Style and age in english drama of the late 16-th and early 17-th centuries

I. Introduction

English and American Literature presented the world with a lot of outstanding poets, playwrights and writers such as: George Byron, Charlotte Bronte, Oscar Wild, Bernard Shaw, Arthur Conan Doyle, Theodor Driser, Jack London and many others.

William Shakespeare is considered to be the greatest and the most famous of all the writers. He is a vivid representative of the Renaissance. The last half of the XVI-th and the beginning of the XVII-th centuries are known as the golden age of English Literature or the age of Shakespeare.

Any discussion of Shakespeare's life is bound to be loaded with superlatives. In the course of a quarter century, Shakespeare wrote some thirty-eight plays. Taken individually, several of them are among the world's finest written works; taken collectively, they establish Shakespeare as the foremost literary talent of his own Elizabethan Age and, even more impressively, as a genius whose creative achievement has never been surpassed in any age.

In light of Shakespeare's stature and the passage of nearly four centuries since his death, it is not surprising that hundreds of Shakespeare biographies have been written in all of the world's major languages. Scanning this panorama, most accounts of the Bard's life (and certainly the majority of modern studies) are contextual in the sense that they place the figure of Shakespeare against the rich tapestry of his "Age" or "Times" or "Society." This characteristic approach to Shakespeare biography is actually a matter of necessity, for without such fleshing out into historical, social, and literary settings, the skeletal character of what we know about Shakespeare from primary sources would make for slim and, ironically, boring books. As part of this embellishment process, serious scholars continue to mine for hard facts about the nature of Shakespeare's world. The interpretation of their meaning necessarily varies, often according to the particular school or ideology of the author.

Whatever the differences of opinion, valid or at least plausible views about Shakespeare, his character and his personal experience continue to be advanced. Yet even among modern Shakespeare biographies, in addition to outlandish interpretations of the available facts, there persists (and grows) a body of traditions about such matters as Shakespeare's marriage, his move to London, the circumstances of his death and the like. The result of all this is that there is now a huge tapestry of descriptive, critical, and analytical work about Shakespeare in existence, much of it reasonable, some of it outlandish, and some of it hogwash.

II. Style and age in english drama of the late 16-th and early 17-th centuries 

    The creative work of William Shakespeare and his contemporary dramatists is traditionally considered to be one of the greatest achievements of English Renaissance culture. Yet for many features English dramatic production of the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries exceeds the bounds of the accepted idea of classical Renaissance style. Must we conclude from this that the traditional approach to study of English drama and theatre of 1570s-1600s has become out of date and needs to be revised in the light of newest investigations? However exhaustive or partial an answer we are to give to the question, it calls for special analysis of those features of English Renaissance culture which influenced the formation of the dramatic system of the Elizabethan and Jacobean Ages.

    Like many other European countries, Britain became ready for sanguineous development of Renaissance processes rather slowly, and the assimilation of these tendencies ran unevenly in different fields of art. English mediaeval drama started to convert into Renaissance theatre with immense delay: not before the Renaissance poetics had taken root in lyrics and romance, and the idea of the Renaissance knight epic had already started being in the air did the theatre start to form.

    This overly “tardy” appearance of Renaissance drama in England did not only lead to its relatively autonomous status among other kinds and forms of literature, but also to the forming of a special type of “Renaissance synthesis”. Virtually, only having acquired its Renaissance quality, English dramatic poetry assumed a special character of modern European drama. For that reason the very indications of the Renaissance nature of drama of the Age of Shakespeare (let alone the principles of its division into periods) must be considered independently. The same is true as regards criteria of classical and non-classical quality of the Renaissance processes in English culture in general. This very approach, assuming that the idea of Renaissance method (along with the conception of style) is being involved, is taken by the author as a guiding principle in the analysis of Christopher Marlowe’s and Shakespeare’s works. 
 

III. Three important points about Shakespeare 

In examining Shakespeare's life, three broad points should be kept in mind from the start. First, despite the frustration of Shakespeare biographers with the absence of a primary source of information written during (or even shortly after) his death on 23 April 1616 (his fifty-second birthday), Shakespeare's life is not obscure. In fact, we know more about Shakespeare's life, its main events and contours, than we know about most famous Elizabethans outside of the royal court itself.

Shakespeare's life is unusually well-documented: there are well over 100 references to Shakespeare and his immediate family in local parish, municipal, and commercial archives and we also have at least fifty observations about Shakespeare's plays (and through them, his life) from his contemporaries. The structure of Shakespeare's life is remarkably sound; it is the flesh of his personal experience, his motives, and the like that have no firm basis and it is, of course, this descriptive content in which we are most interested.

