Shakespeare for All Time

By Kitter Krebs

How come Shakespeare keeps challenging and fascinating us? Why do we keep watching his plays and reading his poetry? Maybe because he knows us so well. His irresistible, playful comedies, full of love and joy, show us at our happiest moments, his tragedies show us the darkest dungeons of the human mind, and his romances have this strong and wonderful tone of reconciliation and forgiveness, that we all need now and then, and his poetry lends words to the deep feelings, that we all know. Kitter Krebs takes the reader on an exciting journey into European culture through her insightful readings and deep interpretations of Shakespeare’s great work. She shows his deep roots in the past, but also the great enrichment Shakespeare has to offer to our present and perhaps to our future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035832248

Kitter Krebs

Kitter Krebs is a BA in literature and an MA in European theatre. She has worked as a stage director and a dramaturg in Copenhagen for 15 years. After becoming parents, she and her husband moved into the country, and she started teaching at the National Danish Actors’ School. Now that she has retired, she has written several books on theatre in general and on her lifelong passion, the works of Shakespeare.

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About the Author

Kitter Krebs is a BA in literature and an MA in European theatre. She has worked as a stage director and a dramaturg in Copenhagen for 15 years. After becoming parents, she and her husband moved into the country, and she started teaching at the National Danish Actors’ School. Now that she has retired, she has written several books on theatre in general and on her lifelong passion, the works of Shakespeare.

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Kitter Krebs 2024

The right of Kitter Krebs to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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The story, experiences, and words are the author’s alone.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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ISBN 9781035832248 (ePub e-book)

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For All Time – An Introduction

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

Ben Jonson, 1623

Why does Shakespeare continue to resonate so profoundly with readers and audiences worldwide? Why do we keep performing his words, adapting them on stage and screen, rewriting and writing about them? What is hidden in the deep layers he reaches, and how come it is seemingly impossible to wear them out? The Danish professor of philosophy, Johannes Sløk, wrote in his translation of Hamlet, 1971, that Hamlet is a portrait painted with so many little, fine lines, that any age will see their own reflection in it. I think that is very accurately put, and I also think, you can apply this view to all of Shakespeare’s work.

Can the relevance and importance of Shakespeare stand the test of time? Let me attempt an answer to this question through three moments in history: one from Shakespeare’s own time, one from ours, and one from between the two. The strength and vigorousness of his language reaches far beyond the edge of the stage, and he has therefore been buckled to the front of many a political project.

Lord Essex and his attempt to dethrone Elisabeth I, February 1601, had a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard II as its prelude. The night before the planned—and failed—rebellion, which led to the execution of Essex, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men performed Richard II, invited by Essex’s followers. Richard II contains a scene in which the monarch is ousted, and upon hearing this Queen Elisabeth is said to have lamented: I am Richard II, know ye not that? Quoted by William Lambarde.

Another example of the violent level of engagement Shakespeare’s drama can provide is The Astor Place Riot in New York, May 1849, where at least twenty people were killed! The violence stemmed from a bitter strife between the British Shakespearean actor and theatre manager William Charles Macready and his American counterpart Edwin Forrest; they were both playing the title role of Macbeth at the same time, and this rivalry sparked the riots.

Francis Bacon likens speaking to a crowd of people to the wind over an ocean; this metaphor is clearly demonstrated in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, where Brutus initially charms the public, but Mark Antony swiftly changes their minds with a rhetorical masterpiece of a speech. The political poignancy of this play is demonstrated on 16 June 2017, when Kate Flaherty in The Guardian writes, Shakespeare plays and civic strife, the Julius Caesar fiasco is nothing new, and she reports that Delta Airlines and Bank of America have withdrawn their funding for a production of Julius Caesar in Central Park, because the performance is ‘intending to provoke and offend’ as the main character is dressed in a Trump-like wig.

This book proposes that the reason why Shakespeare still rouses us to think, feel, and maybe act, is his deep immersion in European culture; he writes at the core of our soul. Shakespeare speaks to us and about us across the ages through his enormous collection of works made up by romances, comedies, tragedies, history plays, and poems, inspired by legends, myths and chronicles from ancient times, the Middle Ages and the renaissance. All of it is written in the most exquisite language; the rich vocabulary and the superb rhythm of the iambic pentameter, the length of which is exactly an exhalation, and the beat, a resonance of our heart. We mostly encounter this rhythm as blank verse in the dramas and as rhyme in the poetry.

