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Citation: C N Trueman "James and Parliament"
historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 17 Mar 2015. 16 Aug 2016.

At the start of the reign of James I, he received a tolerably good welcome from Parliament. James seemed to offer Parliament a fresh start after the unpredictable behaviour of Elizabeth in her last few years. However, James was to quarrel with Parliament over a number of issues and this positive early relationship soon faltered. The major issues that caused James and Parliament to fall out were royal finances, royal favourites and the belief by James that he could never be wrong.

The first Parliament of Stuart England lasted from 1604 to 1611. The major issues it dealt with were royal finances - monopolies as an example - and the raising of money for James without the consent of Parliament.

In 1614 the Adled Parliament sat. This parliament dealt with religious issues (primarily the spread of Catholicism) and royal finances. However, it only sat for eight weeks before being dissolved by James as it wanted to discuss the whole thorny issue of the raising of money by the Crown without Parliamentary consent - a topic James was not prepared for them to discuss.

The next Parliament under James was in 1621. The Thirty Years War had started in 1618 - so foreign policy matters were of primary concern. Parliament also wanted the right to discuss its own powers and rights - something that James was not prepared to allow. As with the Adled Parliament, the life of this Parliament was cut short in December 1621.

Parliament also sat in 1624. The two major issues it dealt with were raising money for war with Spain and the imprisonment of Lionel Cranfield, the finance minister for the Crown.

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James and Parliament - History Learning Site

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At the start of the reign of James I, he received a tolerably good welcome from Parliament. James seemed to offer Parliament a fresh start after the unpredictable behaviour of Elizabeth in her last few years. However, James was to quarrel with Parliament over a number of issues and this positive early relationship soon faltered.

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AO5 - Key quotes for critical perspectives 

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AO5 - Key quotes for critical perspectives 

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Ways of thinking about King Lear " King Lear Study Guide from Crossref-it.info

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Feminists would also focus on why Lear should curse Goneril and Regan by wishing infertility upon them, and indeed the play contains many examples of male disgust at female sexuality. There are no mothers in the play and little evidence of 'nurturing' female/male bonds (the King of France is off-stage after the first scene of the play).

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Shakespeare and Literary Criticism, In Our Time - BBC Radio 4

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare.

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Melvyn Bragg examines whether the ancient genre of tragedy has a place in our own time.

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Shakespeare's Work, In Our Time - BBC Radio 4

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Melvyn Bragg examines what it is about Shakespeare's work that makes it universal.

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Melvyn Bragg examines what we know about the life of William Shakespeare. Charles Dickens said of the deeply enigmatic Shakespeare, "It is a great comfort...that so little is known concerning the poet. The

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Shakespeare's Life, In Our Time - BBC Radio 4

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Melvyn Bragg examines what we know about the life of William Shakespeare. Charles Dickens said of the deeply enigmatic Shakespeare, "It is a great comfort...that so little is known concerning the poet. The

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The Divine Right of Kings, In Our Time - BBC Radio 4

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Melvyn Bragg discusses the idea that kingly authority derives from God.

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אימגו מגזין מאמרים

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Shakespeare's King Lear and the Nature of Disguise

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Shakespeare's King Lear and the Nature of Disguise -First and foremost, the motif of disguise in King Lear is defined in terms of progress narrative.

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This study guide brings you the top six King Lear themes. An understanding of the themes discussed here is essential to really get to grips with this classic play.

The themes covered here include:

1. Justice

2. Appearance versus Reality

3. Compassion and Reality

4. Nature

5. Madness

6. Sight and Blindness

King Lear Theme: Justice

In Act 2 Scene 4, Goneril and Regan make their father give up his servants and cast him out into stormy weather, bolting the door behind him.

This is in response to Lear's erratic behavior towards Cordelia and his distribution of power. Lear's response to this in Act 3 Scene 2 is that he is "more sinned against than sinning"

Lear later insists on a mock trial to bring his daughters to account in Act 3 Scene 6.

Act 3 Scene 7 Cornwall gouges Gloucester's eye out for helping Lear. Gloucester like Lear has shown favor to one of his children over the other, he learns from his mistakes the hard way.

The illegitimate Edmond is vanquished by his legitimate brother Edgar in Act 5 Scene 3. This is in response to his jealousy of his brother; having orchestrated his brother's banishment and punishment for killing the innocent Cordelia.

