William Shakespeare's sonnets about female beauty. Shakespeare on the nature and character of women

O female images Much has been written in Shakespeare's work. But we will talk about the women who surrounded the great playwright in real life.

What do we know about Shakespeare

Shakespeare's life is full of mysteries, the facts that we have are too scarce. He was born on April 23, 1564 in the small English town of Stratford-upon-Avon, was the third child in the family, at the age of seven he was sent to the local Grammar School, where they taught reading, writing and the rudiments of ancient languages. But the father soon took his son away from this school, needing his help. On this, in essence, the education of Shakespeare ended. His father, John Shakespeare, managed to grow up to be a typical provincial townsman who earned his living in trade. He even managed to rise to the position of burgomaster, although later he fell into very cramped circumstances and practically went bankrupt. It is known that at the age of eighteen William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway from neighboring village. The bride was eight years older than him, and their first child was born six months after the wedding - a fact that testifies to the forced nature of the marriage. Soon, twins are also born in the family. In 1585, Shakespeare left Stratford-upon-Avon, and until 1612 he only visited it briefly. It is assumed that Shakespeare was lured to the London theater by his fellow countryman Richard Burbage, the great tragic actor. About the first years of Shakespeare in London (1585-1592) we know almost nothing, and in general about the twenty years of his London creative life we know surprisingly little. It is known that he had high-ranking friends and patrons - Lord Southampton, Lord Essex, communication with which should have been beneficial for him. It seems strange that the playwright left his beloved theater in 1616 and went to his native Stratford to live out his century in the contentment of a wealthy tradesman, where he died on his birthday - April 23, 1616. The house in which Shakespeare was born, the Church of the Holy Trinity, where he was baptized and where his ashes rest, have survived to this day.

Gloriana

Shakespeare lived during the brilliant reign of Elizabeth 1, who received the nickname Gloriana, which means "glorious." She knew how to laugh, loved the theater and patronized the actors. Shakespeare was a leading member of her beloved troupe, and his plays were shown at court more than once. No doubt the Queen honored Shakespeare with a conversation.
England, which had recently survived a century of bloody feudal turmoil, needed strong power and stability. Elizabeth I suppressed feudal opposition by sending to the scaffold her rival, the Scottish Queen Mary Stuart, and later her favorite, Lord Essex, who was caught in a conspiracy. England conquered the world, victoriously paved new sea ​​routes and acquired new colonies.
Elizabeth I's father, Henry VII a short time succeeded six wives, two of whom were executed on his orders. Elizabeth's childhood was filled with a nightmare - she had to shiver from the cold, she fled more than once, a helpless girl at the mercy of terrible adult intriguers. It's amazing how she didn't turn into an uncontrollable violator of all the rules! The nervous and physical stress of this period of life affected her health. Her mood was erratic all her life. But she ruled the country very successfully.
Despite the terrible conditions in which she grew up, the queen acquired a vast knowledge. Her teachers were prominent people of her time and some of her unfortunate stepmothers, the wife of Henry VII. She knew Latin and Greek, history, geography and mathematics, mastered four modern languages- French, Italian, Spanish and Flemish. She also knew the doctrines of the Reformed Church, which was important from a political point of view. She had a photographic memory. She was to become the first lady in the country and set the cultural standard by which other female representatives were to be equal.

Mother

Mary Arden, Shakespeare's mother, was a well-bred lady of impeccable conduct who belonged to the nobility-farmers. She came from a wealthy family, but she had to work her way to fame in her town of Stratford. She married a man who for a long time enjoyed the trust and respect of the inhabitants of the city, John Shakespeare, produced offspring for 22 years, but most of her offspring died as children. Diseases and epidemics then now and then mowed down people. As befits a woman of this age, she craved neither rights nor power beyond what she had in her home. We don't know what Mary looked like, but in Shakespeare's play " winter fairy tale”there are memories of a shepherd about a cheerful, hectic holiday, which was usually arranged by his wife - a wonderful hostess who knew how to have fun at the same time. Perhaps this was the mother of the playwright himself. According to the information that has been preserved about her, it can be assumed that she had tact and common sense.

