Shakespeare and Myths About Genius

[thucythucy]

7. It's relatively easy to explain how Shakespeare could have set his plays

in places he'd never visited.

For many of them he relied on older plays or--in the case of the history plays--biographies or other works of history, most notably Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland. Romeo and Juliet, set in Italy, was a well known story that had already been published--as poetry--in French, Italian, and English. The English poem was a best seller in its day, written by Arthur Brooke, and several plays based on his poem were acted even before Shakespeare's.

Similarly, Shakespeare's work is full of nautical expressions and allusions. Although there's no evidence--none that I'm aware of anyway--that he ever went to sea, the pubs of London at the time were always filled with sailors, and Shakespeare might well have gotten his nautical knowledge from them.

Of course much of his work is totally original--at least we don't know of earlier versions. This is especially true of his characters. While the main plot of "Much Ado About Nothing" is based on a story by Matteo Bandello, the subplot about the love/hate relationship between Benedick and Beatrice is entirely Shakespeare's and is far and away the best part of the play. This happens quite often. Shakespeare takes a rather mediocre source--and Bandello's story is in fact pretty awful--and punches it up almost beyond recognition. Mark Antony's speech in Julius Caesar is another example of this. Shakespeare's source was evidently an English translation of Plutarch's Lives, but Plutarch only mentions that Antony used his speech to inflame the crowd. The speech that famously begins, "Friends Romans countrymen lend me your ears" was entirely Shakespeare's.

Just an aside: if you want a treat, find Marlon Brando's rendition of this speech. An absolutely amazing performance.

Yes, Shakespeare was a genius. But it isn't any magical knowledge of places and people he never saw or met, but rather his stunning use of language that sets him so far above other writers.