Anglo-Saxon Monograph2
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secondary education in Language and Literature
IFD No. 6043 'Jorge Luis Borges'
Subject: Anglo-Saxon Literature
Professor: Claudia del Prado
Jesica Guedilla
Theme: 'Classical Tragedy in the Work of'
Shakespeare and his rewriting forms
Index
Introduction
Author Information
The rewriting, the Elizabethan theater, canon and drama
The traditional tragedy
Analysis of his most famous works
The characteristics of Shakespeare's tragedies
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
This work focuses on providing an overview of the biographical and general data of the author.
We will also seek to explore the characteristics of the classical tragedy of William's works.
Shakespeare and his forms of rewritings, also called forgeries that inscribe us in the
the problem of authorship and of the texts called originals, as well as that of their different versions, in the
from the different perspectives regarding an argument that tradition canonizes as the original work.
author_data
William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in the Mediterranean city of Stratford-upon-Avon.
(Warwickshire) which is currently a Shakespearean museum, was the third son of John Shakespeare,
Prospero, a glove merchant and public activist, and Mary Arden, the daughter of a Catholic landowner. He was
baptized on April 26. And died on April 23, 1616, that same date is usually taken to celebrate his
birthday. He studies at the school in his locality and, as the firstborn son, he was destined to succeed
his father in business. The poet would have attended Grammar School for about six years or school
primary school, whose main subject was Latin, although he had to start working as a butcher's assistant,
due to the difficult economic situation his family was going through. In 1582 he married Anne
Hathaway, daughter of a farmer, with whom he had a daughter named Susanna in 1583 and then two twins.
and one of the children died at the age of eleven and a girl who was born in 1585. I left Stratford already.
that they saw him hunting illegally on the properties of the city’s justice of the peace. In London in the year
By 1588 he had achieved notable success as a playwright and stage actor. The publication of two poems
erotic according to the fashion of the time, Venus and Adonis (1593) and the rape of Lucretia (1594), and of their
sonnets (1609) gave him the reputation of a brilliant poet. Shakespeare's reputation is based on,
everything, in the 38 theatrical works of which there is evidence of his participation, although his contemporaries
At a higher cultural level, they rejected her, considering them, like the rest of the theater, just vulgar.
entertainment. In London, his plays were performed at the court of Queen Elizabeth I and of
King James I.
William Shakespeare returned to his hometown in 1610, he had amassed a fortune, until the day of his
Death dedicated himself to litigations with the neighbors. He did not think of submitting his vast scattered work to the printing press.
De Quincey conjectures that, for Shakespeare, theatrical representation was the true publicity, not the
printing of a text. Shortly before dying, he had made a will where he spoke of furniture and
properties, but not a single book is mentioned.
The rewriting, Elizabethan theater, canon and drama
In recent years, the emergence of multiple playwrights who recover plots has drawn attention.
the classical dramatic tradition, particularly from the Greek heritage and Renaissance theater, especially from
Shakespearian corpus. In some rewrites, the reduction and diminishment of the
texts and arguments, often recognizable only by the name of the character
what mobilizes the action or what gives title to the piece. It is possible then to ask what motivates these
writers to recover those fables at the expense of original creations.
If it is an exercise that seeks to keep the tradition alive in its validation or appropriation and
overcoming, if the questions, themes, and issues that inspired those pieces remain relevant and are modulated
in a different language and speech, thus maintaining a canon and a literary memory; or else,
if in the particular case of theater and dramaturgy it becomes necessary to recover those materials to continue
talking, in the idea that theater recovers and transforms the conception that we always talk
words already spoken by other characters /dramatic authors.
The plot of Hamlet (1603) by Shakespeare, whose roots trace back to the story of Amleth the prince.
from Denmark, is recorded in the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus, expanded in the Histories
tragic of Bellesforest and dramatically elaborated also by Tomas Spanish Tragedy of 1185.
Shakespeare's life takes place in the late years of the 16th century and the early years of the 17th century. Era
this great economic confusion and social reconciliation in which political stability was achieved
and great cultural development. The growth of the market, the progress of the textile industry and the flow of gold and
silver from trade and American colonies dissolved the traditional feudal economy and,
consequently, they weakened the lordly position of the landowners. As the feudal nobility weakened
the Crown and the Court consolidated their political power. With all this, greater administration was achieved
and a political absolutism, supported by a newly created aristocracy, born from the rural bourgeoisie that
it aimed at commercial expansion and the promotion of industry.