Wife

daughters

The eldest, Susan, was a respectable citizen of her town, in which she occupied an important position as the daughter of Shakespeare, heir presumptive to a beautiful house. At the age of 24, she married Dr. John Hall, who was 32 years old. He had no medical education, although he graduated from King's College Cambridge. But in those days it was not an obstacle to the practice of medicine. Among his favorite drugs, with which he treated all diseases, were emetic tincture and laxative. He ran a pharmacy in the house, where he mixed potions with disgusting ingredients, like worms, crab eyes, dog and cat excrement, the smells of which irritated Susan. The doctor constantly praised the Lord as a powerful source of his success in the medical field. But on the other hand, he treated scurvy, which was especially common then in England, really correctly - with vitamin decoctions. Despite the doubtful, on the look modern man, the method of treatment, the doctor enjoyed authority, he was often called to the sick throughout the district, and Susan was left alone with her daughter Elizabeth. AT old age the doctor himself fell seriously ill, recovered, but his health did not recover, he had attacks of unreasonable and uncontrollable irritation. Susan took it with humility. When Shakespeare's granddaughter married, she had no children, and with her death, the branch of Shakespeare's direct heirs ceased.
Shakespeare's youngest daughter, Judith, was a black sheep in the family, lived to be 77 years old, but was a failure - her marriage was unhappy, her children died. Maybe she was timid and slow, being in the shadow of her older sister. She married only at the age of 31, her husband, Thomas Queenie, was four years younger. Her choice was unsuccessful. Her husband was involved in a bad story, which resulted in the death of a woman and her child from Thomas. William Shakespeare did not trust this son-in-law and deprived him of his inheritance. Judith never had a strong position in society, and even the location of her grave is unknown.

"Dark Lady"

There is no doubt that she existed in Shakespeare's life. It is impossible to consider the poet's passionate lines as mere formal exercises in poetry. There are suggestions that they are addressed to Mary, or Moll, Fitton, the queen's maid of honor, about whom all London was talking:
Moll came to court at the age of 17. She was proud of her noble origin.
Court life was fun - palace ceremonial, mask theater, risky tricks, love adventures ... Young maids of honor squealed and frolicked at night. The queen was aware of the life of her courtiers and repaired the guilty with severe reprisals. Moll was frivolous and shameless. She even dared to invite the queen to dance at the performance of masks. But the queen favored her. Moll was a black-haired and dark-skinned beauty. She was haunted by a married elderly court steward, to whom Shakespeare's epithet "disgusting pike" fits - he reported in letters to her older sister about how life goes on Moll, not at all hiding his dirty passion for the young lady. But he didn't have any the slightest chance, the poet Shakespeare appeared at court, treated kindly by the queen, who was much more attractive to Moll. The poet was fascinated by her irresistible black eyes:

I love your eyes. They got me
Forgotten, regret unfeignedly.
Burying a rejected friend
They, like mourning, wear their color black.

Her features for Shakespeare were "disastrous, like the plague."

But soon the Mall was removed from the court in disgrace. She left Shakespeare for William Herbert, who showed no honor to Moll by leaving her pregnant. The child soon died. The lines of the sonnets testify to Shakespeare's despair:

Love is a disease. My soul is sick
A lingering, unquenchable thirst...

And for a long time to me, devoid of mind,
Hell seemed like heaven, and darkness seemed to be light!

Always restrained and noble, he did not miss the opportunity to let go of a sharp remark about her in the play "Twelfth Night". However, perhaps these are not the words of a playwright, but an actor's "gag", which then got into the text of the play by accident. After an ugly incident, the well-known Mall in London became the heroine of mocking songs of commoners. Moll returned to her homeland in Cheshire, married twice, lived to be 69 years old. She had many grandchildren, to whom she left a solid legacy and many memories.
There are other candidates for the role of the "Dark Lady" - for example, Lucy Morgan, nicknamed Lucy the Negress, is obviously also a dark-skinned woman who has gone from court lady to prostitute and brothel owner.
Whoever she was, the Swarthy Lady inflicted an incurable wound on Shakespeare. Their relationship was destructive. The idea of ​​female depravity and betrayal with surprising intolerance arises more than once in the speeches of the heroes late plays playwright. It seems that personal anger is raging in them. The playwright's description of passion and jealousy is especially expressive. There is a severe aversion to sex that runs through everything. later works Shakespeare. The thought of the crushing power of lust does not leave him, and the heroes bring down their fury not on specific women, but on the entire female sex.

Women in the auditorium

London, by the time Shakespeare appeared in it, was
a city with a population of 300 thousand, huge at that time. It was a Renaissance city, where spectacles, holidays, magnificent ceremonies were adored, everything that promised joy to the eye and ear, and especially the theater. The theater turned out to be the art to which the soul of the Renaissance Englishman was especially drawn, longing for spectacle, dynamism, festivity and intensity of passions. City theaters were distinguished by their freedom of morals - the stalls were assigned to the poorest and rudest part of the public, who watched the performance standing up, behaved very freely, reacted directly and violently, throwing leftover food and even stones at the actors on occasion as a sign of discontent. Here they ate, drank beer, smoked, quarreled, and sometimes got into fights. Private theaters looked more decent. On the whole, however, the theatrical audience was motley, but rather bourgeois than vulgar. This audience was mostly literate. Good in those days female education was not uncommon. The theater props were very primitive. The decorations were practically non-existent. When a comedy was played, the ceiling of the stage was covered with a blue cloth, while a tragedy was performed with a black one.
Women's roles were performed at that time only by men, they were
young actors. At the same time, on acting costumes spared no money. The dandies and ladies used to give their clothes to the servants, who sold them to the theatres. The boy who played Cleopatra fainted when he heard that Antony was leaving for the war, and shouted from the stage: “Loosen the lacing, stuffy!”, And one of the ladies sitting in the hall recognized at the same time his last year's outfit on the ancient heroine.
The theaters were visited by respectable ladies who gladly flaunted their dresses and jewelry. It was customary to dress well in the theater. The audience was festive and friendly. Foreigners who came to London were surprised by the activity of women in recreation and entertainment.

