On Friday I toured Hampton Court Palace with my mom, who was visiting
me here in London for several days. The palace was sumptuously decorated and expansive. I appreciated that relevant historical facts were displayed throughout the palace rooms. The gardens were incredibly beautiful and vivid and perfectly kept. The palace grounds were not only breathtakingly beautiful but also provided us with major learning opportunity because we were both completely unfamiliar with the site beforehand. The palace was occupied by British royalty between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. King Henry VIII was the first British monarch to use it and King William III and Queen Mary II were the last to use it as a royal residence. During William Shakespeare's lifetime, Hampton Court Palace was one of the palaces at which Queen Elizabeth I often spent time. King James I succeeded Queen Elizabeth I after her death in 1603 and also spent time at the palace.
Over the Christmas holiday and New Year celebrations in December 1603 and January 1604, Shakespeare's company, the King's Men, performed for the new monarch of England, King James I. These performances took place in the Great Hall, which was previously a room in the state apartments of King Henry VIII. This is the picture that I took of the Great Hall:
The room shown above is the only surviving theater in which Shakespeare's plays were acted during his lifetime. Formerly known as the Chamberlain's Men under Queen Elizabeth I, the most popular acting company in England, gained immediate recognition from her successor, King James I, prompting their rechristening as the King's Men. The King's Men began receiving royal patronage from King James I shortly thereafter. Of the eleven plays they performed for the royal court, seven were Shakespeare plays. These were The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Othello, Measure for Measure, and The Merchant of Venice, which was performed twice. These early performances of Shakespeare's plays were especially significant because of the political atmosphere in which they were performed -- they were part of the festivities that represented the new king in his first English winter court.
Once we entered the palace walls, actors began to imitate events that took place during the reign of King Henry VIII. They reenacted the events that surrounded the king's affair with, marriage to, and execution of Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn's daughter would eventually rise in prominence to become Queen Elizabeth I, a patron of Shakespeare and ruling monarch for much of his life. Below is a picture of the interactions between King Henry VIII and George Boelyn, Anne's brother:
It amazed me to think that so much of British history developed on the grounds of this palace. The historical events that characterized the centuries of palace occupation had a incalculable impact beyond the palace grounds walls. One of the ways in which we can track the social and political mood of a period is by looking at that period's art. In many ways, Shakespeare's plays reflect the social and political climate of the period in which he wrote them. Additionally, because the queen and king were Shakespeare's most important supporters and patrons, he at times alludes to them in complimentary ways within his plays.
Most of Shakespeare's plays were written during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. From a class I once took on Renaissance Literature, I knew that it was common for poets with patronage from the court and those seeking patronage from the court to include favorable, discernible images of the monarchy. For example, Edmund Spenser crafts the ever-present and much admired Faerie Queene, Gloriana, in his epic poem The Faerie Queene. Likewise, in Scene One of Act Two in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare refers to the queen as "a fair vestal throned by the west." Though Shakespeare's allusion to the queen is much subtler than Spenser's, it is discernible because of his reference to the affectionate title the Virgin Queen as well as a reference to the location of England (in the West).
It is impossible to definitively know Shakespeare's real opinion of the queen and British politics. Regardless of his personal beliefs, he conveys an underlying approval of the Tudor dynasty in many of his plays. Some believe his plays to be propaganda motivated by Shakespeare's need to impress and please his patronage. Richard III is the most obvious example of a play that could reasonably be considered Tudor propaganda. Shakespeare depicts the house of York as evil while praising the usurper, the first king of the Tudor dynasty, King Henry VII. Henry VIII seems to demonstrate the authenticity of Shakespeare's admiration for Queen Elizabeth I. Written after her death, the play culminates in a vibrant celebration of her birth. At the birth celebration, Shakespeare includes a beautiful speech foreshadowing the life of the queen that serves as a eulogy for the late Queen Elizabeth I. This same speech also alludes to the heir to the throne and manages to compliment him as well. In this disguised allusion, Shakespeare predicts that King James I's reign will be as great as that of Queen Elizabeth's.
After Queen Elizabeth I died, Shakespeare's plays reflect the changing political and social mood of the country under the new reign of King James I. While he himself continued to include subtle compliments of the king in his works, overall, the plays became darker in this time period. His later tragedies, such as Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, clearly exemplify this late Shakespearean darkness in theme and tone. Shakespeare's comedies also tended towards darker themes, prompting them to be categorized as romances and problem plays, with The Winter's Tale being the best example. The shift in mood probably resulted from a combination of a change in his creative interests and the influence of the shifting mood in the kingdom from extreme admiration and obsession with Queen Elizabeth I to more somber concerns about the sweeping social changes brought about by uniting England and Scotland under King James I.
Henry VIII was the last play Shakespeare ever authored. Two years after he completed the play, he passed away in Stratford at fifty two years of age.
(Below are some photos of the grounds that I just couldn't leave out, despite their irrelevance to my post.)
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