Martin Wiggins (1)

[Shakespeare & the Drama of his Time].
Martin Wiggins

This is in the Oxford Shakespeare Topics series which aims to provide students and teachers with short books on important aspects of of Shakespeares criticism and scholarship.

Wiggins brief here is to look at the relationship between Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists during the period of the English theatrical renaissance. Wiggins point is that it was not only Shakespeare that was shaping the early modern drama of the period and he provides a contextual background to his work with reference to those playwrights and their plays that formed the bulk of the material; for example Christopher Marlowe , Thomas Kyd , George Chapman, Ben Johnson, John Marston and John Fletcher. He does this for the most part by providing a linear history of Elizabethan drama from the 1570’s to Shakespeare’s Jacobean period.

The book is too short to be a history of criticism and rather the summary that is provided Wiggins owns for himself.

In his first chapter Wiggins asks where did Elizabethan drama come from because it seemed to have arrived almost fully formed in the 1580’s with the arrival of Lily, Kyd. Marlowe Geene and Peele. The answer is that not much survives from the previous decade although we know there must have been plays because of the building of theatres in the 1570’s and the title of plays that have not come down to us. Along with the commercial theatre there were the University plays, those developed to be played at Elizabeth's Court and the rise of the schoolboy/choirboy troupes. He gives a brief summary of the plays that have survived and their origins in classical literature or bawdy tales adapted from the Italian Renaissance. Historical plays started to appear and the allegorical plays with their moral messages from an earlier period continued to be performed. There seemed to have been a twin axis of educational plays and those made for entertainment with many increasingly veering towards the entertainment axis.

The subject of the next chapter is tragedy with Wiggins saying that the earliest to appear using the new style of blank verse was Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy 1586 closely followed by Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. He assumes that the sound of Marlowe’s plays with their mighty line must have had a profound effect on theatre goers who would have heard nothing like it. Wiggins analysis just what was so new in Tamburlaine and the Spanish Tragedy saying that Marlowe and Kyd reinvented tragedy for the English stage. The plays that followed including the early Shakespeare historical dramas are given something like a roll call with only a brief reference, before he moves on to Hamlet, but only briefly using it as a signpost that points to the development of human tragedy and human potential in the theatre.

A Chapter on Comedy’s Metamorphosis takes as its starting point Ben Jonson’s play “Every Man out of His Humour” and looks backwards and forwards; emphasising the point that the new comedy was more character centred, more socially realistic and more concerned with the vagaries of human sexuality. He moves through Shakespeares canon before discussing the influence of Chapman and so we are soon into the late 1590’s.

He has a chapter which he calls an interlude in which he discusses the development of drama from a more general perspective. What made plays successful: Plotting and theming. characterisation etc

A chapter follows on plays written towards the end of the period, the new breed of playwrights with Lyly, Greene, Marlowe, Kyd now all gone and Shakespeare as a sort of link towards Chapman, Fletcher, Marston, Webster, Beaumont etc. There is a final chapter on Shakespeare as The Prodigal Father and how he tended to shape the age of Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre even after his retirement.

I found this book interesting on the period of drama that I am beginning to know through my reading: that is up to 1592. Nothing really new here but a good summary with Wiggins own angle on the period. Wiggins does give titles of plays and their first appearance dates whenever he can and so for a potted history of the development of drama of the time it is very good. Wiggins tries hard not to discuss any one play in too much detail and so this book will appeal to readers wanting a more general view, but it helps if you are familiar with the plays. 4 stars.… (mehr)