The historical times we shall examine are primordial, ancient, medieval, early and late renaissance, romanticism, and our present. Every prehistoric and historic period is compared to a choice of dramatic work, a long poem, or a choice of sonnets, all of which I shall present, mentioning some of their literary sources and how we know the plays and poems themselves. This may be from a so-called quarto which is an edition of one single play or from the First Folio, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays from 1623, about half of Shakespeare’s dramatic work is only known from this Folio. Through analysis of theme and composition, the profound commonalities between the historic period and the chosen plays or poems will emerge:

Primordial Time

Once upon a time, there was an oral storytelling tradition in the shape of the fairy tale. This tradition has been added to the big melting pot from which the Shakespearean works are stirred. I will exemplify this through the reading of Shakespeare’s four romances, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, and I shall compare them with the epic elements which characterise the fairy tale.

Ancient Time

Shakespeare was captivated by the classical ancient times, during which six of his plays occur. From Greece: Timon of Athens and Troilus and Cressida, from Rome: Julius Caesar, Titus Andronicus and Coriolanus, and from Egypt: Antony and Cleopatra. Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra shall serve as our case studies.

Medieval Time

I wish to show how the comedies are indebted to Christian morality and ethics by reading them in the light of the seven deadly sins. As examples of this, each of the comedies Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Much Ado about Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, and All’s Well That Ends Well will be interpreted in the light of a deadly sin.

As an example of how all important kin and family were during the medieval time, I have chosen a reading of the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare’s two historic tetralogies also illustrate this medieval feuding, these I shall treat briefly.

Early Renaissance

As an exponent of the dawning renaissance and its breakthroughs in areas both economical, psychological, cultural, and metaphysical, the history play about Henry VIII will be interpreted as an example of England’s definitive departure from the Middle Ages.

Late Renaissance

To demonstrate Shakespeare’s great significance for the looming enlightenment, I have chosen Francis Bacon’s philosophy as it is aptly and concisely expressed in his Essays. The philosophy in Bacon’s Essays is also paramount for Shakespeare, which I will prove through a closer look at what is to me the very pinnacle of his dramatic work; the four great tragedies, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.

Romanticism

From the late eighteenth century, till around the middle of the nineteenth century, the romantic period changes the view of man, and the view of art. Feeling, dream, divinity, soul and imagination are keywords for the literature of this period, and we find inspiration for all of these in Shakespeare’s work, not least in one of his earliest long poems, Venus and Adonis, based on the poem by Ovid.

The Present

Shakespeare’s Sonnets depict with pain, joy, resignation, hope, and disappointment how the person in love is caught in an obsessive circle of self-scrutiny, pining for the beloved, succumbing to the unyielding passing of time, and how with age we lose hope, beauty and thus desirability. This obsession with beauty and youth is a pronounced characteristic of today’s society. Wellness and fitness culture, cosmetic surgery, the prevailing individualism, and self-absorbedness are unfortunately a striking description of us today. Perhaps the reflected focus on youth and beauty encountered in Shakespeare’s Sonnets may call us to contemplation and perhaps evoke a desire for a life based on something deeper than narcissism?

These chapters highlight how the very foundation of European culture and thought in the shape of folk wisdom, religion, history and philosophy is so deeply embedded in Shakespeare’s works that he himself has become a formidable and intrinsic part of that from which he is carved. My ambition is to present the plays or poems representing each period in a way, so that you, dear reader, do not have to know them aforehand, but of course, reading the plays and poems treated will deepen your experience.

Before we enter the wonderful world of Shakespeare’s works, I want to express my deep thanks to Marie Keiser Asmussen. Not only has she translated all these chapters, she has also with insight, knowledge, and empathy pointed out whenever I have been blurred or forgetful. She has definitely raised the standard of this book.

Primordial Time

Fairy Tales and Romances

The fairy tale is an example of an old oral storytelling tradition which conveys the profound, archetypical human experience we also encounter in Shakespeare’s romances. The fairy tale and the romance are intrinsically linked in both theme and composition; I will illuminate this by analysing Pericles, Cymbeline, A Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest.

What decides the tone, the mood in a piece of dramatic writing? Is it the time in which it is written? The literary fashion? Is it the age or the gender of the writer, or other biographical circumstances? It might be an intricate web of all these factors, and it would be pure guesswork to speak definitively of how much each factor weighs for the writer in question: What can however be said with some certainty, is that a new tone is struck in what we know as Shakespeare’s romances; an optimistic tone of forgiveness which makes it possible to gather these four works, believed to be his last ones, under one umbrella. The new tone somewhere between comedy and tragedy can be detected sporadically in his late darker comedies, such as Measure for Measure and Much Ado about Nothing, but the difference in style and structure justify the use of a new term of genre: The Romance.

