William Shakespeare

(Information taken from: Roni Jay , Shakespeare. Guide for young people . Translated Pepa Linares.
Salamanca, Lóguez, 2001. An excellent introductory book, entertaining and clear, about the Stratford
genius. It consists of several chapters that address Shakespeare 's life, his times, his theater, his poetic
work..., carefully analyzing the most important pieces written by the English genius.)
Document index
1. ENGLAND IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME: REIGNS OF ELIZABETH I AND JAMES I (THE GOLDEN AGE)
http://www.avempace.com/personal/jose-antonio-garcia-fernandez
2. THE RENEWAL OF ENGLISH THEATER.................................

3. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616). HIS LIFE AND HIS TIME
4. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. HIS WORK AND HIS STYLE ............
4.1. Complete catalog of his theatrical works ........
4.2. Comedies .............................. ..
4.2.1. Much ado About Nothing 9
4.2.2. The merchant of Venice ...... 10
4.2.3. A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Midsummer Night's Dream .10
4.2.4. The Merry Wives of Windsor .10
4.2.5. To your taste, As You Like It ...
.12
4.2.6. The Tempest .............................
.12
4.2.7. The Tame of the Shrew .......................................
4.2.8. The comedy of mistakes .12
4.2.9. Other comedies: ..................... .12
4.3. Tragedies ................................. .12
4.3.1. Hamlet, prince of Denmark .12
4.3.2. King Lear, King Lear ... .13
4.3.3. Macbeth ................... 13
4.3.4. Othello ......................
.13
4.3.5. Romeo and Juliet ......
.15
4.4. Historical works ..........
4.4.1. Richard III .................. .15
4.4.2. Henry IV .................... .15
4.4.3. Antony and Cleopatra ... .15
4.4.4. Julius Caesar ............. 16
4.4.5. Other historical works .16
4.5. Poetry ......................... .17
5. ANALYSIS OF SOME WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE............................................................. .17
• A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Comedy, 1595 .17
• The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Marry Wives of Windsor. Comedy, 1598 .18
• To your liking, As You Like It. Comedy, 1599 ....................................................... 18
• The Tempest, The Tempest. Comedy ...................................................................
22
• Coriolanus. historical work .................................................................................. 22
• Macbeth, tragedy ............................................................................................... 25
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................... 27
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32
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Prof. José Antonio García DEPT. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE- IES Avempace
Fernández C/ Islas Canarias, 5 - 50015 ZARAGOZA - Telf.: 976 5186 66 - Fax: 976 73 01 69
jagarcia@avempace.com
1. England in Shakespeare's time: reigns of Elizabeth I and James I (the Golden

Age)
Queen Elizabeth had already been on the throne for six years when William Shakespeare was born in 1564.
And when the genius of Stratford died, in 1616, James I had occupied the English throne for thirteen years.
During this golden period, England , a weak state with a small population, poor and poorly known abroad,
rose to the rank of great power , achieved a surprising degree of prosperity and shone in the world of
letters .
Until the middle of the 16th century , the spirit of the Renaissance did not spread beyond the
circles of the Court and, even within it, it manifested itself more in its scholarly form than in its creative
aspect. The Italians and the French still considered the English as semi-barbarians . As for the English
language , no one or almost no one knew it abroad. However, this delay did not constitute an
insurmountable impediment to national development. When the civil war ended and religious reform was
underway; When external dangers were averted, at least temporarily, many circumstances came together
so that England made up for lost time by leaps and bounds.
Ardent and daring, the English of the time were also brutal, bloodthirsty . Drunkenness was
frequent and generated bloody quarrels; rape was frequent; fights often ended in deaths; The most
successful spectacles were mortal fights between animals and capital executions .
At the beginning of her reign, Elizabeth was received with enthusiasm. She implemented an
austere policy, surrounded herself with good advisors, treated Parliament with consideration, restored
finances, concluded peace with France . Glorious, his reign was not, however, peaceful. Palace intrigues,
conspiracies, revolts, executions and murders occurred in it without interruption. But the country moved
forward inexorably. Its agriculture and industry developed, its " adventurous merchants " accumulated
enormous fortunes and the great lords displayed limitless luxury .
Finally, there was also an extraordinary flowering of dramatic, poetic, musical, philosophical
genius ... In 1591 the greatest of all geniuses, William Shakespeare , premiered Henry VI , his first play.
The dominant feature of the England of Shakespeare 's time is the coexistence of the brutality of
customs with the refinement of culture. Many gentle men knew equally well how to compose a sonnet or
an elegy and how to handle the sword or the dagger . And many mediocre merchants, artisans and even
peasants bought books and read them. The translation of the Bible into the language of the common
people had given the masses a taste for reading ; popular songs and ballads had made poetry within the
reach of the humble; Instruction through reading and attachment to culture spread without remedy.
As for the social structure, the old aristocracy had been annihilated by the Wars of the Roses and
their descendants had degenerated. The new rich class, enriched thanks to the confiscation of the monks '
property, was not so haughty or so closed. There were only about sixty great lords , landowners and peers
of the kingdom with an eminent position and particular rights . But the rest of the quality people had no
special rights, no tax exemptions or jurisdictional privileges.
Next to the nobles , and barely separated from them, was the bourgeoisie : wealthy merchants ,
medium-sized landowners , magistrates , lawyers , doctors , professors, men of the church ... All of them
formed an active, ambitious and well- educated category .
2
aban an active , ambitious and well- educated category.
The vast majority of the nation formed the mass , made up of peasants , artisans , workers ,
seamen ...
2. The renewal of English theater
The study of Shakespeare 's works cannot neglect the national historical background . The problems of the
individual are inseparable from the problems of the state. Elizabethan theatre , of which Shakespeare was
a part, is a mixture of popular theater of medieval origin, social and collective experience and historical
consciousness . Popular drama was to be enriched by Renaissance humanism , which would add new
themes, forms and structures.
Elizabethan theater is a synthesis of medieval popular values and Renaissance cultured values . It
could be divided into three periods (starting with the reign of Elizabeth I , the “ virgin queen ”):
• First period , from 1581 to 1615, popular theater is founded on a cultured and Renaissance base
and connects with the people , to whom it gives what they want: death, destruction, jokes,
witchcraft, entanglements of kings and princes, hatred, passions, blood… We find all these
elements in the works of Shakespeare .
• Second period , from 1615 to 1642. Period of court theater , heritage of a minority and far from
the town.
• Third period , from 1642 to 1660. Puritan era . The theater venues were closed and the theater
became clandestine .
It is obviously in the first period in which we have to place Shakespeare (1564-1616), Christopher
Marlowe and Ben Jonson . The Three Major Playwrights of the Elizabethan Era .
Shakespeare's time was a time of individualism , emanating from philosophical reflections, the
empirical study of passions and the theory of characters. Cervantes and Shakespeare are the seers of that
individualization , to which they owe their achievements. The humanistic drama introduced three
novelties in the theater :
> He transformed medieval theater , essentially pantomime , into a work of art .
> He isolated, to enhance the illusion , the public scene .
> He concentrated the action in both space and time , replacing the epic excess of the Middle Ages
with the dramatic concentration of the Renaissance .
In short, Shakespeare 's theater has something of the Renaissance and also of the Baroque . He
was the great innovator of the scene in his country. In his works, he united fantasy and reality , history and
legend , action and psychological introspection . His theater is anti-classical , it does not respect classicist
norms, presenting multiple actions , mixing the tragic and the comic , breaking the unities of place and
time , combining verse and prose ... The production of Shakespeare , actor, director and author,
encompassed all dramatic genres . And in all of them he was successful . He himself said some famous
words:
“All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely player:
31
William Shakespeare was born
They haveintheir
Stratford-upon-Avon , County Warwick , England , in 1564. His father,
exits and their entrances;
John , was a glove merchant and And
cameone manainfarming
from his timefamily.
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He was His acts beingman and expanded hisactivity to
a prosperous
trade seven ages.”
wool and money lending. HE casewith Mary Arden , who
(Scene VII, Act II, As You Like It, As You
belonged to the low aristocracy, with which He managed to ennoble his lineage.Withthe Like It ) benefits of your
4
aaa aha aristocracy, with or thathe managed to avoid losing his inage. With the
eneicios and theirAnd his friend Ben Jonson said of him:
“ He was not of an age, but for all time
William Shakespeare : the eternal

classic.
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tp 3. William Shakespeare (1564-1616). His life and his time
://
Prior to the life of William Shakespeare , but relevant to the history of England , we can highlight these
w events :
w
1349 The Black Death reaches England .
w. 1400 Richard II is assassinated.
av 1421
1474
Joan of Arc is burned as a witch in Rouen, Normandy, Fr Caxton
prints the first book in English.
e 1492 Christopher Columbus discovers America .
1509 Henry VIII is proclaimed king.
m 1558 Elisabeth I is proclaimed queen.
pa
As for the historical period that the playwright lived through, it was a time full of events: big
ce
.c
1564 Scottish rebels fight Catholic Mary Queen of Scots
o 1568 Mary Queen of Scots is arrested by Elizabeth . 4f .
m 1569 Elizabeth wins in her fierce fights against the Catholics .
1581 Francis Drake returns home after having sailed around the world.
/ 1585 The queen approves new laws against Catholics .
pe 1587 Mary Queen of Scots is executed for plotting against the queen .
1588 The Invincible Armada is defeated by the English navy.
rs 1591 Some witches try to assassinate James , King of Scotland .
on 1592 The plagues kill 15 thousand people that year.
1593 The playwright Christopher Marlowe , the queen's spy, is murdered.
al/ 1594 Dr. Roderigo Lopez , a Jew, is accused of trying to assassinate the queen.
jo 1596
1599
Sir Francis Drake dies at sea.
Irish rebellion led by the Earl of Essex .
se 1603 Elizabeth I dies , James of Scotland ascends the throne .
1605 Guy Fawkes and Gundpowder Plot . The Catholic conspirators are executed.
- 1608 In America , the English colonists are saved from the Indian massacre by
an 1611 Pocahontas .
1612 The King James Bible is published.
to 1616 The Lancashire witches are hanged.
ni Prince Charles is named Prince of Wales . He will die in 1649.
o-
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business he was able to buy two houses in the center of Stratford , where William , his first surviving child,
was born (as the marriage had previously lost two children). John Shakespeare became mayor of
Stratford .
There is no birth certificate for Shakespeare, so we do not know the exact date of his birth. But
there is a notation in the baptismal register of the parish, where it is stated that he was baptized on April
26, 1564 . Since the custom was to baptize children three days after birth, it is considered plausible that
April 23 was the date of their birth, which fits very well, since the date of April 23 is also given as good.
1616 as that of his death, although it must be noted that death occurs as with birth. William was buried on
April 25 and the usual custom at that time was to bury the deceased two days after death, from which it
follows that he died on April 23 , St. George's Day ( St. George's Day ), who is the patron saint of England .
Since Cervantes and the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega also died on April 23, 1616 , the date is considered good
and, in their honor, Book Day is celebrated internationally. Saint George is also the patron saint of
Aragon and Catalonia .
The Shakespeares , John and Mary , had five more

children (one of them died young), so William was the
firstborn of a large family. He briefly attended the Grammar
School in his hometown (which still continues in the same
place) and there he learned Latin and Greek and studied the
classical authors (although it is difficult to explain that he had
so much knowledge about the world. Greco-Latin having
attended school for only a few years).
At the age of 14, he stopped studying and we do not

