principles. This is a comedy of humor and joy. There is no satirical, accusatory beginning. They are not household. The background on which the action is played out is quite arbitrary. The action takes place in Italy. For Londoners, this was a special world of the sun, carnival. No one makes fun of anyone, only eavesdrop. Shakespeare's comedies are stand-up comedies. The effect of the comic is created by hypertrophy of character or feelings. "Much ado about nothing". The skirmish between Benedict and Beatrice is humorous. Jealousy is a conflict. "12th night" Hypertrophy of feelings. The Countess mourns her marriage, but death crosses all boundaries. Shakespeare first had the idea that the comic and the tragic come from the same point, two sides of the same coin. 12th night. The ambition of the butler is exaggerated. Macbeth is a tragedy of ambition, his human royalty is not crowned with a royal crown. All events can turn into a comic and tragic side. Almost all comedies were written in the first period. "The Taming of the Shrew" "Two Veronians" "A Midsummer Night's Dream" "The Merchant of Venice" "12th Night". The following comedies are inferior to these. Comedies raise the same important issues as tragedies and chronicles. "The Merchant of Venice". Positive heroes who triumph are not so positive and vice versa. The main conflict is around money.

3. Associated with the development of the tragedy genre. Shakespeare creates mostly only tragedies. Shakespeare very soon realizes that bourgeois morality is no better than the medieval one. Shakespeare wrestles with the problem of what evil is. The tragic is understood idealistically. Shakespeare is horrified by the fact that tragedy springs from the same source as comedy. Shakespeare begins to observe how the same quality leads to good and bad. Hamlet is a tragedy of the mind. Here evil has not yet completely penetrated Hamlet's soul. Hamletism is a soul-corroding inaction associated with reflection. Hamlet is a Renaissance humanist. "Othello" - written on the plot of the Italian novel. At the heart of the conflict is the confrontation between two Renaissance personalities. Humanist - Othello, Renaissance idealist - Iago. Othello lives for others. He is not jealous, but very trusting. Iago plays on this credulity. Othello killing Desdemona kills the world's evil in a beautiful guise. Tragedies do not end hopelessly.

The tragedy "Hamlet" opens the second period of Shakespeare's work (1601-1608).

Thunderclouds seem to hang over Shakespeare's work. One after another, great tragedies are born - "Othello", "King Lear", "Macbeth", "Timon of Athens". Coriolanus also belongs to the tragedies; Tragic is the denouement of Antony and Cleopatra. Even the comedies of this period - "The End Is the Crown" and "Measure for Measure" - are far from the direct youthful cheerfulness of earlier comedies, and most researchers prefer to call them dramas.

The second period was the time of Shakespeare's full creative maturity and, at the same time, the time when he faced big, sometimes insoluble questions for him, when his heroes from the creators of their own destiny, as in early comedies, increasingly became its victims. This period can be called tragic.

The story of Hamlet was first recorded at the end of the 12th century by the Danish chronograph Saxo Grammaticus. In 1576, Belforet reproduced this ancient legend in his Tragic Tales. For Belforet, as for Saxo Grammaticus, the plot was based on the implementation of a blood feud. The story ends with the triumph of Hamlet. “Tell your brother, whom you killed so cruelly, that you died a violent death,” exclaims Hamlet, having killed his uncle, “let his shadow calm down with this news among blessed spirits and free me from the debt that forced me to avenge my own blood” (Belforet ).

In the 1680s, a play about Hamlet was staged on the London stage. This play has not come down to us. It appears to have been written by Thomas Kidd. In Kid's "Spanish Tragedy" old man Hieronimo and Belimperia, people of feeling, are confronted by "Machiavellians" - the son of the Portuguese king and brother of Belimperia. Old man Jeronimo, whose son was killed, hesitates, like Shakespeare's Hamlet, with the implementation of revenge. Like Hamlet, he feels his loneliness. He compares himself to a companion standing in "a winter storm on the plain". A cry breaks out of his mouth: "O world! - no, not the world, but an accumulation of untruth: a chaos of murders and crimes."

