Shakespeare.ppt

1、William Shakespeare,1. Basic Facts,Born 1564 Stratford-upon-Avon , died 1616. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlai

2、ns Men,Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, K

3、ing Lear, and Macbeth, considered by some of as the finest works in the English language.,2. His works,Comedies Alls Well That Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Loves Labours Lost Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Nights Dream,Much Ado Abou

4、t Nothing Pericles, Prince of Tyre The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Two Noble Kinsmen The Winters Tale,Histories: Henry IV, part 1 Henry IV, part 2 Henry V Henry VI, part 1 Henry VI, part 2 Henry VI, part 3 Henry VIII King John Richard II Richard III,

5、Tragedies: Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus Hamlet Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth Othello Romeo and Juliet Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus,Poetry The Sonnets 154 A Lovers Complaint The Rape of Lucrece Venus and Adonis Funeral Elegy by W.S,3. Shakespearean Sonnet,The sonnet, as a poetic genre, began

6、 in Italy in the thirteenth century, and, under the later influence of the Italian poet Petrarch, became internationally popular. Petrarch established the basic form of the so-called Petrarchan sonnet: 14 lines divided into two clear parts, an opening octet (8 lines) and a closing sestet (6 lines) w

7、ith a fixed rhyme scheme (abbaabba cdecde). Often the octet will pose a problem or paradox which the sestet will resolve. Petrarch also established the convention of the sonnet sequence as a series of love poems written by an adoring lover to an unattainable and unapproachable lady of unsurpassed be

8、auty. The Petrarchan sonnet convention, in other words, established, not merely the form of the poem, but also the subject matter.,Sonnet 18,Sonnet 18, often alternately titled Shall I compare thee to a summers day?, is one of the best-known of 154 sonnets written by Shakespeare. Part of the Fair Yo

9、uth sequence1-126 . Most scholars now agree that the original subject of the poem, the beloved to whom the poet is writing, is a male, though the poem is commonly used to describe a woman,Shall I compare thee to a summers day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate: What if I were to compare you

10、to a summer day? You are lovelier and more temperate (the perfect temperature): Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May / And summers lease hath all too short a date: Summers beauty is fragile and can be shaken, and summertime fades away all too quickly:,Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shine

11、s / And often is his gold complexion dimmd; Sometimes the sun is far too hot, and often it is too cool, dimmed by clouds and shade; And every fair from fair sometime declines / By chance or natures changing course untrimmd; And everything that is beautiful eventually loses its beauty, whether by cha

12、nce or by the uncontrollable course of nature;,But thy eternal summer shall not fade / Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; But your eternal beauty (or youth) will not fade, nor will your beauty by lost; Nor shall Death brag thou wanderst in his shade / When in eternal lines to time thou gro

13、west: Nor will Death boast that you wander in his shadow, since you shall grow with time through these sonnets: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see / So long lives this and this gives life to thee. For as long as people can breathe and see, this sonnet will live on, and you (and your beauty)

14、with it.,In the sonnet, the poet compares his beloved to the summer season, and argues that his beloved is better. The poet also states that his beloved will live on forever through the words of the poem. Sonnet 18 is written in the typical Shakespearean sonnet form, having 14 lines of iambic pentam

15、eter ending in a rhymed couplet. Detailed exegeses have revealed several double meanings within the poem, giving it a greater depth of interpretation.,Sonnet 18 is a typical English or Shakespearean sonnet. It consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet, and has the characteristic rhyme scheme

16、: abab cdcd efef gg. The poem carries the meaning of an Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet. Petrarchan sonnets typically discussed the love and beauty of a beloved, often an unattainable love, but not always. It also contains a volta, or shift in the poems subject matter, beginning with the third quatrain

17、. Syllabic structure of a line of Sonnet 18,Rhetoric devices:,Metaphor: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines / And often is his gold complexion dimmd But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Themes:,1. eternal beauty vs. temporary summer 2. fading nature vs. immortal art,The Merchant of Venice,1.

18、Characterization: Shylock 2. Antisemitism 3. Religions: Christians and Pagans 4. Which is first, justice or sympathy? 5. Portia the lawyer: realism or romanticism? 6. Dramatization,Hamlets soliloquy:,To be, or not to be: that is the question:(To live, or to die: that is the question)Whether tis nobl

19、er in the mind to suffer(Is it more honourable in the mind to endure) The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,(The ongoing battle that is being waged on humans,)Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,(Or to fight against this sea of woe,),And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep:(And by fig

20、hting back finish them. To die: to sleep:)No more; and by a sleep to say we end(To be nothing; and by sleeping to end)The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks(The anguish, and the many set-backs)That flesh is heir to, tis a consummation(That people inherit, it is the final ending)Devoutly to

21、be wishd. To die, to sleep;(Greatly to be wished. To die, to sleep;)To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, theres the rub;(To sleep: and perhaps to dream: that is the obstacle;)For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,(For after we die what may happen,),When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,(

22、When we have left the earth,)Must give us pause: Theres the respect(Makes us hesitate: There is the consideration)That makes calamity of so long life:(That causes us to live through a life filled with misfortune:)For who bear the whips and scorns of time,(For who would endure the harsh experiences o

23、f life,)The oppressors wrong, the proud mans contumely,(The wrongs of government, the proud mans insults,),The pang of despised love, the laws delay,(The suddenness of scorned love, and the slow nature of the legal system,) The insolence of office, and the spurns(The insulting behavior of officials,

24、 and the insults)That patient merit of the unworthy takes,(That inferior people direct at worthy people)When he himself might his quietus make(When one might escape)With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear(By means of a knife? Who would burdens bear),To grunt and sweat under a weary life(To groan

25、and sweat under a tired life)But that the dread of something after death,(Except for the fear of something after death,)The undiscovered country from whose bourn(That mysterious land from whose boundaries)No traveler returns, puzzles the will,(No traveler returns, it confuses the mind,)And makes us

26、rather bear those ills we have(And forces us to bear the burdens of life)Than to fly to others we know not of? (Rather than exchange them for the unknown?),Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,(Thus our conscience makes cowards of us all,) And thus the native hue of resolution(And so the natu

27、ral colour of courage)Is sicklied oer with the pale cast of thought,(Is hidden by the shadow cast by thought)And enterprises of great pith and moment(And projects of great significance)With this regard their currents turn awry(With this in mind stray from their course)And lose the name of action. (And they lose their initiative.,Dramatic structure : Hamlet departed from contemporary dramatic convention in several ways. For example, in Shakespeares day, plays were usually expected to follow the advice of Arist