Othello (Shakespeare)

Author: J. Dracakis
Publisher:
Publication Date: 1998-01-01
Features:
Fragment: "Shake-scene in a country'. By this time Shakespeare had already written the Henry VI plays (from which Greene had quoted in his insulting remarks). In 1593 the narrative poem Venus and Adonis was published, and it was dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton. In 1594 The Rape of Lucrece, another narrative poem, was published and dedicated to the same person. It was also probably during the period 1592-4, when the London theatres were closed because of the outbreaks of the plague, that many of the sonnets were written, and some commentators have suggested that Wriothesley is the mysterious 'Mr. W.H.' to whom they were dedicated when they were published in 1609. By 1594 Shakespeare was a member of a company of actors known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which numbered among its ranks actors like the clown William Kempe, and the famous Richard Burbage. We know both that, in addition to writing plays for this company, Shakespeare also acted himself. For example, he acted in Ben Jonson's comedy Every Man in His Humour in 1598, a play he was to remember when he came to write Othello, and later in Jonson's Sejanus (1603) where he may have played the part of Tiberius. Although there is no evidence for it, it has been suggested that he played the role of Adam in his own As You Like It (1598-9), and the Ghost in Hamlet (1600-1). The regular playhouse of the Lord Chamberlain's Men was The Theatre, situated in Shoreditch outside the north boundaries of the City of London, and which had been built by Cuthbert and Richard Burbage in 1576, long before Shakespeare arrived in London. In 1598 this playhouse was dismantled and its timber taken across to Southwark on the south bank of the River Thames in order to build the Globe. This is the theatre with which we most associate Shakespeare. He owned a tenth share in the new enterprise, and was thus entitled to 'receive ten percent of the profits. By 1597 Shakespeare had made enough money to buy the house known as New Place, the second biggest house in Stratford. This was the first of a number of purchases of land which he made during the period 1597 to 1605, and records of his various business dealings in Stratford still survive. In 1596, at the age of eleven, his son Hamnet died, while in 1601 his father John also died. In 1607 his eldest daughter Susanna married John Hall, and they may have lived for some time in the cottage now known as Hall's Croft (which currently houses the Stratford Festival Club). After Shakespeare's death in 1616 the Halls moved into New Place. By 1603, when Queen Elizabeth I died, Shakespeare had written some twenty-four plays and the Chamberlain's Men had become the leading acting company of the time. Indeed, it has been suggested that the play The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600) was written at the request of Elizabeth herself. After the Queen's death the company changed its name to the King's Men, and was in receipt of the patronage of the new king, James I. A year after the King's accession to the throne Othello appeared, and was acted before him at the Christmas festivities of that year. It was during the period 1600 to 1607 that Shakespeare wrote the major tragedies, beginning with Hamlet in 1600-1 and ending with Coriolanus in 1607-8. In 1608 Shakespeare, along with his business associates the Burbages, John Heminges and Henry Condell (who later jointly edited the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays in 1623), Thomas Evans, and William Sly, leased a small indoor theatre in the City of London called Blackfriars. Some critics have felt that this new building, different in its structure from the Globe, played a large part in the noticeable alteration of Shakespeare's dramatic style at this time. It is argued that plays like Pericles (1607-8), Cymbeline (1609), The Winter's Tale (1610), and The Tempest (1611) are the result of Shakespeare's artistic response to a new and more intimate kind of theatre. Unfortunately this argument does not hold, since the first record of a performance of The Winter's Tale in 1611 intimate that it took place at the Globe. Also it is known that one of Shakespeare's very last plays, Henry VIII, was performed at the Globe because during an actual performance the firing of a cannon set the theatre alight, and burnt it to the ground. After 1613 Shakespeare seems to have written no more plays. His last few years were spent in retirement in Stratford, where he died on 23 April 1616. Popular legend has it that Shakespeare caught a fever after a drinking bout with Ben Jonson and the poet Michael Drayton. Unfortunately, we do not know the circumstances of his death, but his will survives, and biographers have sought to infer much from its contents. For example, the bequest of his 'second best bed with the furniture' to his widow Anne has prompted speculation about marital disharmony in the Shakespeare household. But his latest, and possibly most reliable, biographer, Professor Samuel Schoenbaum, has suggested that in any event Anne could have been entitled to one-third of Shakespeare's estate, and that the bed may well have had sentimental associations. It seems more than likely that the best bed was suited for visitors to New Place. In 1623, some seven years after Shakespeare's death, two of his former partners John Heminges and Henry Condell gathered together his plays in one impressive volume, known as the First Folio. Of the thirty-five plays that this volume contains some sixteen had never before appeared in print. William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary. Life, Oxford, 1977.