Ah, No, No, No It Is Mine Onely Sonne
The immediate problems of the Lord Chamberlain's Men had not been lifted by royal or noble favour. The authorities were still trying to close the Theatre and the Curtain, and James Burbage (the owner of the Curtain and the Theatre) was already making plans to convert part of Blackfriars into a roofed playhouse. Blackfriars was not under the official jurisdiction of London. He increased the ground rent from £14 to £24 per annum and agreed that Allen would eventually be able to take possession of the building in a number of years. Allen seems to have gone to far in his demand that the Theatre become his property after only five years. Burbage demurred and began to invest in the Blackfriars. Throughout the summer of 1596, he was engaged in tearing down tenements and converting an old stone refectory in the precincts of the ancient monastery.
On 23 July 1596 Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, at the age of seventy died. His replacement Lord Chamberlain, Lord Cobham, was much less sympathetic to the theatrical profession. One his ancestors, Sir John Oldcastle, had been mocked in the first part of King Henry IV. So the relations between the new Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Chamberlain's Men were strained to say the least. The players may have even have feared that Cobham would support the Lord Mayor's request to close down public playhouses. The players had begun a tour of Kent soon after Hunsdon's death, and once again they found themselves in an insecure profession.
A few days after playing in the town of Faversham, Shakespeare suffered a greater blow. His eleven-year-old son, Hamnet, died. There is every reason to suppose that Shakespeare hastened from Kent to Stratford, for the funeral on 11 August. The death of a child can have various effects. Did he feel any sense of guilt at having left his family in Stratford? And how did he respond to his heartbroken wife, who had to care for these children without his presence? Though these questions, of course, can't be answered but there are some powerful lines in the second part of Henry IV, written shortly after Hamnet's death when Northumberland's wife blames his absence for the death of their child. The child
Threw many a Northward looke, to see his father
Bring up his powers, but he did long in vaine.
Many of Shakespeare's later plays have the pervasive theme of families reunited and love restored. In The Winter's Tale the son dies as the result of his father's conduct, the father's daughter who at the end of the play is restored to her errant father. In her form and figure the dead son is also revived.
The death of the children was much more common in the sixteenth century than it is today. Elizabethan families were also more "extended," with various cousins and other kin so that sudden death had a natural buttress against severe or prolonged grief. It would not be fair to say that sixteenth-century parents were less caring or emotional than their successors, but it is also important to note that the death of a child was not an unusual experience. The cause of Hamnet's death is unknown, although at the end of 1596 Stratford suffered a typhus and dysentery.
So Shakespeare had lost his only son, the image of himself. It is, of course, impossible to gauge the effect of such a loss had on him. He may have been inconsolable. He may have sought refuge in hard relentless work. One critic said that Romeo and Juliet was the "dirge for his son's death". It cannot be that coincidental that Shakespeare may have tapped into the emotions he felt after his son's death to write the tragedy of Hamlet.
It is during this period that he wrote The Merchant of Venice for the Lord Chamberlain's Men. It is usually assumed that Shakespeare played the part of Antonio who is implicitly enamoured with his friend Bassanio. The play does not linger on his sentimental tragedy but instead mounts higher with the story of Shylock and his bloody bargain.
Shakespeare often combined elements from what would seem irreconcilable sources. For The Merchant of Venice, he used the old stage drama, called The Jew. He also had seen the Jew of Malta, since the role of Shylock is in part based upon that of Marlowe's Barabas. The story of Shylock acted as a catalyst, whereby these two plays came together in new and unusual combination. He also used his schoolboy reading of Ovid. There are of course other sources that make part of the texture of Shakespeare's mind; but with the plays, the Italian story and the school reading of set texts, we may gain some inkling of the combination of the power of Shakespeare's imagination.
The character of Shylock has provoked so many different interpretations that he has turned into the Wandering Jew. He is a powerful and perplexing figure. It's almost as if Shakespeare fully intended to create a character drawing upon prejudices about an alien race, but found that he was unable to sympathise with such a figure. He simply could not write a stereotype. He would later explore the nobility of an alien or "outsider" in Othello. It is likely that the sound and appearance of Shylock led Shakespeare forward, without the dramatist really knowing in which direction he was going. This could be why Shakespeare's main figures are beyond interpretation. Shylock is simply beyond good and evil.
