5. Later Subjects

Subject

        Perhaps the Bards personality is most evident from looking at the subject of His later work. In Shakespeare’s play’s there many different subject topics according to the many different depths of His play. Threw the subject of His plays you can see that He included more than ever, self and artistic expression as well as to appeal to popular audiences as was shown in the subject heading “genre” and “diction”.  

One great example of Shakespeare’s self-expression is in the play Hamlet. In Greenblatts book, He draws a very close connection between Shakespeare’s life and feeling and the character Hamlet in His play called Hamlet. In the quote below Greenblatt makes the connection between the name of the play and the name of his deceased son.

Even if the decision to do Hamlet had come

to Shakespeare from strictly commercial considerations, the coincidence

of the names may well have re-opened a deep wound,

a wound that had never properly healed. If the tragedy swelled

up from Shakespeare’s own life—if it can be traced back to the

death of Hamlet—something must have made the playwright tormented sense that something is missing

In the quote above, Greenblatt is  saying that the link of the name of his dead child stirred up an old wound to the imagined of his father, among other things. Greenblatt argued that it was the change in the language and ceremony of burial rites instituted by the Protestant Reformation that could have caused Shakespeare’s emotional investment in the materials of Hamlet. He depicts for us the scene of Shakespeare attending the burial of his son

Shakespeare undoubtedly returned to Stratford in 1596 for his

son’s funeral. The minister, as the regulations required, would

have met the corpse at the entry to the churchyard and accompanied

it to the grave. Shakespeare must have stood there and

listened to the words of the prescribed Protestant burial service.

While the earth was thrown onto the body—perhaps by the father

himself, perhaps by friends—the minister intoned the words:

“Fore as much as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy
to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed,
we therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes

 to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection

to eternal life.”

Did Shakespeare find this simple, eloquent service adequate,’’ Greenblatt asks, “or was he tormented with a sense that something was missing? ‘What ceremony else?’ cries Laertes by the grave of his sister Ophelia; ‘What ceremony else?’ Ophelia’s funeral rites have been curtailed because she is suspected of the sin of suicide, and Laertes is both shallow and rash. But the question he repeatedly asks echoes throughout Hamlet, and it articulates a concern that extends beyond the boundaries of the play. Greenblatt goes on to give two and a half pages of specific information about the difference between Protestant and Catholic ideas about the status of the dead, and how those differences affected the ceremony of burial, before returning to the scene He has imagined for us, of Shakespeare at the grave of his son. This is one of many strong bases for Greenblatt’s argument that Hamlet is Shakespeare’s self-expression. Greenblatt’s book makes many other claims that is mentioned in this blog and many on the same basis yet why is it that he is so quoted in a blog that seeks for the truth? Because it is an amazing success: a multi-week bestseller, receiving cascades of rave reviews in all the right places and for other reasons shown in the conclusion. Greenblatt has decided the X marks the spot of the wound he has postulated in Shakespeare’s psyche, and to come up with a very real argument about the relationship between life and art in Hamlet. Greenblatt draws a very close connection between the subject of morning death in the play Hamlet and the life of Shakespeare. The Father of Psychoanalytical criticism also drew many comparisons from Shakespeare’s life to the character Hamlet. Freud said once that “Hamlet probably expresses the core of Shakespeare’s philosophy and outlook on life as no other work of his does."

                As is mentioned in the subject topic of “style” in this blog but many critics’ including Encyclopedia Britannica have drawn many close comparisons from The Tempest and the life of Shakespeare.  While we used the comparison of The Tempest to show that Shakespeare wrote himself into the play using the type of popular style. You can also see the character of the Bard from the facts previously mentioned under “style”.   As mentioned before the presentation of magic was a controversial topic of that time. Shakespeare wrote in His plays important topics to Him such as Renaissance humanism, and writing Himself in His play (Prospero). From the three examples of Shakespeare, writing in subjects that appealed to Him and express His own self-expression we know that while he was concerned about his success, He was also concerned about his own self-expression.