The Elizabethan English was a child of the Renaissance and the Reformation. A man dominated by enthusiasm,
sensible to art, striving to be a gentleman. “All the influences of those stimulating times
they contributed to the Elizabethan ecstasy; the conquest and discovery journeys that will expand the globe, the
markets and the mind; the wealth of the middle classes, which expanded the scope and objectives of the
companies the revelation of literature and art we pay the tomb of the Reform; the repudiation of the
papal influence in England the theological debates lead man from dogma to reason the instruction
and the expansion of the audience for books and theater. Such were the stimuli that spurred
England towards greatness; such were the germs that made it great with Shakespeare. Era
also of the spirit of the heroic knight that merges with the courtly spirit.
Shakespeare's tragedy arises from the inner, energetic, heroic force of great passions that affirm
to the individual man and lift him from his own destiny. The tragic does not arise from a feeling of guilt,
but of an inner heroism, of the play of lives and the desire for individuality that fights for the
immortality.
Like the great poets, Shakespeare had a nuanced and extensive lexicon.
Critics have highlighted two aspects of the dramatic work of William Shakespeare, in the first place, the
indifference and almost inhuman distance of the author towards the reality of his characters. No
It moralizes, does not preach, does not propose faith, belief, ethics, or any solution, it raises some of the anxieties.
fundamentals of the human condition, but it never gives an answer, we do not know what the poet thought, yes
his underlying vision is pessimistic and bleak regarding the miserable and minimal position occupied by a man
made of the same material as dreams in a mysterious, deep, and unfathomable reality. While
that Spanish baroque theater privileges the divine over the human, Shakespeare equally distributes his fear
before the heavenly and before the earthly.
Secondly, criticism has highlighted Shakespeare's extraordinary power of synthesis as a lyricist,
his fantasy is able to see a universe in a nutshell, as a creator of characters, each one of
to represent in itself a worldview for which he has been called Poet of poets. The Elizabethan theater,
of which Shakespeare was a part, summarized the survival of a popular theater and a social experience.
It was truly an indivisible theater, with a poetry, limitless in its social and aesthetic appeal, for
included many of the popular, humanist elements and some of the courtly ones along with their
theatrical equivalents, such as rhetoric, allegory, singing, dancing, clowning, the scenes of
mimicry, costumes and the corresponding modes of language, presentations and stage acting.
But Shakespeare not only reflected the problems of his time, but he also discovered the formula for them.
were converted into dramatic matter.
The traditional tragedy
Before Shakespeare, there were archetypes, and after Shakespeare, there were characters of men and women.
capable of changing, with absolutely individualized personalities where we can see people
with extraordinary intelligence like Hamlet, the disturbed imagination of Macbeth, the ability to
affection of Lear, the theatricality of Cleopatra, the genius of Iago to manipulate the lives of others–
we managed to penetrate into Shakespeare's own obsessions and an insightful portrait emerges within us
and exciting which we will call the portrait of the playwright.
This is perhaps the most famous for its tragedies; in fact, many consider that Hamlet is the best work.
of theater never written. Other tragedies included Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and King Lear, all are
recognized and regularly studied frequently.
In Romeo and Juliet it is said to have been extracted from a story from Verona, Italy, which several authors
They used. It exalts the legend of two lovers whose love leads them to death due to the social environment.
familiar from the era.
Hamlet here the author inverts this approach as through the soliloquies and not through action as
the audience captures the motives and thoughts of the protagonist. The work is filled with apparent flaws in
continuity and irregularities of action, time is circular, recursive; the end of the work refers us to
its beginnings already start with narratives of the past, the guards tell us what happened that day
anterior and Horacio tells us what happened thirty years ago when Hamlet's father fought in a duel
with Fortinbras's father.
The structure established by classical poetics is preserved, repeating the points in its five acts.
key:
• Exhibition: the ghost of the king's plea for revenge to Hamlet.
• Complication task to the actors to represent the fratricide.
• Climax Claudio exposes himself by leaving the play and turning point Hamlet kills Polonius.
• Delay, madness, and death of Ophelia
• Catastrophe death of Hamlet, Gertrude and Claudius
In Othello it is primarily a dramatic play, this means that it was not written as material
not as reading material, but as a script to be performed; in addition to this, it is categorized as a tragedy, in
this uses a dark language and features usually illustrious characters who must confront
difficult situations generally caused by some mistake on their part or by terrible circumstances. The Moor
From Venice this tells us a lot about what we can expect and the facts that lead us to situations
where Othello goes from being a noble boyfriend to an irrational and evil husband who struggled with the idea that
Desdemona is unfaithful. And then convinced of her infidelity, he decides to kill her.