know what happened to his life until he was 18 , when he married Anne Hathaway , daughter of a local
farmer and eight years older than him (1582). Six months after the wedding, their daughter Susan was
born. In 1584 Anne gave birth to twins , Judith and Hamnet .
A few dark years followed, during which nothing was known about William , until 1592, when he
reappeared in London , at the age of 28. Was he a school teacher at that time, as some claim? Was he
caught poaching around Charlecote Park and fled to avoid prosecution, as other scholars want? The truth is
that he reappears already knowing a lot about theater , so we have to imagine that he attended the
performances of the London companies of that time during the "lost" years , and even that he belonged to
one of them.
The only certainty is that, in 1592, he was already a theatrical writer. Robert Greene , one of his
colleagues, defined him as “an upstart rook.” His first published works were Venus and Adonis , 1593, and
The Rape of Lucretia , 1594, two long poems.
In 1594 he joined Richard Burbage 's company, Lord Chamberlain Men's , with which he spent
twenty years as an actor and writer . Burbage reserved the leading roles, but William participated in many
others, comic or tragic, and it seems that he was a good actor , a hard and not very “respectable” job,
forbidden to women and which also included making the costumes with which Act. As Burbage 's company
frequently performed before Queen Elizabeth I , when she died in 1603, her successor James I granted him
royal patronage and so the troupe took the name " Her Majesty's Servants ", " The King's Men ". .
In 1609 they already had their own covered theatre , the Blackfriars , and they also performed at
The Globe , both located outside the jurisdiction of the city of London , south of the River Thames .
5
1
Shakespeare 's wife and children always lived in Stratford and William visited them there,
becoming rich thanks to his status as a shareholder in The Globe , which he himself once called “ the
wooden O ”, “ the O from Wood ”, alluding to its circular layout. In 1597 he acquired New Place , one of
the largest and best houses in Stratford . Then, his father John was already mayor of the city and received a
coat of arms that William inherited upon his father's death in 1601, officially becoming a “ knight ,”
although he was only a comedian. The writer always maintained a relationship with his hometown and
suffered greatly when his son Hamnet died prematurely at the age of eleven. He bought land and property
there and retired there in his last years, from 1610.
William died in 1616 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church , Stratford , where the plaque placed on
his grave and the tombstone with his famous epitaph still remain:
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear

To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.
Good friend, for Jesus' sake, refrain from digging the

dust locked up here.
Blessed is the man who respects these stones and cursed is the
one who moves my bones.
Stratford owes much to its most illustrious neighbor and remains today one of the most visited
tourist spots in England . Shakespeare 's birthplace and Anne Hathaway 's cottage are preserved there.
The Royal Shakespeare Theater is also present.
Since the 18th century , many Shakespeare scholars have claimed that his works are actually due to
a different author . The historical existence of William or his collaboration with Burbage is not usually
discussed, but it is common to attribute his works to other authors, such as the playwright Christopher
Marlowe (1564-1593, author of Doctor Faustus , 1604), the philosopher Sir Francis Bacon ( 1561-1626), the
politician Sir Walter Raleigh , the 17th Earl of Oxford Edward de Vere (1550-1604), the playwright Ben
Jonson , King James I and Queen Elizabeth I herself . The powers are numerous:
F
4g /
• Henry Wriothesley , Earl of Southampton ;
• The Earl of Rutland ;
• William Stanley, Earl of Derby ;
• Anthony Bacon , brother of Sir Francis …
The attribution to the Bacons, Sir Francis and Anthony (a surname that, in Spanish, means
“bacon”), has given rise to many jokes :
• “ If Bacon wrote the plays, pigs might fly .”

• “ The play Hamlet was a piece of Danish Bacon .”
• “ In Hamlet , Bacon put the ham (=ham).”
• “ If Bacon insisted he wrote the plays, he was telling porkies .”
The longest word written by Shakespeare is:
Honorificabilitudinitatibus
Playing with the letters, you can find the Latin phrase:
“ Hi ludi F. Baconis nati tuiti orbi ”, which means:

6
Hi ludi F. Baconis nati tuiti orbi , meaning:
“ These works, daughters of F. Bacon, are preserved for
the world .”
For this, it is alleged that Shakespeare did not go to

university , so he could not know as much about the
classics, the laws, the language of the Court... Also that
when he died no poet or playwright wrote a tribute to him.
Or that his detailed will, however, does not cite a single
book or manuscript, as if the intellectual property of the
works did not interest him in the least.
Among the personalities who have discussed

Shakespeare 's authorship are Sigmund Freud, Henry
James, Mark Twain, Benjamin Disraeli ... Let's say that the first was the Reverend James Wilmot who,
about a hundred years after Shakespeare's death, went to Stratford and could not find no letter written by
him, no book he owned, no allusion to the works supposedly written by the English genius. The American
Delia Bacon went even further and claimed that Will was…
“ A stupid, ignorant third-rate play-actor from a dirty, doggish group of players .”
Regarding the time in which he lived, Shakespeare lived between the end of the Renaissance and
the beginning of the Baroque , a time of great artistic, philosophical and cultural flourishing, but also times
of great political upheaval. There was a serious conflict between the Roman Catholic church and the
Protestant churches . The European Catholic powers, France and Spain , wanted to restore Catholicism to
the English throne, which Elizabeth I 's father, King Henry VIII, had renounced.
Many of Shakespeare 's plays deal with disputes over the succession to the throne and express the
author's support for the succession rights of Elizabeth I and James I. His works also reflect the social
hierarchy of his time, customs, conventions and beliefs.
Shakespeare 's works were printed in a single volume after his death, in 1623, and were performed
again and again, until we reach our days, when he remains one of the most performed playwrights in the
history of universal theater . Furthermore, many of his works have been made into films and television ,
so, as someone wrote in 1996,
“ Shakespeare is the most popular script-writer in Hollywood .”
4. William Shakespeare. His work and his style
Due to their style, Shakespeare 's works represent a great renewal and a break with tradition. He was a
revolutionary on the scene. He used verse for serious speeches and prose for the everyday speech of
people of low social extraction. In the verse, he used the so-called iambic pentameter , of ten syllables,
with alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. The punctuation and spelling with which we see his
works in modern editions are updated, they are not the ones he used, as they would not be understood
today except by philologists and professors.
Of his linguistic talent , it is said that he was able to use 7,000 words in his works just once,
compared for example to the version of the Bible due to King James I , which uses fewer than those 7,000
different words. A piece of information that serves to somehow quantify your command of the English
language.
7
english
Among the most famous metaphors of Shakespeare's exquisite language are the
following:
• “ The Moon Looks with Tearful Eyes ” ( A Midsummer Night's Dream ).

• “ Here is the hour of the night spells, when the tombs yawn, and the same
“Hell exhales its pestilent breath upon the world !” ( Hamlet ).
• “ If music is the food of love …” ( Epiphany Night ).
• “ The dream that weaves the tangled loose silk of care ”… ( Macbeth ).
• “ I am constant as the North Star ” ( Julius Caesar ).
Also famous are the words with which Juliet ardently wishes that the night would come to
welcome her beloved Romeo :
“ Come, complacent night, placid matron, all in mourning, and teach me how to lose a profitable
match, played between two clean virginities! Come, night! Come, Romeo! Come, day into the night, for on
the wings of the night you will appear whiter than the snow that has just perched on a crow! Come, gentle
night! Come, loving dark night! Give me my Romeo !”
Shakespeare wrote about forty very varied works : historical, comedies, tragedies, black comedies,
classic works, poems... His themes were not invented, but from ancient history . Its sources were multiple:
chroniclers such as Raphael Holinshed, Saxo the Grammarian and Jean Froissart , poets such as Samuel
Daniel , historians such as Edward Hall , authors such as Boccaccio, Giraldi Cinthio, Arthur Brooke , classics
such as Plautus , Plutarch , Ovid , Chaucer ...
Here are some words and phrases that were first used by the Stradford genius:
A tower of strength. • I must be cruel to be kind.

• Assassination. • Fancy-free.
• Countless. • Bag and baggage.
To the manner born. • Vanish into thin air.
• Dwindle.
• Flesh and blood.
And here are these others that he also used, but they did not catch on in today's English:
• Protractive.
• Abruption.
• Anhungry. • Questrist.
• Appertainments. • Tortive.
• Cadet. • Ungenitured.
• Conflux. • Vastidity.
His vocabulary is rich, even in the register of insults :
• Punk Taffetta. • Fat chuff.

• Scurvy lord. • False caterpillars.
• Red-tailed bumble-bee. • Bloodsucker of sleeping men.
• Threadbare juggler. • Scolding crookback
• Mad-heades ape. • Deformed lump.
He wrote his first works from 1590 ( Henry VI , part 2; Henry VI , part 3; Henry VI , part 1; Richard
III ; The Comedy of Errors ...) and the last ones date from 1611-13 ( The Tempest, Henry VIII, The Two
Noble Cousins
8
, nrque, os os no es pmos ).
Pirated , in-quarto editions were made of his works (something like current pocket editions), not
always well cared for, so the transmission of Shakespearean verses poses serious problems of literality and
interpretation. The most reliable edition is that of the First Folio , official, made seven years after the
author's death, in 1623. Later editors, in the 18th and 19th centuries, changed the punctuation, added
scene separations, and divided the plays into acts , and that is how they have come down to us.
Magic and witchcraft are very present in Shakespeare 's works. Fairies and pixies appear in A
Midsummer Night's Dream . In Julius Caesar there are portents and predictions of death. In Hamlet, the
ht spirit of the murdered king appears to his son demanding revenge. In Macbeth , witches and their
prophecies appear, bloody visions , symbols ... The era was very inclined to believe in the supernatural and
tp the demonic. Let us not forget that a contemporary of Shakespeare , Christopher Marlowe , wrote The
:// Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (1604), which is about the story of a man who sold his soul to the devil (he
would touch on the same topic later, in the 19th century , Goethe , in his immortal Faust ).
w
w
Here is a summary of Will Shakespeare 's dramatic production:
w.
av Gender
Characters
Titles
e Initial period
Romantic, entangled plot. Love intrigue.
Complicated action. Fantastic elements.
The Taming of the Shrew (1593), The Two
Gentlemen of Verona (1594). The Merchant of
m Comedies "Dark
Venice (1596), A Midsummer Night's Dream
(1596), All's Well That Ends Well (1602),
Conflict between reality and appearance.
pa comedies"
Theater
Intrigue. Measure for Measure (1603)
ce "Blackfriars" Greater lyricism and fantasy.

Mystery.
Topics: monarchy and peace.
The Tempest (1611), The Winter's Tale (1610)
.c
Historical Henry IV (1590). Richard III (1592)
Characterization of the characters.
Dramas
Political reflections on power and tyranny
Classics
o Tragedies
Theater
Julius Caesar (159 9). Antony and Cleopatra
Universal characters that symbolize values. vices (1606) Romeo and Juliet (1594), Hamlet (1599),
m "The
balloon"
and virtues of the human being.
Othello (1604). King Lear (160S). Macbeth
/ (1606)
(Taken from Santos Alonso and others , Spanish language and literature, 1st Baccalaureate ,
pe Barcelona, Casals, 2015, p. 291)
rs
on 4.1. Complete catalog of his theatrical works
al/ Shakespeare left us 38 plays and some sonnets . Its dated catalog is as follows:
jo
1589 The two knights of Verona . The comedy of errors .
se 1590 Henry VI (1st part). King John .
- 1591 Titus Andronicus .
1592 Henry VI (2nd part), Henry VI (3rd part).
an 1593 Richard III . Venus & Adonis . Love's labors lost . The Taming of the Shrew .
to 1594 Romeo & Juliet . The Abduction of Lucretia .
1595 Richard II . Summer night Dream .
ni 1596 Merchant of Venice . Henry IV (1st part).
o- 1597 Henry IV (2nd part). The Merry Wives of Windsor .
1598 Much ado about nothing .
ga 1599 Julius Caesar . As you like . Henry V.
rc
1
0
1600 Hamlet . Troilus & Cressida .

