Cymbeline

The play Cymbeline tells the story of an ancient British king and his three children. The king, Cymbeline, is mentioned in chronicles in Shakespeare’s day, and may be historical or may be legendary. The chronicles say that he ruled at the time of Augustus Caesar, was brought up in Caesar’s court, and had a peaceful reign. His children—although the two sons, Guiderius and Arviragus, also appear in the chronicles—are presented in the play as if they have stepped in from romance or fairy tales. And Cymbeline himself, with his marriage to a beautiful but wicked queen and his almost miraculous victory in his war against Rome, also partakes far more of romance than of history.

Much of the play focuses on the story of the king’s daughter, Imogen, whose secret marriage to a gentleman named Posthumus Leonatus triggers a great deal of the play’s action. Her father, outraged at the marriage, banishes Posthumus, who is then maneuvered into making a foolish wager on Imogen’s chastity. The story that follows of villainous slander, homicidal jealousy, cross-gender disguise, a deathlike trance, the appearance of Jupiter in a vision, and final repentance, forgiveness, and reunion is the stuff of the popular fiction of the time, as well as of popular drama of an earlier period. The trials of Imogen, however, are also larger than life, reminding one of the sufferings of mythological heroines who anger powerful gods.

The story of Cymbeline’s two sons, which intersects with that of Imogen, is even more deliberately fictional. As the play tells it, Guiderius and Arviragus were kidnapped in infancy and raised in a cave in the Welsh mountains. (The play acknowledges the incredible nature of this part of the plot by having a gentleman say to a doubter: “Howsoe’er ‘tis strange, / Or that the negligence may well be laughed at, / Yet is it true, sir”). Knowing nothing of their heritage and remembering no life beyond their mountain cave and its environs, the young men yearn for adventure. In the course of the play, they rescue a starving young man (their sister Imogen in disguise); they kill and decapitate Cymbeline’s stepson; and they go into battle against the Roman army and prove almost superhumanly valiant.

The fairy-tale-like stories of Imogen and of her brothers play against the somewhat more realistic story of King Cymbeline as he takes on a Roman invasion rather than pay the tribute agreed to by his ancestors. References to such personages as Augustus Caesar and Julius Caesar and his conquest of Britain appear to ground Cymbeline’s story in history. But Cymbeline too is a familiar romance figure—a father who loses his children and after long years miraculously finds them; a king who, through what seems supernatural intervention, defeats an invading army and then grants pardon to all.

Shakespeare uses the long-ago-and-far-away fantasy quality of the stories dramatized in Cymbeline as the ground against which he displays unusually powerful human emotions. The play tells of love and loss, of jealousy and fury, of the joy of finding and the near-delirium of reuniting after heartrending separation; and the language in which the emotions accompanying these human states are expressed has never been more potent. The audience is seldom allowed to forget that the action is fictional; at the same time, the characters’ ordeals and triumphs and their responses to those moments carry a tremendous charge. The resulting drama, while reminding us at many times of stories and situations explored in earlier Shakespearean plays, has a quality that links it to his other late work—especially The Winter’s Taleand The Tempest—as a dramatization of improbable story lifted, through its characters and its language, into a realm that is nearly mythic in scope.

Shakespeare is thought to have written Cymbeline in 1609–10; a contemporary observer saw it performed in 1611. The play was published in the First Folio in 1623. Among Shakespeare’s sources for Cymbeline were Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587), The Mirror for Magistrates, Boccaccio’s Decameron, and The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune.

Hamlet

Hamlet is the most popular of Shakespeare's plays for readers and theater audiences. Superficially, it follows the well-worn path of a “revenge tragedy.” This popular type of play centered on a heroic figure—in this case, Hamlet, prince of Denmark—and his quest for vengeance against his father’s murderer—here, Hamlet’s uncle Claudius, now the king of Denmark in his dead brother’s place. Much of the play’s enduring fascination, however, lies in the uncertainties that Shakespeare chose to weave through this familiar plot. In the end, Hamlet is not only Shakespeare’s most popular work, but also his most puzzling.

Many questions about the play continue to fascinate readers and playgoers. What is this Ghost that appears to Hamlet? Is it Hamlet's murdered father returned from the everlasting fire to demand justice upon his murderer? Is it a "goblin damned"—that is, a demon bent on claiming Hamlet's soul by tempting him to assassinate his king? Or is the Ghost "a spirit of health," an angelic messenger revealing to Hamlet that the young man's mission in life is to cleanse the kingdom of Denmark of its corrupt king?