Second, the appeal of seeing an autobiographical basis in Shakespeare's plays and poetry must be tempered by what the bulk of the evidence has to say about him. Although there are fanciful stories about Shakespeare, many centering upon his romantic affairs, connections between them and the events or characters of his plays are flimsy, and they generally disregard our overall impression of the Bard. In his personal life, Shakespeare was, in fact, an exceedingly practical individual, undoubtedly a jack of many useful trades, and a shrewd businessman in theatrical, commercial and real estate circles.

Third, the notion that plays ascribed to Shakespeare were actually written by others (Sir Francis Bacon, the poet Phillip Sidney among the candidates) has become even weaker over time. The current strong consensus is that while Shakespeare may have collaborated with another Elizabethan playwright in at least one instance (probably with John Fletcher on The Two Noble Kinsman), and that one or two of his plays were completed by someone else (possibly Fletcher on an original or revised version of Henry VIII), the works ascribed to Shakespeare are his. 

The life way and the chronology of the creative art of William Shakespeare 

As a brief introductory detail it should be mentioned that, during the sixteenth century, there were many families with the name Shakespeare in and around Stratford. "Shakespeare" appears countless times in town minutes and court records, spelled in a variety of ways, from Shagspere to Chacsper. Unfortunately, there are very few records that reveal William Shakespeare's relationship to or with the many other Stratford Shakespeares. Genealogists claim to have discovered one man related to Shakespeare who was hanged in Gloucestershire for theft in 1248, and Shakespeare's father, in an application for a coat of arms, claimed that his grandfather was a hero in the War of the Roses and was granted land in Warwickshire in 1485 by Henry VII. No historical evidence has been discovered to corroborate this story of the man who would be William Shakespeare's great-grandfather, but, luckily, we do have information regarding his paternal and maternal grandfathers. The Bard's paternal grandfather was Richard Shakespeare (d. 1561), a farmer in Snitterfield, a village four miles northeast of Stratford. There is no record of Richard Shakespeare before 1529, but details about his life after this reveal that he was a tenant farmer, who, on occasion, would be fined for grazing too many cattle on the common grounds and for not attending manor court. There is no record of Richard Shakespeare's wife, but together they had two sons (possibly more), John and Henry. Richard Shakespeare worked on several different sections of land during his lifetime, including the land owned by the wealthy Robert Arden of Wilmecote, Shakespeare's maternal grandfather. Robert Arden (d. 1556) was the son of Thomas Arden of Wilmecote, Shakespeare's maternal great-grandfather, who probably belonged to the aristocratic family of the Ardens of Park Hall. He was catholic and married more than once (we know the name of his second wife -- Agnes Hill) and he fathered no fewer than eight daughters. He became the stepfather of Agnes' four children. Robert Arden had accumulated much property, and when he died, he named his daughter (Shakespeare's mother) Mary, only sixteen at the time, one of his executors. He left Mary some money and, in his own words, "all my land in Willmecote cawlide Asbyes and the crop apone the grounde, sowne and tyllide as hitt is".  

