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William Shakespeare
1564 - 1616
William Shakespeare
Born on March 31st, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.
Died on April 23, 1616. The cause of Shakespeare’s death
remains a mystery.
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright,
widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English
language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's Birthplace is a restored 16th-century halftimbered house situated in Henley Street, Stratford-uponAvon, Warwickshire, England, where it is believed that
William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and spent his
childhood years.
Shakespeare’s family
In November 1582, William Shakespeare married a local
farmer’s daughter called Anne Hathaway. He was 18, while
Anne was 26 and expecting their first child, Susanna.
In 1585, twins arrived, who were named Judith and
Hamnet.
In the 1580s, Shakespeare said goodbye to his family in
Stratford and set off to seek his fortune in London.
The Elizabethan Era
The Elizabethan era was the period
in English history of Queen
Elizabeth I’s reign (1558-1603).
Historians often depict it as the
golden age in English history.
This "golden age” represented
the peak of the English
Renaissance and saw the
flowering of poetry, music and
literature.
Religious Conflict
The 16th century was a time of bitter religious divisions.
All English people were Christian, but there were two
rival versions of the faith – Catholicism and
Protestantism.
From 1585 to 1604, Protestant England was at war with
Catholic Spain, ruled by King Philip II. The war created a
mood of patriotism in the country, and people wanted to
see plays drawn from English history with battles on the
stage.
England at war
•
In the 1590s, Shakespeare wrote 9 plays dealing with
English history, featuring kings, wars, and battles for
the throne.
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A central theme of the plays is the need for order.
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At the time, people were worried about the war with
Spain, the fact that their queen had no heir, the
rumors of Catholic plots to dethrone her, and the risk
of civil war.
Outbreaks of a terrible disease called the plague were common
in Elizabethan London. Nobody knew how the plague spread,
but when there was an outbreak, it seemed sensible to avoid
crowded places.
As the plague became worse, the playhouses closed for just over
two years (1592-1594).
There was no demand for Shakespeare to write new plays, so he
turned to poetry.
The Lord Chamberlain’s Men
In 1594, Shakespeare joined a company called the Lord
Chamberlain’s Men.
He wrote about 2 plays a year for them, and also
worked as an actor.
Shakespeare was one of several ‘sharers’ who invested
money in the company to pay for costumes, playbooks,
and the wages of actors and stage hands. In return,
they took a share of the profits.
Building the Globe
In 1597, the theatre was forced
to close.
In 1587, they built a new
playhouse and decided to call it
the Globe.
There was no direction in charge
of a production. The players
knew what was expected of
them, and they worked out the
staging together.
The King’s Men
King James I became the patron of Shakespeare’s
company, which was renamed the King’s Men.
They played before the King about ten times a year,
and above all, they relied on his support and
protection.
To please the king, Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, a
tragedy with a Scottish setting.
The Complete Works of
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s surviving works, including some collaborations,
consist of:
38 plays
154 sonnet
2 long narrative poems
Several other poems
His plays have been translated into every major living
language and are performed more often than those of any
other playwright.
A Few Facts
William was the third of eight children, although the two
born before him had died, possibly of the Bubonic plague.
The Bubonic plague (or ‘Black Death’) was spread by fleas
that were carried by rats or other small rodents. It killed an
estimated 75 million–200 million people in the 14th
century.
Few records of Shakespeare's private life survived, and there
has been considerable speculation about such matters as his
physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether
the works attributed to him were written by others.
All that can be deduced about Shakespeare is that over
the course of 20 years, he wrote plays that capture the
complete range of human emotion and conflict.
It is important to understand that Shakespeare’s plays
were never intended to be read – they were intended to
be performed.
Only men could act on the English stage in
Shakespeare’s time, so women’s roles were performed
by boys.
Play going became the most popular form of
entertainment for the people of London in the late
16th century.
Farmers, seamstresses, soldiers, sailors, apprentices and
servants stood side by side in the crowded yard.
The Plays
Shakespeare’s plays were divided into three
genres: Comedies, Histories and Tragedies.
The Comedies and Tragedies are the most
popular and the most often performed of his
work.
The Comedies
Comedy of Errors (1589)
Twelfth Night (1599)
Taming of the Shrew (1593)
As You Like It (1599)
Love’s Labour’s Lost (1594)
Merry Wives of Windsor (1600)
Two Gentleman of Verona (1594)
All’s Well That Ends Well (1602)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(1595)
Measure for Measure (1604
Merchant of Venice (1596)
Much Ado about Nothing (1598)
Winter’s Tale (1610)
Tempest (1611)
The Comedies
"Comedy", in its Elizabethan usage, had a very different
meaning from modern comedy. A Shakespearean
comedy is one that has a happy ending and a tone and
style that is more light-hearted than Shakespeare's
other plays.
