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Shakespeare, Fletcher and Baroque Tragedy
- Edited by Kenneth Muir
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- Shakespeare Survey
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- 28 March 2007
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- 02 December 1967, pp 1-16
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Summary
The supremacy of Shakespearian tragedy is no doubt unchallenged and unchallengeable, though it may be that its superiority to other types lies more in the man than in the actual type, and that if the type had been represented only by Marlowe, Chapman and the rest its position would be less assured. The purpose of this paper, however, is not to discuss questions of value, though I believe that the later seventeenth-century type of tragedy, which begins with Fletcher and in England reaches its fullest growth with Dryden, suffers rather unfairly in critical opinion from being regarded, especially in its earlier stages, too much as a degenerate descendant of a great model rather than an attempt to evolve something answering to the needs of a different age, with a different vision and climate of opinion. The paper is much more an attempt to point out some of the more essential differences between the two types which may help us to see better where Shakespeare’s strength does chiefly lie. It may seem strange that I should choose to demonstrate the later type mainly on Fletcher, who after all has only two not very outstanding tragedies to his name—for I do not believe that he had much to do with the planning of the Beaumont tragedies. But most of what I say applies to his tragi-comedies too. And for me the peculiar interest of Fletcher lies in the fact that he does represent the gateway to seventeenth-century tragedy, or what I should call the Baroque type in its essentials and without the neo-classical accidentals that loom so large with Dryden and his fellows, as also with the French classicists.
Shakespeare and Lyly
- Edited by Allardyce Nicoll
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- Shakespeare Survey
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- 28 March 2007
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- 02 January 1961, pp 15-24
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Summary
Shakespeare’s debt to Lyly has never been denied, and it might well seem that any attempt to resurvey the subject could be no more than the gleaning of an already well-harvested field. Yet in fact much more than the gleaning of a few stray ears of corn has been left for those who would apply themselves to the task of making a fresh study of the relationship between these two authors. In particular, it may be said at once that, in the earlier investigations of the theme, there has been a definite tendency to concentrate rather on concrete parallels than on fundamental principles, and thus to forget how far-reaching the effect of the Lylian formula was upon Shakespeare, how it dominated most of his comedies, overpowering even the Jonsonian humour of Twelfth Night and mingling with the Beaumontesque-D’Urfeian romanticism of The Tempest. Furthermore, it may be suggested that Lyly’s example was of no less importance to Shakespeare for what it gave him positively than for its negative effect in raising in him a spirit of opposition.
Naturally, to speak of a Lylian formula or type of comedy is not altogether correct. If that particular sort of comedy should bear the name of any one man, it might rather have been that of Edwardes, who had given an excellent example of the type nearly twenty years before Lyly; and its roots reach back much further—to that extremely interesting, indeed almost seminal playlet Fulgens and Lucrece. But the fact is that Lyly represents for us a genre of which otherwise we should know extremely little; and though it is possible that much of what we may call the Lylian elements in Shakespeare derived either directly or through Lyly from other sources, we are justified in giving his name to English court comedy in general. And there is at least one feature of Lyly's comedies (perhaps the most important of all) that does not occur in Damon and Pythias—they are for the most part love-comedies, in which the mainspring of the comedy itself is love. And that was in those days something practically unique; nor has it been very frequent since then.
The Structural Pattern of Shakespeare’s Tragedies
- Edited by Allardyce Nicoll
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- Book:
- Shakespeare Survey
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- 28 March 2007
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- 02 January 1950, pp 58-65
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Summary
The subject of this paper is not, on the whole, one to which scholars have devoted much attention, and the results of this lack of interest have in some ways been unfortunate. Shakespeare’s tragedies seem to conform outwardly to the conventional Aristotelian triangle well enough to foster on the one hand the impression that the triangular scheme is the only possible one and that playwrights such as Fletcher who have worked on other principles are lacking in form, while on the other certain un-Aristotelian tendencies, such as the frequent disappearance of the hero during the decline, or the rather abrupt episodic nature of the structure, have been overlooked and even, for instance in discussing the doubtful plays, been regarded as un-Shakespearian while in fact they are typical.
Of the four great tragedies it is Hamlet that seems to exhibit the Shakespearian pattern most perfectly. The opening scene is a wonderful piece of atmosphere: a solitary sentry pacing up and down, muffled in an inky cloak to suggest the dark and the cold; to him another figure, similarly muffled, a hasty snatch of conversation in muffled tones, betraying a sense of uneasiness—then more figures, more talk, and out of it, abruptly dropped, the cause of the uneasiness—"What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?"