Lear dies heartbroken having lost the only daughter who truly loved him.

King Lear Theme: Appearance Versus Reality

At the start of the play, Lear believes his older daughters' sycophantic professions of love, rewarding them with his kingdom.

While banishing his truthful daughter Cordelia and his close ally Kent.

In Act 1 Scene 2 Edmond hatches a plan to discredit his brother Edgar who he is fiercely jealous of because of his higher social status due to his legitimacy. Edmond discredits Edgar's character to his father Gloucester.

Gloucester rejects his son Edgar based on a forged letter written by his deceitful son Edmond in Act 2 Scene 1.

Gloucester is later blinded and told he has been betrayed by Edmond, not Edgar. For most of the play, Edgar has been disguised as a poor man.

Kent is also disguised in order to help Lear.

King Lear Theme: Compassion and Reality

An important theme that runs throughout King Lear is the triumph of compassion and reconciliation in the face of tragedy.

Despite his banishment, Kent returns to Lear's service disguised as a peasant in order to protect him in Act 1 Scene 4.

Act 3 Scene 3 Lear demonstrates compassion for his fool despite his own deterioration into madness.

Lear tears off his own clothes on finding 'Poor Tom' and laments the trials and tribulations of the poor.

As Lear and Cordelia are reconciled in Act 4 Scene 7, she tells him she has 'no cause' to hate him.

King Lear Theme: Nature

The raging storm reflects the turbulent political background Lear has created by pertaining power to Goneril and Regan. The weather also reflects Lear's mental state as his confusion and grip on reality falter. "The tempest in my mind" (Act 3 Scene 4)

King Lear Theme: Madness

Lear's sanity is questioned by Goneril and Regan who refer to his age as a reason for his inconsistency but who also acknowledge Lear's lack of self-awareness throughout his life "'Tis the infirmity of his age; yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself" ( Act 1 Scene 1).​

One could argue that throughout the play Lear is forced to become more self-aware and unfortunately, he begins to accept his mental state is deteriorating "O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven". At the end of the play Lear dies heartbroken, one could argue he is driven mad by his own poor choices and decisions.

King Lear Theme: Sight and Blindness

This links with the appearance and reality theme. Lear is blinded by Goneril and Regan's false flattery and does not see Cordelia's genuine affection for him.

Gloucester is similarly blinded by Edmond's account of Edgar and is physically blinded by Cornwall who gouges his eyes out.

Gloucester acknowledges his desperate situation in Act 4 Scene 1 "I have no way and therefore want no eyes. I stumbled when I saw. Full oft 'tis seen Our means secure us, and our mere defects prove our commodities." (Line 18-21) Gloucester explains that he was metaphorically blind to his son's behavior, he now knows but has no way to rectify the situation.

His physical blinding has metaphorically opened his eyes.

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This study guide brings you the top six King Lear themes. An understanding of the themes discussed here is essential to really get to grips with this classic play.

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Gloucester and Lear: Men who act like Gods

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Gloucester and Lear: Men who act like Gods

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Topics, Sample Papers & Articles Online for Free

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King Lear was written around 1603-06. A contextualised political reading interprets King Lear as a drama that gives expression to crucial political and social issues of its time: the hierarchy of the Jacobean state, King James' belief in his divine right to rule, and the political anxieties that characterised the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign: fears of civil war and division of the kingdom triggered by growth of conflicting fractions and a threatening underclass.

Like all writers, Shakespeare reflected the world he knew. The ancient Britain the pseudo-historical Lear lived in contained anachronistic references to aspects of Jacobean life, such as eel pies and toasted cheese. Kent calls Oswald a 'base football player', evoking the class assumptions of the times. More significantly, King Lear reveals the conditions and preoccupations of Jacobean England in terms of politics, social change, justice, religion, madness, and the natural order.

Politics

Watching the play, Jacobean audiences would detect many resonances with their own socio-political climate: troubled and uncertain times as Elizabeth's reign draws to a close and James ascends the throne - as the Tudor dynasty gave way to the Stuarts.

Poverty, food shortages and unemployment were commonplace; Bedlam beggars were troublesome, roaming the countryside pleading for charity. These social features are explored by Shakespeare via Lear's madness and the character of Edgar-turned-poor-Tom.

The Cordelia-led French invasion may have sparked memory of the Spanish Armada of 1588.

