The Merchant of Venice. Уильям Шекспир

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СКАЧАТЬ A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act II, Scene i). Once again, imagination must have been required of the audience.

      Costumes were the one aspect of stage production in which trouble and expense were hardly ever spared to obtain a magnificent effect. Only occasionally did they attempt any historical accuracy (almost all Elizabethan productions were what we should call ‘modern-dress’ ones), but they were appropriate to the characters who wore them: kings were seen to be kings and beggars were similarly unmistakable. It is an odd fact that there was usually no attempt at illusion in the costuming: if a costume looked fine and rich it probably was. Indeed, some of the costumes were almost unbelievably expensive. Henslowe lent his company £19 to buy a cloak, and the Alleyn brothers, well-known actors, gave £20 for a ‘black velvet cloak, with sleeves embroidered all with silver and gold, lined with black satin striped with gold’.

      With the one exception of the costumes, the ‘machinery’ of the playhouse was economical and uncomplicated rather than crude and rough, as we can see from this second and more leisurely look at it. This meant that playwrights were stimulated to produce the imaginative effects that they wanted from the language that they used. In the case of a really great writer like Shakespeare, when he had learned his trade in the theatre as an actor, it seems that he received quite enough assistance of a mechanical and structural kind without having irksome restrictions and conventions imposed on him; it is interesting to try to guess what he would have done with the highly complex apparatus of a modern television studio. We can see when we look back to his time that he used his instrument, the Elizabethan theatre, to the full, but placed his ultimate reliance on the communication between his imagination and that of his audience through the medium of words. It is, above all, his rich and wonderful use of language that must have made play-going at that time a memorable experience for people of widely different kinds. Fortunately, the deep satisfaction of appreciating and enjoying Shakespeare’s work can be ours also, if we are willing to overcome the language difficulty produced by the passing of time.

       Shakespeare: A Timeline

      Very little indeed is known about Shakespeare’s private life; the facts included here are almost the only indisputable ones. The dates of Shakespeare’s plays are those on which they were first produced.

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1558	Queen Elizabeth crowned.
1561	Francis Bacon born.
1564	Christopher Marlowe born.	William Shakespeare born, April 23rd, baptized April 26th.
1566		Shakespeare’s brother, Gilbert, born.
1567	Mary, Queen of Scots, deposed. James VI (later James I of England) crowned King of Scotland.
1572	Ben Jonson born. Lord Leicester’s Company (of players) licensed; later called Lord Strange’s, then the Lord Chamberlain’s and fi nally (under James) the King’s Men.
1573	John Donne born.
1574	The Common Council of London directs that all plays and playhouses in London must be licensed.
1576	James Burbage builds the first public playhouse, The Theatre, at Shoreditch, outside the walls of the City.
1577	Francis Drake begins his voyage round the world (completed 1580). Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland published (which Shakespeare later used extensively).
1582		Shakespeare married to Anne Hathaway.
1583	The Queen’s Company founded by royal warrant.	Shakespeare’s daughter, Susanna, born.
1585		Shakespeare’s twins, Hamnet and Judith, born.
1586	Sir Philip Sidney, the Elizabethan ideal ‘Christian knight’, poet, patron, soldier, killed at Zutphen in the Low Countries.
1587	Mary, Queen of Scots, beheaded. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (Part I) first staged.
1588	Defeat of the Spanish Armada. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (Part II) first staged.
1589	Marlowe’s Jew of Malta and Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy (a ‘revenge tragedy’ and one of the most popular plays of Elizabethan times).
1590	Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Books I–III) published.
1592	Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Edward II first staged. Witchcraft trials in Scotland. Robert Greene, a rival playwright, refers to Shakespeare as ‘an upstart crow’ and ‘the only Shake-scene in a country’.	Titus Andronicus Henry VI, Parts I, II and III Richard III
1593	London theatres closed by the plague. Christopher Marlowe killed in a Deptford tavern.	Two Gentlemen of Verona Comedy of Errors The Taming of the Shrew Love’s Labour’s Lost
1594	Shakespeare’s company becomes The Lord Chamberlain’s Men.	Romeo and Juliet
1595	Raleigh’s first expedition to Guiana. Last expedition of Drake and Hawkins (both died).	Richard II A Midsummer Night’s Dream
1596	Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Books IV–VI) published. James Burbage buys rooms at Blackfriars and begins to convert them into a theatre.	King John The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare’s son Hamnet dies. Shakespeare’s father is granted a coat of arms.
1597	James Burbage dies, his son Richard, a famous actor, turns the Blackfriars Theatre into a private playhouse.	Henry IV (Part I) Shakespeare buys and redecorates New Place at Stratford.
1598	Death of Philip II of Spain	Henry IV (Part II) Much Ado About Nothing
1599	Death of Edmund Spenser. The Globe Theatre completed at Bankside by Richard and Cuthbert Burbage.	Henry V Julius Caesar As You Like It
1600	Fortune Theatre built at Cripplegate. East India Company founded for the extension of English trade and influence in the East. The Children of the Chapel begin to use the hall at Blackfriars.