2 - Shakespeare’s Life, Times, and Stage

Summary

Two works of major importance must be treated first. With the publication of his seventh volume Geoffrey Bullough brings his immense collection of Shakespeare’s possible source material within sight of completion. Only the last volume, on the Romances, remains to be published. Like its predecessors, this is a volume which any serious student must have ready to hand. It is particularly convenient to have in one volume such materials as Saxo Grammaticus and Belleforest as well as the later Fratricide Punished for Hamlet; Cinthio, Bandello and Richard Knolles for Othello; the Annesly case, Holinshed, Higgins, Spenser, Sidney, Harsnett and The True Chronicle History for King Lear; Holinshed, Buchanan and Leslie for Macbeth. Professor Bullough provides much more than a collection of the standard sources. He has revived the suggestion that the play-within-the-play in Hamlet contains elements originally derived from some account of the murder of Francesco Maria I, Duke of Urbino. Two passages are included, Luigi Gonzaga’s protestation of his innocence and Pietro Aretino’s apology to Gonzaga. In general this volume gives considerable weight to the possible effect of contemporary historical events. The marriage of James VI and Anne of Denmark is considered as a possible influence on the early play on the Hamlet story and current political issues may have been glanced at in the referrences to England and Poland.