Of the rabuplic of uzbekistan samarqand state institute of foreign languages english faculty II

Chapter 2. Myth and History in Shakespeare's Works
2.1 History in the works of Shakespeare
The figure of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is shrouded in mystery. Researchers of his work have been arguing for centuries whether this person really existed or whether it was just a literary mask, behind which a whole galaxy of talented Elizabethan playwrights was hiding. It is unlikely that literary critics, philologists and historians will ever be able to find an exact answer to this question. The debate will continue, but only one thing can be said with certainty: under the name of Shakespeare, brilliant plays were published that forever entered the history of literature and theater.
Peru is credited with 38 dramatic works, extremely diverse in content and including comedies, historical chronicles and tragedies. Shakespeare borrowed plots for them from everywhere: from ancient legends and chronicles, from Renaissance short stories and poems. Researchers say that the sources of only 5 plays have not been found: "Titas Andronicus", "Love's Labour's Lost", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and "The Tempest".
Why then is Shakespeare a genius if most of his stories are not original? You can start with the fact that in the Renaissance, borrowing was considered commonplace. If you look at the work of his contemporaries, it is hard not to notice that almost all of their dramatic works are written on the same plots. For the most part, these were ordinary dramatizations of primary sources, and only in Shakespeare's edition did they become famous throughout the world.

I have prepared a short course in the history of the plots of five plays by the great English playwright.

«Romeo and Juliet» (1594 — 1595)

During the Renaissance, the story of two noble lovers belonging to warring families was quite common. He often met with writers of that time. It was first recorded and published in his collection Novellino by the Italian writer Masuccio Salernitan in 1476. In 1524, Luigi Da Porto revised Masuccio's short story and gave the lovers the names of Romeo and Juliet, and exactly 30 years later, Mateo Bandello supplemented the well-known plot with new characters. This story was also addressed by Gherardo Bolderi in the story "The Unhappy Love of Giulia and Romeo" (1553), Luigi Groto in the tragedy "Ariadne" (1578) and the Spaniard Lope de Vega in the play "Castelvins and Montes" (1590).

When exactly the story about noble lovers reached the shores of Foggy Albion is not known for certain. But the English poet Arthur Brooke, who wrote the poem "The Tragic History of Romeus and Juliet" in 1562, claimed that he created it under the impression of some anonymous drama (unfortunately, not preserved). Despite the fact that numerous literary adaptations and retellings have added their own details to the story of Romeo and Juliet, the most famous interpretation of the popular plot belongs to William Shakespeare.

«Hamlet» (1601)

The story of Prince Hamlet was first told by the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammatik in the third book of the Acts of the Danes, dated to the 12th century. In 1570, the French writer François de Belforet rewrote and published this legend in his collection Extraordinary Stories Extracted from Many Famous Authors. According to researchers, it was Belforet's short story that inspired Shakespeare to write the famous work. There is also a version that the plot could have been borrowed by the playwright from the lost tragedy of his contemporary, Thomas Kyd.
«Troilus and Cressida» (1602)

The tragic story of a valiant warrior and his unfaithful lover was first told in The Romance of Troy by the medieval French poet Benoît de Saint-Maur in the middle of the 12th century (c. 1155 - 1160). Subsequently, this plot migrated to the "Trojan History" by the Italian Guido de Columna (1287). And in the first half of the XIV century (c. 1335 - 1340), based on the works of his predecessors about the Trojan War, Giovanni Boccaccio composed the poem "Filostrato", in which he also touched on this topic.
Inspired by the work of the author of The Decameron, the Englishman Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his own poem Troilus and Cressida (c. 1386 - 1387), which became very popular with his compatriots during the Renaissance. The Scottish poet of the 15th century, Robert Henryson, even created its sequel, Cressida's Testament, which describes the terrible divine punishment that befell the girl for treason. But the plot got its highest development when Elizabethan playwrights began to turn to it: Thomas Heywood, Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker and, of course, William Shakespeare.
«Othello» (1604)

The plot of the play was borrowed by Shakespeare from Giraldi Cinthio's short story The Moor of Venice, published in the collection Ekatomiti in 1565. Unlike the original source, where a lieutenant kills Desdemona on the orders of a jealous husband, in Shakespeare's play Othello strangles his wife with his own hands (in one of the Russian translations, he also stabs him with a dagger). Also in the original, the Moor does not confess his crime even under torture, while in Shakespeare's tragedy he fully admits his guilt and punishes himself. By the way, it is noteworthy that in Cinthio's short story, all the characters, with the exception of Desdemona, did not have their own names. Thus, the English playwright seriously reworked the plot of the original source, making the story from a novel (now unknown to anyone) one of the most recognizable in world literature.
«King Lear» (1605 — 1606)