Shakespeare's father, John, came to Stratford from Snitterfield before 1532 as an apprentice glover and tanner of leathers. John Shakespeare prospered and began to deal in farm products and wool. It is recorded that he bought a house in 1552 (the date that he first appears in the town records), and bought more property in 1556. Because John Shakespeare owned one house on Greenhill Street and two houses on Henley Street, the exact location of William's birth cannot be known for certain. Sometime between 1556 and 1558 John Shakespeare married Mary Arden, the daughter of the wealthy Robert Arden of Wilmecote and owner of the sixty-acre farm called Asbies. The wedding would have most likely taken place in Mary Arden's parish church at Aston Cantlow, the burial place of Robert Arden, and, although there is no evidence of strong piety on either side of the family, it would have been a Catholic service, since Queen Mary I was the reigning monarch. We assume neither John nor Mary could write -- John used a pair of glovers' compasses as his signature while Mary used a running horse -- but it did not prevent them from becoming important members of the community. John Shakespeare was elected to a multitude of civic positions, including ale-taster of the borough (Stratford had a long-reaching reputation for its brewing) in 1557, chamberlain of the borough in 1561, alderman in 1565, (a position which came with free education for his children at the Stratford Grammar School), high bailiff, or mayor, in 1568, and chief alderman in 1571. Due to his important civic duties, he rightfully sought the title of gentleman and applied for his coat-of-arms in 1570 (see picture on left). However, for unspecific reasons the application was abruptly withdrawn, and within the next few years, for reasons just as mystifying, John Shakespeare would go from wealthy business owner and dedicated civil servant to debtor and absentee council member. By 1578 he was behind in his taxes and stopped paying the statutory aldermanic subscription for poor relief. In 1579, he had to mortgage Mary Shakespeare's estate, Asbies, to pay his creditors. In 1580 he was fined 40 pounds for missing a court date and in 1586 the town removed him from the board of aldermen due to lack of attendance. By 1590, John Shakespeare owned only his house on Henley Street and, in 1592 he was fined for not attending church. However, near the very end of John Shakespeare's life, it seems that his social and economic standing was again beginning to flourish. He once again applied to the College of Heralds for a coat-of-arms in 1596, and, due likely to the success of William in London, this time his wish was granted. On October 20 of that year, by permission of the Garter King of Arms (the Queen's aid in such matters) "the said John Shakespeare, Gentlemen, and...his children, issue and posterity" were lawfully entitled to display the gold coat-of-arms, with a black banner bearing a silver spear (a visual representation of the family name "Shakespeare"). The coat-of-arms could then be displayed on their door and all their personal items. The motto was "Non sanz droict" or "not without right. The reason cited for granting the coat-of-arms was John Shakespeare's grandfather's faithful service to Henry VII, but no specifics were given as to what service he actually performed. The coat-of-arms appears on Shakespeare's tomb in Stratford. In 1599 John Shakespeare was reinstated on the town council, but died a short time later, in 1601. He was probably near seventy years old and he had been married for forty-four years. Mary Shakespeare died in 1608 and was buried on September 9.  

The baptismal register of the Holy Trinity parish church, in Stratford, shows the following entry for April 26, 1564: Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakespeare. The actual date of Shakespeare's birth is not known, but, traditionally, April 23, St George's Day, has been Shakespeare's accepted birthday, and a house on Henley Street in Stratford, owned by William's father, John, is accepted as Shakespeare's birth place. However, the reality is that no one really knows when the great dramatist was born. According to the Book of Common Prayer, it was required that a child be baptized on the nearest Sunday or holy day following the birth, unless the parents had a legitimate excuse. As Dennis Kay proposes in his book Shakespeare

If Shakespeare was indeed born on Sunday, April 23, the next feast day would have been St. Mark's Day on Tuesday the twenty-fifth. There might well have been some cause, both reasonable and great -- or perhaps, as has been suggested, St. Mark's Day was still held to be unlucky, as it had been before the Reformation, when altars and crucifixes used to be draped in black cloth, and when some claimed to see in the churchyard the spirits of those doomed to die in that year. . . .but that does not help to explain the christening on the twenty-sixth.(54)

No doubt Shakespeare's true birthday will remain a mystery forever. But the assumption that the Bard was born on the same day of the month that he died lends an exciting esoteric highlight to the otherwise mundane details of Shakespeare's life. 

Shakespeare probably began his education at the age of six or seven at the Stratford grammar school, which is still standing only a short distance from his house on Henley Street and is in the care of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Although we have no record of Shakespeare attending the school, due to the official position held by John Shakespeare it seems likely that he would have decided to educate young William at the school which was under the care of Stratford's governing body. The Stratford grammar school had been built some two hundred years before Shakespeare was born and in that time the lessons taught there were, of course, dictated primarily by the beliefs of the reigning monarch. In 1553, due to a charter by King Edward VI, the school became known as the King's New School of Stratford-upon-Avon. During the years that Shakespeare attended the school, at least one and possibly three headmasters stepped down because of their devotion to the Catholic religion proscribed by Queen Elizabeth. One of these masters was Simon Hunt (b. 1551), who, in 1578, according to tradition, left Stratford to pursue his more spiritual goal of becoming a Jesuit, and relocated to the seminary at Rheims. Hunt had found his true vocation: when he died in Rome seven years later he had risen to the position of Grand Penitentiary.