And what happens to Hamlet after the Ghost commands that the throne of Denmark be cleansed? Does Hamlet actually go mad, becoming unhinged by the accusation that his uncle murdered his father or by the ugly picture the Ghost paints of Hamlet's lustful mother? Or does Hamlet merely pretend to be mad, pretend so well that he makes us wonder if we can tell the difference between sanity and madness? Why is he so hostile to women, both to his mother and to the woman whom he once courted and whom he claims to have loved dearly? Why does he wait so long to confirm the guilt of the king after the Ghost has accused the king of murder? And once he is convinced that the king is a murderer, why does Hamlet not act immediately?

And what about Gertrude? Was she unfaithful to her husband during his lifetime? Was she complicit in his murder? What does she come to believe about Hamlet's madness? And about her new husband?

Beyond such questions about the play and its characters lie deeper issues about the rightness of revenge, about how to achieve an ethical life, and about how to live in a world where tears of sorrow, loving smiles, and friendly words are all suspect because all are "actions that a man might play." Hamlet's world is bleak and cold because almost no one and nothing can be trusted. But his world, and Hamlet himself, continue to draw us to them, speaking to every generation of its own problems and its own yearnings. It is a play that seems particularly pertinent today—just as it has seemed particularly pertinent to any number of generations before us.

Shakespeare is thought to have written Hamlet in 1599–1601. It was published as a quarto in 1603. In 1604–05 a second quarto containing another, much fuller text superseded this first printing. The Folio version of 1623 is much closer to this second quarto than to the first, but differs from the second by hundreds of lines. There are thus three texts of the play. A major source for the plot may have been an earlier Hamlet play, mentioned in contemporary documents, but now lost. Shakespeare also may have drawn on several other contemporary works, including accounts of drinking at the Danish court and of “melancholy.”

Henry IV, Part 1

At the center of Henry IV, Part 1 (which is called “Part 1” because it has a sequel, “Part 2”) are several family relationships—primarily pairs of fathers and sons, but also brothers, husbands and wives, and uncles and nephews.

King Henry and his son, Prince Hal, form one major father-son pair. When the play opens, Henry is in despair because Hal lives a dissolute life. Henry himself has won (rather than inherited) the throne of England; Hal’s way of living can be seen as calling into public question Henry’s and his family’s right to the throne. In seeming contrast to the king and prince are the father-son pair of Hotspur (Lord Henry Percy) and his father, the earl of Northumberland. Hotspur accomplishes deeds that “a prince can boast of”— as Henry is reminded—and Henry openly envies Northumberland “his Harry,” wishing that it could be proved that the two sons had been exchanged in their cradles so that Henry could be rid of Hal and could claim the gallant Hotspur as his own. In the meantime, Hal himself has entered into a quasi-father-son relationship with a disreputable knight, Sir John Falstaff.

Much of the action of the play can be seen as the interactions of these pairs of fathers and sons. The fathers, Henry and Northumberland (along with Northumberland’s brother, Worcester), fight for control of England while Henry and Falstaff seem to fight for Hal’s love and loyalty. At the same time, the sons Hal and Hotspur fight for the place of honor in the eyes of the English nobility.

Another strand of action centers on a different set of family relationships. Hotspur’s stand against King Henry, engineered by his uncle Worcester and colluded in by Hotspur’s father, focuses on Hotspur’s brother-in-law, Mortimer. As this play presents English history, this is the Mortimer whom Richard II had proclaimed heir to the throne. Mortimer has led “the men of Herefordshire” to fight against the great Welsh magician Owen Glendower, has been defeated and captured, and has married Glendower’s daughter. King Henry has declared Mortimer’s defeat a defection and, because Mortimer is now his captor’s son-in-law, has pronounced Mortimer a traitor whom Henry will not ransom. Hotspur, in declaring war on England’s king, sees himself as fighting for the honor and rescue of his wife’s brother.