1601 All's well that ends well . Epiphany Night ( Twelfth Night ).
1602 Othello .
1603 Measure for Measure .
1604 Helm of Athens .
1605 King Lear .
1606 Macbeth . Pericles .
1607 Anthony & Cleopatra .
1608 Coriolanus .
1609 Winter's Tale . Cymbeline . Sonnets (the only non-theatrical work he wrote).
ht 1610 The Tempest .
1611 The two noble knights .
tp 1612 Cardenio .
:// 1613 Henry VIII .
w Shakespeare did not manage to publish a single one of his works during his lifetime. In 1623, once
w he died, John Heminges and Henri Condell , two members of his company, compiled his work and
published what is known today as the “ First Folio .” Let's look at an analysis of its production in more
w. detail.
av
4.2. Comedies
e
m
foll
edi
ow
ing
sta
on
nd
ou
co
es
th
th
m
m
t:
A
e
g
pa
ce 4.2.1. Much ado About Nothing
.c
Work in which Don Pedro , Prince of Aragon , Don Juan , Beatriz and not bastard, and above all
o Benedicto appear, destined to love each other despite pretending to
m hate each other.
(Much Ado About Nothing Guide at the link
/ http://www.avempace.com/file_download/3737/Willi
pe Gu%C3%ADa+Mucho+ruido+y+pocas+nueces.pdf ) .
rs
on 4.2.2. The merchant of
al/ Venice
Sometimes considered an anti-Semitic work against Jewish lenders, but in reality it defends and attacks
jo Christians and Jews alike. The Jew Shylock appears as a victim relegated only because of his Semitic
se condition, and his daughter Jessica is a totally positive character. The Jew Shylock hates the Christian
Antonio , his rival in business. Antonio asks to borrow money so that his friend Basanio
- can woo Portia , a beautiful and beautiful young woman. Shylock lends it to him on the condition of giving
an him a pound of his own flesh if he does not repay the loan within the agreed time. As Antonio goes
bankrupt, Shylock takes him to court to enforce the contract. Thus he takes revenge on his hated Antonio
to and eliminates a rival from his usury business. But the intelligent Portia appears in Act IV disguised as a
man
ni as Antonio 's lawyer and resolves the case in favor of the
Christian.
o- Among Shylock 's most famous phrases are the following in which he justifies his revenge :
ga
rc
1
1
“I love Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses,
affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same
diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a
Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do
we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a
Jew, what should his suffering be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I
will execute—and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
“I am a Jew. Does a Jew have no eyes? Does a Jew have no hands, organs, proportions,
senses, affections, passions?... If you prick us, don't we bleed? If you tickle us, don't we laugh? If you
poison us, don't we die? And if you insult us, will we not take revenge? If we are alike in everything
else, we will also be alike in that (…).”
Portia , who has a lot of the intrepid Rosalind from As You Like It , replies to the Jew begging for
mercy :
“The property of clemency is that it is not forced; It falls like the sweet rain of heaven upon
the plain beneath it; blesses him who grants it and him who receives it.”
Jews had always been treated with suspicion in Elizabethan England . In 1594, Dr. Roderigo López ,
a Jew, was accused of working for Spanish Catholics and attempting to poison the queen and, although he
was surely innocent, he was convicted. Christopher Marlowe wrote The Jew of Malta , which was a great
success because it showed a skilled assassin, the Jew Lopez . People started saying “ Just like Lopez !” to
refer to a scheming and evil person. Shakespeare wanted to imitate Marlowe 's idea in his Merchant of
Venice .
The argument goes something like this:
Bassanio , a Venetian nobleman who has squandered his fortune, asks the rich merchant Antonio ,
his friend, for three thousand ducats to be able to continue his courtship with dignity with the rich heiress
Portia , who lives on the mainland, in Belmonte .
Antonio , who has used all his money in overseas speculation, intends to borrow the money from
Shylock , a Jewish usurer whom he had previously insulted for the usury he practiced. Shylock agrees to lend
the money under one condition: if the amount is not paid on the appointed day, Shylock will have the right to
take a pound of flesh from Antonio 's body.
Portia , by her father's testamentary disposition, will marry the suitor who among three caskets (one
of gold, one of silver, one of lead) chooses the one that contains her portrait. Illustrious candidates come
from all over; The prince of Morocco and the prince of Aragon fail, opening the chest of gold and silver
respectively; but Bassanio , with sensible reflection, chooses the good casket, the lead one , and marries
Portia , who loves him, and his friend Graciano with Portia 's maid, Nerisa .
Meanwhile, news arrives that Antonio 's ships have been shipwrecked, that his debt has not been
paid within the agreed time, and that Shylock is asking for his pound of flesh . The matter is brought before
the Doge .
Portia disguises herself as a lawyer and Nerisa as a notary and, unbeknownst to their husbands, they
appear before the court to defend Antonio . After having tried in vain to obtain the Jew 's forgiveness ,
offering him three times the amount owed, Portia requests that the Hebrew 's request be granted, but warns
him that he will lose his life if he spills a single drop of blood , since the obligation only gives you the right to
meat . He then argues that Shylock must pay with his life for the crime of having attempted, as a foreigner ,
against the life of a citizen of Venice .
The Doge spares Shylock his life, but assigns half of his wealth to Antonio , and the other half to the
State . Antonio renounces his share if Shylock becomes a Christian , and leaves his wealth, when he dies, to
Jessica ( Shylock 's daughter), who has fled, after having taken money from her father's coffers, to marry a
Christian, Lorenzo , and for this reason it has been disinherited.
Shylock agrees; Portia and Nerisa , who have not been recognized, ask for the rings that Bassanio
and Graciano received from their wives, and from which they promised never to part. They give them up after
having resisted in vain.
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Upon returning home, their wives reproach them for that action, but finally they reveal their trick. It
is finally known that three of Antonio 's ships have returned safely.
4.2.3. A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Written around 1595, with the characters Oberon, Titania and Puck . (We analyze it in detail a few pages
below.)
(We analyze it below).

4.2.6. The storm
(We analyze it in detail below)
4.2.4. The Merry Wives of Windsor
4.2.5. To your liking, As You Like
(We also discuss it below).

According to many the ita few years before his
best
4.2.7. The Tame of the Shrew
Also known as The Taming of the Shrew . Misogynistic and not very current, on a medieval theme that
already appeared in El conde Lucanor , by our Don Juan Manuel, “ Enxiemplo del mancebo que married a
brave woman ”).
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4.2.8. The comedy of mistakes
The Comedy of Mistakes is the first comedy written by Shakespeare and is inspired by Plautus ' The
Menechmos , although he reconstructs it with greater complexity from the moment he decides to
incorporate two identical pairs of twins to constantly create confusing, wrong, with good humor.
This comedy premiered on December 28, 1594, at the "Gray's Inn " and it seems that it surprised
the audience, because despite being an elementary comedy, there are moments where the farce reaches
inconceivable heights within that geometry structured with two mirrors that reflect—erroneously—the
double image of the twins , while the audience laughs, because they have become the playwright's
accomplice , since the respectable person does know who is who and enjoys the confusion that occurs
between the protagonists. The public knows well the identity of the brothers separated since childhood by
a shipwreck when they returned to their home in Syracuse with their parents.
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4
In this comedy you enter and leave the territories of farce to shine as a comedy . of course with a
happy ending , where everyone is reunited and reconciled: the father with the mother, the boss twin
brothers and the servant twin brothers , who had been separated and who came to think and say, in the
midst of all the confusion , their opinions on marriage , the relationship between man and woman , and
the preference in that society of courtesans over wives , that is, between moral and immoral or corrupt .
Love's labors lost ,
The two gentlemen of Verona,
4.2.9. Other comedies:

Epiphany Night or Twelfth Night . A sitcom, where Viola pretends to be a man, cleverly disguised.
In the end everything ends in double weddings.
4.3.1. Hamlet, prince of Dinah