In the atmosphere of these feelings and thoughts, knowing Kid's play lost to us and, of course, his "Spanish Tragedy", as well as the French novel by Belforet and, probably, the story of Saxo Grammar, Shakespeare created his "Hamlet". There is reason to believe that "Hamlet" was performed at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge by amateur students. The tragedy was, of course, on the stage of the Globe.

The basis of the ancient story was blood feud. Shakespeare "took away" this motif from Hamlet and "transferred" it to Laertes. Blood revenge required only the fulfillment of filial duty. The murderer of his father must be avenged at least with a poisoned blade, - this is how Laertes argues, according to his feudal morality. We know nothing about whether Laertes loved Polonius. The ghost calls for revenge in a different way: "If you loved your father, avenge his murder." This is revenge not only for the father, but also for the man whom Hamlet loved and highly appreciated. "I saw your father once," said Horatio, "he was a handsome king." "He was a man," Hamlet corrects his friend. And the more terrible for Hamlet is the news of the murder of his father - the news that reveals to him all the crime of the "cruel world". The task of personal revenge develops for him into the task of correcting this world. All the thoughts, impressions, feelings, taken from the meeting with the ghost of his father, Hamlet sums up in the words about the "dislocated eyelid" and the heavy duty that calls him to "set this dislocation".

The central place of the tragedy is the monologue "to be or not to be." "Which is better," Hamlet asks himself, "to silently endure the slings and arrows of a furious fate, or to take up arms against a sea of ​​disasters?" Silently, meekly contemplate Hamlet, an active person by nature, cannot. But for a lonely person to take up arms against a whole sea of ​​disasters means to perish. And Hamlet moves on to the thought of death ("To die. To fall asleep."). The "sea of ​​disasters" here is not just an "extinct metaphor", but a living picture: a sea over which countless rows of waves run. This picture, as it were, symbolizes the background of the whole tragedy. Before us is the image of a lonely man standing with a drawn sword in his hand in front of waves running one after another and ready to swallow him up.

Hamlet is one of the most versatile Shakespearean characters. If you like, he is a dreamer, because he had to carry in himself the dream of some other, better human relationship, in order to be so indignant at the lies and ugliness around him. He is also a man of action. Didn't he confuse the entire Danish court and deal with his enemies - Polonius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Claudius? But his powers and possibilities are inevitably limited. No wonder he opposes himself to Hercules. The feat that Hamlet dreamed of could only be accomplished by Hercules, whose name is the people. But the mere fact that Hamlet saw the horror of the "Augean stables" that surrounded him, the fact that at the same time he, the humanist Hamlet, appreciated a man so highly, constitutes his greatness. Hamlet is the most brilliant of Shakespeare's characters. And one cannot but agree with the commentators who noted that of all the heroes of Shakespeare, only Hamlet could write Shakespeare's works.

The plot of the tragedy "King Lear" (King Lear) takes us into the distant past. The story of the old British king and his ungrateful daughters was first recorded in Latin at the beginning of the 12th century. During the 16th century, this story was retold several times both in verse and in prose. Variants of it are found in Golinshed's "chronicles", and in the "Mirror of the Rulers" and in "The Fairy Queen" by Edmund Spenser. Finally, in the early 1690s, a play about King Lear appeared on the London stage. Unlike Shakespeare's tragedy, pre-Shakespeare's "Lear" in all its variants brings events to a happy ending. Lear and Cordelia are rewarded in the end. In their well-being, they seem to merge with the reality around them, assimilate with it.

On the contrary, the positive heroes of Shakespeare's tragedies rise above this reality. This is their greatness and, at the same time, their doom. If the wound inflicted by the poisoned sword of Laertes had not turned out to be fatal, Hamlet would still not have been able to reign over the world of the Osrics, the new Rosencrantians, Guildensterns and Polonii, just as he could not have returned to peaceful Wittenberg. If the fluff at Cordelia's lips moved and she came to life, Lear, "who saw a lot," as the Duke of Albany says about him in the final words of the last act, would still not be able to return to that magnificent hall of the royal castle, where we saw him at the beginning tragedy. He could not, wandering bareheaded in a storm and rain across the night steppe, where he was reminded of "poor naked unfortunates," could not have been content with the secluded serene shelter that Cordelia would have created for him.

