Hi everyone, it's Lauren and this is the
first video in a series that I'm doing
on the plays of William Shakespeare. I'm
going to be looking at Shakespeare in
context, Shakespeare in performance and
giving some tips and advice on how to
read Shakespeare and also doing some
separate videos really analyzing
some of his plays, so if there's any
requests that you have, any specific
parts of Shakespeare or certain plays
that you want me to focus on, let me know
in the comments below and today's video
is just going to be a really brief
really brand-new overview, sort of a
Shakespeare 1010 for people who maybe who are
interested in learning a little bit more about
Shakespeare but don't really have any
experience or have had really bad
experiences in school. Starting from the
very beginning, Shakespeare was born in
1564 in Stratford-Upon-Avon which is a
small town in the middle of England. He
was married there, he had three children
and then sometime later left them all
behind to move down to London to pursue
his career as an actor and playwright. He
was part of a group of players called
the Lord Chamberlain's Men and they
performed in several different theatres
in London, they also toured the country,
until about 15 99 when they opened their
own theater - The Globe, a replica of which
is in London which you can go and what
plays in today, and this was an open-air
theatre. The stage is covered, so the actors
stay dry but if it rains all of the
audience standing in the pit below get
wet
Although Shakespeare's language is very
poetic and I do enjoy reading his plays
his plays weren't really written to be
read they are written to be performed so
understanding the context in which they
performed really helps you understand
what's going on in the plays and Shakespeare's
motivation for some of the things
that he's doing. So we can roughly
divided Shakespeare's plays into about two
areas, the first area is when he's
performing under the reign of Queen
Elizabeth I and plays of this
time tend to be historical plays which
are really fashionable and also a lot of
comedies are written at this time. It's
important to remember with the history
plays in particular that these are not
being written from a position of
objectivity because Queen Elizabeth is a
Tudor monarch and she is the current
reigning monarch, and there is a lot of
Tudor propaganda which turns up in some of
these plays that Shakespeare's writing
particularly Richard III
Quick English history lesson here!
Richard III was the king before Elizabeth's
grandfather, Henry VII and he
was killed in battle during a time
called the Wars of the Roses and since
he was killed and basically usurped
by Henry VII, it was really
important for the Tudors to depict
him as a terrible cruel and evil king
which he is depicted as in 'Richard III'
The second part of Shakespeare's career
takes place under the reign of King
James I who is a Stuart king and
his group of players, the Lord
Chamberlain's Men is changed to become
the King's Men and they have a much
closer relationship with the monarch and
there is a change in the type of plays
that he's producing at this point, they're not
so much comedies and really literal
historical tragedies. They're a little bit more
complex such as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear
and The Winter's Tale, they are all
written in this period. We also notice some
themes which are probably appealing more
to King James's taste, who was really
obsessed with magic and witchcraft and
those sorts of things appear in Macbeth
and The Tempest. At this point the King's
Men are also given a theatre to perform in
during the winter months because you can
imagine in The Globe being open air can
only be performed in summer, it would be
too cold in the winter otherwise, but
performing plays indoors is actually
kind of a new and interesting concept
and allows the players to try out some
different techniques with special
effects. It means that they can make the
stage dark for the first time, they've
never been able to do that before and the
use of candlelight is very interesting
and important and comes back in lots of
Jacobean plays. Now we come to the part
which a lot of people seem to struggle
with with Shakespeare and that is the
language itself. So firstly you have to
remember that these plays were written
400 years ago and language and certain
words, certain meanings is very different
to how we speak now. Not only that, you've
got to imagine that these players are
performing these words, performing these
speeches in front of audiences who don't
have very much set, there's not very
much special special effects as we know
them today, people might be standing in
the cold for hours on end to see these
plays and the key isn't just a tell a good
story is also to capture the imagination
of the audience and also maybe explain
stuff that can't be portrayed them
visually. For example with plays like
Henry V you can't have a massive
battlefield on the stage, it just isn't
possible and they
can't do it justice to the audience
so they have to use their words, they
