You will find that the language is not only old fashioned but also complex and dense.
Structure – Every play can be said to fall into three
stages, generally referred to as exposition, complication and resolution.
The play begins with the exposition stage, where we are introduced
to the characters and the situation, they find themselves in. At the outset the
characters might not seem to have any particular problems but there would not
be much to interest us if we were simply confronted with characters who were
living happily, continued to live happily and lived happily ever after. Very soon,
often in the first scene, a problem develops: something happens which looks as
if it is going to disrupt the character’s lives. One way of putting this is to
say that a kind of order prevails at the beginning of the play but that very
soon this ordered life is thrown into disarray. The central and longest stage
of a play is the complication stage.
Shakespeare takes a situation where things are relatively
peaceful at the outset, but then shows how the actions of people disrupt that established
social order.
Comedy can present an irrational quality in people that
undermines any possibility of a rational order in society.
In all plays, however, what happens is that the behavior of
the characters creates confusion and social disarray.
Third stage of the play – the resolution stage. In a
tragedy, the social order is so thoroughly destroyed that civilized behavior yields
to violence, and the play ends with the death of the principal characters. The situation
is thus in a way resolved, but what we are principally left with is an
impression of the precariousness of the whole idea of social order.
In all plays we see some threat to or disruption of the established
order.
The story of a Shakespearean Play – You know that at the
outset you will be introduced to various characters and that soon a problem
will begin to define itself. Some act, or series of acts will take place that
alters the way of life that has existed. During the course of the play, things
will become more and more chaotic, so that by the central point of the play
life will have become completely topsy turvy. At the end, however, things will
sort themselves out in some way: order might be reestablished, or there might
be a feeling of temporary peace and taking stock of what has happened, but it
could be that the drain of events leads to the death of one or more of the
characters.
Every play is built upon a tension between an idea of order
and the reality of disorder in society.
What should I be trying to do in a critical response?
Look for the broad pattern of the play. Look for the action
or actions that trigger off the complications of the play: almost invariably
one of the characters acts in a headstrong, or foolish, or ill conceived, or
possibly evil way. The act creates discord and disarray. Order yields to
disorder. People are at odds with each other, and in which conflicts and disagreements
or confusion and misunderstandings dominate. Have some ideas about the
particular characteristics of the kind of play you are studying.
The real task of criticism is to capture the distinctive
qualities of the play you are studying.
Start looking in more detail at the plot: Remember that you
are not only interested in what happens but also in the significance of what happens.
General framework helps you to see the overall pattern of the story and can be
used as a key to help you interpret any part of the story. If you attempt to discuss
too many scenes you are likely to lapse into merely summarizing the action without
commenting on its significance.
Concentrate on a few scenes: Look for evidence that the
characters feel there is something wrong with the disorderly state of affairs:
implicit in every scene will be the idea that life should be more orderly,
rational, even though it is in the nature of people to disrupt harmony.
Be aware of the kind of things you can focus on. The six
areas of interest in a play are – plot, character, thought, diction, music and
spectacle.
You need a way of focusing and disciplining your impression
and again the large ideas we have been working with provide a way of organizing
your response.
It can be shown how the main characters are caught between
opposite impulses, how they are attracted by an idea of orderly and reasonable
behavior yet often find themselves acting illogically and irrationally.
The broad pattern of the plot reproduces itself in the
experiences and personalities of the major characters, so that there is a
constant tension both in the play as a whole and in the central characters between
orderly and disorderly behavior. The minor characters play an important dramatic
function, as they often serve to comment on or draw attention to eth gap between
how things ought to be in an orderly world and the disorderly state of affairs
that prevails in the play.
Tension is also reflected int eh language of the play, where
images of order are constantly set against images of disorder and in the thought
of a play which we more commonly refer to as a play’s theme.
What, if anything, is Shakespeare trying to say in his
plays?
Shakespeare returns again and again to passions that
disrupt social order. He writes with the intention of warning people against acting
in an antisocial or unruly way. Shakespeare is exploring the reality of human
experience, the way in which people do act. He is making us aware of how
society is complex because people are complex; of how individual instincts, and
passions disturb any ideal of a harmonious society. He writes to explore both
the good and the bad qualities in human nature. At the end of a play we come
away with an increased awareness of the problems and choices and difficulties
that humanity has to face up to.
What distinguishes Shakespeare from other dramatists?
The characters are constantly raising all the larger
questions implicit in the play about the whole relationship between a
harmonious vision of life and the messy reality of experience. Every Shakespeare
play seems to raise fundamental questions about the whole nature and meaning of
life.
Why does Shakespeare
write in verse?
Poetry is highly ordered language. When Shakespeare writes
in verse, his lines are usually in blank verse – i.e., unrhymed lines, each line
containing 10 syllables. In an ordered verse form a character will be talking about
the disorder of experience. In Shakespeare’s verse there is a constant tension
between the desire for neatness, symmetry and order and the awareness that life
itself always burgeons out of control. Presumably at such moments we are closer
to the mundane reality of life where order and disorder jostle together.
Do I need to know about Shakespeare’s life and times?
Renaissance period – a shift from an essentially religious
world view to an essentially secular world view. People came to feel that they
were living in a less familiar somewhat more disturbing world. The medieval
period offered people a secure image of a divine order in the universe: there
were problems, of course, but the world seemed well ordered. His characters are
self-centered and ambitious. The play reveals a sense of a new spirit of
individualism which is in conflict with the traditional religious order. Individuals
are increasingly presuming to take the initiative in a world where it is used
to the be case that everyone knew their place and trusted in God.
Studying a tragedy: Shakespeare’s four major tragedies –
Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.
In tragedy, the dramatist gives full and serious consideration
to the disruptive effects of people’s behavior. The consequences are so serios
that the order presented leads to the death of the main character at the end of
the play. Any play that ends with the death of the main character is a tragedy;
the pattern is always the same: the society presented in the play has shifted
so far from any orderly standard of behavior that it collapses into violence
and the main character is the principal victim of this violence.
In History plays, when things begin to go wrong, it is because
people are weak, or fallible, or ambitious, or resent authority.
In tragedies, the passion that disrupt life are far more
extreme: there is a focusing on the evil in human beings, an evil that results
not just in the death of the tragic hero but also in the deaths of the innocent
and good who seem to be singled out for destruction for no other reason than
that they are innocent. The tragedies, force us to ask how such qualities as
goodness, love, justice and loyalty can survive in the world given people’s
capacity for evil and destruction.
If we assume that at the beginning of a tragedy life is
much as it always has been, some action then takes place that disturbs the
status quo. The moment the façade of order is shattered, we begin to see the
cruel, vicious and murderous side of people, to see the self-seeking, hatred
and violence.
(Taken from the note edited by John Peck and Martin Coyle)