Lear's character contains parallels to King James's. James, like Lear, believed in his own divine right to rule, and deemed it blasphemous to question the King's action. The divine right of the King was the prevailing sentiment reinforced by law, and Lear's unwitting decision to abdicate ruptures the divine and natural order

Shakespeare makes subtle allusions to James' profligate behaviour - which held significance for Jacobean audiences. James had proved susceptible to the flattery of ambitious courtiers. Lear's belated recognition of the conventions, flatteries, and corruptions by which he has long been deceived provides sharp reminder to James that a king is only man like other, subject to the same human frailties: "they told me I was everything; 'tis a lie, I am not ague-proof."

James, with his intention to unite England and Scotland, would have welcomed the play as a validation of his unionist views. The doomed Lear shown to have "divided in three our kingdom"; this brusque cutting-up of a kingdom would have appalled the audience (who would share Kent's horror), warning against partitioning of a state. Monarchs have a sacred duty to keep their kingdom intact, it was a sin to abdicate or divide their country. The divided coronet is a striking visual image, symbolising the political dysfunction, chaos, civil war and personal tragedy that follows the division of the kingdom.

Social Change

Both Lear and James rules societies characterised by its distinct hierarchical order - but also in the process of social change. A stable feudal society wit its strong allegiances and rigid hierarchy had crumbled in the wake of new scientific discoveries and global exploration. Increasing wealth from commerce fostered new ideas about value and status, as James made social mobility a reality with the selling of knighthoods for cash. A prosperous commercial gentry challenged the King's power and divided the aristocracy, giving rise to difference political fractions - reflect in the rivalry between Albany and Cornwall.

Newly acquired power and property gave rise to a new kind of individual - those who felt no obligation to the old feudal loyalties, filled with the spirit of radical individualism, driven by self-interest. Edmund, Gloucester's unscrupulous illegitimate son, refuses to "stand in the plague of custom" and seeks to thrive by his own cunning - mocking the superstitious beliefs of his father (an upholder of the old feudal loyalty to the king). Another is the corrupt, self-serving Oswald, who is ridiculed by the nobleman Kent. But he represents the emerging class of thrusting individualists in Jacobean England, motivated by self-interest, not loyalty to the traditional order.

In their acquisitiveness, Goneril, Regan and Edmund flaunt the "offices of nature, bonds of childhood, effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude" within the old order of human relationships.

Social Preoccupations/Values: How Jacobeans would have responded to these themes/motifs

Justice - King Lear reflects the passionate interest of the Jacobeans in justice - both process of law (human justice) and justice meted out by gods (divine justice).

The play's many trials would strike a familiar chord in its contemporaries. There are five trials:

1. Love trial

2. Trial of Kent, whose bluntness earns him instant punishment

3. Improper trial of Gloucester by Cornwall and Regan

4. Lear's hallucinated 'mock trial' of Goneril and Regan

5. Trial by combat where Edmund is destroyed.

In each case, the play raises questions as to whether justice has been done. In his madness, Lear becomes obsessed with bringing his daughters to justice, while losing faith in human justice, asking "which is the justice, which is the thief?" He reveals the inherent hypocrisy in judgement itself as he imagines a beadle (Jacobean figure of legal authority) punishing a whore despite how he "hotly lusts to use her in that kind for which thou whippst her". The concluding lines "through tattered clothes great vices do appear: Robes and furred gowns hide all" - is a damning indictment of human justice, where possession of power is more important than fairness, where the fallibility of judgement present itself as a searing criticism of Jacobean society.

Divine justice, although unmotivated by tangible influences, is equivocal - and their effects equally devastating. Although Albany claims Cornwall's deserved disgrace of being killed by a servant as proof of divine justice, the death of Cordelia is a bolt from a sky cleared by the vanished storm, demonstrating that there's no simple scheme of rewards or punishments, earthly or divine. Both are equally wanton, confirming the bleak views of human predicament expressed in "like flies to wanton boys are we to th'gods; They kill us for their sport".

Religion - Adapted from old play: King Leir, which is pre-Christian. Shakespeare gave his play a pagan setting, which allowed greater freedom for him to present ticklish theological issues, in particular the question of providence, without falling foul of the strict Jacobean censorship. Jacobeans would be shocked by the image of a son assisting his father to attempt suicide, which is a sin.

