English Literature KS3 / GCSE: What were Shakespeare's sources and influences?

Narrator:
Shakespeare, like most writers, was a magpie, pulling in inspiration from many different sources - writers like Geoffery Chaucer and Edmund Spenser are famous examples - but there’s echoes in his work of folk tales and even pamphlets handed out on Elizabethan streets.

Ultimately Shakespeare was interested in people – both real and imagined - and the relationships between them.

Narrator:
Julius Caesar was a real historical character and in 1579 Sir Thomas North, a classical writer, translated Caesar’s biography called ‘Parallel Lives’ by Plutarch, into English.

Shakespeare seems to have used the text to help write his play, not only as a guide for telling the story but occasionally borrowing some of the exact words too, with minimal changes!

Brutus:
‘Countrymen,
my heart doth joy that yet in all my life
I found no man but he was true to me.’

Narrator:
Plagiarism wasn’t an issue in those days, so writers had no qualms or rules about claiming other people’s words as their own. Brutus’ farewell speech to his men at the end of the play is very similar to Plutarch’s, as is Mark Antony’s celebration of Brutus.

Antony:
His life was gentle, and the elements
so mix’d in him that nature might stand up
and say to all the world ‘This was a man!’

Narrator:
Shakespeare may have used classical sources – occasionally rather closely – but he brought the characters to life with observation, humour and immense skill, making them his own.

Narrator:
In the Christian Bible, Judas is a disciple who betrays Jesus – handing him over to those who want to kill him.

Shakespeare uses many references to religion, and the Bible, and in Macbeth the parallels to Judas are clear. At John 13 – verse 27, Jesus says to Judas, ‘That thou doest, do quickly’ and in the lead up to King Duncan’s murder, Macbeth echoes the words.

Macbeth:
‘If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well
it were done quickly.’

Narrator:
Macbeth almost loses his nerve at this point, not helped by the fact that King Duncan is very God-like in his goodness and purity. As he tussles between good and evil thoughts, Macbeth uses more religious references, reckoning that heavenly beings will sound an alarm if he plucks up the courage to kill…

Macbeth:
‘or heaven’s cherubins, horsed
upon the sightless couriers of the air,
shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,’

Narrator:
A really big influence in Shakespeare’s plays is nature. He uses it to reflect the emotion of a scene, to help build his characters and create more dramatic tension. Birds play a big role and in the famous scene in Romeo and Juliet, where they spend their only night together, he uses the lark versus the nightingale to help show the danger they are in:

Juliet:
‘It was the nightingale and not the lark
that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear’

Romeo:
‘Night’s candles are burnt out and jocund day
stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live or stay and die.’

Narrator:
Larks sing in the early morning and Romeo is risking death if he’s discovered in Juliet’s bed. By trying to pretend the birdsong they heard is in fact a night time nightingale they’re hoping for a few more precious minutes.

As they say goodbye Shakespeare uses nature again with Romeo convincing himself that the daylight is in fact moonlight.

Romeo:
I’ll say yon grey is not the morning’s eye
it is the light of Cynthia’s brow.

Narrator The huge range of sources and influences behind Shakespeare’s writing suggests he was a very well read and educated man.

He may have borrowed some lines from classical writers, as in Julius Caesar, but his knowledge of the Bible – which we see in Macbeth - and his understanding of nature is immense, and impressive.