1、,William Shakespeare,-The peak of Humanism,小组成员：,Shakespeare attended grammar school,knowing well of the basic techniques of writing and having a lot of knowledge,The English poets, playwright William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England. The son o
2、f a successful middle-class glove-maker,After his father went bankrupt, his formal education proceeded no further. After that he worked as a butchers apprentice. Once taught in a country. And he did many other jobs. This helped him get a lot of work experiences.,life,At the age of 20 ,he came to Lon
3、don, first he became a groom in the theater .And then he joined the troupe, became the actor ,director and the stockholder of the theatre.In 1582, he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her.Around 1588, Shakespeare started to writing. At first, he adapted the former sc
4、ript, and soon began to create his own works. Then Shakespeare became very famous,Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright.,in 1591, he wrote the historical drama “Henry Six Th“ the trilogy, after the script performance has been welcome greatly
5、the audience, and has won the very high prestige for him, let him come to a stop gradually in the London theatrical circle the heel. In 1595, Shakespeare has written a tragedy “Romeo And Juliet”,In 1596, in the name of his father Shakespeare applied for the title of “the gentleman“ and have the righ
6、t to crest, then purchased the real estate for three times successively. In 1599, Shakespeare poured into wrote the script with all ones strength “Hamlet“, has obtained the huge success In 1603, James I came into power, Shakespeares troupe was renamed as “the king consecrate theater“. He and his gro
7、up was appointed as the” queen attendants”, In addition to touring outside, the troupe also often performed in court.,Shakespeare lived in London for more than 20 years, and during that time his wife still stay in the Stella f.Around 1604,He retreated to his hometown Stella f and died in 1616 at the
8、 age of fifty-two.,Major works,All his life he left for the world 37 dramas, 154 sonnets（1590 -1598） , 2 first narrative long poem and a few miscellaneous poems.,early stage： history and comedy; mid stage: tragedy ; later stage: romance,Four Great Tragedies : Hamlet 哈姆雷特 To be or not to be, that is
9、the question. Othello 奥赛罗Macbeth 麦克白 King Lear 李尔王,Tragedies:,Comedies:As You Like It皆大欢喜,The Merchant of Venice威尼斯商人All that glitters is not gold.,A Midsummer Nights Dream 仲夏夜之梦,Romances:,Winters Tale冬天的故事,The Tempest暴风雨,Romeo and Juliet,My only love sprung from my only hate. 我的恨灰中燃起了爱火融融。,Writing
10、style,1.Shakespeares first plays were written in the conventionally happy style of the day. 2. Soon, however, Shakespeare began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. 3.Shakespeares standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter. 4 After Hamlet, Shakespeare varied
11、his poetic style further 5 Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve some effects which included run-on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length.,First,Shakespeares first plays were written in the conventionally happy style of the day. The poetr
12、y depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetoricalwritten for actors to declaim rather than speak. For example, the grand speeches in Titus Andronicus, in the view of some critics, often hold up the action; meanwhile, the verse in Two Gentlemen of
13、 Verona has been described as stilted.,Second,2. Soon, Shakespeare began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes The opening soliloquy of Richard III has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama. At the same time, Richards vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soli
14、loquies of Shakespeares mature plays.No single play marks a change from the traditional to the freer style. Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles.By the time of Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Nigh
15、ts Dream in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself.,Third,Shakespeares standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter.Blank verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of t
16、en syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines, with the risk of monotony. Once Shakespeare mastere
17、d traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet.,Fourth,After Hamlet, Shakespeare varied his poetic style further The literary critic A. C. Bradley described this style a
18、s “more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical“.,Fifth,In the last phase of his career Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve some effects which included run-on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence st
19、ructure and length. In Macbeth, for example, the language darts from one unrelated metaphor or simile to another: “was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed yourself?“ (1.7.3538); “.pity, like a naked new-born babe/ Striding the blast, or heavens cherubim, horsd/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air
20、.“ (1.7.2125). The late romances, with their shifts in time and surprising turns of plot, inspired a last poetic style in which long and short sentences are set against one another, clauses are piled up, subject and object are reversed, and words are omitted, creating an effect of spontaneity.,Willi
21、am Shakespeares influence,William Shakespeares influence extends from theatre and literature to present-day movies and the English language itself. Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language, and the worlds pre-eminent dramatist, he transformed European theatre by
22、expanding expectations about what could be accomplished through characterization, plot, language and genre. Shakespeares writings have also influenced a large number of notable novelists and poets over the years, including Herman Melville and Charles Dickens. Shakespeare is the second-most-quoted wr
23、iter in the history of the English-speaking world after the various writers of the Bible, and many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages.,Change in English,literature,entire English language,1.Early Modern English as a literary medium was unf
24、ixed in structure and vocabulary in comparison to Greek and Latin, and was in a constant state of flux. When William Shakespeare began writing his plays, the English language was rapidly absorbing words from other languages due to wars, exploration, diplomacy and colonization. 2.By the age of Elizab
25、eth, English had become widely used with the expansion of philosophy, theology and physical sciences, many writers lacked the vocabulary to express such ideas. To accommodate, writers such as Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare expressed new ideas and disti
26、nctions by inventing, borrowing or adopting a word or a phrase from another language, known as neologizing. Scholars estimate that, between the years 1500 and 1659, nouns, verbs and modifiers of Latin, Greek and modern Romance languages added 30,000 new words to the English language,Changes in Engli
27、sh at the time,Shakespeare is cited as an influence on a large number of writers in the following centuries, including major novelists such as Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and William Faulkner.Examples of this influence include the large number of Shakespearean quotations throughou
28、t Dickens writings and the fact that at least 25 of Dickens titles are drawn from Shakespeare, while Melville frequently used Shakespearean devices, including formal stage directions and extended soliloquies, in Moby-Dick. In fact, Shakespeare so influenced Melville that the novels main antagonist,
29、Captain Ahab, is a classic Shakespearean tragic figure, “a great man brought down by his faults.“ Shakespeare has also influenced a number of English poets, especially Romantic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge who were obsessed with self-consciousness, a modern theme Shakespeare anticipated in
30、plays such as Hamlet. Shakespeares writings were so influential to English poetry of the 1800s that critic George Steiner has called all English poetic dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson “feeble variations on Shakespearean themes.,Influence on European and American literature,Shakespeares writings gr
31、eatly influenced the entire English language. Prior to and during Shakespeares time, the grammar and rules of English were not fixed. But once Shakespeares plays became popular in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, they helped contribute to the standardization of the English language, with
32、 many Shakespearean words and phrases becoming embedded in the English language.Particularly through projects such as Samuel Johnsons A Dictionary of the English Language which quoted Shakespeare more than any other writer. He expanded the scope of English literature by introducing new words and phrases, experimenting with blank verse, and also introducing new poetic and grammatical structures.,Influence on the English language,Thank you!,
