History-Makers: Shakespeare

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts. Nothing else quite sums up William Shakespeare's attitudes on the power of theatre, but England's Favourite Bard demonstrates time and time again that the reverse is also true, that one stage can become anywhere in the world. You've surely spent a class or two with one of William's works, and heck, Red started OSP as a Shakespeare channel, but today we'll put aside the tragedies and So, to see how he became a legendary playwright, and to find out why he's England's number one accidental historian, let's do some history. William Shakespeare was born in the English town of Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, early into the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Though Shakespeare's family wasn't noble-born or all that rich, they lived far enough from London that they could pay the rent without going on a monthly heist. Shakespeare spent some of his early life in Stratford helping in his dad's glove shop, so our young Bill would have been familiar with his local tradespeople. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway and had a daughter six months later, and I will let you run the math on that one. Aside from family matters, Shakespeare studied at the town's local grammar school. It wasn't fancy, but it was an honest education, and as we'll see, it gave him everything he needed to succeed in his later career as a playwright. His primary instruction was in Greek and Latin, with the aim of reading the New Testament and the ancient Roman Classics in their original language. On its face, this is a fairly simple curriculum, but it was radically new to Elizabethan England, as the Renaissance love for all things ancient was just making its way north. In the 1500s, a lot of things were new to England. In addition to the concept of disposable income, English theater culture was just taking shape, and it was the textbook definition of quick and dirty. With only a few permanent playhouses, most stages were simple pop-up wooden sets with no decoration and only a few key props. And unlike the ancient Greeks and Romans, England didn't have a handy catalog of material to draw from, so plays were written quickly, often in collaboration, and then performed and discarded. This meant that freelancers were in high demand, and this is probably where Shakespeare got his start in the theater biz, writing with London's other leading playwrights. Actors, by contrast, mostly went in troops, working together over multiple productions over the course of years, with the financial support of some hotshot patron who got the naming rights. In 1594, Shakespeare was a founding member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, under the patronage of none other than the Lord Chamberlain. And this is where William worked as both an actor and as a playwright for the rest of his career, writing tragic and comic fiction as well as historical plays for almost two decades. Sweet mother of job security. In 1598, the city's main playhouse was closed over a landlord dispute, so our troop took matters into their own hands by disassembling it and hucking the timber across the Thames in the dead of winter to build a new theater on the other side of London. Now that is dedication to the craft. The next year, the Globe became the home of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, but despite its size, it was still pretty simple. Flat stage, no roof or fancy sets, standing area below, and three balconies above. The Globe didn't faff around. And with room for the lower-class groundlings as well as the high-rolling aristocrats, everybody had a place, so Londoners of all stripes could enjoy the plays. To that end, Shakespeare wrote to the high brow and to the low, so if your local Shakespeare production skips over the dirty jokes, then you have been duped, because that is not the authentic Shakespeareans. Before too long, Shakespeare and friends performed at the royal court for Queen Elizabeth herself, and when the crown passed to King James in 1603, he was so fond of the troop that he became their patron and redubbed them the Kingsmen. Classy. And speaking of kings, let's zoom out for a minute to look at how England was doing in Shakespeare's day, because it was quite a busy time. Before James Stuart became king, Elizabeth was the last reigning monarch of the Tudor dynasty. The Tudors are best known for ending the War of the Roses, telling the Pope to scram, and converting the Spanish Armada into a subaquatic lumberyard. In Shakespeare's day, life was pretty good, England was peaceful, finally, and the arts had never been more popular. Ancient Greek and Roman texts were getting translated into English for popular consumption, and Raphael Holinshed had just finished up a mammoth historical chronicle of England, Scotland, and Ireland. With English patriotism flying higher than ever, people wanted to hear stories about English greatness. Now, most Englishmen knew how to read, sure, but Holinshed's history was about a thousand pages too doorstoppy to be accessible to the average lad. So this is where Shakespeare comes in. He lures you with the promise of entertainment, keeps things exciting with pathos and murder, then dazzles you with some snark and lowbrow jokes, and when you leave, you realize that he duped you into learning. This might sound familiar, because this is how we teach you stuff. Disregarding the fact that he was extremely good at writing plays, Shakespeare's mere choice of subject matter gave countless Englishmen their first glimpse at their own history. In making popular the genre of the history play, Shakespeare inadvertently became the most influential historian in England. Shakespeare's early work is loaded with histories, and his first focus was on The War of the Roses, where he covered the life of Henry VI in three plays and concluded with the bloody reign of Richard III. Afterwards, he jumped back in time to show the rise of the hero King Henry V. This was a four-play sequence, starting with Richard II through Henry IV, and finishing with Henry V. Now, all of these plays are self-contained, but they share characters, conflicts, and some key themes. Plus, when we put the eight plays together into a macro story, this Henriad becomes a century-long epic of English history's greatest hits, culminating in the ascension of Henry VII and the new Tudor dynasty. So, with our proverbial stage set, let's summarize some Shakespeare. Quickly. And, uh, quietly, before Red catches me trespassing on her turf. We begin in the late 1300s with Richard II, who's been asked to settle a dispute between two nobles over some misplaced cash and a murdered uncle. Richard dawdles and avoids doing his job, so Henry Bollingbroke takes the opportunity to coup his way into becoming King