1. “He was not of an Age,
but for all time!”
Peter Brown
EAQUALS AGM, Budapest – 26th April 2014
2.
3. Nuanced characters
• Iago: „Good name in man and woman, dear
my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis
something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to
thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.‟
Othello Act 3, scene 3, 155–161
9. As You Like It, II.7. 139-167
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women
merely players;
They have their exits and their
entrances,
And one man in his time plays
many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
14. Curiosities: Abdul Wahid – aged 42
• Who? Abd el-Ouaheed ben Messaoud ben
Mohammed Anoun
• What? Ambassador and Plenipotentiary from
the King of Barbary to Elizabeth I
• When? For over six months from 1600 to 1601
• Why? To negotiate an alliance against Spain
15. Curiosities: Final Judgments?
Cassio: “he [Othello] was great of heart” (V.ii)
Othello: “one that loved not wisely, but too well”
(V.ii.542)
Iago:
• “The Moor is of a free and open nature
That thinks men honest … ” (I.iii.398-9)
Ben Johnson‟s tribute to Shakespeare:
• “Shakespeare was indeed honest, and of
an open and free nature … ”
18. Shakespeare‟s legacy?
• 39 Plays – (40 – Cardenio, lost)
• 35 collected in The First Folio – 1623
• Poetry (12 major poems) – Sonnets (hundreds)
• a new world of words: WS in Love
– the living English language we use today
– e.g. Agatha Christie‟s Murder Most Foul, Mousetrap
• A mainspring of imaginative English literature -
formative influence on Italian, French, German,
Spanish, Russian cultures … > 200 operas,
music, painting, >300 films, thousands on TV
19. Fig 4: 767 1000-word
pieces of the Folio Plays
rated on scaled
Principal Components 1
and 4. ... all the plays
are color-coded red,
with the exception of
Othello, which is coded
blue, and collects
mostly in the upper-
right hand quadrant
where the Comedies
tend to cluster.
20. Shakespeare‟s legacy?
• Neither here nor there (Othello)
• Send him packing (Henry IV)
• Set your teeth on edge (Henry IV)
• There's method in my madness (Hamlet)
• Too much of a good thing (As You Like It)
• Vanish into thin air (Othello)
• In the twinkling of an eye (Merchant Of
Venice)
• Mum's the word (Henry VI, Part 2)
21. Shakespeare‟s legacy?
• A laughing stock (Merry Wives of Windsor)
• A sorry sight (Macbeth)
• As dead as a doornail (Henry VI)
• Eaten out of house and home (Henry V, Pt 2)
• Fair play (The Tempest)
• I will wear my heart upon my sleeve (Othello)
• In a pickle (The Tempes)
• In stitches (Twelfth Night)
• ...
22.
23. Geoffrey Chaucer 1342[?]-1400
a thumbnail sketch - I
• Transforms E even more than Dante transforms Florentine
into Italian: imports continental forms, knew Petrarch,
“but of heaven and hell I have no power to sing”…
• Co-incides with growth of English
– c13th – 20 – medical MSS in EN
– c14th – 140
– c15th – 872
– Edward I & II: FR + Latin | Edward: III EN
– 1362 – Statute of Pleading – EN now in public life
• Growth in education, schools & universities
• >80 GC MSS survive (no printing yet)
• The Canterbury Tales has been in print >520 years
24. Geoffrey Chaucer 1342[?]-1400
a thumbnail sketch - II
• Created English as a medium of art
• Before Chaucer simply a demotic
language, afterwards a literature
• Adds ca 1,000 words to English
(Chaucer had a vocabulary of ca 8,000)
– Jubilee, administration, policy, tranquillity,
secret, galaxy, digestion, philosophical, …
– snow-white, ...
25. Geoffrey Chaucer 1342[?]-1400
a thumbnail sketch - III
• Alliterative systems (from Anglo-Saxon roots)
– Friend & foe
– Busy as bees …
– No doubt, I dare say, …
• Many similarities to Shakespeare:
– intoxicated with words
– takes people as they come – not censorious
– very English - sees England as a unity
– impact on the English language – enriches it
– uses speech & vernaculars (no theatre then)
26. New Language for New Frontiers
• WS introduced 2,076 (6,700) entirely new
words (10%) into English as well as new
prefixes:
– un- (314): undressed, unpolished, untrained,
uncomfortable, unaware, ...
– out- : outswear, outpray, outvillain, (outperform) ...
• Introduced ca. 600 words in Hamlet (2/3 never used
again) of which 170 new
– King Lear: 350 | Julius Caesar: 70
• New usage: Hendiadys (1 from 2): 66 examples
– “the book and volume of my brain” (I.v.103)
27. Intoxicated with words – new English
• WS takes words out of the common stock
and baptises them anew:
– abode, abstemious, affecting, anchovy, attorney-
ship, weather-bitten (-beaten), well-ordered, well-
read, widen, worm-hole, zany, ...
• 322 words only WS used
– also politicians: misunderestimate, dublicitous, ..
• Some WS words go but others caught on:
– bandit, charmingly, tightly, ...
28. Shakespeare as an explorer
• “The historian speaks of what has
happened, the poet of what can
happen” Aristotle – Poetics
• The true discoverer or Explorer is not
he who discovers new lands, but he
who sees the world with new eyes
29.
30.
31. The Tempest: 1st farewell
“The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous
palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yes, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like the insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little
life
Is rounded with a sleep. …”
Prospero IV.i.152 ff
32. The Tempest: 2nd farewell
“... - I have bedimmed
The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
And twixt the green sea and azzured vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire… Graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let „em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure…..I‟ll break my staff.”
Prospero V.i.41 ff
• as Playwright & Dramatic Poet
33.
34. The Tempest: 3rd farewell
“Now my charms are all overthrown,
And what strength I have‟s mine own,
Which is most faint! …
As you from crimes would pardon‟d be,
Let your indulgence set me free.”
The Epilogue – spoken by Prospero
• as Actor & Player
• Is Shakespeare speaking to us via
Prospero for these 3 farewells?