Like all of the great poets and dramatists of the time, Shakespeare learned his basic reading and writing skills from an ABC, or horn-book. Robert Speaight in his book, Shakespeare: The Man and His Achievement, describes this book as a primer framed in wood and covered with a thin plate of transparent horn. It included the alphabet in small letters and in capitals, with combinations of the five vowels with b, c, and d, and the Lord's Prayer in English. The first of these alphabets, which ended with the abbreviation for 'and', began with the mark of the cross. Hence the alphabet was known as 'Christ cross row' -- the cross-row of Richard III, I, i, 55. A short catechism was often included in the ABC book (the 'absey book' of King John, I, i, 196). (10)

In The Merry Wives of Windsor, there is a comical scene in which the Welsh headmaster tests his pupil's knowledge, who is appropriately named William. There is little doubt that Shakespeare was recalling his own experiences during his early school years. As was the case in all Elizabethan grammar schools, Latin was the primary language of learning. Although Shakespeare likely had some lessons in English, Latin composition and the study of Latin authors like Seneca, Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, and Horace would have been the focus of his literary training. One can see that Shakespeare absorbed much that was taught in his grammar school, for he had an impressive familiarity with the stories by Latin authors, as is evident when examining his plays and their sources. Even though scholars, basing their argument on a story told more than a century after the fact, accept that Shakespeare was removed from school around age thirteen because of his father's financial and social difficulties, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that he had not acquired a firm grasp of both English and Latin and that he had continued his studies elsewhere. The famous quotation from Nicholas Rowe's notoriously inaccurate biography of Shakespeare (written in 1709), where he claims that Shakespeare "acquir'd that little Latin he was Master of" and that Shakespeare was prevented by his father's poor fortune from "further Proficiency in that Language", should be read with an extremely critical eye.

There are other fragmented and dubious details about Shakespeare's life growing up in Stratford. He is supposed to have worked for a butcher, in addition to helping run his father's business. There is a fable that Shakespeare stole a deer from Sir Thomas Lucy at Charlecote, and, instead of serving a prison sentence, fled from Stratford. Although this surely is a fictitious incident, there exists a few verses of a humorous ballad mocking Lucy that have been connected to Shakespeare. "Edmond Malone records a version of two verses of the Lucy Ballad collected by one of the few great English classical scholars, Joshua Barnes, at Stratford between 1687 and 1690. Barnes stopped overnight at an inn and heard an old woman singing it. He gave her a new gown for the two stanzas which were all she remembered":  

Sir Thomas was so covetous

To covet so much deer

When horns enough upon his head

Most plainly did appear

Recordings in the Episcopal register at Worcester on the dates of November 27 and 28, 1582, reveal that Shakespeare desired to marry a young girl named Anne. There are two different documents regarding this matter, and their contents have raised a debate over just whom Shakespeare first intended to wed. Were there two Annes? Was Shakespeare in love with one but in lust with the other? Was Shakespeare ready to join in matrimony with the Anne of his dreams only to have an attack of conscience and marry the Anne with whom he had carnal relations? To discuss the controversy properly we should look at the documents in question. The first entry in the register is the following record of the issue of a marriage license to one Wm Shakespeare:

Anno Domini 1582...Novembris...27 die eiusdem mensis. Item eodem die supradicto emanavit Licentia inter Wm Shaxpere et Annam Whateley de Temple Grafton.1

The next entry in the episcopal register records the marriage bond granted to one Wm Shakespeare:

Noverint universi per praesentes nos Fulconem Sandells de Stratford in comitatu Warwici agricolam et Johannem Rychardson ibidem agricolam, teneri et firmiter obligari Ricardo Cosin generoso et Roberto Warmstry notario publico in quadraginta libris bonae et legalis monetae Angliae solvend. eisdem Ricardoet Roberto haered. execut. et assignat. suis ad quam quidem solucionem bene et fideliter faciend. obligamus nos et utrumque nostrum per se pro toto et in solid. haered. executor. et administrator. nostros firmiter per praesentes sigillis nostris sigillat. Dat. 28 die Novem. Anno regni dominae nostrae Eliz. Dei gratia Angliae Franc. et Hiberniae Reginae fidei defensor &c.25.2 The condition of this obligation is such that if hereafter there shall not appear any lawful let or impediment by reason of any precontract, consanguinity, affinity or by any other lawful means whatsoever, but that William Shagspere on the one party and Anne Hathwey of Stratford in the diocese of Worcester, maiden, may lawfully solemnize matrimony together, and in the same afterwards remain and continue like man and wife according unto the laws in that behalf provided...