Shakespearean comedies tend to include:
 Multiple, intertwining plots.
 A clever servant.
 Separation and re-unification.
The Comedies Quiz
Match the the plot summary with the play to which it belongs.
1. As You Like It
A.
Follows the adventures of four young
lovers and a group of six amateur actors,
who are controlled and manipulated by
fairies.
B.
The beautiful Bianca has no shortage of
admirers but her father insists that she
will not marry until her nasty sister,
Katharina, is married.
C.
A young woman disguises herself as a
man to acquire a position in the court
of her love. To her surprise, Lady Olivia
falls in love with her.
D.
Follows its heroine as she flees her
uncle's court with her cousin and the
court jester, to find safety and
eventually love in the Forest of Arden.
2. The Taming of the Shrew
3. A Midsummer Night’s
Dream
4. Twelfth Night
The Tragedies
Titus Andronicus (1593)
Macbeth (1605)
Romeo and Juliet (1594)
Antony and Cleopatra (1606)
Julius Caesar (1599)
Coriolanus (1607)
Hamlet (1600)
Timon of Athens (1607)
Troilus and Cressida (1601)
Othello (1604)
King Lear (1605)
The Tragedies
We recognize tragedy in literature because we find that
it corresponds to a sense of the tragic within us.
Defeat, shattered hopes and, ultimately, death face us
all as human beings. They are very real, but somehow
we have the intuitive feeling that they are out of place.
They seem to be intruders into life. Tragic literature
confronts us and we become fascinated by it.
The Tragedies Quiz
Match the the quote with the play to which it belongs.
1. Romeo and Juliet
2. Hamlet
A.
"To be, or not to be: that is the
question”
B.
"What's in a name? That which we
call a rose by any other name would
smell as sweet”
C.
"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire
burn, and cauldron bubble.”
D.
"Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich,
being poor; Most choice, forsaken;
and most loved, despised!"
3. Macbeth
4. King Lear
Hollywood Adaptations
Shakespeare’s legacy
“He was not of an age, but for all time” wrote the
playwright Ben Jonson to describe his friend William
Shakespeare.
Great legacy is to the English language itself.
We all regularly quote from Shakespeare without
realizing it.
Pleasing a King
Queen Elizabeth I died childless on the 24 of March, 1603.
5th of April, 1603 - King James VI of Scotland was crowned King
James I of England.
His position as the King was important because it was the first
time that England and Scotland agreed to have the same
monarch.
During his time as King, James learned to survive plots, rebellions
and riots. He even wore specially padded clothes to protect
himself.
James was convinced that he had been chosen by God to be king
and that anyone plotting against him must be in league with the
devil.
Witchcraft was seen as a real threat to society.
Macbeth was probably written in early 1606 when plots
against the King seemed to be everywhere.
Shakespeare presents a man who is told by three
witches that he will be king and is then encouraged by
his wife to bring it about by killing the King. He shows
what King James feared.
When the murderers suffer torment of conscience and
are eventually destroyed by the forces of good, the King
of England would have been pleased.
In focusing on Macbeth, as a figure from Scottish
history, Shakespeare paid respect to his king’s Scottish
background.
The play is more than pleasing the King – it is about
asking difficult questions, of ambition, guilt,
conscience, and the nature of evil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF4NJrxu5Xo
Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Macbeth was first performed at Hampton Court Palace
before James I and his guests in 1606. The storyline, like
that of most of Shakespeare's plays, was not original, and in
this case was based on fact. T
The story was familiar to James: he had inherited the throne
of Scotland through his ancestors Banquo and Fleance, and
the story of Duncan's murder was well known. The real
Macbeth reigned in Scotland from 1040 to 1057. He killed
his predecessor Duncan I, and was in turn killed by
Duncan’s, son Malcolm III. Events such as these were not
uncommon in the 'barbaric' feudal Scotland of the eleventh
century. Of the fourteen kings who reigned between 943
and 1097, ten were murdered
Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Shakespeare never let historical fact get in the way of a
good story. He changed several key aspects of the
original story, either to intensify his drama or to ensure
political correctness. As an example of the latter,
Shakespeare's Macbeth, who commits the greatest of all
crimes by murdering his king, finds he cannot live with
himself and the consequences of his actions. He has
rebelled against God and the order of creation; he
becomes inhumane and his crime is rightly punished
by his death.