The plot of this play dates back to ancient times. It was repeatedly reproduced in legends and chronicles. In Shakespeare's time, it was retold in The Mirror of the Rulers (1574). Edmund Spenser recounted the story in his The Faerie Queene (1580-1596), and Raphael Holyhead mentions King Lear in The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587). In addition, an anonymous play dating from 1594 has also survived. Apparently, it was these works that served as the primary sources for Shakespeare's tragedy.
2.2 Myth in Shakespeare's works
In this article, I would like to analyze the significance of ancient mythology for European culture using the examples of W. Shakespeare's plays "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest". How possible is a theological interpretation of the various magical beings in these plays? Despite the fact that these plays are secular, comic, talk about "human, all too human" subjects, they lead to deep theological reflections.
These plays are good for analysis in this vein, since they are dedicated to understanding the essence of the world of magic and miracles and cover both the early stage of the great playwright's work and his mature years. In both works, the main characters, against their will, encounter fairy-tale characters, in whose existence they do not believe, and this meeting changes their lives. A Midsummer Night's Dream, a very light and Renaissance comedy, depicts the story of four lovers who find themselves involved in a quarrel between Oberon and Titania, the king and queen of the fairies and elves, and who experience miraculous transformations on a moonlit night in the forest. The Tempest, one of Shakespeare's last plays, written in the tragicomedy genre, tells the story of a shipwreck that took place thanks to the magic of the Duke of Milan, Prospero, who planned to teach a lesson to the enemies who had treacherously deceived him. In both cases, an encounter with a wondrous world reconciles the protagonists and restores justice and order. Ultimately, miracles and magic disappear like a dream, leaving, however, a deep imprint in the hearts of the heroes, internally changing them. This is how the characters of A Midsummer Night's Dream themselves reflect on this, revealing to us the metaphysics of the poetic word:

Hippolyta

How strange, my Theseus, is the tale of lovers!
Theseus
More weird than true. I do not believe
Funny fables and fairy tales.
All lovers are like crazy
Boiling brains: their imagination
Always stronger than cold reason.
Crazy, lovers, poets -
All of the fantasies are created by one.
The madman sees more hell
What is in hell. The madman is in love
In a gypsy she sees the beauty of Elena,
The poet's gaze in sublime madness
Wandering between heaven and earth.
When the imagination of the form creates
Unknown things, the poet's pen,
Having embodied them, the air "nothing"
Gives both a home and a name.
Yes, ardent fantasy so often
Plays: is she waiting for joy -
It seems to her that joy is a harbinger.
On the contrary, sometimes with fear at night
The dark bush will seem like a bear to her.
Hippolyta
Do not say; in the events of this night
There is more than one game of imagination.
How immediately their feelings changed!
It seems to me that there is truth in this.
But still, how strange and wonderful!

Miranda, D.W. Waterhouse. Illustration for the play by W. Shakespeare "The Tempest"
Through this ironic dialogue, Shakespeare describes the role and means of poetry in the transformation of reality. Theseus and Hippolyta in this dialogue seem to represent two sides of human consciousness - reason and sensual imagination, which argue with each other. Theseus, as a reasonable party, completely rejects "funny fables and fairy tales" (English antique fables - ancient fables, in literal translation). He stands firmly on the ground, while Hippolyta trusts the story of the lovers about the miracles that happened to them, because he sees their consequences - a change in mutual feelings. However, the rational Theseus, by the irony of Shakespeare, cuts the branch on which he sits with his own reasoning - after all, he is also a fictional character in a “fairy tale”. He stands on the stage in front of the audience and assures us not to believe everything that happens here. Meanwhile, as if against his will, he reveals the true meaning of poetry as a bridge "between heaven and earth", as a special space created to express the inner world of man. He also explains the origin of fabulous creatures, to which the poet's imagination gives "both a dwelling and a name": they are the artistic embodiment of human feelings. Poetic fantasy, waiting for joy, sees "the joys of the harbinger", "out of fear at night" the bush turns into a bear.
Thus, the fabulous mythological creatures in these plays personify different aspects of the human soul: its feelings and fears, its suffering, doubts and desires. If you look from this side, it turns out that the whole play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is devoted to disagreements between lovers, their friends and relatives, which arose due to their inability to understand themselves, to discern their own love inclinations. The dark forest in which they wander is the darkness of their own soul. They cannot understand what they really need and are confused. And their disagreement with themselves is embodied in a quarrel between Oberon and Titania. With the help of a fabulous dream setting, moving away from the material world into the world of spiritual and spiritual life, Shakespeare manages to show the whole essence of the contradictions of the main characters and help them resolve them.
“Oberon and Titania are “both the abode and the name” given by Shakespeare to those realities that we cannot depict in any other way, but which, nevertheless, play as forces within our soul, and perhaps in the larger world. We can say that Oberon and Titania represent two poles of being and meaning, between which forces arise, on which other realities in the play depend. When they are in harmony, there is a dimensional blessing in the material world, and their discord also has a measurable and tangible effect on the world. As Titania herself tells of the consequences of her quarrel with Oberon, expressed in the confusion of all nature:
All times interfere in confusion:
And the gray-headed frost falls
To the crimson rose in a fresh embrace;
But to the crown of the icy winter
Fragrant wreath of summer buds
Attached in a mockery. Spring and summer
Birthing autumn and winter
They change attire, and cannot
The world is amazed to distinguish times!
But such disasters appeared
All because of our quarrels and disagreements:
We are their cause, we create them