Audience may detect the Christian theme of a journey through pain, suffering and humiliation to love, forgiveness and wisdom. There are obvious biblical echoes, like as Cordelia's "O dear father, / It is thy business that I go about", and the apocalyptic nature of the storm. Thus, its bleak, almost sadistic ending diverges from Jacobean expectation. It doesn't fit the tragedy trajectory that moves from order to disorder and eventual restoration and fulfilment - Hence, a modified version by Tate containing a happy ending had replaced Shakespeare's original on the stage for few centuries.

Madness - Jacobeans' attitudes to madness were harsh and unsympathetic (bedlam beggars were believed to be possessed by devils). They may have been startled by the proliferation of madness within the empowered individuals of society:

Lear's madness is that of a selfish, autocratic old man whose will is thwarted, whose moral blindness, misjudgements and lack of understanding of himself and others inevitably lead to breakdown: "O Fool, I shall go mad"

Cornwall and Regan seem to become mad in their obsession with Gloucester's punishment.

Gloucester thinks it better to be 'distract' and lose his sorrow in 'wrong imaginations'. He views madness as a privilege, bestowing innocence upon the insane person.

Ironically, the madness of Poor Tom, and archetypal image of insanity, is put on. The Fool's 'madness' is professional, witty, exposing the weakness and folly of his 'reasonable' superiors.

Human madness is reflected as disturbance in nature and society. Lear's inner torment is externalised by the violent storm. Lear's tearing up of the kingdom is political madness, kindling a storm of social frenzy that precipitates cruelty, blindness, madness and death.

These incidences of madness demonstrate the vulnerability of those in whom we entrust power, and thus how fragile the fabric of Jacobean society was.

The Natural Order - Jacobeans would have viewed the play, especially its characters, through notions of what's 'natural' and 'unnatural' instilled into them by their paradigm. This paradigm advocates hierarchical order enforced by God - with King fixed at the pinnacle of the social hierarchy, and the father at the family's - both charged with the duty to maintain their state in harmony.

The perversions that occur to this order are unnatural:

Lear's division of the kingdom according to daughters' protestation of love violates a monarch's duty to keep his kingdom unified. This act allows evil to breed, resulting in personal and social madness in the form of suffering, civil war, self-destruction.

Children revoking their filial duty also violate natural order. Being female, Goneril and Regan's usurping of the patriarchal status quo induce particular shock and horror in Jacobeans. Their self-destruction is expected repercussion of their double felony against the natural order.

A Jacobean reading interprets King Lear as a vivid social portrait, featuring aspects of social conditions, depicting social change, and voicing the beliefs of its contemporary audience. Its story teaches a moral lesson against the shirking of responsibility and division of one's state. Its characters represent social groups- their actions and interactions parallel the ebb and flow of social forces.

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King Lear was written around 1603-06. A contextualised political reading interprets King Lear as a drama that gives expression to crucial political and social issues of its time: the hierarchy of the Jacobean state, King James' belief in his divine right to rule, and the political anxieties that characterised the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign: fears of civil war and division of the kingdom triggered by growth of conflicting fractions and a threatening underclass.

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Shakespeare and the Stage | University of Oxford Podcasts - Audio and Video Lectures

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Professor Tiffany Stern gives a short talk on William Shakespeare and how his plays were performed in Elizabethan England.

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At the heart of King John is the death of his rival Arthur: this fifteenth lecture in the Approaching Shakespeare series looks at the ways history and legitimacy are complicated in this plotline.

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At the heart of King John is the death of his rival Arthur: this fifteenth lecture in the Approaching Shakespeare series looks at the ways history and legitimacy are complicated in this plotline.

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Writing essays: Constructing an essay

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Writing essays: intros and conclusions

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Speech, Gender and Power  (very long, but very helpful!)

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Speech, Gender and Power  (very long, but very helpful!)

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http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1784&context=theses

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Mark scheme

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SPOILER ALERT- 'King Lear' The ending

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Tragic recognition in 'King Lear'

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'Sin and Suicide in King Lear'

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Misogyny and patriarchy in Lear

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'Dirty Rotten Bastards' Lear

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'Defining Renaissance tragedy'

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'A divided kingdom' Lear

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CRITICAL ANTHOLOGY

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Ian McKellen: Understanding King Lear, the Character

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King Lear - nothing will come of nothing

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Originally screened as part of the NT Live broadcast, this short film gives an insight into Sam Mendes's 2014 production of King Lear with Simon Russell Beale in the title role.