Henry IV. Now, Henry had wanted to absolve his usurpation guilt by going on a crusade, but there's turmoil at home with the nobles, so it's too risky to leave. Worse yet, his son Hal is too busy partying in the tavern to be a helpful prince, but he eventually decides to do his job and fights the rebels. Now, Hal might be a decent prince, but being a good king is a much harder ask. Unfortunately, this takes the entire runtime of the play and an earful from his dying father, but by the end he's shaped up, apologized for his misdeeds, and is ready to take on the world as King Henry V. Now, this is the spicy play. Our Prince Hal is all nice and kinged, and England has done civil warring, so he lays a renewed claim to the throne of France. In return, the French prince sends him a very rude letter and some tennis balls as a concession, so Henry, quite toasty by the slight, sets off to go a-conquering and starts the Hundred Years' War back up. He first takes the port of Harfleur with a hardy once more onto the breach and pushes on to Agincourt, heavily outnumbered. The night before the battle, he treks around the camp to ruminate on how being king is effort. Ugh. And the next day, the English army surprise the French and themselves by longbow-spamming their way to victory. Cut to several years later, and Henry is negotiating a treaty with France as well as wifing up Princess Catherine of Valois. The end. Except for the part immediately after this where Henry VI whiffs it and loses the war, but that's where the second four-parter comes in. So, timeskip forward two years, and Henry V unexpectedly bites it, so little BB Henry VI is now the king. From here, everything goes south. France starts throwing hands at Orléans with the help of one Joan of Arc, while English nobles are too busy scheming against each other to stop it. A rift opens up between the Lancaster family and the Yorks, which becomes a big mess later. Several timeskips later, Joan is captured and killed by England, and Henry marries Margaret of Anjou. Despite some initial success, England lost the war and got the boot out of France, so Richard of York is rather miffed with Henry's leadership, and lays a claim to the throne. This all comes to a head at the Battle of St. Albans, where York smashes the king's forces and sends Henry into disarray. With defeat in sight, Henry marks York as next in line for the throne, but Henry's wife Margaret and the Lancastrian faction think that this is stupid, so they take the fight to the Yorkies. They win for a little bit, lose for a little bit, win a little more, but then they start losing again, and eventually Henry is captured and killed and imprisoned by Richard Jr of York. Once again, the last play in the set is the spiciest one. Edward IV of House York is king, again, long story, and his brother Richard Jr wants the headgear for himself, because it's civil war all the way down. So Richard jails his younger brother and drowns him in a vat of wine, which makes Edward die of shock, leaving the crown to his two kids, with Richard as their regent. Clearly his work isn't done, so he convinces the nobles that the princes are illegitimate, so that Richard can get the crown from his dead brother. But then to seal the deal, he had the kids killed anyway, because loose ends sink royal claims. Richard takes the throne, but rebellions break out immediately afterwards, and the Earl of Richmond leads an army against the king. Before their battle, Richard is haunted by the ghosts of all the people he's killed, he gives the kingdom for a horse speech, Richmond kills him, and takes the throne as Henry VII. England's troubles are over, the Tudors have arrived. Now, in a stage performance, there's not much room to investigate the big-scale dynamics of national conflict like you'd see in a typical history book, but Shakespeare does focus in on the nuances of kingship, and how their character affects the way they rule a state. That said, these plays can get flack for retroactive Tudor bias, especially in the case of Richard III. Historically, Richard was unremarkable, but he was guilty of being the last king before the Tudors, so clearly he just has to be awful. As such, Shakespeare condemns him to a murder-frenzied reputation, and shows rumors like the killing of the young princes as a fact. The play explicitly sets up Richard as a pure evil villain to contrast with the heroic arrival of Shakespeare's present Tudor dynasty. So while Richard III makes for great drama, it pulls double duty as political propaganda. And this isn't the last time that Shakespeare fiddles with facts to make a narrative more exciting, as McBoy and Wife are fully rewritten to be more murderous, and Cleopatra is... Alright, listen up, Bill. But outside those glaring exceptions, Shakespeare tells his history pretty straight, and the benefit of a multi-person drama is that diverse perspectives can be portrayed, especially with stories like Julius Caesar, where competing rhetoric weighs the morality of tyrannocide and civil war. Shakespeare is at his best when characters and ideas are in conflict on stage, and that's just as true for his histories as it is for his dramas. Ignoring, for a second, how Shakespeare has made life tricky for later historians, let's appreciate the effect that he had on his contemporary audience. When history is distilled from its thousand-page write-ups and presented in a way that people can actually appreciate, suddenly an entire share of the population can understand their national history for probably the first time ever. This kind of storytelling was powerful then, and it's powerful now. I mean, just think about how much better you know revolutionary American history since Hamilton came out. Though Shakespeare didn't intend to publish his plays because a script is lifeless without its actors, his friends in the Kingsmen compiled a folio of his works for distribution, which is why we're able to enjoy the brilliance of his plays even today. And that's actually where some get hung up on his story, because surely our talented William couldn't really have been some countryside plebeian. Only a gentleman of refinement could have possibly written these masterpieces. So there have been theories that Shakespeare was just a pen name for Edward de Vere or Sir Francis Bacon or some secret guild of writers, but alas, Shakespeare was indeed a kid from Stratford who got a decent grammar school education and really enjoyed reading the classics. Perhaps the greatest Shakespeare conspiracy of all, dare I say, a Shakespeare-icy, was that William could be smart without being rich. Thank you so much for watching. This topic was voted on by our lovely patrons, so if you want to support the channel and have a say in what kind of content we make, be like these cool kiddos on screen and hop on over to patreon.com slash OSP.