Conventions of Theatre and Shakespeare’s Style

In Elizabethan England, the public had a great appetite for plays and performances.

Theaters were often built on the outskirts of towns and cities, and the public would flock to them to watch the latest plays. They were places of social gathering, and the audience would often be made up of people from all walks of life.

The plays were often based on classical stories, and the audience would be familiar with the plot and characters.

Shakespeare weaponized this by altering these tropes and subverting expectations.

The audience was also a source of inspiration for the playwrights, and Elizabethan playwrights frequently make reference to theatre as a past-time within the plays themselves.

Shakespeare does this, for example, in Hamlet, where he includes a play as part of a scene within the play itself. In this scene, the main character, Hamlet, arranges for a group of actors to perform a play that mimics the suspected circumstances of his father's murder.

By watching the reaction of his uncle, King Claudius, who is the suspected murderer, Hamlet hopes to confirm whether his uncle is indeed guilty. This use of a play within a play serves as a clever device to reveal hidden truths and emotions.

Shakespeare also often compares life to theatre in his writing. For example, in As You Like It, one of the characters proclaims:

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”

Shakespeare was not a totally unconventional playwright in that he often made use of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatrical conventions, often called 'tropes'. These are standard devices or techniques that were common to theatre at the time.

One such trope was the use of soliloquy, a monologue that was used to explore the inner thoughts and feelings of characters. This allowed the audience to gain a deeper understanding of the characters and their motivations.

For example, in Macbeth, Lady Macbeth uses a soliloquy to expose her naked ambition. Speaking only to herself and the audience, she calls upon supernatural forces to strip her of feminine weakness and fill her with cruelty, revealing her intense desire for power and her willingness to go to any lengths to achieve it.

This soliloquy provides critical insight into her character and sets the stage for the ruthless actions she and Macbeth will undertake.

Shakespeare's use of language was a major factor in his success as a playwright.

His ability to create vivid imagery and to convey complex emotions and ideas through language was unparalleled. He was able to use language to create a sense of atmosphere and to draw his audience into the story.

His mastery of the English language was evident in his use of puns, wordplay, and blank verse.

Blank verse is a type of poetry that doesn't rhyme, but instead follows a strict meter - almost always iambic pentameter, which is five pairs of syllables, alternating between stressed and unstressed. Shakespeare made frequent use of blank verse in his plays. This allowed him to have characters speak in a way that felt poetic, but also natural and unforced.

The lack of rhyme also creates an open-ended quality – allowing the characters to express their thoughts at length, without being confined within tight rhyming structures. For example here, when Romeo speaks in Romeo and Juliet:

'But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief

That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.'

Blank verse is usually reserved by Shakespeare for the most serious and dignified of his speeches. Rhyming verse is more prevalent in the comedies.

Shakespeare's use of wordplay and puns was a masterful way to express his ideas and themes. His ability to craft clever jokes and double entendres was unparalleled in his time. He often used puns to create a humorous effect, but also to make a point about the characters or the plot.

For example, in Twelfth Night, Feste's puns are used to mock the other characters and to make a point about the foolishness of their behavior. Despite being cast within the trope of the fool, Feste’s existence outside of normal society allows him to point out things other characters miss – he is a subversive figure.

“Better a witty fool than a foolish wit” - Twelfth Night

Shakespeare also used puns to create a sense of irony, as in Macbeth, where Macbeth's puns about death foreshadow his own demise.

His wordplay was also used to create a sense of tension or suspense, as in Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo's puns about Juliet's name create a sense of anticipation for their meeting.

Shakespeare was an innovator in creating new words and phrases, which have since become part of the English lexicon. His works are full of newly coined words, such as 'swagger,' and 'lackluster,' all of which have become commonplace in everyday language.

He also created hundreds of idiomatic phrases that are still used today, such as 'in a pickle,' 'heart of gold,' and 'break the ice.' His influence on the English language is so great that it is impossible to imagine what it would be like without his contributions.

It's estimated that Shakespeare invented 1,700 words that are still in use today.

These include, among many others:

Bedroom

Critic

Eyeball

Gossip

Hurry

Traditional

To read Shakespeare is not just to read a master of the modern English language, but to read its most significant creator.

William Shakespeare's plays can be categorized into three main genres: comedies, tragedies, and histories.

To put it simply, a genre is like a category that tells you what type of story to expect—comedies are light-hearted and often end happily, tragedies involve serious themes and usually end sadly, and histories focus on real events from the past, particularly the lives of English kings.

But beyond just general humor or sadness, each of Shakespeare's genres comes with more specific tropes or recurring themes and elements.

For example, his comedies often feature mistaken identities and complex love triangles, while his tragedies typically involve fatal flaws in the main characters that lead to their downfall.

In his histories, Shakespeare frequently explores themes of political power and legitimacy, using real historical figures and events.

The concept of genre originates from ancient Greek literature, where it was used to classify and organize different forms of art and writing based on shared characteristics and styles.

As classical Greek and Roman literary forms were studied and revived during the Renaissance, European playwrights, including the English, adopted and adapted these genres to structure and thematicize their own dramas.

The Renaissance began in Italy around the 14th century and spread to England by the late 15th century. It occurred as a revival of Classical learning and values, spurred by the rediscovery of ancient texts and the defeat of the eastern Roman empire (centered on Constantinople) by the Ottomans, which led many scholars to the West.

By the time Shakespeare started writing in the late 16th century, Renaissance ideas had been influencing English theatre for about a century, infusing it with new styles and an emphasis on humanistic, rather than medieval religious, themes.

One unique hallmark of Shakespeare's use of Renaissance genres is his emphasis on the psychology of his characters, distinguishing his works from the more fate-driven narratives of classical tragedies.

Comparing Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex" to Shakespeare's "Hamlet" highlights this difference.

"Oedipus Rex," a pivotal Greek tragedy by Sophocles, revolves around King Oedipus who unknowingly fulfills a grave prophecy. He was abandoned as a baby because an oracle foretold he would kill his father and marry his mother. To prevent this, his parents, the king and queen of Thebes, ordered him to be left on a mountainside to die. However, he was rescued and raised by the king and queen of Corinth, unaware of his true parentage.

As an adult, Oedipus kills a stranger in self-defense: King Laius of Thebes, and later marries Laius widowed queen. Later, it is revealed that Laius was his biological father, and the queen his own mother. This realization horrifies him, and he blinds himself.

Sophocles’ play highlights the Greek themes of inescapable fate and the limited influence of human choice. In contrast, "Hamlet" is acutely aware of his choices and grapples with the psychological consequences of revenge against his uncle, who murdered his father. Shakespeare’s focus on individual choice, moral ambiguity, and psychological depth marks a significant departure from Sophocles' exploration of external fate, emphasizing instead the internal battles of conscience.