This play’s highlighting of family patterns and family struggles is most clear in such scenes as the two father-son scenes in mid-play. The first, parodic scene is staged in the tavern when Falstaff and Hal pretend to be father and son, followed by the second scene played out in earnest between King Henry and Prince Hal. Between these two scenes comes the remarkable domestic scene in Wales, where Mortimer, the supposed heir to the throne, and Hotspur, valiant leader of rebel forces, are presented primarily as husbands and brothers-in-law and where Owen Glendower, legendary wizard and military commander, is presented as doting father and concerned father-in-law.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that several of the important details that, in the play, bring father-son and other family relationships into prominence are Shakespeare’s own creations—are not found, that is, in the chronicles of English history that provide the play’s historical narrative. To mention only a few examples: Hal’s offer to fight Hotspur in single combat, Hal’s rescue of his father in battle, and Hal’s final battle with Hotspur—none of these appear in the chronicles. (The fact that Hal and Hotspur are presented in the play as being the same age, when, in fact, Hotspur was older than King Henry himself, may not be a change that Shakespeare himself made, but may instead indicate that Shakespeare was here following Samuel Daniel’s Civil Wars [1595] rather than Holinshed’s Chronicles.) Second, the domestic scene in Wales depends upon major changes of chronicle material. In the chronicles, the meeting to divide the kingdom and to draw up the indentures was not attended by the rebel lords but was conducted by their representatives, and it did not take place at Glendower’s home but at the residence of the Archbishop of Bangor. Thus the presentation of the rebel lords in a family setting required a significant rewriting of history.

Such rewriting and the play’s resulting focus on family relationships have two important effects. First, they pull us into the play: Henry, Hal, and Hotspur are not so much distant historical figures as they are persons caught up in relationships and struggles that resemble family situations even today. Second, the play’s focus on the family reminds us that the wars for control of England, Scotland, and Wales in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were basically family struggles. When the oldest son of King Edward III died prematurely, leaving behind an infant son to inherit the kingdom (as Richard II) at Edward III’s death, the stage was set for the bloody centuries that followed, as brothers, cousins, and nephews fought each other to win and retain the tantalizing prize of the crown.

Scholars believe that Shakespeare wrote Henry IV, Part I in 1596-97. It was published as a quarto in 1598

Henry VI, Part 2

Henry VI, Part 2 puts onstage a kind of story that was very popular in the years before Shakespeare began writing, a story of the fall, one after another, of men and women from positions of great power to their untimely deaths.

Such a pattern in this play was obvious to the publishers who first put a version of it into print in 1594. They chose not to call the play by the name of its king, as did the First Folio, and as we do. Instead they gave it the title The First part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster, with the death of the good Duke Humphrey: And the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the Tragicall end of the proud Cardinall of Winchester, with the notable Rebellion of Iacke Cade: and the Duke of Yorkes first claim vnto the Crowne. This title, typical of the time in its length, indicates a reading of the play as the beginning of “First part” of a succession of catastrophes.

The first of those catastrophes afflicts “the good Duke Humphrey,” or the Duke of Gloucester, who at the beginning of the play is Lord Protector of England and therefore the most powerful man in the kingdom—the one on whom King Henry relies absolutely to dispense justice to all his subjects. Gloucester will be murdered, but only after his beloved Duchess has herself fallen, sent into exile through her own ambitions and the conspiracy of their enemies.

After Gloucester’s murder, as the title goes on to say, comes “the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolke.” Another of the most powerful men in England, Suffolk was the noble who arranged King Henry’s marriage to Queen Margaret and who, as the queen’s lover, ruled England through the influence he exerted over the queen, who in turn prevailed over the king. But when Suffolk conspired with the “Cardinall of Winchester” to kill Gloucester, Suffolk was banished. In his newly vulnerable state, he became the victim of assassination.

“The Tragicall end of the proud Cardinall of Winchester” seems almost the result of Gloucester’s murder, as the Cardinal dies raving about his guilt and the punishment waiting for him in the next world.

The play shows that the fall of these English nobles and their ability to prey on each other come about through the weakness of their king. Uninterested in politics, King Henry sought a life of spiritual contemplation; almost all of his speeches reveal in their allusions to the Bible his otherworldly interests. Largely absent from deliberations of the affairs of state, King Henry left his royal family and aristocrats free to contend for power.

As the conclusion of the long title of the 1594 quarto reveals, however, the king's own liberty is thereby also put at risk, as first Jack Cade and then the Duke of York openly rise up against him. Henry VI, Part 2 keeps its audience in suspense about the ultimate fate of the king by ending at the beginning of the Wars of the Roses, which set the white rose of the Duke or York against the red rose of King Henry of the House of Lancaster. The outcome of these wars will be presented inHenry VI, Part 3.