4.3. Tragedy
Among the
tragedies , we must
mention Hamlet and the famous monologue :
"To be or not to be. That's the question...", " To be or not to be. That's the
question To be, or not to be, I there's the point. To
“To be or not to be, that is the question.
What is more worthy for the spirit? To suffer the Die, tofleepe, ij that all? I all: No, to flee, to dream,
I mary there it goes, For in that dream of death,
blows and darts of insulting fortune or to take up
when we awake. And borne before an cucrlafting
arms against oceans of calamities and, facing them,
Judge, From whence no paffenger euer retur'nd.
perhaps put an end to them? Die…, sleep; no more.
The vndifcoucred country, at whofe fought The
And to think that with a dream we put an end to the happy fmile, and the accused damn'd. But for this,
sorrow of the heart and the thousand natural the ioyfull hope of this,
conflicts that constitute the inheritance of the flesh!
Here is a devoutly appealing term! Die…sleep, and
maybe dream! Yes, there is the obstacle! For we must S corned by the right rich, the rich curfed the poore?
stop ourselves from considering what dreams can
survive in that dream of death, when we have freed ourselves from the whirlwind of life.
This is the reflection that gives such a long life to misfortune! For who would endure: the insults and disdains
of the world, the grievances of the oppressor, the affronts of the proud, the torments of snubbed love, the
delay of the law, the insolence of power and the disdain that patient merit receives from unworthy man,
When oneself can provide rest with a simple stiletto?
Who would want to carry such burdens, groan and sweat under the weight of a busy life, if it were
not for fear of it after death, the unknown region from whose confines almost no traveler returns?
Fear that baffles our will and makes us endure the evils that afflict us before launching into others
that we do not know. Thus unconsciousness makes cowards of us all, and thus the primitive nuances of
resolution faint in the pale tint of thought, and thus enterprises of great importance, for these considerations,
twist their course and lose name and action.
It's like this... beautiful Ophelia! Great girl, I hope my flaws are not forgotten in your prayers.”
A magnificent tragedy where poor Ophelia appears, who goes crazy, and also the well-known scene
of the undertakers and Hamlet with the skull of the jester Yorick that he then imitates
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burlesquely our Ramón del Valle-Inclán in Luces de Bohemia (during the funeral of Max Estrella ,
attended by the modernist poet Rubén Darío ):
“ Ah, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horacio; “He was a man of infinite grace …”
Hamlet is Shakespeare 's most representative dramatic work and one of the best in universal
literature, and this for many reasons:
o For the masterful development of the action , from a disturbing beginning to a bloody and
inevitable end.
o Because of the depth of the themes it deals with: the limits of the human condition, the existence
of the afterlife, love, the passage of time, death, suicide, murder, tyranny...
o Because of the magnificent plot of the characters , especially that of the protagonist , a creature
that seeks the absolute outside of religion, to be contradictory, at the same time bold and
hesitant, benevolent but cruel, wise and crazy, capable of talking about literature or to
philosophize with a skull in his hand or to act crazy to make fun of those around him. A person
who, finally, achieves what he sets out to do, but dies without having managed to clear up his
great doubt : the meaning of life and death.
o For its beautiful literary language , rich and vigorous, alternating verse and prose, full of images
and deep thoughts.
The argument is, more or less, the following:
King Hamlet of Denmark dies and his brother Claudius ascends the throne. He suddenly marries
Gertrude , the queen, and Prince Hamlet , son of the deceased king and nephew of the new king, is plunged
into a deep depression . Bernardo and Francisco , vassals of the king, were on guard , and commenting on
the different, strange and incomprehensible appearances of a ghost that visited them and two other friends
of theirs, also vassals of the kingdom, Horacio and Marcellus , night after night, always at the same time. They
did not know why the ghost appeared to them or the message he wanted to give them. Marcellus said that
the ghost had the same appearance as the deceased king .
Confused by these appearances, they told Hamlet, to whom the shadow of his father, the deceased
king, appears one night, revealing that Claudius killed him to access the throne and demands revenge .
But Hamlet , irresolute, doubts, his task becomes difficult. To hide his machinations, he feigns
madness , and this affects his relationships with his fiancée, Ofelia , a symbol of innocent victims.
Taking advantage of the fact that a troupe of traveling comedians is passing by the castle, Hamlet
asks him to perform a play in the palace, a play that he himself will write. When this is performed before the
new kings, they become enraged, as it depicts how a king is poisoned by his own brother. Claudius wants to
get rid of Hamlet , the prince argues strongly with his mother and then, by mistake, kills Ophelia 's father,
Polonius , an old and meddlesome courtier who was hiding behind some curtains. The king sends Hamlet into
exile and orders his death. But the plan goes awry and Hamlet survives.
After a certain time of absence, the prince returns with his friend Horatio and they both enter a
cemetery , where the famous scene of the gravediggers takes place and where Hamlet sees the burial of his
beloved Ophelia who, desperate because her fiancé has been exiled and has murdered her father, Polonius ,
she has gone mad and, sunk in the pond, has put an end to her unfortunate life. His brother Laertes swears
revenge on Hamlet , whom he considers guilty of all the evils of his family.
In the final scene, a fencing match takes place. King Claudius has poisoned the tip of Laertes ' sword
and Hamlet 's cup, to ensure the prince's death. But everything turns out the other way around: the
combatants exchange swords and are mortally wounded. The queen drinks from the poisoned cup that was
intended for Hamlet . Near death, Hamlet kills the king , while Fortimbras arrives from Poland ,
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6
The argument prince
is moreofor less as, who
Norway follows:
becomes the new sovereign of the kingdom of England . Horatio , Hamlet 's friend,
The Montecchi
survives (toMontagues
witness the) and the Cappelletti
tragedy and pass it on( Capulets ), the two main families of Verona, are enemies. Romeo
to posterity.
, son of old Montecchi , Fortimbrás
attends a party
, nowatking,
the Capulets
orders four ' house masked
captains and, Hamlet's
to carry if he previously
body tothought
the daishelike
was in love with
a warrior and
Rosaline , he now discovers
orders themthat his true
to open fire passion
in honorisofJuliet . prince.
the late
After the party, the young people are inflamed with mutual love. And, being under the
15 1 4.3.2. King Lear, King Lear
Another unparalleled work is King Lear , a tragedy of filial ingratitude . King Lear decides to abdicate the
crown in favor of his daughters, but two of them, Goneril and Regan , evil and interested, are ungrateful to
ht the former monarch, when he has already abdicated in their favor. The two end fatally, killing each other.
However, Lear 's third daughter, Cordelia , loves him until the tragic end.
tp
:// The story is told by the fool , the king's jester , a character who always attracted Shakespeare's
sympathies. Remember the words full of loving memory of Hamlet when he finds the skull of Yorick , the
w deceased jester of his father, the king of Denmark , in the famous scene of the gravediggers .
w
w.
av 4.3.3. Macbeth
e /«
Macbeth is the tragedy of ambition , which we analyze below.
m
pa
4.3.4.
ce Othello
.c Another justly famous work is Othello , the tragedy of jealousy , where the traitor character Iago ,
o appears, the instigator of Desdemona 's murder, and who is capable of lying and entangling the u
everyone and
revenge. Iago , incapable of good feelings, full of resentment, hates his boss, the black Othello network
for his
m success and his personal qualities and manipulates him into believing that Desdemona has been unfaithful
/ to him. Iago wants to show that he is the most intelligent, he is an inferior being, cunning and resentful,
calculating, capable of deceiving his candid and naive boss. When Othello learns the truth, he takes
pe revenge by wounding the perfidious man, who ends up committing suicide. This is the most sober and
rs concentrated of Shakespeare 's tragedies. The intrigue follows an inexorable, cruel progression,
culminating in the murder of the beautiful and virtuous wife.
on
al/ 4.3.5. Romeo and Juliet
jo The most famous tragedy of all is Romeo and Juliet , a tragedy of the impossible love between Capulets
se and Montagues , between Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet , as they say in English . It is located in the
Italian city of Verona , with the famous balcony scene. The main characters, in addition to the young lovers,
- are: Mercutio , Romeo's friend, murdered by Tybalt , Juliet's cousin. And also the friar who marries the
an two young people in the hope that their marriage will appease two powerful families of Verona that have
long been at odds. The friar's name is Friar Lorenzo .
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ga
rc
Prof. José Antonio García Fernández DEPT. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE- IES Avempace
jagarcia@avempace.com \ O C/ Islas Canarias, 5 - 50015 ZARAGOZA - Telf.: 976 5186 66 - Fax: 976 73 01 69
Juliet 's window , Romeo hears her confess to the night her love for him, and obtains her consent for a secret
marriage .
With the help of Friar Lorenzo they get married the next day. Mercutio , Romeo 's friend, finds
Tybalt , great-grandson of Lady Capulet , furious at having discovered Romeo 's presence at the party;
Mercutio and Tebaldo quarrel. Romeo intervenes, and responds to Tybalt 's challenge with words that hide
the new bond of kinship, and refuses to fight. Mercutio is outraged by such submission and draws his sword.
Romeo tries in vain to separate the contenders, only managing to give Tybalt the opportunity to mortally
wound Mercutio .
Romeo is then dragged into fighting and kills Tybalt . He is condemned to exile and, the next day,
after having spent the night with Juliet , he leaves Verona to go to Mantua , being exhorted by Friar Lorenzo ,
who understands that this is the opportune moment to make his marriage public.
Juliet , forced by her father to marry Count Paris and advised to do so even by her nurse, who had
previously favored her union with Romeo , allows herself to be convinced by Friar Lawrence to consent, but
on the eve of the wedding she drinks a narcotic that It will make her look dead for forty hours. The friar
himself will take care of notifying Romeo , who will take her out of the tomb when she wakes up and take her
to Mantua .
Julieta puts the advice into practice. But the message does not reach Romeo because the friar who
was supposed to deliver it is arrested as a suspected contagion; Instead, he receives news of Juliet 's death.
He buys a powerful poison from an apothecary and heads to the tomb to see his beloved for the last time; At
the entrance he finds Paris and kills him in a duel. Then, Romeo , having kissed Juliet for the last time, drinks
the poison.
Juliet comes to and finds Romeo dead, with the cup still in his hand. He realizes what happened and
stabs himself.
This tragic end is narrated by the friar (who arrived too late to prevent it) and by Count Paris 's page.
The heads of the two enemy families, moved by the catastrophe caused by their feud, reconcile.
Romeo and Juliet has given rise to many film and television versions, such as the classic versions by
George Cukor and Franco Zefirelli , the more modern one by Baz Luhrman (with Leonardo di Caprio and
Clare Danes in the leading roles); Romanov and Juliet , by Peter Ustinov . There are also films with
romantic themes derived from Shakespearean tragedy, such as Letters to Juliet ; also musicals such as
West Side Story , with music by Leonard Bernstein , about a gang confrontation in New York ; films like
Montoyas y Tarantos or Los Tarantos , about the confrontation of two rival gypsy families. There is also an
animated film, Gnomeo and Juliet , where Romeo is a gnome . And a Hindi adaptation: Bollywood Queen .
Even History of a Staircase , by Buero Vallejo , a symbolic interpretation of our civil war , has something of
the Shakespearean classic.
4.4. Historical works
4.4.1. Richard III
Of the historical works , we highlight Richard III , one of the worst villains in literature, where Shakespeare
defends the rights of succession to the throne of James I , against the vile Richard , interestedly converted
into a malevolent being.
" A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse !”, “ A horse! A horse! "My kingdom for a horse !"
exclaims Ricardo , wanting to flee shortly before meeting his tragic end.
In the work the dominant motif is blood . The protagonist hides Machiavellian plans beneath his
benign appearance. Physically deformed , unable to succeed in love, he concentrates his energies on
bringing down his relatives and usurping their positions. He does not hesitate to murder his own brothers
and nephews,
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alleging reasons of state, and he doesn't stop when he has to seduce his sister-in-law and then his
young niece. In the end, faced with the people's rebellion, he dies on the battlefield. His figure reaches epic
dimensions despite his evil, since he is credible as a soldier, lover, politician, hypocrite, hero, criminal... He
is very skilled at dissimulation and fraud, he has great eloquence (like Molière 's Tartuffe ) and he is a
terrible flatterer. But at the same time he is a very lonely soul:
“ There is no one who loves me ,” he complains, “ and if I die, no one will have mercy on me; and
why should they have it, if I don't have it myself? ”
4.4.2. Henry IV
In Henry IV , he appears as a time the character of Falstaff , spec Sancho Panza English, lively,
coward and charlatan, who I will star in a comedy.
4.4.3. Antony and

Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra is a play about the famous lovers of antiquity.
4.4.4. Julius
Caesar
Without a doubt it is Julius Caesar , inspired by Plutarch , the best known of those that deal with themes of
ancient history. There the soothsayer tells Caesar :
Beware of the Ides of March !
Julio also leaves his phrase:
“ Cowards die several times before, if not Breath never tastes death
once !”
When Brutus justifies his murder he says the famous bras:

words
“ Not because he loved Caesar less, but because he loved Rome more
.”
And Mark Antony , anticipating the future, speaks of the
slaughter
“ will unleash the dogs of war ”,