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The historical context of Lear

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Historical Context for King Lear by William Shakespeare | The Core Curriculum

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While Shakespeare is indeed one of the great writers of the Western canon-and one of the best-known-it's important to avoid uncritically endorsing portrayals that render him as a near-mythical kind of universal genius, without considering the particular historical contexts not only of the period in which he lived and worked, but of the nearly 400 years after his death.

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During Shakespeare's time, people's lives were often short. As many as one-half of the children born never lived beyond fifteen years and, thus, never reached adulthood. Also, the average lifespan of an adult was only thirty years. These short lifespans were due to the limited medical knowledge.

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The influence of genre on the depiction of gender 

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The influence of genre on the depiction of gender 

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English & Media Centre | Enter emagazine online | emagazine

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English and Media Centre (EMC) is an educational charity providing CPD and innovative & award-winning teaching materials to secondary English & Media teachers

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English & Media Centre | Enter emagazine online | emagazine

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English and Media Centre (EMC) is an educational charity providing CPD and innovative & award-winning teaching materials to secondary English & Media teachers

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English & Media Centre | Enter emagazine online | emagazine

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English and Media Centre (EMC) is an educational charity providing CPD and innovative & award-winning teaching materials to secondary English & Media teachers

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This collection of films offers performance extracts from the National Theatre's production of King Lear, alongside interviews with the cast and director about elements of the play.

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This collection of films offers performance extracts from the National Theatre's production of King Lear, alongside interviews with the cast and director about elements of the play.

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This collection of films offers performance extracts from the National Theatre's production of King Lear, alongside interviews with the cast and director about elements of the play.

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The film and stage director talks to Mark Leipacher about his acclaimed production of King Lear, working with Simon Russell Beale and his career thus far. This is a recording of a live Platform event from May 2014.

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Talking Lear: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia

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Fiona Mountford talks to Kate Fleetwood, Anna Maxwell Martin and Olivia Vinall about playing the three daughters in Lear, being directed by Sam Mendes and performing in the Olivier theatre. This is a recording of a live Platform event from January 2014.

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Let it fall rather, though the fork invade The region of my heart: be Kent unmannerly, When Lear is mad. What wilt thou do, old man? Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak, When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour's bound, When majesty stoops to folly.

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Struggling with William Shakespeare's King Lear? Check out our thorough summary and analysis of this literary masterpiece.

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A generation before, Dr Samuel Johnson confessed that even reading the play was almost too much to bear: "I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia's death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor." The shock for Johnson was both emotional and moral. The death of Cordelia -Shakespeare's boldest alteration of the older versions of the Lear story, in all of which the beloved youngest daughter survives - was an extraordinary breach of the principle that Johnson called "poetical justice", whereby the good end happily and the bad unhappily.

It was quite in order to impose poetical justice on the play: during the 1680s Nahum Tate, author of the hymn While Shepherds Watched, had rewritten King Lear with a happy ending, in which Cordelia was married off to Edgar. Johnson had some sympathy with this alteration, which held the stage for a century and a half, whereas for Lamb it was yet one more indication that the theatre was not to be trusted with Shakespeare's sublime vision of universal despair.

The play's special place in the modern Shakespearean repertoire can be traced back to a moment in the early Sixties when the director Peter Brook read an essay by the Polish literary scholar Jan Kott called King Lear, or Endgame. The unlikely juxtaposition of an epic drama set in Ancient Britain and Samuel Beckett's nihilistic Endgame, in which dying characters exchange absurd dialogue as they lurk in dustbins in a post-nuclear wasteland, gave Brook a new way into the play. He cast Paul Scofield as the aged king and inspired the great critic Kenneth Tynan to write: "Lay him to rest, the royal Lear, with whom generations of star actors have made us reverently familiar, the majestic ancient, wronged and maddened by his vicious daughters." Scofield's Lear was an irascible father, a difficult old man, as much sinning as sinned against.

The genius of Brook and Scofield was that they revealed the play to be about Big Issues - power politics, international conflict, poverty and social exclusion, the condition of humanity in a godless universe - but equally about domestic problems, such as coping with a father who has dementia or dividing an estate between three daughters. The key to a great production is the ability to hold together the huge and the tiny, the universal and the local, the epic and the intimate. Shakespeare's language makes just this demand, as it moves at speed from vast philosophical questions ("Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?") to the language of small and ordinary things - garden waterpots, gilded flies and toasted cheese.

