# books / William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction - Stanley Wells

‘He was not of an age, but for all time.’

cover

One of my [40 before 40] is to study & know well a new Shakespeare play, so that is my Shakespeare project over the next month. It’s been a while since I read the great playwright, so I refreshed my memory on his life and the play’s context. These Very Short series never disappoint.

Notes & Highlights

the Rose, the only one of which substantial remains have so far been excavated,

Where are these ruins?

Update: The Rose ruins, still being excavated, are under an office block but open for visits. I’ll be taking a look.

He was a practical man of the theatre, aware of the capabilities and limitations of his actors and of the demands of his audiences.
Many actors belonged to the same company for most or all of their careers: for instance the leading man of the Lord Chamberlain’s company, Richard Burbage, a founder member in 1594, stayed with it till he died in 1619. This may be why the leading men in Shakespeare’s plays—from Romeo through Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Lear to Prospero—tend to age along with him.

A key takeaway was the extent to which I should think about Shakespeare as a theatre man first. While it was clear he did not merely pander to audiences, challenging with new rather than repeating worn patterns, he was pragmatic, knowing the strengths of his company, the capabilities and realities of the playhouse, and wrote with this in mind. My favourite nugget on this front is that the characters tend to age with Shakespeare and his band, so that they could reasonably believably still play them.

Upon a time, when Burbage played Richard III, there was a citizen [he means a woman, a citizen’s wife] grew so far in liking with him that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name of Richard III. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained, and at his game ere Burbage came. Then, message being brought that Richard the Third was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror came before Richard the Third.

A great story, true or otherwise.

‘For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, | Who art as black as hell, as dark as night’ (147).

No. 129 expresses shame at sexual enthralment: ‘Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame | Is lust in action.’

Rather naughtily, though entirely characteristically, George Bernard Shaw praised Shakespeare’s ‘gift of telling a story (provided that someone else told it to him first)’.

‘The first thing we do let’s kill all the lawyers’ – Henry VI, Part 2

’the quick forge and working-house of thought’ – Henry V

This quote from Henry VI P2 does well to describe Hamlet, which reveals the working and troubled machinations of the mind unlike any prior writer.

‘O God’, Cassio says, ’that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!’ (3.1.283–5).

Alcohol

On Shakespeare’s influence and relevance:

a single phrase from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, ‘art made tongue-tied by authority’ (66), became a rallying cry for central European protests against political censorship.