Shakespeare and Drama
Analyze dramatic structure, soliloquy, conflict, irony, performance choices, and Elizabethan context in Shakespearean drama.
A lesson of English 12, in British and World Literature, about 10 minutes.
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to analyze Shakespearean drama at an advanced level, understand how Elizabethan theater conventions shape meaning, and situate Shakespeare in both historical context and the ongoing critical conversation.
Shakespeare's Historical Context
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote for the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage — a public theater that included audiences from all classes. The theater was:
- Open-air (the Globe had no roof over the stage)
- All-male: women were not permitted to perform; boy actors played female roles
- Minimal sets and props: language created setting
- Densely political: plays engaged with questions of power, succession, and social order that were directly relevant to Elizabethan England
Understanding these conditions helps explain why Shakespeare's language is so rich — it had to do the work of sets, lighting, and much else.
The Plays: Major Categories
Tragedies: a protagonist of high status falls through a combination of character flaw (hamartia), circumstance, and tragic choice. (Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear)
Comedies: social disorder resolved through love, identity revelation, and usually marriage. (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night)
Histories: chronicle plays about English kings; the relationship between personal character and political order. (Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V)
Late romances: tragicomedies mixing loss and restoration. (The Tempest, The Winter's Tale)
Reading Shakespeare: Language
Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter (da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM) — the dominant verse form. High-status characters tend to speak in blank verse; lower-class characters more often in prose.
Rhymed couplets: often mark the close of a scene or signal a character's resolution.
Prose: used for comic scenes, letter-reading, and lower-status characters.
The verse can be "scanned" — the stress patterns reveal intended emphasis and can signal performance choices.
Advanced Reading of Hamlet
Hamlet raises the central modern question: is delay cowardice or wisdom? The play refuses to resolve this, which is precisely what makes it inexhaustible.