To make these shifts an actor needs long experience and terrific stamina. It's sometimes said that the problem with the part of Lear is that by the time you are old enough to play it, you are too old to play it. Laurence Olivier tried both too soon and too late: on the stage in 1946, still in his thirties, he seemed to be impersonating a whimsical old tyrant rather than actually being one, while on television in 1983, he was too frail for the rage.

"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow": the role is often associated with the barnstorming style of Sir Donald Wolfit, as immortalised in Ronald Harwood's play about his experience as the old actor-manager's backstage dresser. But many of the finest modern productions have been in small spaces and a quieter style. For the actor, the real difficulty in playing the part is deciding how much to let rip how soon - if you give too much to the anger in the first half you're too exhausted for the madness in the second half, but if you have too much control to begin with, the transition into madness can seem too sudden and extreme to be convincing. A slow build and then a relentless stretching out of emotional agony: that's what works best.

Minimalist design and physical proximity to the audience help tremendously. The three best Lears I have ever seen were all in "black box" studio theatres: they were Tony Church, directed by the late Buzz Goodbody in an RSC "Theatregoround" production, Ian Holm in the little Cottesloe in Richard Eyre's farewell production as artistic drector of the National, and Lee Beagley with a company called Kaboodle in Liverpool's tiny Unity Theatre. What they had in common was the ability to range from a whisper and a tear to a curse and a howl. Fancy design on a cavernous stage, by contrast, can all too often lead to a train wreck, as Nigel Hawthorne discovered when he teamed up with the Japanese director Yukio Ninagawa in 1999.

The other key to a great production is the quality of the ensemble. Many a Hamlet has shone even in an indifferent production - as Jude Law did for the Donmar last year - because the character's soliloquies allow him to hold the stage alone. But Lear, exceptionally for a Shakespearean tragic hero, is hardly ever alone. He constantly bounces off his companions - the Fool, who tries to teach him wisdom; the loyal Kent, who follows in disguise; the other broken aged man whose name is Gloucester.

Many of the most brilliant productions have depended on double acts: Michael Gambon as Lear with Antony Sher as Fool (perched on the king's lap like a ventriloquist's dummy), Ian McKellen as Kent standing resolute with Brian Cox's Lear for Deborah Warner at the National, Alan Webb as Gloucester beside Scofield in both the stage version and the film of the Brook production. Compelling performances from Lear's antagonists are equally important.

If the reviewers are to be believed, Michael Grandage's production at the Donmar hits all the buttons: an intimate space and a minimal design, a uniformly strong ensemble, and in Sir Derek Jacobi an actor who has not left it too late, as Olivier did. It sounds as if in pursuit of a ticket we should be taking the advice of Lear himself: "Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill."

Jonathan Bate is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick

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A generation before, Dr Samuel Johnson confessed that even reading the play was almost too much to bear: "I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia's death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor."

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"You are a vain, greedy, cruel boy," snarls Sir Anthony Hopkins as the white-haired and bearded god Odin to his rebellious son in 2011's Marvel Studios film Thor.

"You are an old man and a fool!" howls Thor, played by toned, blond Chris Hemsworth, before he and his mythic hammer are cast out of their celestial home to the doldrums of Earth.

That blistering exchange, ripe with Freudian father-son tension, disappointment and bravado, could come straight out of Shakespeare, from a tragedy like King Lear or Hamlet. And Tom Hiddleston's quest for power in the film and in last year's Marvel box office hit The Avengers is pure Macbeth.

Opening in US cinemas this weekend, Thor: The Dark World is filled with sibling rivalry, hubris and paternal frustration. Once again it shows the lasting influence of William Shakespeare in superhero films and in other big budget fantasy and adventure movies that dominate the big screen.

"Stan Lee, who edited and wrote most of the early Marvel comics, was heavily influenced by Shakespeare," says Stuart Moore, co-author of the Marvel tie-in book The Art of Thor: The Dark World. "It's evident in everything from the language the gods use to the larger themes behind the stories."
The playwright's the thing
In multiplexes aroundthe world, Marvel Studios' franchises rub shoulders with the X-Men, Hobbit and James Bond films. And increasingly, these genre movies attract classically-trained, heavyweight British actors like Anthony Hopkins, and also Royal Shakespeare Company alumni Sir Kenneth Branagh, Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Patrick Stewart, Dame Judi Dench and Dame Helen Mirren, to name a few.