Three possible conclusions can be reached from the above records: 1) The Anne Whateley in the first record and the Anne Hathwey in the second record are the same woman. Some scholars believe that the name Whateley was substituted accidentally for Hathwey into the register by the careless clerk. "The clerk was a nincompoop: he wrote Baker for Barber in his register, and Darby for Bradeley, and Edgock for Elcock, and Anne Whateley for Anne Hathaway. A lot of ingenious ink has been spilt over this error, but it is surely a simple one: the name Whateley occurs in a tithe appeal by a vicar on the same page of the register; the clerk could not follow his own notes, or he was distracted" (Levi, 37). Moreover, some believe that the couple selected Temple Grafton as the place for the wedding for reasons of privacy and that is why it is recorded in the register instead of Stratford. 2) The Wm Shaxpere and the Annam Whateley who wished to marry in Temple Grafton were two different people entirely from the Wm Shagspere and Anne Hathwey who were married in Stratford. This argument relies on the assumption that there was a relative of Shakespeare's living in Temple Grafton, or a man unrelated but sharing Shakespeare's name (which would be extremely unlikely), and that there is no trace of this relative after the issue of his marriage license. 3) The woman Shakespeare loved and the woman Shakespeare finally married were two different Annes. Not many critics support this hypothesis, but those that do use it to portray Shakespeare as a young man torn between the love he felt for Anne Whateley and the obligation he felt toward Anne Hathwey and the child she was carrying, which was surely his. In Shakespeare, Anthony Burgess constructs a vivid scenario to this effect:

It is reasonable to believe that Will wished to marry a girl named Anne Whateley. The name is common enough in the Midlands and is even attached to a four-star hotel in Horse Fair, Banbury. Her father may have been a friend of John Shakespeare's, he may have sold kidskin cheap, there are various reasons why the Shakespeares and the Whateleys, or their nubile children, might become friendly. Sent on skin-buying errands to Temple Grafton, Will could have fallen for a comely daughter, sweet as May and shy as a fawn. He was eighteen and highly susceptible. Knowing something about girls, he would know that this was the real thing. Something, perhaps, quite different from what he felt about Mistress Hathaway of Shottery. But why, attempting to marry Anne Whateley, had he put himself in the position of having to marry the other Anne? I suggest that, to use the crude but convenient properties of the old women's-magazine morality-stories, he was exercised by love for the one and lust for the other. I find it convenient to imagine that he knew Anne Hathaway carnally, for the first time, in the spring of 1582... (57)

Whichever argument one chooses to accept, it is fact that Shakespeare, a minor at the time, married Anne Hathaway, who was twenty-six and already several months pregnant. Anne was the eldest daughter, and one of the seven children of Richard Hathaway, a twice-married farmer in Shottery. When Richard died in 1581, he requested his son, Bartholomew, move into the house we now know as Anne Hathaway's Cottage, and maintain the property for his mother, Richard's second wife and Anne's stepmother. Anne lived in the cottage with Bartholomew, her step-mother, and her other siblings. No doubt she was bombarded with a barrage of household tasks to fill her days at Hewland Farm, as it was then called. After her marriage to Shakespeare, Anne left Hewland Farm to live in John Shakespeare's house on Henley Street, as was the custom of the day. Preparations for the new bride were made, and for reasons unknown, her arrival greatly bothered John Shakespeare's current tenant in the house, William Burbage. A heated fight ensued, and John refused to release Burbage from his lease, so Burbage decided to take the matter to a London court. On July 24, 1582, lawyers representing both sides met and resolved the matter -- John would release William Burbage from his lease.

The Shakespeares' first child was Susanna, christened on May 26th, 1583, and twins arrived in January, 1585. They were baptized on February 2 of that year and named after two very close friends of William -- the baker Hamnet Sadler and his wife, Judith. The Sadlers became the godparents of the twins and, in 1598, they, in turn, named their own son William. Not much information is known about the life of Anne and her children after this date, except for the tragic fact that Hamnet Shakespeare died of an unknown cause on August 11, 1596, at the age of eleven. By this time Shakespeare had long since moved to London to realize his dreams on the English stage (a time in the Bard's life that will be covered in depth later on) and we do not know if he was present at Hamnet's funeral in Stratford. We can only imagine how deeply the loss of his only son touched the sensitive poet, but his sorrow is undeniably reflected in his later work, and, particularly, in a passage from King John, written between 1595 and 1597: 

Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost:

I am not mad: I would to heaven I were!

For then, 'tis like I should forget myself:

O, if I could, what grief should I forget!

Preach some philosophy to make me mad,

And thou shalt be canonized, cardinal;

For being not mad but sensible of grief,

My reasonable part produces reason

How I may be deliver'd of these woes,

And teaches me to kill or hang myself:

If I were mad, I should forget my son,

Or madly think a babe of clouts were he:

I am not mad; too well, too well I feel

The different plague of each calamity....