On The Romance

With the drama Alcetis, the Greek poet, Euripides, (approx. 480–406 BC) becomes the first European dramatist, who works on weaving together the strings of tragedy and comedy thus creating a romance. This genre depicts if not a true image of human experience, then of human emotions.

The first to term Shakespeare’s last four plays ‘romances’ is Edward Dowden in his work Shakespeare: A Critical Study of his Mind and Art from 1875, in which Dowden analyses Shakespeare’s works biographically. Dating Shakespeare’s works accurately is difficult, but there is a broad consensus that the four romances are the last of the opus, and it is also commonly accepted that they are probably written in this order: Pericles about 1608, Cymbeline about 1609, The Winter’s Tale about 1611, and finally, The Tempest about 1612.

The romance is a development of the tragicomedy, which is first launched by John Fletcher, Shakespeare’s heir as resident playwright for The King’s Men. The tragicomedy is characterised by sombre matter and weighty themes resolved in a happy ending. What sets the romance apart from the tragicomedy is its wide chronological and geographical span. There is no Aristotelian unity of neither time nor space; the plot is complex, and it is full of tragic and magical or mystical elements.

Apart from being influenced by the tragicomedy, the romances are also inspired by the so-called ‘masques’; these were grand performances and exhibitions resulting in festive frivolity, which is why a key element of the romance is the spectacular, the grand visual show which enhances the atmosphere of magic, dream, and illusion.

When I last read Shakespeare’s four romances, I was struck by their commonalities, not only in terms of theme, but also regarding their key compositional elements.

On The Fairy Tale

We have been told fairy tales as children, and as adults many of us have read or told them to our children or young ones. Fairy tales are eternal, global, and archetypical, but what do they consist of?

A hero or a heroine comes of age, ventures out into the world, is faced with several dangers, or trials, finds his or her mate, and lives happily ever after. That is a fairy tale as most of us have come to know them, but a fairy tale is more than that. A fairy tale is a primordial image of the family structure consisting of the old father, rarely a mother, often a stepmother, who also provides the hero or heroine with step siblings. The hero or heroine is at the cusp of adulthood, as it is this troublesome phase of transition and initiation that the fairy tale treats, and of which it provides an understanding.

The composition of the fairy tale follows the pattern home-away-home. ‘Home’ is the setting of childhood, which must be left behind. ‘Away’ represents the dangers and trials that must be overcome and surpassed in order for the young one to find his or her fortune. ‘Home’ then becomes the new place, where the individual finds his or her rightful place through marriage, and where life is to be lived happily ever after. The pursuit of the individual is finding fortune, which is why fairy tales can be considered collective daydreams.

One of the most important stylistic elements of the fairy tale is contrast:

Young-old

Male-female

Rich-poor

Intelligent-dumb

Good-evil

Light-dark

All these components are found in Shakespeare’s romances in rich measure. The following chapter investigates how these fairy tale features add weight to the romances, and what this might signify.

Pericles

ca 1608

Pericles is named after a Greek king who seizes power in 462 BC and the tale of his adventures stems from the English fourteenth-century poet John Gower (who incidentally appears as an officer in Shakespeare’s Henry V). Even though Pericles was one of the most played and popular plays through the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the romance is more or less unknown today. The only original print of the text available for us today is a so-called bad quarto from 1609, and Pericles does not even appear in the two First Folio editions of Shakespeare’s Works (1623 and 1632). This is probably because the play is a co-production, most likely with George Wilkins as the writer of the two first acts and Shakespeare as the writer of the rest. Pericles appears in the second edition of the third Folio from 1684.

As is typical for a romance, the plot of Pericles spans across many years (fourteen) and several places, five to be exact: Antioch, Tyre, Tarsus, Pentapolis and Mytilene. This is not in accordance with the recommendations of Aristotle on the unity of time and space. Regarding his demand of causality, the notion that one scene should follow upon the next in a coherent chain of events, the old Greek philosopher’s efforts are also in vain; Pericles does not heed to classical dramaturgy; the composition is episodic. Nonetheless, the many repetitions of actions and thematic patterns attest to a deliberate narrative structure. The play alternates rhythmically between narrations from the Gower figure, who is placed outside the narrative and guides us from place to place, intertwined with little pantomimes, and dramatic scenes.

Plot summary

A young prince sets out to find a wife. He marries a princess and lives with her at her father’s castle. On their way back to his country, they have a daughter. The wife apparently dies and disappears into the sea. The baby daughter is placed with another royal family. So, now the young prince has no family at all! After fourteen years, he finds his wife, he finds his daughter, and they all live happily ever after.