"I guess great Shakespeare actors like McKellen, Dench, Mirren, Branagh and company have the capacity to scale the heights of human emotion that Shakespeare charts in roles like Lear, Hamlet, and Cleopatra," notes Gregory Doran, artistic director of the UK's Royal Shakespeare Company. "He challenges an actor to go to the limits of human experience, and find the surprising elements of humor and pathos, the absurd and the pathetic, at the very edges of catastrophe. Perhaps that's why they have the ability to play the almost superhuman scale that science fiction and fantasy demand."

Genre roles exist on a superhuman scale. They are made for movie-going masses who love high drama and strong heroes with cracks underneath their skin. And the Shakespearean backgrounds of the actors involved add respectability to material often dismissed as lowbrow.

Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, both Shakespearean juggernauts who have taken the title role in Macbeth on stage, battle against each other as Magneto and Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men series, including the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past. McKellen will also reprise his Lord of the Rings turn as the wise wizard Gandalf in December's The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

Helen Mirren is best known to film buffs for her stately Oscar-winning role in 2006's The Queen, but Shakespeare aficionados might first recall her work on stage in Troilus and Cressida and As You Like It. She vamps it up as an assassin in the comic book film RED (2010) and this year's sequel RED 2. Judi Dench, with Shakespeare stage credits including Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Lady Macbeth, has played steely British secret service boss M in seven popular James Bond movies.

It might be tempting to think these theatrical heavyweights take on pop culture roles just for the money. But that is not so, says Sean Howe, author of Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. "There's a lot of resonance with Shakespeare in these stories, and it's probably a comfortable, perhaps even nostalgic, mode for the actors. I would never accuse those fine women and men [of being] cash-grabbers, but let's say that these movies are cost-effective for them. They're not big budget romantic leads. It's probably the biggest possible payday they can enjoy. And they're in the company of other great actors."
Of gods and monsters
Shakespeare loved to map a hero's upward and downward journey and show how a tragic flaw or moral weakness makes them come unstuck. His tragedies, based on Greek, Roman, Danish-Nordic and English history and legends, are stuffed with elements of betrayal, lust, sibling and parental rivalry, supernatural beings, witches and ghosts.

Still, there is comedy too, with a royal fool or clever commoners as silly yet truthful commentators. Writer-director Joss Whedon added some saucy dialogue worthy of a fool to his superhero ensemble piece The Avengers, and followed it up with this year's black-and-white version of the Bard's tart romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing.

The first Thor film was directed by Kenneth Branagh, who has starred in and overseen a slew of Shakespeare film adaptations, including Henry V, Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost and his own version of Much Ado About Nothing. In Thor he sets up the Shakespearean motif of brother versus brother, vying for and defying their godly father's approval to take his throne.

Its follow-up, Thor: The Dark World, directed by Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor, places Thor at the center of a epic fight to save Earth from the marauding Dark Elves. For help he enlists the untrustworthy Loki, a role taken by Hiddleston, a fan favourite bred on Shakespeare. He told told GeekExchange.com and other outlets that he and Branagh discussed the similarities between cheeky, scheming Loki and the illegitimate son Edmund in King Lear. In Shakespeare's play, Edmund grows up in the shadow of the Earl of Gloucester's legitimate heir, Edgar, just as Loki, Odin's adopted son, the bastard offspring of a Frost Giant, was raised alongside Thor - and like Edmund, Loki plots to betray his brother. Thor himself takes after Prince Hal, the young, petulant heir to the throne who is a letdown to his royal father but later matures to become King Henry V.

"Thor: The Dark World features kings, commoners, family betrayals, invading armies, and troops dispatched in defense of the realm," says Moore. "Despite the low-culture trappings of comic book films, they're the closest thing in modern entertainment to the kind of grand-scale melodrama that Shakespeare trafficked in."

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Finding Shakespeare in Thor: The Dark World

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"You are a vain, greedy, cruel boy," snarls Sir Anthony Hopkins as the white-haired and bearded god Odin to his rebellious son in 2011's Marvel Studios film Thor. "You are an old man and a fool!" howls Thor, played by toned, blond Chris Hemsworth, before he and his mythic hammer are cast out of their celestial home to the doldrums of Earth.