Analysis of his most famous works
Hamlet is one of the works in which Shakespeare has delved deepest into the inner life of a
character, and yet, what a waste of action and movement! To the pathetic effect of the appearance
the ghost in the Esplanade of Elsinor is followed by the pomp of a grand court scene, the new
the appearance of the shadow in Hamlet's dispute with his mother, warrior forces on stage, madness
Ofelia, the cry of rebellion that bursts into the palace, a burial and a fierce struggle beside the tomb,
a duel to the death and murder, poison, destruction, above all which the martial music is heard
of Fortinbras. The events overflow from the scene and we learn about the trip to England, of
the mockery of the king's stratagem, from the episode of the pirates; furthermore, we witness the arduous experience
of the illusion of a theater within another. All of this exceeds the demands of any script.
adventures, in the tragedy of a hero whose most steadfast trait is neither action nor bravery. It would be, without
embargo, it is absurd to interpret that waste of ingenuity as subordinate or melodramatic, since it does not
it is about overlays, but rather a whole amalgamated with the deep course of psychological life
the characters.
In Hamlet and King Lear, the action exceeds the maximum limit that is possible to conceive in the scene, but in
other tragedies have been able to adhere to a less rich development. Mackail highlights the 'contrast between
the intense concentration and compression in Othello and Macbeth and the voluminous, the gigantic expansion,
in Hamlet and King Lear. The economy of external facts may perhaps obey the need to
compensate other effects; the overflow of events in Hamlet balances the intellectual conflict of a
reflective and sensitive nature; in Othello and Macbeth, troubled characters in which passion is the
dominant, there are not so many demands of plot; in King Lear, the volcanic upheaval of souls and
Nature synchronizes with the torrential rhythm of events.
Each creation was a new experience for Shakespeare. The light examination of some themes in
Four of his tragedies will help us to better see his methods, his style, his mastery. We must not lose
from sight, however, the deep poetic unity that ties them together. How much distance between weightlessness
and the tenderness of Romeo or Juliet and the colossal stature of Othello or Lear, heroes that Bradley compares with figures
from Miguel Angel! The same spirit, an identical and inimitable appeal - no matter how radical they may be
differences prevail in all Shakespearean creatures.
Romeo and Juliet is an early piece, written before the age of thirty. From the point of view
constructive, however, shows -in its brief development-, the same exact management and equal aptitude for
to create a poetic illusion that we will find in later works. The heat of July in Italy is the setting
of this tragedy of love and dream. Like Othello, it is inspired by Italian sources and has the warm
Mediterranean atmosphere that contrasts with the foggy background, of cold northern horizon, that surrounds Hamlet.
and to King Lear.
Shakespeare's tragedies share certain characteristics:
Like many Western tragedies, these often describe the downfall of the hero who ends up dying, this
it exemplifies the tragic fate of human beings:
In Hamlet, the tragedy of revenge and doubt, the inner conflict of the protagonist is presented and the
revenge as a means to restore political and moral order.
In Othello, the character kills his wife after the suspicions of infidelity instilled in him by Iago, it is the tragedy.
of jealousy.
In Macbeth, the protagonist urges her husband to murder the king; it is the tragedy of ambition.
King Lear, after abandoning his kingdom, divides the realm among his three daughters, tragically raising the issues of
parent-child relationships, it is the tragedy of abandonment.
Shakespeare's tragedies share certain characteristics:
Like many Western tragedies, these usually describe the fall of the hero who ends up dying, this
it exemplifies the tragic fate of human beings:
In Hamlet, the tragedy of revenge and doubt presents the protagonist's inner conflict and the
revenge as a means to restore political and moral order.
In Othello, the character kills his wife after the suspicions of infidelity that Iago instills in him.
tragedy of jealousy.
In Macbeth, the protagonist drives her husband to murder the king; it is the tragedy of ambition.
King Lear, after renouncing his throne, divides the kingdom among his three daughters, tragically raising the
parent-child relationships, it is the tragedy of abandonment.
Conclusion
It is important to conclude the following monographic work by inviting you to restore and deepen the
Greek drama, where dramatic art is developed and imitations have been found in
Shakespeare and other English poets can be good evidence of this. The Romans themselves could not.
surpass the Greek dramatic genius since although we find in them terms already of religion already of
education that separates us a little we must be convinced that if true poetry and noble oratory
and the same Greek statues and paintings that exist can only give us this beautiful ideal that is so necessary
for the perfection of dramatic art and will take us away from this barbarism, for only in that way
we will find in his scholarship and study, like chemists in the analysis of bodies, the true
elements of genius that only aim to aspire to this genre of poetry.
In summary, classicism and romanticism, those two opposing positions for many, come together in
the figure of the doctoral Alfonso in a singular way. His attitude towards this classic topic can only be
to understand oneself from a balanced ambivalence deep respect for the antiquity that so well had
shaped his spirit and his condition as a romantic.
Bibliography
Juan Manuel Rodríguez. Professor at the Central University of Politics. National University of
Ecuador.