as it really happened.
However, Shakespeare took many licenses in this historical play. For example, Romans wore hats
and coats on stage, just in Elizabethan fashion, instead of togas . Brutus appears on the tables reading a
book , when at that time only scrolls existed, and hears the chimes of a clock , an invention at least a
thousand years after the time of the action.
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4.4.5. Other historical works
• Titus Andronicus ,
• Timon of Athens and
• Troilus and Cressida .
• Another of Shakespeare 's historical works , also inspired, like Julius Caesar , by Plutarch 's Parallel
Lives , is Coriolanus , which we analyze below.
4.5. Poetry
Of Shakespeare's poems , his sonnets are among the best in English literature. In them he uses the
usual clichés (" Carpe diem ", " Tempus fugit ", etc.) within the Petrarchan lyric , but he expresses himself
with great elegance and allows for details of originality and irony. For example, in the famous sonnet 130 ,
where he mocks the Petrarchan commonplaces in the description of the beloved.
The sonnets were published in 1609 by the editor Thomas Thorpe and dedicated by him, as was
then customary, to a certain “ Mr. W. H. ”, who is presented as the only “ begetter ” of the volume. Of
course, critics have begun to explain whether “ begetter ” means “inspirator” or “author” and to offer
hypotheses about the mysterious “Mr.”
It must also be said that two very different characters appear in the poems: the “ Fair Youth ”, a
clean and innocent young man to whom he dedicates the first 126 sonnets and where the poet sings about
a platonic love, and the “ Dark Lady ”, to to which sonnets 127 to 150 are dedicated; In the latter there are
allusions to a passionate and explicitly sexual love and the poet makes it clear that the “lady”, whom he
calls “ dark ” because he says she has black hair and dark skin, has been unfaithful to him. Critics have
wanted to identify this “dark lady” with a poet, a prostitute, even with a woman of Spanish or African
origin.
We offer below a selection of Shakespeare 's poems:
SONNET 12 SONNET 12
When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the When I count the touches that mark each hour and I
brave day sunk in hidden night; When I behold the violet see the day sink into the hateful night.
past prime, And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white; I see spring fulfilled in the violet and the dark curls,
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves Which erst covered by the white and the leafy trees bare of the
from heat did canopy the herd, And summer's green all leaves that were from the flock, shelter from the heat,
girded up in sheaves Borne on the bier with white and bristly tied in a thousand sheaves the greenery of summer,
beard, Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou with a hard white beard, carried in his coffin, then I
among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and wonder: what will be your beauty? since you will also
beauties do themselves forsake And die as fast as they see leave, with the remains of time, because sweetness
others grow; and beauty compete with each other and quickly die,
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defense Save watching others grow.
breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence. Nothing against that time can have defense,
except for an offspring that challenges your game.
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase, Cheered and checked even by the selfsame sky,
SONNET 15 Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage present night but shows
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And wear their brave state out of memory; great proscenium take place under the influence of
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay Sets the stars;
you most rich in youth before my sight, Where and that man flourishes like a plant whom
wasteful Time debates with Decay To change your day heaven itself encourages and surrenders, first proud
of youth to sullied night; and then dejected, until no one remembers its
And all in war with Time for love of you, As he splendor:
takes from you, I engraft you new. The idea of such a fleeting stay in my eyes
shows you more vibrant, while Time and Decay plot to
SONNET 15 change your young day into a sordid night.
When I think that everything that grows preserves its And, for your love warring with Time, if he
perfection for a mere moment; steals you, I graft you new life.
(Translation by Manuel Mújica Láinez )
SONNET 18
SONNET 18 Can you compare yourself to a summer day?
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? More possess beauty and softness.
Thou art more lovely and more temperate. The May bud trembles under the wind and the
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer hardly lasts at all.
summer's lease hath all too short a date. Sometimes the solar eye shines too brightly,
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, and other times its golden complexion fades; All
And often his gold complexion is dimmed; beauty sometimes declines, faded by luck or time.
And every fair from fair sometime declines, But everlasting will be your summer.
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed; You will not lose grace, nor will Death boast of
But your eternal summer shall not fade, darkening your steps when you grow in immortal
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, verses.
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, You will live as long as someone sees and
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st. feels and this can live and give you life.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, (Translation by Manuel Mújica Láinez )
So long lives this, and this gives life to them.
SONNET 23
Like an imperfect actor on stage who, because of his
SONNET 23 fear, falls out of his role, or like a hatred so full of fury
As an unperfect actor on the stage, that its immense strength weakens his own heart, so I,
Who with his fear is put besides his part, fearing to trust, forget the steps of the perfect
Or some fierce thing filled with too much rage, Whose ceremony of love that carries me, and with the very
strength's abundance weakens his own heart; power of my love I seem to sink, overloaded with the
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say weight that the strength of my love has.
The perfect ceremony of love's rite, Oh, let my books then be the eloquent ones, the sleepy
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay, ventriloquists of the words of my chest, those who beg for
O'ercharg'd with burden of mine own love's might. love and seek a greater reward than that tongue would ever
O let my books be then the eloquence And be able to express.
Oh, we must learn to read what love writes in silence: only
dumb presagers of my speaking breast, Who plead for
the fine intelligence of love can hear with the eyes.
love and look for reward More than that tongue that
more hath more express'd.
Or, learn to read what silent love has written:
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless sight, Which, like
SONNET 27 a jewel hung in ghastly night, Makes black night
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose beautiful and her old face new.
for limbs with travel tired; Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
But then begins a journey in my head, For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, And keep my
drooping eyelids open wide, that the functions of this
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SONNET 27 You don't sleep, but stay awake, next to me.
Tired of the hustle and bustle of the day in solitary bed You do not bring peace, but restlessness.
I rest. Wanting to hold on to you is being condemned to
But I can do nothing against the harassment of your never stop trying in the dark.
image, and I am its watchman. And not for a moment, as long as I conceive
hour after hour. From the distance in which this, have I stopped, in my opinion, from being with
you get lost, my fiery idea makes you so much the way you.
you are that it is painful to know that you are the (Translation : Carlos Peregrín Otero )
daughter of my fantasy.
SONNET 55 music has a far more pleasing sound;

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; SONNET 55
But you shall shine brighter in these contents Than Neither the marble nor the gold of the royal tombs
unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time. will last longer than this poem, but you will shine
When wasteful war shall statues overturn, brighter here than unswept tombstones, dirty with
And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his time. When war demolishes statues and riots destroy
sword nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record buildings, neither the sword of Mars nor war will burn
of your memory. the seal of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity Against death and self-absorbed hatred you will win;
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room Your praises will have their place in the eyes of
Even in the eyes of all posterity posterity that wears the world to its end.
That wears this world out to the ending doom. Therefore, until you are resurrected in the Judgment,
So, until the judgment that arises yourself, you live here and dwell in the eyes of lovers.
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
SONNET 97
SONNET 97 Oh, how like winter this absence of you has been to
How like a winter has my absence been From thee, me, the pleasure of a fleeting year!
the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have What frosts have I felt, what dark days have I seen!
I felt, what dark days seen! What old December's What old nakedness, in everything, of December!
bareness everywhere! But the time of absence was a season of
And yet this time removed was summer's
time, the fertile autumn, fringed with rich fruits, carrying
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the erotic weight of the faithful spring, like the wombs
the wanton burden of the prime, Like widow'd wombs of widows, after their husbands die.
after their lord's decease: But this immense offspring seemed to me,
Yet this abundant issue seems'd to me But like an orphaned hope, like fruits without a father,
hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit; since the sweet summer was waiting only for you and
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And, thou because it is so far away, not even the birds sing:
away, the very birds are mute; Or if they sing, they do so with such a
Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer That shadow of sorrow that the leaves faint, already
leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near. fearing winter.
SONNET 130 I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
Coral is far more red than her lips' red; And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; As any she belied with false comparison.
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, SONNET 130
But no such roses I see in her cheeks; My beloved's eyes are not like the sun; the coral is
And in some perfumes is there more delight much redder than her lips.
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. If the snow is white, her breasts are dark;
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That If the hair is wire, black grows on his head.
I have seen red and white damask roses,
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but it is not the color that is in his cheeks; pleasure.
and in some perfumes you smell more delight It is true, I have never seen a goddess walk: my
than in the smell that emanates from your beloved, as she walks, splits the earth.
breath. However, my beloved is as unique as
I love to hear her speak, but I know well, anyone falsely compared.
that the sound of music gives much more
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5. Analysis of some works of William Shakespeare
❖ A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Midsummer Night's Dream . Comedy, 1595
A Midsummer Night's Dream , A Midsummer Night's Dream, was written around 1595
and features the characters Oberon, Titania and Puck among others. Another
representation is interspersed in the performance, the Fable of Pyramus and Thisbe , a
metatheatrical resource—theater within the theater—very frequent in Shakespeare (it
is also used by the author in works such as Hamlet ). When Oberon meets Titania he
tells her:
“ Bad meeting, by the light of the moon, proud Titania ... ”.
And when he describes the place where she sleeps, he explains:
“ I know of a border where wild thyme grows, where violets and primulaceae sway ... ”,
a discourse that links with the Essays , by Michel de Montaigne , and with all the classic utopians
who dealt with the myth of the Golden Age , from Horace to Cervantes . And in 1595 Queen Elizabeth I
reigned in England and Sir Walter Raleigh was then in Guyana , in South America , looking for the
legendary El Dorado , which he never found.
In act I, scene I , Elena , one of the young women in the play, in love with Demetrius , who disdains
her, because he loves Hermia , complains bitterly about love with these beautiful words:
“How much happier some manage to be than others! In all Athens I am considered their
equal in beauty, but what good is it to me? Demetrius doesn't think so. He refuses to recognize what
everyone but him recognizes. And just as he is deceived, fascinated by Hermia's eyes, so I am
blinded, in love with her qualities. Love can transform low and vile things into worthy, exalted ones.
Love does not see with the eyes, but with the soul, and that is why they paint the winged Cupid
blind. Not even in Love's mind has there been any sign of discernment. Wings without eyes are an
emblem of reckless haste, and because of this it is said that Love is a child, because in the choice it
frequently errs. Just as naughty children are seen violating their oaths in games, so rapacious Love is
perjured everywhere. Because before Demetrius saw Hermia's eyes, he hailed me with oaths,
assuring me that he was mine alone; and when this hailstorm felt the heat of his presence, it
dissolved, melting the shower of votes. I am going to reveal to you the escape of beautiful Hermia;
he won't stop chasing her tomorrow night in the woods; and for this notice, if you only thank me, I
will have received a high price. But it will be enough to mitigate my pain to be able to look at him
there and return. (Comes out.)"
In Act II, Scene I , Puck introduces himself as a mischievous and devious goblin. The role of the elf
in the work is reminiscent of the role of Hermes ( Mercury , in Latin mythology ) among the gods of
Olympus , as a messenger ; and since he is fast and “ diligent ” in his tasks: in reality, Puck seems like a
parody version of the Olympian god and son of Jupiter, since it is his mistakes that generate the imbroglio
(=entanglement) of the work.
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“FAIRY—Either your exterior deceives me at all, or you are that evil and clueless elf they call
Robin the Good Boy. Are you not the one who frightens the village girls, foams the milk, messes with
the hand mill, and, rendering all the efforts of the housewife useless, prevents the butter from
curdling, and sometimes the beer from fermenting? Do you not lead astray those who travel by
night and laugh at their evil? To those who call you Apparition and sweet Puck, you advance their
work and give them good luck. Isn't that you?
PUCK: You spoke correctly, fairy. I am that cheerful nightcrawler. I amuse Oberon and make
him smile when I attract a fat horse well nourished with beans by imitating the neighing of a young
mare. And sometimes I curl up in a comadre's bowl, in the shape of a cooked but, and, when she
goes to drink, I collide against her lips and spill the beer on her withered jowls. The prudent aunt,
telling a sad story, often makes a mistake with her three-foot stool; then, I slip between her
buttocks, she falls flat on her face and screams: "Tailor!", and falls into a fit of coughing. And
immediately the crowd, clutching their sides, laughs and sneezes, and swears that a happier hour
has never passed there. But make room, fairy, Oberon is coming here!”
In act IV, scene I , the young Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia and Elena reflect on living and dreaming
“DEMETRIUS—These adventures appear to me as if in a confusing distance, just like those

mountains that turn into clouds from afar.
HERMIA—It seems that an illusion of the eyes makes me see things double.
ELENA— That's how I feel too. And Demetrio seems to me like a jewel that I had found, that
is mine and not mine at the same time.
DEMETRIUS: Are you sure we are awake? Something tells me that we are sleeping, that we
are still dreaming... Don't you think that the duke was here recently and that he told us to follow
him?
HERMIA: Yes, and also my father.
ELENA—And Hippolyta.
LlSANDRO—And he invited us to accompany him to the temple.
DEMETRIUS: This is what proves that we are awake. Let's follow them, and walking we will
tell each other our dreams. ( They leave .)”
In the epilogue, the mischievous Puck returns to the theme of life as a dream , a literary topic that
our Calderón de la Barca also spoke about and that Shakespeare himself resorts to on several occasions
(for example, in Hamlet 's famous monologue: “ To die… Sleep… Dream perhaps ”:
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“PUCK.”
If we, vain shadows, have offended you, think only of this, and everything is settled: that
you have remained here sleeping while those visions have appeared.
And this weak and humble fiction
It will have nothing but the inconsistency of a dream, kind spectators, do not rebuke us;
If you grant us your forgiveness, we will mend our ways.
And by honest Puck's faith, if we have been fortunate enough to escape the serpent's hiss
now, we will endeavor to correct ourselves as soon as possible;
Otherwise, call Puck a liar.
So, good night everyone.
Give me your hands, if we are friends, and Robin will restore you with compensation.
( Comes out .)
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According to Vicente Molina Foix , it is Shakespeare 's most volatile and spectacular work, his great
musical, one of the most fun, a combination of the fantastical and the bizarre, and for the same reason also
an extravagant work that has not always been well judged. For example, Samuel Pepys , a 17th-century
English diarist, considered it “the most insipid and ridiculous play I have ever seen.” And in the 18th
century, Dr. Johnson considered it excessively “fantastic and wild.” Starting with Romanticism , however,
and thanks above all to the German romantics of Sturm und Drang , with Goethe at the helm, the
assessment of Shakespeare changed. Molina Foix relates it to the unconscious dreams of Dr. Freud and
quotes the Viennese wise man, who assured that
“ Poets and philosophers discovered the unconscious before me .”
Henry Purcell made a musical version of this Shakespearean Dream in 1692, with the title The Fairy
Queen , which has become enormously popular. And Félix Mendelssohn also made his symphonic version
in 1843, including the famous Wedding March . Benjamin Britten was inspired by the Shakespearean play
for his contemporary opera of the same name in 1960.
Also in the cinema, several versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream have been made, one of the
most popular works of the Stratford genius. • ■ ______ x
The action takes place in Athens , in a forest adjacent to the city, during St. John's Eve , a magical
night par excellence (June 23, the shortest night of the year), and begins with the announcement of the
wedding of the Athenian duke Theseus. and Hippolyta , queen of the Amazons . But in the forest are
Oberon and Titania , king and queen of the fairies, who represent the magical world and who, helped by
the pixie Puck , unravel their entanglements through enchantments, mischief and mirages, until everything
ends well.
The theme is the inconstancy of love and is developed through three intertwined actions : a) a
couple who tries to escape and another who chases her, b) the king and queen of the fairies, who seek to
reconcile after a fight, c) a company of artisans rehearsing a comedy. The pixie Puck plays with all of them,
pouring a magical filter (which makes one fall in love with the first being they see when they wake up). The
filter produces a terrible mess , causing the couples that had formed before to intersect and the queen of
the fairies to become infatuated with a craftsman dressed in a donkey's head. Although, of course,
everything ends well in the end.
The argument is more or less the following:
Hermia , in love with Lysander , refuses to

