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Introduction – Genre
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About the lecture
In this lecture, we begin our introduction to The Tempest, focusing in particular on: (i) where the play comes in Shakespeare’s career; (ii) the idea of the classical (or Aristotelian) unities: unity of action, unity of time, unity of place; (iii) the theory of the harmony of the spheres and the definition of tragedy and comedy; and (iv) the genre of the Tempest.
About the lecturer
John McRae is Special Professor of Language in Literature Studies and Teaching Associate in the School of English at Nottingham University, and holds Visiting Professorships in China, Malaysia, Spain and the USA. He is co-author of The Routledge History of Literature in English with Ron Carter, and also wrote The Language of Poetry, Literature with a Small 'l' and the first critical edition of Teleny by Oscar Wilde and others.
Hello. I'm John McCrane.
00:00:06Welcome along for a fun ride on The Tempest by
00:00:07Shakespeare.
00:00:12Now don't know how much you know about The Tempest,
00:00:13but there is a lot of nonsense talked about it by virtue of
00:00:16the fact that it's considered to be Shakespeare's last complete play.
00:00:21We'll we'll talk about that.
00:00:26It's considered to be the only play that uses
00:00:28the famous classical unities.
00:00:33The unities are that you keep all the action of the play in
00:00:36one time setting, one place setting,
00:00:43and one action setting.
00:00:45I eat no loads of subplots, days and days, and backwards and forwards.
00:00:48Unities of time, place, and action.
00:00:53It's a neoplatonic concept.
00:00:55And this would if that is true, this would be the only play of Shakespeare's
00:00:57that follows these unities.
00:01:03Now you do, of course, remember,
00:01:06especially if you've heard me talk before,
00:01:08how many plays Shakespeare wrote, don't you?
00:01:11What's the betting?
00:01:14Think about it. That's correct.
00:01:16The answer is about thirty seven.
00:01:19About.
00:01:22Because there are plays that he wrote all on his own,
00:01:23and there are plays that he wrote probably
00:01:27to help out some other writers,
00:01:30or some other writers helped him out.
00:01:32After The Tempest was staged, which is in about sixteen
00:01:36ten, sixteen eleven, there are at least
00:01:41two plays with Shakespeare's name on them that were staged.
00:01:45That is The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry the eighth.
00:01:50Probably both of these were staged
00:01:55after The Tempest.
00:01:59So that makes it questionable whether The Tempest was
00:02:00Shakespeare's last play of the thirty seven.
00:02:06Other things that make us wonder,
00:02:11when the plays were finally published in sixteen twenty
00:02:14three in the famous first folio by John Hemming and John Kandel,
00:02:17The Tempest was actually the very first
00:02:23play in the volume.
00:02:26And Cymbeline,
00:02:29a play written probably a little bit before The Tempest,
00:02:30but maybe not, was the very last play
00:02:34in the volume.
00:02:38Oh, dear.
00:02:42What does that mean?
00:02:44My answer to that is it means absolutely nothing at all.
00:02:46It means probably
00:02:50that the editors got the scripts for these plays in
00:02:52one after another, put them together,
00:02:57see to see if they fitted.
00:02:59There are very few sequences
00:03:01in Shakespeare apart from like Henry the four part one and
00:03:04two, Henry the fifth, Henry the sixth part one, two and three.
00:03:08But we do know, for example, that Henry the sixth part one,
00:03:11two and three were written in completely different order.
00:03:15They weren't written in the order in which they're now numbered.
00:03:19So all of that kerfuffle
00:03:22around the ordering of the plays and which one is the
00:03:26first and which one is the last
00:03:29is,
00:03:32shall we say, interesting in inverted commas, but
00:03:34leave it out.
00:03:41Once you've thought about it, leave it out.
00:03:42We will work on the assumption that the Tempest is a late play.
00:03:46That's definitely the case.
00:03:51It's after all the big comedies and all the big tragedies.
00:03:52And
00:03:56most importantly it's after things like King Lear,
00:03:58which is a very patriarchal play.
00:04:03This one is pretty patriarchal as well
00:04:07because it's one big daddy bringing the family all together.
00:04:10It's not a tragedy.
00:04:16Okay, this is where we do the parenthesis.
00:04:20If you know this bit, you can fast forward.
00:04:23But the parenthesis about the difference between a tragedy
00:04:26and a comedy and all that.
00:04:28Alright?
00:04:30So if you don't know, here we go.
00:04:31In the Shakespearean world,
00:04:35you had the idea of the harmony of the universe.
00:04:37It goes back to ancient Greek neoplatonic idea well, platonic
00:04:41ideas which in the Renaissance become neoplatonic ideas.
00:04:46And the harmony of the spheres is the ideal
00:04:50harmonious arrangement of everything including your
00:04:54planets and your spheres and your gods and all of that.
00:04:57Humanity down lower down the chain.
00:05:01In a Shakespearean
00:05:05comedy like Midsummer Night's Dream or
00:05:08The Comedy of Errors or As You Like It or Twelfth Night.
00:05:11Twelfth Night being the one which is closest
00:05:15to this empress,
00:05:18that harmony of the universe is jolted,
00:05:21shaken.
00:05:26And after lots of errors and mistakes
00:05:27and fake deaths and misunderstandings and everything,
00:05:32everything is renewed and brought back to harmony by the
00:05:37end, and nobody dies.
00:05:40That's the important thing.
00:05:43Harmony by the end and nobody dies.
00:05:45Lots of fake deaths, presumed deaths,
00:05:49and we'll see that again in The Tempest.
00:05:52In a tragedy, and we're talking things like Hamlet, King Lear, Othello,
00:05:55Anthony Cleopatra,
00:06:02the harmony of the universe is overthrown
00:06:04completely.
00:06:09And the opposite of harmony is disharmony
00:06:10or, indeed, chaos.
00:06:14And that disharmony, in effect, triumphs
00:06:19at the end,
00:06:24and lots of people die.
00:06:26Think Romeo and Juliet where they die. But love triumphs.
00:06:28So there's the contrast between the tragic fate and
00:06:32the immortal destiny.
00:06:37Hamlet, practically everybody dies apart from Fortinbras.
00:06:39Mac Beth, everybody dies.
00:06:43Othello, everybody dies except Iago.
00:06:45King Lear, good lord, practically everybody dies.
00:06:48And these are the tragedies.
00:06:52Tempest, by that standard, is a comedy.
00:06:56But it's a different kind of comedy.
00:07:01Now we'll come on to the structure
00:07:06that makes it a different kind of comedy.
00:07:10
Cite this Lecture
APA style
McRae, J. (2024, September 17). The Tempest - Introduction – Genre [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/options/the-tempest-afb5bb35-8a44-411b-83f0-3ddcca802d10?auth=0&lesson=17290&option=13430&type=lesson
MLA style
McRae, J. "The Tempest – Introduction – Genre." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 17 Sep 2024, https://massolit.io/options/the-tempest-afb5bb35-8a44-411b-83f0-3ddcca802d10?auth=0&lesson=17290&option=13430&type=lesson