But we must never forget the stridency of Elizabethan theatre. Shylock would have been played with a red wig and bottlenose. The play is, after all, entitled the "comicall History." The play retains strong elements of commedia dell'arte, and can indeed be seen in part as a grotesque comedy. But Shakespeare can't use any dramatic convention without in some way changing it.
All of the scenes are wrapped in the greater unreality of sixteenth-century theatrical convention, which veered closer towards the twentieth-century naturalistic theatre.
There were a small number of Jews in sixteenth-century London, as well as ostensible converts from Judaism who generally living and working under assumed names. In 1594, the Earl of Essex had been instrumental in the apprehension, torture, and death of Roderigo Lopez, a Jewish doctor accused of attempting to poison the queen. There is an allusion to that affair in the play itself. But the stage image of Jews essentially came from the mystery plays. It is, in effect, the image with which Shakespeare was obliged to work. Yet out of this character he created something infinitely more interesting and sympathetic than the stock type. As a result Shylock has enterd the imagination of the word.
So Shakespeare had lost his only son, the image of himself. It is, of course, impossible to gauge the effect of such a loss had on him. He may have been inconsolable. He may have sought refuge in hard relentless work. One critic said that Romeo and Juliet was the "dirge for his son's death". It cannot be that coincidental that Shakespeare may have tapped into the emotions he felt after his son's death to write the tragedy of Hamlet.
It is during this period that he wrote The Merchant of Venice for the Lord Chamberlain's Men. It is usually assumed that Shakespeare played the part of Antonio who is implicitly enamoured with his friend Bassanio. The play does not linger on his sentimental tragedy but instead mounts higher with the story of Shylock and his bloody bargain.
Shakespeare often combined elements from what would seem irreconcilable sources. For The Merchant of Venice, he used the old stage drama, called The Jew. He also had seen the Jew of Malta, since the role of Shylock is in part based upon that of Marlowe's Barabas. The story of Shylock acted as a catalyst, whereby these two plays came together in new and unusual combination. He also used his schoolboy reading of Ovid. There are of course other sources that make part of the texture of Shakespeare's mind; but with the plays, the Italian story and the school reading of set texts, we may gain some inkling of the combination of the power of Shakespeare's imagination.
The character of Shylock has provoked so many different interpretations that he has turned into the Wandering Jew. He is a powerful and perplexing figure. It's almost as if Shakespeare fully intended to create a character drawing upon prejudices about an alien race, but found that he was unable to sympathise with such a figure. He simply could not write a stereotype. He would later explore the nobility of an alien or "outsider" in Othello. It is likely that the sound and appearance of Shylock led Shakespeare forward, without the dramatist really knowing in which direction he was going. This could be why Shakespeare's main figures are beyond interpretation. Shylock is simply beyond good and evil.
But we must never forget the stridency of Elizabethan theatre. Shylock would have been played with a red wig and bottlenose. The play is, after all, entitled the "comicall History." The play retains strong elements of commedia dell'arte, and can indeed be seen in part as a grotesque comedy. But Shakespeare can't use any dramatic convention without in some way changing it.
All of the scenes are wrapped in the greater unreality of sixteenth-century theatrical convention, which veered closer towards the twentieth-century naturalistic theatre.
There were a small number of Jews in sixteenth-century London, as well as ostensible converts from Judaism who generally living and working under assumed names. In 1594, the Earl of Essex had been instrumental in the apprehension, torture, and death of Roderigo Lopez, a Jewish doctor accused of attempting to poison the queen. There is an allusion to that affair in the play itself. But the stage image of Jews essentially came from the mystery plays. It is, in effect, the image with which Shakespeare was obliged to work. Yet out of this character he created something infinitely more interesting and sympathetic than the stock type. As a result Shylock has enterd the imagination of the word.
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