I tore them from their bonds and cried aloud

'O that these hands could so redeem my son,

As they have given these hairs their liberty!'

But now I envy at their liberty,

And will again commit them to their bonds,

Because my poor child is a prisoner.

And, father cardinal, I have heard you say

That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:

If that be true, I shall see my boy again;

For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,

To him that did but yesterday suspire,

There was not such a gracious creature born.

But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud

And chase the native beauty from his cheek

And he will look as hollow as a ghost,

As dim and meagre as an ague's fit,

And so he'll die; and, rising so again,

When I shall meet him in the court of heaven

I shall not know him: therefore never, never

Must I behold my pretty Arthur more. (III.iv.45-91)   

Had not his worship one deer left?

What then? He had a wife

Took pains enough to find him horns

Should last him during life. (Levi, 35)  

Shakespeare's daily activities after he left school and before he re-emerged as a professional actor in the late 1580s are impossible to trace. Suggestions that he might have worked as a schoolmaster or lawyer or glover with his father and brother, Gilbert, are all plausible. So too is the argument that Shakespeare studied intensely to become a master at his literary craft, and honed his acting skills while traveling and visiting playhouses outside of Stratford. But, it is from this period known as the "lost years", that we obtain one vital piece of information about Shakespeare: he married a pregnant orphan named Anne Hathaway.  

Shakespeare's work as a playwright is subdivided into 3 periods. Written in the first period, Shakespeare's plays are mostly history plays like "Henry VI", and comedies with strong elements of farce. His masterpiece of this period is "Romeo and Juliet". In the second period Shakespeare wrote a number of comedies where he moved away from farce towards romance. In the third period, after 1600, appeared his major tragedies - "Hamlet", "Othello". They presented a clear opposition of order to chaos, good to evil. Shakespeare was a great poet and would be well known for his poetry alone. His major achievement as a poet is his sonnets, first published in 1609. A sonnet is a poem consisting of 14 lines, with a moral at the end. The sonnets are addressed to some "W.H.", and to mysterious "Dark Lady of Sonnets". The sonnets deal with the great themes of love, friendship, death, change and immortality. Shakespeare looks at his own poetry as a means of immortality. Shakespeare's sonnets are excellent. They are full of harmony and music; they praise love, friendship and beauty, though there is no sentimentality in them. Shakespeare's poetry is at the summit of human achievement. Many centuries have passed since his death in 1616, but Shakespeare is still considered to be the greatest of all playwrights and poets. The prideses of Shakespeare. The most brilliant period of English literature was in the second half of the 16'th and begining of 17'th centure.Sometimes it's called "Elizabethen age" after quen Elizabeth 5. England had become a geat world power. It had established wide commercial contact with countries And rich trading company had been organaized. The english people were now a great nation and the english language inriched was now not unlike the language of Chaucer. Many famous poetical and prose works appeared. Among those who inriched the literary haritage of this period ere sir Philip Sydney, Adnond Spenser and Christother Marlowe. There were fine works of poetry and prose in the Elizabethen age but the greatest hight's of literature of this period were riached in drama. 2. Life of Shakespeare. The great poet and dramatist William Shakespeare is often called by his people "Our National Bard", "The Immortal. Poet of nature" and "The Great Unknown". More than two hundred contemporary references to Shakespeare have been located amoung church records, legal records, documents in the Public Record Office, and miscellaneous repositories. When these owe assembled, we have at least the sceleton out line of his life, begining with his baptist on April 26, 1564, in Trinity Churche, Stratford-on-Avon, and ending with his burial there on April 25, 1616. Shakespeare native place was Sratford-on-Avon, a little town in Warwickshive, which is generally described as beign in the middle of England. Shakespeare's father, John, was a prosperious glove maker of Stratford who, after holding minor municipal offices, was elected high bailiff of Stratford. Shakespeare's mother Mary Arden, came from an affluent family of landowners. Shakespeare probably recieved his early education at the exellent Stratford Grammar School, supervised by an Oxford graduate, where he would have learned Latin smattering of Greek. In 1582 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who lived in a neighboring hamlet. The first child born to Ann and William was their daughter Susanna. In about two years Ann bore him twins a boy and a girl, Hamlet and Jidith. Then life in Stratford became intolerable for William Shakespeare and he dicided to go to London and began a theatrical career. Shakespeare major activity lay in the field of drama. He became a full shaveholder in his acting company, he was partowner of "the Globe" theatre and later of "the Blackfriars" theatre, and in 1597 he purchased property in Strarford. Including new place, one of the largest houses in the town. He probably refired there about 1610, travelling of London when necessary to take cave of his theatrical business. In all, 154 sonnets seguence. The sonnets were probably written in the 1590 but were first published in 1609. 3. Shakespeare's works. Shakespeare's literary work is usually divided into three periods. The first period of his creative work falls between 1590 and 1600. Shakespeare's comedies belong to the first period of his creativ work. They all are written in his playfull manner and and in the brilliant poetry that conveys the spectator to Italy. Some of the first plays of the first period are: "Richard 3" (1592), "The comedy of errors" (1592), "Romeo and Juliet" (1594), "Julius Caesar" (1599), "As you like it" (1599), 1600 - "Twelth night". Shakespe-are's poems are also attributed to the first period, "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece", and 154 sonnets. "Venus and Adonis" was the first of Shakespeare's works that came off the press. The second period of Shakespeare's creative work during from 1600 to 1608. His famous tragedies appeared at this time. In the plays of this period the dramatist reaches his full maturity. He presents great humans problems. His tragedies and historical plays made Shakespeare the greatest humanist of the English Renaissanse. Some plays of the second period: 1601 - "Hamlet", 1604 - "Othello". Shakespeare's plays of the third period are called the "Romantic dramas". There is no tragic tension in these plays. This period lasted from 1609 till 1612. 1609 - "Cymbeline", 1610 - "The Winters Tale", 1612 - "Henry 8".  