List of Characters

Gower, fourteenth-century poet and chorus of the play.

Pericles, prince of Tyre

Thaisa, princess of Pentapolis and wife to Pericles

Marina, daughter of Pericles and Thaisa

Helicanus and Escanes, Lords of Tyre

Antiochus, king of Antioch

Daughter, princess of Antioch

Thaliard, nobleman of Antioch

Messenger

Cleon, governor of Tarsus

Dionyza, wife to Cleon

Leonine, servant to Dionyza

A Lord of Tarsus

Three pirates

Simonides, king of Pentapolis

Three fishermen

Marshal

Five knights, suitors for the hand of Thaisa

Lords of Pentapolis

Lychorida, attendant to Thaisa and, later, to Marina

Two sailors, mariners onboard a ship from Pentapolis

Lord Cerimon, a wiseman/physician in Ephesus

Philemon, servant to Cerimon

Two suppliants

Two gentlemen of Ephesus

Servant

Diana, goddess of chastity

Lysimachus, governor of Mytilene

Pander, owner of brothel

Bawd, mistress of brothel and wife to Pander

Bolt, servant to Pander and Bawd

Two gentlemen, visitors to brothel Tyrian Sailor

Sailor from Mytilene

Gentleman of Tyre

Lord of Mytilene

Followers of Antiochus, Attendants to Pericles, Attendants to Simonides, Squires to the five Knights, Tyrian gentlemen, Citizens of Tarsus, Ladies of Pentapolis, Servants to Cerimon, Companion to Marina, Priestesses in Diana’s temple, Messenger from Tyre

Act I

We begin in traditional fairy tale style, where a prince, Pericles of Tyre, ventures out into the world to find a wife to secure the continuation of the dynasty. He travels to Antioch, where the greatest ruler of the time resides, to strengthen his kingdom through a powerful ally. The king of Antioch lives in an incestuous relationship with his daughter. All who propose to marry her, must guess a riddle, which directly reveals the true nature of the relation between father and daughter. The ones who do not guess—or are too afraid to speak the right answer, are decapitated! Pericles guesses the riddle, which he is given forty days to solve, but he does not dare to speak the answer, so he flees to his home in Tyre. The king of Antiochus sends his servant, Thaliard, after Pericles with the order to kill him.

Act II

When Pericles returns home, he confides in his loyal advisor Helicanus, who urges Pericles to flee while he himself takes responsibility for Tyre in the meantime. Shortly after Pericles’ second departure from Tyre, Thaliard arrives in vain. A storm forces Pericles to go ashore in Tarsus, where there is a famine. The conditions are so dire, that parents consider eating their own little children! Pericles leaves in order to fetch food for the starving people. He assures Cleon and Dionyza, the rulers of Tarsus, that he only wishes to bring love and wants no reward. After this, Pericles once again returns home to Tyre, where Helicanus reports the visit of the murderer, Thaliard, so Pericles sets out for the third time.

This time a tempest blows Pericles to Pentapolis, where he encounters a group of fishermen, who treat him well, feed him and dress him in dry clothes, even though they hardly make a beggar’s wage themselves. They tell him of the princess of Pentapolis, whose birthday is the very next day, and of a tournament where the victor wins her hand. Pericles of course wishes to participate, and the fishermen happen to have caught an old armour in their net, which turns out to have belonged to Pericles’ father! Thus, endowed Pericles, ventures to the court of King Simonides in Pentapolis.

Simonides’ daughter, Thaisa, is very popular, she has suitors from Sparta, Macedonia, Antioch and several other places, but she chooses the melancholic suitor, Pericles, and they dance all night long after the tournament (a tournament which is never mentioned again). Simonides tells the suitors, that Thaisa will not marry until a year has passed, but Thaisa is ready! Luckily, Pericles is also the son-in-law that Simonides prefers. Simonides praises Pericles’ musicality, and Princess Thaisa and Prince Pericles are wed.

Act III

Approximately nine months later, Helicanus is encouraged to take over the throne from Pericles by the people of Tyre, but he is steadfastly loyal and sends for his master. It is time to return to Tyre, and Pericles and Thaisa set out with Thaisa’s old nurse, Lychorida. Thaisa is pregnant, and under a storm at sea, she gives birth. Pericles calls upon the goddess of birth, Lucina, but to no avail; Thaisa is declared dead, and since the superstitious crew on the ship believes that the body of a dead person aboard brings bad luck, Thaisa is placed in a coffin and lowered into sea. Lychorida introduces Pericles to his new-born daughter, Marina. As Pericles doubts whether his little girl may survive the journey to Tyre, he changes course