In my own personal study of Shakespeare I to have seen Shakespeare personal self-expression from His play Romeo & Juliet. The example from my blog post is not one of the three plays that were intended to be compared so it will not be mentioned in any detail in this post.

One important fact in regards to the subject that Shakspeare uses in Greenblatt book is that The Tempest wasn’t completely Shakespeare’s self-expression. Greenblatt states that "attempting to establish himself now not as a popular playwright but as a cultivated poet, someone who could gracefully conjure up the mythological world to which his university-educated rival poets claimed virtually exclusive access."  Greenblatt points out the “conjure” of magic was also a way for Shakespeare to see himself with “university educated poets.” Shakespeare sot for scholarly artistic expression as well as self expression.

            Another important thing to point out is that the play A Winters Tale was one of Shakespeare’s last plays and has a lot of symbolism to Shakespeare's life. What is interesting about this play in regards to the personality of Shakespeare, is not the subjects that He included but the subjects that He didn’t take out. Shakespeare borrowed the play A Winters Tale from Robert Greene’s play Pandesto: The Triumph of Time written. According to the text book "Shakespeare changes the names, reverses the two kingdoms of Sicilia and Bohemia, and alters the unhappy ending that afflicts King Pandesto and Queen Bellaria of Bohemia (Leontes and Hermione). Otherwise, the narrative outline remains intact." (Bevington) What is unique about the relationship between Greene and Shakespeare's version is that Shakespeare didn't change it as much as He normally did with His other sources for his plays. The changes in A Winters Tale "uncharacteristically slight." According to the text book "Shakespeare changes the names, reverses the two kingdoms of Sicilia and Bohemia, and alters the unhappy ending that afflicts King Pandesto and Queen Bellaria of Bohemia (Leontes and Hermione) otherwise, the narrative outline remains intact. When Shakespeare “borrowed” a text, He normally changed it to embody his own unique style and the “Jacobean fascination with dark complexities of sexual jealousy, betrayal, and social conflict.” (Bevington) While it is true that the Romantic Pastoral genre was making its way back at this time, it is also true that Shakespeare didn’t change much in this play.  What was it that Shakespeare liked so much about this play that he didn’t change it at all? One idea in the book "The Shakespeare Apocrypha" by C.F. Tucker Brooke is that “at the end of His career Shakespeare felt a renewed interest in the dramatic contexts of his youth.” As mentioned previously, Shakespeare was spending a lot of time going back and forth between His home of His youth in Startford and His home in London so His childhood days would have had to have been on His mind a lot. The fact that the one major change from Shakespeare’s play to the original play is a more emotional king also shows that the play felt like home to Him. Shakespeare was raised primarily by His mother later in life. Shakespeare must have attributed a closer sense of leadership with the more emotional type of leadership of women, generally speaking. Shakespeare died not many years after this play was written. Just as all people do, Shakespeare’s thoughts must have been on his early life towards the end. Simply stated, from the subjects of the pastoral romance that Shakespeare included from the play Pendesto: The Triumph of Tim that he  used as a source for his play A Winters Tale, It can be concluded that Shakespeare was thinking more and more about His childhood days in Stratford as he got older. 

       From looking at the subjects of Shakespeare's later plays it is clear that Shakespeare did try to appeal to his popular audience. The popular genre's of that time had specific subject topic's such as romance, shepherds, fields, and comedy just to name a few. Previously in this blog it was shown how He did appeal to all those subjects in His last plays. In His last plays He also tried to appeal to the politics of that time.Upon closer review of the play Hamlet, we can see Shakspeare's appeal to politics of his time. 

       When the play Hamlet was written there was a great deal of political turmoil. In the book “The Masks of Hamlet” by Marvin Rosenberg he identifies that throughout the play, characters draw explicit connections between the moral legitimacy of a ruler and the health of the nation. The dead King Hamlet is portrayed as a strong, forthright ruler under whose guard the state was in good health, while Claudius, a wicked politician, has corrupted and compromised Denmark to satisfy his own appetites. While Shakespeare had a great deal of self expression in His later plays, He also tried to appeal to the powers at be.