Threads stretch from "King Lear" to the ancient tragedy "Gorboduk", written back in the 50s of the 16th century by Sackville and Norton. King Gorboduk divided power between his two sons, which led to internecine warfare, torrents of blood and great disasters for the country. So Lear, by dividing power between his two daughters, almost made the “shattered kingdom” the prey of foreigners, as Kent says.

But Shakespeare's tragedy differs from its sources, first of all, in the formulation of a humanistic, truly Shakespearean problem. Lear on the throne, "Olympian", surrounded by the splendor of the courtyard (the opening scene is undoubtedly the most magnificent in the whole tragedy), is far from the terrible reality behind the walls of the castle. The crown, the royal mantle, the titles are in his eyes sacred attributes and have the fullness of reality. Blinded by subservient worship during the long years of his reign, he took this outward brilliance as the true essence.

But under the external brilliance of the "ceremonial" there was nothing. "Nothing will come out of nothing," as Lear himself says. It has become "zero without a number," as the jester says. Royal clothes fell from his shoulders, a veil fell from his eyes, and for the first time Lear saw the world of unvarnished reality, a cruel world dominated by the Regans, Gonerils and Edmunds. In the night steppe, realizing reality for the first time, Lear begins to see clearly.

The scene in the steppe is the moment of Lear's complete fall. He was thrown out of society. "An unequipped man," he says, "is but a poor, naked, bipedal animal." And yet, this scene is his greatest victory. Torn out of the network of social relations that entangled him, he was able to rise above them and comprehend his surroundings. He understood what the jester understood from the very beginning, who had already known the truth for a long time.

No wonder Lear calls him "a bitter jester." "Fate, whore of whores," the jester sings, "you never open the door to the poor." The life around, as the jester sees it, is ugly distorted. Everything about her needs to change. "Then the time will come - who will live to see it! - when they start walking with their feet," the jester sings. He is a "fool". Meanwhile, unlike Lear's courtiers, he retains human dignity to the end. Following Lear, the jester shows true honesty and he himself is aware of it. “That master,” sings the jester, “who serves for the sake of profit and seeks profit, and who only in appearance follows his master, will blow his feet when it starts to rain, and leave you in a storm. But I will stay; the fool will not leave; let him flee a wise man; a fleeing scoundrel looks like a jester, but the jester himself, by God, is not a scoundrel. So, the jester already had the freedom that Lear gained by throwing off the royal mantle and crown.

Edgar, who roams the steppe under the mask of a madman, acquires the same freedom, as well as the blinded Gloucester, who, in his own words, "stumbled when he was sighted." Now, blind, he sees the truth. Turning to Edgar, whom he does not recognize and takes for a homeless poor man, he says: “Let a person who owns excess and is satiated with luxury, who has turned the law into his slave and who does not see because he does not feel, quickly feel your power, then distribution will destroy superfluity, and everyone will have enough to live on." The indignation at the unfair distribution of earthly goods coincides with the moment of the highest tension of this deeply thought-out tragedy by Shakespeare.

The fate of Gloucester, shown in parallel with the fate of Lear, is of decisive importance in the ideological composition of the work. The presence of two parallel developing and largely similar plots makes the work universal. What could be taken as a special case, acquires, thanks to a parallel plot, typical.

The world theater turned to the later works of Shakespeare relatively rarely, and this is not accidental. The full-blooded realism of Shakespeare acquires a psychological coloring that is largely alien to him in Antony and Cleopatra, creates a powerful, but monotonous image of Coriolanus, and far from reaching, with the exception of individual monologues, its former artistic height in Timon of Athens, although this tragedy is of great importance. to understand the Shakespearean worldview. The comedies of the second period, with the exception of "Measure for Measure", belong to the artistically weakest works of Shakespeare. Even in such works of the last period as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest - magnificent in their brightness of colors, picturesque images and richness of language, imbued with an unshakable faith in life and love for it - sometimes one feels a certain slowness of action.