marry Demetrius , thus contravening the wish of Aegeus , her father. Demetrius , for his part, is loved by
Hermia 's friend, Elena , whom he has abandoned to marry Hermia . According to Athenian law, Duke
Theseus gives Hermia four days of time to obey her father's will, after which she must die.
Hermia and Lysander agree to secretly leave Athens and marry where the law cannot reach them.
They plan to meet in a forest a few miles from the city. Hermia reveals the plan to Elena , who informs
Demetrius . Demetrius follows Hermia into the forest and Elena follows Demetrius ; so the four of them are
in the forest that night.
Oberon and Titania , king and queen of the fairies , who live in the forest , have quarreled because
of a page . Oberon asks the pixie Puck , a symbol of the volubility of love , to provide him with a certain
magical flower whose juice, poured into Titania 's eyes while she sleeps, will make her fall in love with the
first being she sees when she wakes up.
Oberon hears Demetrius in the forest reproaching Elena for following him, and, eager to reconcile
them, he orders Puck to pour a little of that loving filter into Demetrius 's eyes when Elena is next to him.
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Puck , taking Lisandro for Demetrio , gives him the filter, and since Elena is the first person Lisandro
sees when he wakes up, he speaks words of love to her; but it only manages to irritate her, because she
thinks that Lysander is making fun of her.
Oberon , having discovered Puck 's mistake , pours the juice into Demetrius 's eyes, so that now
there are two of them courting Elena . The two women fight while the men prepare to challenge each other
for Elena .
Meanwhile, Oberon has put the filter on the eyelids of Titania , who, upon awakening, finds at her
side the weaver Bottom with a donkey's head instead of her own: in fact, Bottom , with a company of
Athenian craftsmen , He is in the woods rehearsing a drama to be performed to celebrate the Duke's
wedding , and Puck has given him the head of a donkey. Titania falls in love with him as soon as she sees him,
and praises him for his beauty.
They are surprised by Oberon , who pities Titania , and after recovering the kidnapped page , rubs
his wife's eyes with an herb that frees her from the spell.
Puck , by order of Oberon , surrounds the human lovers and brings them together: while they sleep
next to each other, he squeezes the herb that undoes the charm into their eyes, so that when they wake up
they return to the loves of before.
Theseus and Aegeus are introduced; fugitives are forgiven and couples marry. The
drama ends with a scene from Pyramus and Thisbe grotesquely recited by Bottom and his
william
companions for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta , queen of the Amazons .
Shakespear
e Foreword by Vicente Molina Foix
indsor, The Marry Wives of
The Merry Wives of Windsor . Comedy, 1598
This comedy, also translated by The Merry Wives of Windsor , has always been
considered one of Shakespeare 's main ones, thanks above all to its protagonist, Sir John Falstaff , one of
the great male characters of the Stratford author who had already left his indelible mark on the work of
Enrique IV , as a companion of the king 's escapades and debaucheries when he was just a prince . Falstaff
is boastful, anarchic, playful, rebellious, free, attentive only to enjoyment and excess, fat, immoral,
lascivious, trickster, drinker, bully, ingenious in his tricks, seducer... But here, he becomes the mocked
mocker and is the center of all the mockery and deception, although in the end he manages to cast a
shadow of doubt on the damage that all the adventures he has experienced have caused him:
“ I am glad to see that although all the darts were aimed at me, some have hit the void .”
It is said that Queen Elizabeth I was enthusiastic about the obese knight character present in Henry
IV and made known her august wish that Falstaff would once again be the protagonist of some stage
libretto and that he would also appear in love. As it is seen that the character also had a pull among the
common people, Shakespeare thought of rescuing him from oblivion and made this comedy, linked to the
crown also because of the place where the action is located, Windsor , and because of the times in which
he is cited. The Order of the Garter affects the reigning house of Windsor.
The play is full of dialogues vibrant with wit and ends with a quadruple wedding , something
unusual on the scene at that time and which would undoubtedly delight the public. As a dialogue example,
we copy this fragment where Guillermo Page , youngest son of the Pages, speaks with his master, Sir Hugo
Evans , without the maid, Mistress Quickly , ignorant and quick with language (hence her name), failing to
intervene:
“ SIR HUGO EVANS — William, how many numbers are there in names?
GUILLERMO — Two.
MISTRESS QUICKLY — Actually, I thought there was one more, because they say "odd number."
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SIR HUGO EVANS — Enough talk!... What is beautiful in Latin, William?
GUILLERMO — Pulcher.
MISTRESS QUICKLY — Fleas! There are things more beautiful than fleas surely.
SIR HUGO EVANS — What a foolish woman! Silence please! What is lapis, Guillermo? GUILLERMO
— Stone.
SIR HUGO EVANS — And what is stone, William?
GUILLERMO — A pebble.
SIR HUGO EVANS — No, it's lapis. I beg you to keep it in your memory.
GUILLERMO — Lapis.
SIR HUGO EVANS — That's it, dear William. And where are the articles taken from, Guillermo?
GUILLERMO — The articles come from the pronoun, and are declined like this: Singulariter,
nominative, hic, haec, hoc.
SIR HUGO EVANS — Nominative, hig, hag, hog; look, please; genitive, hujus. How do you make
the accusatory case?
GUILLERMO — Accusative, hint.
SIR HUGO EVANS — Please remember this well, child; accusative, hung, hang, hog.
MISTRESS QUICKLY — Hang hog is Latin for bacon, I assure you.

SIR HUGO EVANS — Stop your nonsense, woman! What is the vocative case, Guillemo?
MISTRESS QUICKLY — O. Vocative, O.
SIR HUGO EVANS — Remember William: vocative, caret.
MISTRESS QUICKLY — And it's a good root!
SIR HUGO EVANS — By God, woman!
MISTRESS PAGE — Silence!
SIR HUGO EVANS — What is the case with the genitive plural, William?
GUILLERMO — The genitive case?
SIR HUGO EVANS — Yes.
WILLIAM — Genitive, orum, arum, orum.
MISTRESS QUICKLY — Wow with the Genital case! What a shame! Never name her, child; yes
she is a whore!
SIR HUGO EVANS — For modesty, madam!
MISTRESS QUICKLY — It is a bad thing to teach children such words. Teach him hick and hack,
which boys learn on their own, and appeal to the horum? It's embarrassing for you!
SIR HUGO EVANS — Are you mad, woman? Don't you know the cases, numbers and genders?
You are the stupidest Christian creature I have ever seen” (act IV, scene II)
The title is due to two married women, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page , to whom Falstaff
requires love by sending them a compromising letter. The two decide to take revenge and give the
lecherous fat gentleman what he deserves:
“MISTRESS PAGE—Hang, you dishonest scoundrel! We will never punish him enough.
Let us prove that we, happy women, can also be honest without acting, even though we
tend to joke and laugh, which is an old but true saying:
«Even the pig feeds on the feces»! (act IV, scene II).
At the end of the play, they decide to all dress up as elves and fairies and give the very scared
Falstaff a good beating. This is how Ana Page , daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Page , acts, pretending to be
queen of the fairies:
“Let's work, let's work! Goblins, search Windsor Castle up and down. Spread joy, sylphs, in
each of the sacred rooms. May the castle remain standing until the day of final judgment, in a state
of perfection that is always worthy of its owner, as its owner is worthy of it. Rub the chairs of the
order with perfumes and rare flowers. May the chairs, shields and crests always display the loyal
coat of arms. Sing, fairies of the meadows, forming in the night a circle equal to that of the Garter.
May the moss bloom fresher than anywhere else under the footprint of your steps! Write Honni soit
qui mal and I thought of emerald bunches of flowers
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red, blue and white, like the sapphires, pearls and rich embroidery that cling below the bent knees of
arrogant chivalry. The fairies replace the letters with flowers. Go, disperse!
But until one o'clock do not forget to dance, as is customary, around the oak
of Heme the hunter.” (act V, scene V)
Ana Page quotes the motto of the Order of the Garter , Honni soit qui mal y
pense , Cursed be he who thinks ill (of it).
❖ To your liking, As You Like It. Comedy, 1599
In To your taste - also translated As you like in some editions - Rosalinda, Celia, Orlando, Oliverio, Jaques
and Touschstone (" Touchstone " in Spanish) appear, the jester who represents the enlightened madman,
the fool or clown so frequent in Shakespeare's theater.
Jaques, a melancholic and gloomy character who represents the skeptical or pessimistic spirit of
the late Shakespeare (already in his maturity), says the famous phrase about the seven ages of man:
“The whole world is a theater, and all the men and women simply comedians. They have
their entrances and exits, and a man in his time plays many roles, and his acts are seven ages. First, it
is the child who moans and drools in the arms of the nurse; Then, it is the crying schoolboy, with his
backpack and his shining dawn face, who, like a snail, reluctantly crawls to school. Immediately, it is
the lover, sighing like an oven, with a mournful ballad composed at the bars of his beloved.
Afterwards, he is a soldier, full of strange oaths and bearded like a leopard, jealous of his honor,
quick and daring in quarrel, seeking the air bubble of reputation even in the mouth of the cannons.
Later he is the judge, with his beautiful round belly, stuffed with a good capon, severe eyes and
carefully cut beard, full of serious sayings and commonplaces. And so he plays his role. The sixth age
transforms him into the character of the wiry and daft Pantalón, with his glasses on his nose and his
bag at his side. The leggings of his youth, which he has carefully preserved, would be a world of
width for his meager shins, and his strong virile voice, once again converted into the high-pitched
voice of a child, now emits pipe and whistle sounds. In short, the last scene of all, the one that ends
this strange story full of events, is second childhood and total oblivion, without teeth, without eyes,
without taste, without anything.
( scene seven, act II ).
Jacques is a Hamlet -like prince of grief, but without any pending revenge (unlike the Danish
prince). He is simply a mocking, impertinent, misanthropic, hurtful, environmentalist and lonely being. He is
a contemplative and meditative spirit, with a natural background of melancholy, sick with acedia (apathy or
apathy), an illness that the medieval writers of the Church called “the midday demon.” The writer Vicente
Molina Foix , in his prologue to the work, entitled " Melancholy among the trees ", focuses his attention on
this character, whom Orlando calls " Monsieur Melancholy ", and considers him an antecedent of
Baudelaire 's dandy , a decadent rather than a revolutionary, a superior being whose singularity would lie,
according to the French poet,
“ in that cold air that comes from the firm resolution not to feel excited .”
Baudelaire , in The Flowers of Evil , adds that
“ Dandism is a setting sun: like the declining star, it is arrogant, devoid of heat and full of
melancholy .”
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Rosalind , a shrewd and intelligent young woman who remembers Portia from The Merchant of
Venice and who, like her, disguises herself as a man calling herself Ganymede , says these poetic words to
Orlando :
“Men are April when they make their court; December when they get married; maidens are
may when they are maidens; but the cycle changes when they get married. I will be more jealous of
you than a Barbary wood pigeon is of its dove; more boisterous than a parrot exposed to the rain,
more capricious than a monkey, more giddy in my desires than a monkey. I will cry for nothing, like
Diana at the fountain, and this when you are in a happy mood, I will laugh like a hyena, even when
you feel inclined to sleep ” (act IV, scene I).
ht Rosalinda always shows signs of her intelligence . For example, talking to Orlando:
tp
“Oh! I know what you mean. Yes it's true. Nothing so sudden has ever been seen, except for
:// the combat of two rams and Caesar's sonic boast: "I came, I saw and I conquered," because your
brother and my sister barely met when they looked at each other; They barely looked at each other
w when they loved each other; They barely loved each other, when they sighed; They barely sighed,
w when they asked themselves the reason; They barely knew the reason when they looked for the
remedy; and thus, from grade to grade, they have built a succession of stairs leading to marriage, up
w. which they will climb incontinenti, or will be incontinent before they marry. They are in all the fury of
love, and they must unite. Not even blows of a mace could separate them” (act V, scene II).
av
e She, furthermore, is the one who closes the work in the
final epilogue :
m “ It is not customary to see the lady in the epilogue, but it is no more inconvenient than
pa the gallant in the prologue .”
ce Rosalind is a champion of equality between men and women and also sexual equality, freedo
as she does not refrain from saying, highlighting the sexual ambiguity of Shakespeare's work: m
.c
o “If I were a woman, I would kiss all those of you who had beards that I liked, physiognomies
that seduced me, and breaths that did not repel me. And I am sure that all those who have good
m beards, beautiful physiognomies and soft breaths will consent, in exchange for my affectionate offer,
/ to say goodbye to me when I have made my bow to them.
pe If we take into account that, in Elizabethan times , it was forbidden for women to They will act in
perform and that their roles were played by young, still beardless people, Ro's words are the inda-
rs quite a provocation. Ganymede
on
As for Orlando , the leading man, he is very strong; He defeats the strongman of the usurping duke,
al/ Carlos, much larger than him; but he also knows how to write verses, which he engraves on the trees of the
jo forest in honor of his beloved:
se “Why is this place deserted? I will write Rosalind , so that