State of the art of Shakespeare’s authorship problem: attempt at bibliographic analysis 

    The problem of Shakespeare’s works authorship remains as a subject of new hypotheses and controversies. A significant resuscitation of activity in this direction was invoked by the publications of Ch. Оgburn's (USA, 1984) and I. Gililov's (Russia, 1997) fundamental researches, correspondingly devoted to the hypotheses of the Earl of Oxford's and the Earl of Rutland's authorship, and also the usage and perfecting of computer analysis of Shakespeare’s texts and those of his contemporaries. During the last three decades over 700 articles and monographs on the given problem have been published in Russia and abroad.

    The perspectives of such studies and their usefulness for the introducing in a scientific usage of all new historical and literary realities of Shakespeare’s epoch (under condition of the scientific approach to the facts) is evident. In the review we attempted an analysis and systematization of the last decade’s (1994-2003) publications on the "Shakespeare’s question". The bibliographic basis of the browse is founded on World Shakespeare Internet-bibliography (WSB Online), data of Shakespeare’s sites in the Internet and periodicals of some foreign Shakespeare’s societies, specializing in this or that hypothesis, and also works published in the recent years in Russia.

    Special attention is given to roughly explicating linguistic methods of analysis of the literary texts on the basis of computer technologies permitting to assign real hopes for a scientific solution of the authorship problem. 

Psycho-phonetics in Shakespeare’s sonnets as a translator challenge 
 

    Psycholinguistic analysis argues that efficacy in speech is gained partly through special arrangement of phonemes, each of them contributing to the emotional effect. People of letters have employed these effects to an artistic advantage, combining and repeating them, as means of providing the emotional setting. Several of Shakespeare’s sonnets illustrate this.

    To name Sonnet 71, we bring to light the repeated sound [w] and its function as accompaniment to sorrow and suffering (cf. surly sullen bell in line 2, where [s] and [l] repeated sound solemn and pompous – public grief as contrasted to the lover’s innermost grievances). Line 4 alliterates world and worms, but this is frequently overlooked by translators who will painstakingly render worms but fail to see the phonetic logic here. These repetitions culminate in the end-rhymed woe in line 8. The 3^rd stanza abounds in [s]’s – pacifiers and healers. And the abrupt couplet strives to overcome the spiritual crisis, once more resorting to [w] (wise world), which yields to the triumphant [m]’s.

    Psychophonetics gives the translator options of selecting his equivalents in ways he considers proper, to render the mood of the original in the best way. To resort to Russian translation attempts, we can see that Shakespeare’s jewel from Sonnet 27 has been translated as diamond, gem, crystal, and pearl.

    The discussion of honour and dignity in Shakespeare’s drama 
 

    Among other evils of the world, Sonnet 66 discusses “gilded honor shamefully misplac'd”. In feudal times, knightly honour proved a major ethical asset, a foundation for the whole social and economic system. The Renaissance turned to utilitarian thinking, and honour was disputed as a natural, inborn value; in this light, the degraded knight Sir John Falstaff is truly representative of his era, when he pursues personal safety and cynically argues, “What is honour? A word”.

