The Sonnets. Уильям Шекспир

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СКАЧАТЬ they could no longer be improved. As virtually nothing is known of Shakespeare’s life and even less about his method of working, we shall never know the truth about his plays. They certainly contain some very elegant phrasing, clever plot devices and plenty of words never before seen in print, but as to whether Shakespeare invented them from a unique imagination or whether he simply took them from others around him is anyone’s guess.

      The best bet seems to be that Shakespeare probably took the lead role in devising the original drafts of the plays, but was open to collaboration from any source when it came to developing them into workable scripts for effective performances. He would have had to work closely with his fellow actors in rehearsals, thereby finding out where to edit, abridge, alter, reword and so on.

      In turn, similar adjustments would have occurred in his absence, so that definitive versions of his plays never really existed. In effect Shakespeare was only responsible for providing the framework of plays, upon which others took liberties over time. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the English language itself was not definitive at that time either. The consequence was that people took it upon themselves to spell words however they pleased or to completely change words and phrasing to suit their own preferences.

      It is easy to see then, that Shakespeare’s plays were always going to have lives of their own, mutating and distorting in detail like Chinese whispers. The culture of creative preservation was simply not established in Elizabethan England. Creative ownership of Shakespeare’s plays was lost to him as soon as he released them into the consciousness of others. They saw nothing wrong with taking his ideas and running with them, because no one had ever suggested that one shouldn’t, and Shakespeare probably regarded his work in the same way. His plays weren’t sacrosanct works of art, they were templates for theatre folk to make their livings from, so they had every right to mould them into productions that drew in the crowds as effectively as possible. Shakespeare was like the helmsman of a sailing ship, steering the vessel but wholly reliant on the team work of his crew to arrive at the desired destination.

      It seems that Shakespeare certainly had a natural gift, but the genius of his plays may be attributable to the collective efforts of Shakespeare and others. It is a rather satisfying notion to think that his plays might actually be the creative outpourings of the Elizabethan milieu in which Shakespeare immersed himself. That makes them important social documents as well as seminal works of the English language.

       Money in Shakespeare’s Day

      It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to relate the value of money in our time to its value in another age and to compare prices of commodities today and in the past. Many items are simply not comparable on grounds of quality or serviceability.

      There was a bewildering variety of coins in use in Elizabethan England. As nearly all English and European coins were gold or silver, they had intrinsic value apart from their official value. This meant that foreign coins circulated freely in England and were officially recognized, for example the French crown (écu) worth about 30p (72 cents), and the Spanish ducat worth about 33p (79 cents). The following table shows some of the coins mentioned by Shakespeare and their relation to one another.

      A comparison of the following prices in Shakespeare’s time with the prices of the same items today will give some idea of the change in the value of money.

THE SONNETS

      TO. THE. ONLIE. BEGETTER. OF.

      THESE. INSUING. SONNETS.

      MR. W. H. ALL. HAPPINESSE.

      AND. THAT. ETERNITIE.

      PROMISED.

      BY. OUR. EVER-LIVING. POET.

      WISHETH.

      THE. WELL-WISHING.

      ADVENTURER. IN.

      SETTING.

      FORTH.

      T.T.

       1

      FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,

      That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

      But as the riper should by time decease,

      His tender heir might bear his memory;

      But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

      Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

      Making a famine where abundance lies,

      Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

      Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

      And only herald to the gaudy spring,

      Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

      And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.

      Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

      To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

       2

      When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,

      And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,

      Thy youth’s proud livery, so gaz’d on now,

      Will be a tatter’d weed of small worth held.

      Then being ask’d where all thy beauty lies,

      Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,

      To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes

      Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

      How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,

      If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine

      Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse’

      Proving his beauty by succession thine!

      This were to be new made when thou art old,

      And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

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