- Because it is not populated? No;
I will give languages to the trees, which
everyone without error
knows that heaven has given
an will take on a civil voice. her greater sovereignty;
They will say how short life is, how much and that only in one body Nature
to pilgrimage is made, and how age has a brought together
span of extension. Others will talk about how many scattered graces dwelt
ni vows that friendship broke; but in the in Creation.
o- most beautiful branches and at the end
of each expression
The pure face of Elena, of
Cleopatra the royal brilliance, of
ga Atalanta the richest gift and of
Lucretia the modesty.
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Thus, by celestial order, everything that captivates the That is what heaven wanted,
eyes and the heart was given to Rosalinda. and that my soul was a slave to
his love.” (act III, scene II)
Vicente Molina Foix remembers that the play takes
place in the Forest of Arden , near Stratford, Shakespeare's birthplace, which existed many centuries before
the writer was born. From the forest she took the surname Mary Arden , William's mother. It is a name
with Celtic roots and a toponym that is also recorded in France , where the Ardennes Forest exists,
bordering Belgium and Luxembourg .
The play was written by Shakespeare around 1599, around the time he composed Henry V, Julius
Caesar and Hamlet .
In Shakespearean works there is usually some important forest as a space where the action takes
place, an enchanted or magical place, as occurs with the Athens Forest in A Midsummer Night's Dream , or
with the Birman Forest in The Tragedy of Macbeth . In Love's Labour's Lost , Cymbeline , Titus Andronicus
and other works there are also tragic, horrifying or idyllic forests, depending on the case. And when it's not
a forest filled with extraordinary spells, it's an island ruled by a wizard, as with Prospero in The Tempest .
Another frequent element in Shakespeare 's works, and which is also here, is the presence of the
usurping brother who displaces the sovereign from power through intrigues and plots , so that the forest
becomes the place of exile of legitimacy and good. , a utopian corner . Shakespeare thus also links with the
topic of the aurea mediocritas or Beatus Ille , the retired wise man. And also with that of Arcadia (" Et in
Arcadia ego ", " locus amoenus "), the bucolic-pastoral genre , full of pleasant places where shepherds live
in peace and talk about verses while they herd their goats. In Shakespeare's works there is a long gallery of
nobles and powerful people murdered, betrayed or dispossessed: Hamlet, The Tempest, Macbeth, King
Lear ...
A comedy of pretense, disguises, gallantry, pastoral songs and promiscuous

games, As You Like it puts the finishing touch to a brilliant comic cycle by Sakespeare,
which includes comedies such as Much Ado About Nothing or The Merry Wives of
Windsor .
The Tempest, The Tempest . comedy
The Tempest is, according to many, Shakespeare's

best play, written
a few years before his death, located on an enchanted island in a place in the
Mediterranean , where the magician Prospero lives with his daughter Miranda and two creatures who
serve him: Ariel and Caliban . Caliban 's name is a derivation of " Cannibal ", a word that Shakespeare
learned from travel books that we know he was very fond of. At the end of the play Prospero concludes:
“ Our fun has ended. These actors, as I had warned, were all spirits and have dissipated into
air ...
We are woven from the same cloth as dreams, and our short life closes with a dream .”
“ We are such stuff / As dreams are made on; and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep ”
Some words that recall Life is a Dream , by our Calderón de la Barca , and that evoke the epilogue
of the pixie Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream .
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Another very famous moment of the comedy is when Miranda discovers the Milanese courtiers
(she has never seen such elegant men before, since she has always lived on the island):
“ O brave new world that has such people in it !”,
“ New and splendid world you have such people in you !”
Brave New World is the title of a hilarious book by David Lodge . Aldous Huxley also used that
Shakespearean expression for his novel about the bitter future of humanity, Brave New World .
The Tempest is considered to be Shakespeare's most original invention and there is an abundance
of sources that inspire it: Ovid 's Metamorphoses , the romances , the Essais of Michel de Montaigne , the
philosophy of Francis Bacon , the "masque" Hymenaei of Ben Jonson , the historians of the Tudor era... The
work serves for the debate on English colonial policy , on the relationship between religion and magic , etc.
It is superior and experimental from a scenographic and musical point of view, it is Aristotelian in terms of
the rule of three units. In short, a paragon of perfections, a multi-significant work that allows very different
readings, a true symphonic poem or “ opera in musica ”.
The relationship between the magician Prospero , the master, and his servant, the monstrous
Caliban, has given rise to many critical reflections. It has to do with the relationship between the human
and the divine , between master and servant , between colony and metropolis , between civilization and
barbarism , between white and black race... The French philosopher Ernest Renan wrote his drama
Caliban in 1878, where the exploited monster rebels against his employer. Caliban becomes a symbol of
the exploited peoples of the Caribbean in Aimé Césaire 's noir play Une Tempête , from 1969. Caliban is at
the same time the indigenous of the New World, the cannibal , the uneducated wild man .
The poet T. S. Eliot also dealt with another of Prospero 's servants, Ariel , in a poem from his Waste
Land, Tierra Baldía . Furthermore, W. H. Auden also dealt with the Shakespearean work in The Sea and the
Mirror , in 1945. Wilcox 's science fiction film, The Forbidden Planet , is in some ways a variation on The
Tempest , with Ariel turned into a robot . In 1991 , Peter Greenway published his Prospero's Books , which
is a Shakespearean rereading.
Much has been said about different aspects of this work, such as Prospero 's incestuous feeling
towards his daughter Miranda , the relationship between Shakespeare, Montaigne and El Criticón de
Gracián , etc., and it is still far from being exhausted in its critical interpretations or in its increasingly bold
stagings, such as that of director Peter Brook , greatly influenced by the theater of the absurd of the Irish
Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett . There is no doubt that Shakespeare had accumulated great literary
and dramatic knowledge at the end of his theatrical career that he knows how to use wisely in this his most
personal creation.
For example, from Montaigne he learned the complex relationship between appearance and
reality, the contradictory nature of man, the skeptical stance towards life... The echoes of the French author
are in Hamlet, King Lear ... In the case of The Tempest , the influence of the essay “ Of the Cannibals ”
when the Shakespearean character Gonzalo speaks of an innocent land,
“where there is no type of commerce; no knowledge of letters; no science of numbers; no

name of magistrate or political position; no custom of vassalage, wealth or poverty; no contract; no
succession; no distribution; no occupation that is not idle; no respect of kinship that is not common;
no clothes; no agriculture; no metal; no use of wine or wheat. Even the words that mean lie,
betrayal, dissimulation, greed, envy, detraction, forgiveness, are unheard of!”
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This utopian land has to do with the island ruled by the magician Prospero , it links with utopian
literature that starts from Plato 's Republic and continues in the Renaissance and Baroque , and even
further in time, with works such as the aforementioned Essays. , by Montaigne ; Utopia , by Thomas More ;
New Atlantis , by Francis Bacon ; Oceana , by John Harrington ; Robinson Crusoe , by Daniel Defoe ;
Gulliver's Travels , by Jonathan Swift ; Tarzan , by Edgar Rice Burroughs , or the government of the
Barataria Island by Sancho Panza in our Don Quixote .
Furthermore, it is related to the myth of the ages of man , from the original Golden Age to the
current Iron Age , a discourse that is also present in Don Quixote :
“Happy age and happy centuries are those whom the ancients called golden, and not
because in them the gold (which in our iron age is so highly esteemed) was achieved in that
fortunate time without any fatigue, but because then those who in it They lived unaware of these
two words of yours and mine …”
And it also refers to the myth of Arcadia , “ Et in Arcadia Ego ”. Or even to the biblical myth of the
earthly Paradise (the Garden of Eden ).
It must be understood that after the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus, many
authors were attracted to the theme of the happy society and utopia . The scientific fictions of H. g. Wells ,
the futuristic fantasies of Aldous Huxley or George Orwell , films like The Blue Lake , in the 20th century,
have done nothing more than continue a literary and philosophical reflection that had begun many
centuries before.
Pietro Martire d'Anghiera , Spanishized in Pedro Mártir de Anglería , chronicler of Columbus 's
voyages, speaks of the indigenous people of Hispaniola ( Santo Domingo ) and says that they lived in the
golden age , naked, without money, without laws or judges neither books nor concern for the future. He
also talks about the natives of Cuba who have the land and water in common, they do not know the words
yours and mine , “seeds of all evils.”
The myth of the golden age is very old, part of the old poems of Hesiod (c. VIII a. C.), who in The
Works and the Days speaks of a golden age, aetas aurea , innocent and happy, ruled by Cronus , which is
followed by four other ages ( silver , bronze , heroic and iron ), each one more degenerate than the
previous one. This topic is continued by Cicero, Virgil (in the Eclogues ) , Ovid (in his Metamorphoses ) and
Seneca. And he continued later with Arcadia , by Jacopo Sannazaro , with Amina by Torcuato Tasso (“O
bella età de l'oro…”) and with Pierre de Ronsard and the French poets of the Pléiade .
Virgil 's fourth eclogue , 63 verses long, reworks the topos and presents a variant, since there is no
nostalgia for the past time , but rather a reference to the future , to a new era to come when a mysterious
child is born that later Christianity - for example, Saint Augustine of Hippo - identified, of course, with
Jesus . In this eclogue it is predicted that, with the birth of the child, the golden age will return to humanity
and, thus, we will stop striving to gather the fruits of the earth or to earn bread with the sweat of our brow.
The fourth eclogue is the reason Dante Alighieri chose Virgil on his journey to Hell in the Divine Comedy .
ECLOGUE IV, fragment