    For Isabella in Measure for Measure, honour is absolute and universal, therefore requires observance by each and everyone. When this quality loses universality, one starts doubting whether it has any inherent value at all.

    A true “victim of honour” is presented in Desdemona, although the honour concerned is not specifically hers, but rather her husband’s. Othello’s concerns are about his honour from his first appearance on the stage; moreover, they are formulated in the title: the Moor of Venice, since the hero is immediately recognized as an alien in his professional field, and the able general needs constant references to his noble origin, which is not taken for granted by others.

    Othello belongs to people for whom honour is more than a mere word. Iago senses this, and employs the notion as a bait for his over-honest commander. In the resolution of the play, honour is the culprit of the tragic happenings: “But why should honor outlive honesty? Let it go all”. 

    “Imagination” and “cool reason” in Shakespeare’s sonnets 

    The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

    Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

    And as imagination bodies forth

    The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

    Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

    A local habitation and a name.

    A Midsummer Night’s Dream (5.1.4-20)

    In these lines of Shakespeare we read the report of a meditative path, by which one follows the poet up to the realm of unformed, pure imagination, and then back down to everyday experience, spontaneously marrying “imagination” to “cool reason”, along a continuous chain of links from unknown to body, to form, to shape, and finally to the down-to-earth attributes of name and address . This meditation in relation to the challenge confronting the Poet is fully manifested in The Sonnets, considering that the basic subject of the Sonnets is the Poet brooding on Time, Love, Beauty, Fortune, Nature, Life and Death, as well as on his work, his gift and his verse, on poetry and arts in general.

    The foundation of the Poet’s knowledge is his personal earthly life experience. But this is not all. The Poet stands at the hub of the universe. He possesses the supreme knowledge (in the Plato sense), which he has acquired by his gift of observation and from the world treasure of letters and the sacred writings of the past. By means of imagination the earthly and timely happenings are reflected in the universal symbolism, whereas the universal symbols are being filled up with everyday facts and events. This kind of interaction is possible only in the realm of imagination, thus uniting heaven and earth.

    But to see these links is only one task of the Poet. Another is to trap heaven-and-earth within a visible form, forcing the creation onto the tip of his pen, to choose from among the ideas and place them in order, to scrutinize the expressions and put them where they belong. Or, in other words, “to shroud in beautiful language”, to gather a fine diction, “to test the sap of the words”. Words in the Sonnets expand the theme, provoke its development, make the thought more profound. Shakespeare uses a myriad of variations to express one idea. His metaphors are arranged in sequences, his language abounds in synonyms, and at the same time there are many key-words, repeated numerously.

    The paper will offer a close analysis of a number of sonnets from this point of view. 

    Shakespeare’s “lunar heroes” in dialogue with providence: tragedies “Romeo and Juliet” and “Hamlet” 

    Astrological beliefs of the age of the Renaissance were rather strong. They influenced conflicts and characters of Shakespearean plays and formed so called astrological-associative characteristics. It involves the hero through astral images into a chain of associations connected with some astrological type, and the hero acts like a person of this type.

    Romeo and Hamlet have “lunar” astrological-associative characteristics which help Shakespeare to represent a tense dialogue of the heroes with Providence because “lunar” heroes have such features as intuition and ability to perceive the irrational side of existence. This paper analyzes a device, by means of which Shakespeare shows the complexity and semantic polyvalence of this dialogue: representation of the hero’s state which can be considered as inadequate from a conventional point of view through the versions of different personages and self-characterization.

    At the beginning of the tragedy different personages (Romeo’s parents, Benvolio) give their own description of the symptoms of Romeo’s state. His friends accept his own version (an unhappy love). But the hero’s words about his fatal presentiments sound as alternative self-characterization. This impression is reinforced by a pair of star-crossed lovers in Prologue, echoed in Romeo’s some consequence, yet hanging in the stars.

    In the first act of “Hamlet” the personages classify the hero’s state as grief, woe, transformation. Then Polonius, who is the first to use the word mad, come up with his hypothesis of Hamlet’s love obsession. The motive of madness appears also in the scene of meeting with the Ghost. Hamlet’s self-characterization allows us to speak about his fictitious mask of a madman (mad in craft), as well as about his real deep shock after contact with the Ghost, who embodies the forces of Providence.

    So Romeo’s and Hamlet’s dialogue with Providence is represented with a specific effect of “twinkling senses” which is based on “lunar” astrological-associative characteristics of the heroes so as on Shakespearean technique of using different versions.