Titania and Oberon, illustration by Arthur Rackham
“Shakespeare's idea of poetic imagination as the ability to embody heavenly ideas with earthly concepts gives us a model for understanding the Incarnation as the highest act of divine poiesis. If this is true, then it has rich implications for our understanding of humanity as made in God's image, for it means that we are created as creators of ourselves, as creative "embodiments"
In the plays "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest" we meet a large number of fabulous creatures from ancient myths. Above we considered their existence as an illustration of our own world of thoughts and feelings. Nevertheless, the first thing that catches the eye of the viewer of the plays of the great playwright is the affinity of these creatures to the natural world: they represent nature to us in its beauty and mystery. These are "elves of mountains, springs, forests and quiet waters", living beings of various elements and natural phenomena. In fact, for mythological consciousness and poetry there is no strict distinction between the inner world of human feelings and the outer world of nature - these worlds are interdependent and express one another. We have already seen this in the above scene of Oberon and Titania's quarrel in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Their disagreement is the cause of the confusion of the seasons.
So, what is the existence of these fabulous mythological creatures? What do they mean for nature, and how can we interpret them in a Christian context? Let's take a closer look at Titania and her realm. Titania, “the highest of the fairies in power,” is the queen of the fairies and elves, she reigns over the forest and meadows, “initial letters are her convoy”, flowers, fields and insects are subordinate to her, “spring always reigns in my country”, the elements and the seasons are under her protection. She sings and dances with her subjects, manages possessions. Her servants, like her, are spirits, some of them are listed by name: Mustard Seed, Polka Dot, Gossamer, Moth. These names indicate the size and character of fairy-tale creatures: they are elusive, light, fast, look like a midge or a bee, or another small insect. Thus, Titania is the queen of the flowering meadow, she personifies the flowering nature, she is her being and soul. Shakespeare's poetic language animates nature and depicts its beauty through the way of life of invisible spirits. Through their appearance and attitude, their games, dances and singing, we perceive the beauty and mysterious essence of nature. Each bright flower has its own representative in the spiritual world, each valley or forest, water source or river has its own soul, its own eidos, personified in a living incorporeal creature. Speaking of these incorporeal entities, we are talking about nature in its essence and spirituality, we hear the music of nature.

This attitude towards nature is the oldest intuition of mankind. Animation and deification of heavenly bodies, lands and waters, natural phenomena, plants and animals is the principle of paganism. For the pagan worldview of primitive man, there is no “material world” at all - the world is full of spirits with whom he constantly enters into relationships, whether in hunting, gathering or ritual actions[13]. This way of perceiving the world has been significantly weakened by the secularization of culture and the “scientific picture of the world”, however, everyone can find it in themselves. Everyone has experienced slight forms of this paganism, for example, in childhood, when faced with a new unknown object that seemed to have a mysterious life of its own. The Bible zealously opposes such a worldview, constantly emphasizing that the contemplation of all these images of spirits and gods that arise in the human mind is wrong and dangerous, since they are all "the work of human hands", products of his imagination. Nevertheless, the poetic language of Holy Scripture itself uses the methods of enlivening and personifying nature. A striking example of this is the book of Psalms. In it, King David calls on all the elements to glorify the Lord:

Praise the Lord from heaven, praise Him in the highest.

Praise Him, all His angels; praise Him, all His hosts.
Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all the stars of light.
Praise Him, heavens of heavens and waters that are above the heavens.
Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded, and they were created;
put them on eyelids and eyelids; gave a charter that will not pass away



Titania, illustrated by Arthur Rackham

Thus, on the example of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest", we see that ancient myths, ancient gods and mythical creatures made a significant contribution to the disclosure of the spiritual aspects of human personality and nature. It turned out to be possible for the Christian consciousness to interact with the old mythological worldviews and intuitions, creating with their help new ways of interpreting reality. Theology and ancient mythology (and with it the mythologies of other eras and peoples) began to complement each other in an attempt to get closer to the Truth, to embody it in different ways. The ancient gods became patrons and inspirers of secular arts - arts that explore the inner world of a person, his personality. Despite their secularity, as we found out, with their rich poetic language they sometimes touch on completely non-secular topics, revealing the gospel meanings to us in a new way.

It seems to me that questions of this kind are very important in the current cultural situation. One of the main obstacles that prevent modern man from understanding the nature of the Church is the secularism of modern culture and the materialistic "scientific picture of the world" that has become habitual. Man in our time has become insensitive to the realm of the spirit as a whole; he prefers to remain on the ground of reason and intellect, although he may admit that "something is there." For such a person, it is important to meaningfully reveal areas in life that are inaccessible to reason, to show alternative possibilities for perceiving reality. And you can start with the poetry of Shakespeare. Rethinking the classical poetic tradition, its images and symbols, can also give us a fresh look at the sacred poetry of Scripture, the history of the incarnation of the Word.