"The last times of which the Sibyl speaks have arrived:
The immense course of the centuries is going to begin again.
A repairman will be sent to us from the highest heavens.
Rejoice, chaste Lucina, for the birth of this child,
that will put an end to the Iron Age, reigning until now,
and will extend the Golden Age throughout the universe...
He who must work these wonders will be engendered in the very womb of God;
34
Prof. José Antonio García Fernández DEPT. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE- IES Avempace
jagarcia@avempace.com \ O C/ Islas Canarias, 5 - 50015 ZARAGOZA - Telf.: 976 5186 66 - Fax: 976 73 01 69
will be distinguished among the celestial beings;
He will appear superior to all of them and will rule the pacified world with the virtues of his father...
Come, then, dear offspring of heaven,
illustrious offspring of Jupiter, because the predicted times are approaching.
Come receive the great honors that are due you.
See your coming to the globe of the world wavering under the weight of its vault;
the earth, the vast seas, the high sky...
everything stirs and rejoices for the century to come."
❖ Coriolanus. historical work
Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare 's historical plays , also inspired – like Julius
Caesar – by Plutarch 's Parallel Lives . This tragedy was greatly appreciated by T. S. Eliot, Colredidge and
Bertolt Brecht .
Gaius Marcius , called “ Coriolanus ” by his fellow citizens for having conquered the city of Corioles
for Rome , is a brave warrior of noble origin, full of pride and presumption. When he returns victorious to
the Eternal City , he hopes to be elected to the Senate as tribune of the plebs . But he refuses to flatter the
masses by showing them the wounds that the defense of Rome has inflicted on his body and is
contemptuous of the crowd, whom he believes should be dealt with with the whip. He is in favor of only
the aristocracy, the patrician class, having representation in the Senate. His way of speaking is so brutal and
intolerant of Roman democracy that several tribunes of the plebs, such as Sicinius Veluto and Junius Brutus
, seeing the hero as a dictator , bias the people against him and condemn him to exile.
Hurt by the behavior of his homeland, Coriolanus seeks out his former enemies, the people of the
Volscians , and his general, Tullus Aufidius , his mortal enemy. If he had previously conquered his cities
Corioles and Ancia, and had murdered his soldiers, now he offers to lead an army that destroys Rome. And
little by little he advances to the gates of the wall, in an unstoppable military parade. The Romans send
parliamentarians, among them old Menenius Agrippa , Coriolanus' mentor, who had always treated him
like a venerable father. But everything is useless.
The city is saved in extremis by the intervention of women : Volumnia , Coriolanus's mother, and
Virgilia , his wife, who beg the hero to forgive the place where he was born. The tears of his loved ones
soften the hard heart of the warrior, who finally forgives Rome. But the Volscians and their former enemy
Tullus Aufidius do not forgive his betrayal and kill him.
Because it is a work from the classic Shakespearean repertoire, it has had many performances
throughout history, both in countries with communist and capitalist ideology. Coriolano has a lot of the
coup general capable of interrupting civil and democratic life with his authoritarian tics . From another
point of view, he is a glorious hero , a patriot poorly rewarded by his own people. His story has been
interpreted from very different, even contradictory, perspectives. Its end can be seen as the triumph of the
oppressed people over the tyrant or as the success of misunderstanding and slander over warrior heroism.
Macbeth is the tragedy of ambition, where Lady Macbeth , first the instigator of the murder of King
❖ Macbeth , tragedy
Duncan , also goes crazy when she feels the weight of guilt on her conscience:
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5
“Away, cursed stain!... Away, I say!... But who would have imagined that that old man would have so
much blood!
The warrior Macbeth was a thane (ancient name for Lord ) of 12th century Scotland who enjoyed
the favor of King Duncan , as one of his most faithful knights. However, greed pushes him to betray and
murder his king when he was a guest in his palace.
The story begins with the uprising of the Thane of Cawdor , supported by the king of Norway ,
against the king of Scotland Duncan . Macbeth , Thane of Glamis , fights the king's enemies and helps him
win. The king decides to name him the new Thane of Cawdor in place of the traitor and sends his emissary
Ross to tell him his decision. Macbeth and his friend Banquo are resting after the battle and walk through
the forest, where they find three witches who predict to Macbeth that he will be Thane of Cawdor and,
later, king of Scotland , but that Banquo will never be king, although the sons of their children. After the
prophecy, Ross appears and communicates Duncan 's decision. Macbeth tells his wife about the encounter
in the forest and she pushes him to murder the old king while he is staying in the castle of his friends the
Macbeths . This is how the remorse begins, the feeling of hands full of blood, the obsession with cleaning
them at all hours, the lack of sleep, the ghostly visions...
Paranoia takes over Macbeth , who murders his friend Banquo , fearing that he is plotting
something against him. He goes to see the witches again and they tell him to be careful with Macduff , a
Scottish thane . And they tell him that no man born of a woman can kill him and that no one will defeat him
until Birnam Forest comes to Dunsinane Hill , the hill where he has his castle. So Macbeth , more confident
in his power, murders the wife and son of Macduff , who swears revenge on the tyrant. Lady Macbeth goes
mad and dies. Macbeth is also defeated by the Scottish nobles, with the help of England , commanded by
Macduff , by Seyward , Earl of Northumberland , and by the sons of the late King Duncan ( Donalblain and
Malcolm ), and eventually also dies, defeated by Macduff , who He had been torn from his mother's womb
at seven months and had led his men to advance covered with branches from Birnam Forest to Dunsinane
Hill.
This tragedy is one of Shakespeare 's best-known and has been made into a film on multiple
occasions: 32 films for the big screen and 16 for television and video. Among the most famous versions are:
> 2Fd /
• Macbeth (1948), by Orson Welles , B film, made in just 23 days, with a low budget. In black and
white, directed and performed by the American director.
• Joe Macbeth (1955), by Ken Hughes , transposition of the work into a gangster story in 1930.
Mrs. Macbeth convinces her husband to kill the gang leader while they are both swimming.
Macbeth becomes the new leader of the criminal group, but he feels paranoid and believes
that everyone wants to kill him, so he murders his best friend, Banky , whose ghost appears to
him at a banquet. Mrs. Macbeth goes mad and the two are killed in a shootout with a rival
gangster whose father and wife Joe Macbeth had murdered.
• Macbeth (1971), by Roman Polanski , starring Jon Finch and Francesca Annis , director
Polanski 's first film after the terrible murder of his wife Sharon Tate . Perhaps his personal
trauma explains the brutality, cruelty and excessive gore of the film, which was produced by
Hugh Hefner , the owner of Playboy magazine , which influenced the film not to be very well
received by the public.
• Macbeth (1978), by Trevor Nunn , Royal Shakespeare Company production for television .
With Ian McKellan and Judi Dench , eminent Shakespearean actors, very successful.
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• Macbeth (1997), by Michael Bogdanov , for British television. Updated version, places the
action in a post-industrial metropolis, with characters dressed in modern clothing.
6. Bibliography
• Alonso, Santos and others , Spanish language and literature, 1st Baccalaureate , Barcelona, Casals,
2015, topic 13.
• Calero Heras, José , Universal literature . Baccalaureate. Barcelona, Octaedro, 2009.
•1998.Deary, Terry, Top ten. Shakespeare Stories . Illustrated: Michael Tickner. New York, Scholastic Inc.,
• Roni Jay , Shakespeare. Guide for young people . Translated Pepa Linares. Salamanca, Lóguez, 2001.
• Shakespeare, William, As You Like . Prol. Vicente Molina Foix. Translated Luis Astrana Marín. Madrid,
Alliance, 2009.
• Shakespeare, William, Macbeth . Adapt. James Butler and Maria Lucia de Vanna. Barcelona, Vicens
Vives, 2007.
• Shakespeare, William, Coriolanus . Intr., trans. and notes Pablo Ingberg. Buenos Aires, Losada, 2004.
• Shakespeare, William, The Tempest . Ed. bilingual from the Shakespeare Institute, dir. Manuel Ángel
Conejero, intr. Giorgio Melchiori, notes Miguel Teruel and Jesús Tronch. Madrid, Cátedra, 2005, 6th
ed.
• Shakespeare, William, The Merry Wives of Windsor . Prol. Vicente Molina Foix. Translated Luis Astrana
Marín. Madrid, Alianza, 2009.
• Shakespeare, William, A Midsummer Night's Dream . Prol. Vicente Molina Foix. Translated Luis Astrana
3
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(Information taken from: Roni Jay , Shakespeare. Guide for young people . Translated Pepa Linares.

2. THE RENEWAL OF ENGLISH THEATER.................................

1. England in Shakespeare's time: reigns of Elizabeth I and James I (the Golden

2. The renewal of English theater

> He transformed medieval theater , essentially pantomime , into a work of art .

> He isolated, to enhance the illusion , the public scene .

“All the world's a stage,

“ He was not of an age, but for all time

William Shakespeare : the eternal

The Shakespeares , John and Mary , had five more

At the age of 14, he stopped studying and we do not

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear

And cursed be he that moves my bones.

Good friend, for Jesus' sake, refrain from digging the

• “ If Bacon wrote the plays, pigs might fly .”

The longest word written by Shakespeare is:

“ Hi ludi F. Baconis nati tuiti orbi ”, which means:

For this, it is alleged that Shakespeare did not go to

Among the personalities who have discussed

“ A stupid, ignorant third-rate play-actor from a dirty, doggish group of players .”

“ Shakespeare is the most popular script-writer in Hollywood .”

4. William Shakespeare. His work and his style

• “ The Moon Looks with Tearful Eyes ” ( A Midsummer Night's Dream ).

A tower of strength. • I must be cruel to be kind.

• Punk Taffetta. • Fat chuff.

ce "Blackfriars" Greater lyricism and fantasy.

1600 Hamlet . Troilus & Cressida .

The argument goes something like this:

4.2.3. A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Midsummer Night's Dream

(We analyze it below).

4.2.6. The storm

(We analyze it in detail below)

4.2.4. The Merry Wives of Windsor

4.2.5. To your liking, As You Like

(We also discuss it below).

4.2.8. The comedy of mistakes

4.2.9. Other comedies:

4.3.1. Hamlet, prince of Dinah

The argument is, more or less, the following:

15 1 4.3.2. King Lear, King Lear

4.4. Historical works

4.4.1. Richard III

4.4.3. Antony and

Beware of the Ides of March !

Julio also leaves his phrase:

When Brutus justifies his murder he says the famous bras:

“ will unleash the dogs of war ”,

4.4.5. Other historical works

We offer below a selection of Shakespeare 's poems:

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

SONNET 55 music has a far more pleasing sound;

SONNET 130 I grant I never saw a goddess go;

5. Analysis of some works of William Shakespeare

❖ A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Midsummer Night's Dream . Comedy, 1595

“ Bad meeting, by the light of the moon, proud Titania ... ”.

And when he describes the place where she sleeps, he explains:

“DEMETRIUS—These adventures appear to me as if in a confusing distance, just like those

“ Poets and philosophers discovered the unconscious before me .”

The argument is more or less the following:

Hermia , in love with Lysander , refuses to

indsor, The Marry Wives of

The Merry Wives of Windsor . Comedy, 1598

MISTRESS QUICKLY — Hang hog is Latin for bacon, I assure you.