Shakespeare was a woman and smoked marijuana?

There are many hypotheses that completely deny any relation of Shakespeare to the works attributed to him. Some would like to think that the authors of the famous plays were more educated and intelligent people than half-educated country boy William Shakespeare. One of these versions, owned by Valentina Novomirova, says that the authors who wrote under the pseudonym "William Shakespeare" were Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, her sons - William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, which is to Shakespeare's work the poets Samuel Daniel and Ben Jonson are directly and immediately related. Their conclusions about the true authorship Shakespearean works V. Novomirova made on the basis of the so-called First Folio of William Shakespeare - complete collection dramatic works William Shakespeare, published in London in 1623. In her study, the portraits of William Shakespeare and the Countess of Pembroke in this edition are very interestingly compared, from which it is concluded that Shakespeare's portrait is a modified face of the Countess.
Literary critic Alfred Barkov, examining the structure of "Hamlet", suggested that the text of this work answered the question of who was hiding under the pseudonym "Shakespeare": "tanner, not lying in his grave", was the son of Queen Elizabeth, a brilliant poet and playwright on Nicknamed "Tanner" Christopher Marlowe, whose death was staged. The secrecy of authorship, he argues, turned out to be closely related to the political situation and the security of the country. There are also suggestions that the works belong to the Queen herself.
Some scholars have found direct indications that Shakespeare was inspired not only by an unknown lady who went down in history as the "dark lady of the sonnets." Shakespeare's plays were found to be generously scattered with unusual metaphors and descriptions of natural disasters, quite characteristic of hallucinatory visions. Lines: “Why do I always write the same way and hold on to fiction in famous grass?” - usually attributed to the general artsy style of sonnets and understood in figuratively. But researchers suggest understanding these lines quite unambiguously: “grass” is hemp, which was widespread in England at that time (ship ropes were woven from it), and “fiction” is the poems themselves, written under its influence. Having made a chemical analysis of the contents of earthenware excavated in the garden of Shakespeare's house in Stratford smoking pipes, scientists found traces of marijuana in them. Of course, they do not claim that these are Shakespeare's pipes, but the pipes belong to the period of his life. Marijuana has been smoked before and is now smoked by many, but none of them has created something like Shakespeare's creations. So it's not the grass...

William Shakespeare - English poet and playwright, often considered the greatest English writer and one of the best playwrights in the world. Often referred to as the national poet of England. The works that have come down to us, including some written jointly with other authors, consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, 4 poems and 3 epitaphs. Shakespeare's plays have been translated into every major language and are staged more often than the works of other playwrights.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: a daughter, Suzanne, and twins, Hemnet and Judith. Shakespeare's career began between 1585 and 1592 when he moved to London. He soon became a successful actor, playwright, and co-owner of a theater company called The Lord Chamberlain's Servants, later known as The King's Servants. Around 1613, at the age of 48, he returned to Stratford, where he died three years later. Little survived historical evidence about the life of Shakespeare, and theories about his life are created on the basis of official documents and testimonies of contemporaries, therefore, questions regarding his appearance and religious beliefs, and there is also a point of view that the works attributed to him were created by someone else; it is popular in culture, although it is rejected by the vast majority of Shakespearean scholars.

Most of Shakespeare's works were written between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mostly comedies and chronicles, in which Shakespeare excelled. Then a period of tragedies began in his work, including the works of Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbeth, which are considered among the best on English language. At the end of his work, Shakespeare wrote several tragicomedies, and also collaborated with other writers.

Many of Shakespeare's plays were published during his lifetime. In 1623, two of Shakespeare's friends, John Heming and Henry Condell, published the First Folio, a collection of all but two of Shakespeare's plays currently included in the canon. Later, several more plays were attributed to Shakespeare by various researchers with varying degrees of evidence.

Already during his lifetime, Shakespeare received commendable reviews for his work, but he really became popular only in the 19th century. In particular, representatives of romanticism and Victorians bowed to Shakespeare so much that Bernard Shaw called it "bardolatry", which means "bardo-worship" in English. Shakespeare's works remain popular to this day, being constantly studied and rethought in accordance with political and cultural conditions.