Late Plays Flashcards
What does Simon Palfrey argue that the late plays explore?
What it is to be ‘a subject’ within a state (as operational mechanism)
(Hence exploration of figures denied their place at the centre of a state)
What does ED Hoeniger argue?
“in all the last plays we are made aware of the frightening shape and power of evil to an extent alien to the very spirit of the romantic comedies”
What does JW Lever argue was the “crowning achievement of the last plays”?
“self-knowledge was the crowning achievement of the last plays”
What does Jonathon Hart say Shakespeare does in the Late Plays?
makes his characters ‘inconsistent’ and calls attention to their “experiemental conditions” (compares to Brecht’s ‘alienation effect’
What does Jonathon Hart suggest of the last scene of Cymbeline?
‘Piques the audience’ because they ‘know the events and wants to see how Shakespeare will represent them’ - NOT because they want to find out what happens (concern with representation over action)
#. The alienation effect derives from the audience observing the characters learning the “facts” and not from its surprise’
These plays ‘make the audience critical of the relation between art and life and of the theatre itself’ by use of dramatic irony to ‘alienate the audience’
What does Tillyard insist?
The late plays are interconnected - we cannot understand one without the other
[but remember he is a fan of schematic interlinking - eg Shakespeare’s History Plays]
What does Lytton Strachey (1904) assert?
The last plays are poor, showing shakespeare “bored with everything except poetry and poetical dreams”
Which new theatre did Shakespeare’s later plays have to consider in their writing?
Blackfriars Theatre - acquired by the King’s Men in 1608
What does JHP Pafford argue about the audiences of this new theatre?
Audiences in private theatres were likely to be more educated, but far from entirely courtly, and also likely to also attend public theatres
Therefore, the last plays “cater to all” - not exclusively written for coterie theatres
What does Arthur Quiller-Couch identify?
The theme of reconciliation necessitates the experimetnal treatment of time in the late plays - as reconciliation necessitates space and time
What does DG James think the late plays are?
Non-Christian myths about re-finding something (materal and spiritual) which had been lost
What does DG James judge the late plays to be?
‘comparatively formless’ and thus ‘a failure of expressiveness’
What does G Wilson Knight call the late plays?
‘myths of immortality’ and ‘an allegory of creating nature’
What does S L Bethell argue?
In all of his plays - but particuarly the late ones - Shakespeare was expounding christian doctrine
What does JHP Pafford identify as the ‘rhythm’ of the late plays?
“a rhythmic development…harmony is broken by evil in human character, and is righted by human virtue aided by the gods: yet this virtue acts in conjunction with the natural processes of continuing life through time; and so, together, man and nature finally succeed in re-creating peaceful harmony”