have to use the language to really evoke
the atmosphere. So this descriptive
poetry that he uses can get a little bit
flowery and to a modern audience seemed to
get a little bit off topic, but you've got to
perhaps put yourselves in the shoes of
the audience who are listening to these
passages.Shakespeare also uses a lot
of myth, a lot of stories that his audience
would have been really familiar with in
the way that these days we might watch a
lot of World War II films or read some
books which are fairytale retellings
because those stories are sort of in our
collective consciousness and Shakespeare
uses stories of recent history such as
the Wars of the Roses which were not
really long ago for his audience and he
also uses allusions and comparisons to
characters in Greek and Roman mythology
and well-known folktales because these
are stories that his audiences would
have been really aware of and it's just
a metaphorical way of setting the scene
and explaining and the emotions and
motivations of the characters. And this
is why I would really advocate listening
to Shakespeare being read aloud, by
someone else or reading and out to
yourself or watching an adaptation of
one of his plays either on stage or
film. Not only can the language itself be
a little bit tricky at times but also
the structure I think people can find
alienating. So Shakespeare uses two
different types of structure depending
on who's speaking
and depending on the nature of the
speech or the scene. He uses prose for
more colloquial chatter when people are
talking to each other, being funny or
when characters are of a lower status
and then he uses verse for his epic
grand speeches and often when characters
are of noble blood. Now the verses,
although it doesn't often rhyme, it does
sometimes, and they are written in
iambic pentameter. Now I'm sure you've
heard that phrase before I'm sure it was
banged over your head at school, and it
really is very simple, so breaking it
down, a penetameter is basically a set
of five pairs of syllables we know that
pent (pentagon) is five, it's five sets of
two syllables which means actually the
whole sentence itself is ten syllables
but it's more like ONE and TWO and THREE
and FOUR and FIVE
that is a penetameter. Iambic
pentameter flips the rhythm of that on
its head a little bit and it means that
the stress is always on the second
syllable rather than the first
so rather than ONE andTWO and THREE and
FOUR and FIVE
it's more like da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM
To BE or NOTto BE that IS the QUEStion
that his iambic pentameter. Simple!
Another reason I think it's a really
good idea to watch a production or an
adaptation of Shakespeare's plays is the
way that his place have been written
down and preserved there aren't a lot of
stage directions in there which can make
a reader perhaps imagine the characters
just standing on stage and giving a
really long monologue and that there's
not much going on, and you really need a
director to bring this stuff to life
When these plays were written, the actors
didn't get a whole play as you would
these days, they literally got their
parts written down just with the last
line of the person speaking before them
so that they knew their cue so that when
they heard that line they knew that that
was then their turn to speak
so there wasn't really a play as such
which existed in one form for the actors
to work from
so the stage directions and what was
going on would have just been happening
while the play was being rehearsed and
they haven't all been written down
However there are actually a lot of
visual jokes in Shakespeare and gestures
which you can see in people's words
they're reacting to, but it's not obvious
that that's what other characters are
doing so if you are new to Shakespeare I
think it really helps having someone who
deeply understands that text bring it to
life before your eyes and it just helps
with the comprehension
for example there's a scene in As You
Like It where Rosalind walks on stage
and says 'Well this is the Forest of
Arden' and that's just a line when you
read it down because she's saying 'oh
we're in the forest', but if you saw her
on stage in a blank and empty wooden
state and she goes 'Wwell this is the
Forest of Arden!'
that's actually quite funny (if you're
actually a professional actor and not me)
and that's quite a funny visual joke for
the audience but it's something that you
wouldn't get on a first read. So I hope
that has whetted your appetite somewhat
and given you a little bit of
background into who Shakespeare was and
how and why he was writing these plays.
Like I said I'm going to be doing some
small videos really focusing on a couple
of his plays, perhaps ones that you're
studying at
school maybe Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet
and really going through the language
of them, so if there are any that you
would really particularly like me to
make a video on please let me know
make sure that your subscribed to get all
of the videos in this series and I will
see you next time, bye!
