Why?

[ravana]

Have you ever thought why in most Shakespeare's dramas accidents take place everywhere, except England?

[emily655321]

Don't most of Shakespeare's plays take place elsewhere than in England?

[Jay]

Good point lol

[ravana]

Hm! Em, if you tried to correct my English, thanks darling! I know that it's terrible.

What did I mean in this thread? - I heard one opinion: They say that English people are too cold to feel real love, so Shakespeare chose Verona for his Romeo and Juliet. If he wrote about love of English couple, nobody in England would believe the reality of his play. And the play was in a great success most because of that was the love tale of foreign couple.

Probably this opinion is nonsense. I haven't read all his works, so don't know if there's any his play regarding to England.

[Shea]

Isn't Lear supposed to be set in Britain?

[Shea]

Oh! Why didn't I think of this before?? :rolleyes: The answer to this question is that the playwrites were heavily censored because the crown didn't want the plays to influence the people in such a way to cause dispair in the monarchy. Sometimes, the plot would really be historical, or the excuse was that it was a commentary on what happened in another country, so what's the harm? (though most of the time it reflected what was happening in England) Anyway, some of those playwrites were severely punished for breaking those censorship laws, like losing appendages or even heads. :eek: :eek2:

[ravana]

Oh, Shea, you're quite right, it's rather acceptable.

[emily655321]

Hm! Em, if you tried to correct my English, thanks darling! I know that it's terrible.

Sorry, Ravana, I wasn't correcting you. :D I just misunderstood the question.

I agree with Shea, that basing tragedies in foreign countries was one way to avoid offending the monarchy of England. But also, Shakespeare wrote during the Renaissance, when tons of new art and literature was being discovered in the Mediterranean and brought back to England. Many of the people in Shakespeare's audience had never even been outside of London, so it was popular to write about foreign places. The same way that during the 1950's, at the beginning of space exploration, audiences were more interested in watching movies about outer space than about Earth.

[ravana]

em, you shouldn't apologize. I'm always glad for your comments about my bad structured English.

[mono]

Good question, but I'm afraid I do not know the confident answer. I know the blasphemy in saying so, especially in a Shakespeare forum, but I think that's why so many people have questioned whether Shakespeare wrote all of the plays by himself, and without help from others such as Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, and I-can't-remember-his-first-name de Vere (whose nickname was Spear-shaker, ironically). Apparently, Shakespeare himself didn't travel as much t as otherso acquire such detailed knowledge of distant lands. Good luck, regardless; I hope this helps.

[Helga]

I think you'd rather belive a story like the ones Shakespeare wrote when they happen somewere else, were customs are different.

plus Italy and Greece (some plays were centered there like you know) have a romantic flair about them that make the stories more belivable....

[Ace42]

It is about the romantacising of the exotic, as Emily said here http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=33405&postcount=8

The reason Venice was such a popular location for renaissance writers, apart from the Legacy of the crusades, apart from the fact that as a major trading port it was well-renowned, etc was because it was the first "capitalist" state, IE not run by a monarchy, absolute or otherwise. Critics of renaissance literature often refer to the "myth of Venice" - Jonson uses it as an allegory for Renaissance England in Volpone for example. Generally, I think it is merely an authorial device for allowing the coincidental (itself a popular feature of literature at the time) to occur without ruining the suspension of disbelief in the audience.

Arcadia, Salome, etc etc. I'd even go as far to say that the majority of the plays at the time were not set in England.