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William Shakespeare 1564-1616 Stratford-upon-Avon Will’s Birthplace QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture. Anne Hathaway • Anne was 26 and Will, 18, when they married. • She was pregnant with their first child, Susanna. • Susanna was born in May 1533, six months after the wedding. • Twins, Hamnet and Judith, were born two years later. • Hamnet died of the black death when he was eleven. • Shakespeare’s father, John, was a prominent glove maker and was once the mayor of Stratford. • Traveling acting companies visited Stratford every year. • The Shakespeare family must have been disappointed when Will left his wife and children to travel to London to become a shiftless, vagabond actor. Evidence of Shakespeare in London • Will was 28 when Robert Greene attacked him in a newspaper editorial as an actor and someone who dared to write plays. • Another critic, Henry Chettle, defended Shakespeare as a good playwright and an excellent actor. Most actors were trained from childhood • • • • Actors were trained stuntmen Actors were trained swordsmen Actors had to be dancers Actors had to be able to play musical instruments • Actors need good voices • Actors needed to be able to play several roles in one play • Actors needed to be able to memorize their lines in a few days ‘ time. • Women were not allowed to be actresses. – All of the characters were played by males. Female roles were played by boys whose voices had not yet changed. • Only the best actors performed in London; second-rate ones joined traveling acting companies that traveled to Germany or the Netherlands. • Many actors became playwrights. • A script had to be approved by the government. • Queen Elizabeth did not want any unpatriotic material in a play. • Shakespeare always wrote as a loyal subject and a good Englishman. • In the play Richard II, Shakespeare wrote a beautiful tribute to England: This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise… This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea… This blessed plot, this earth, this real, this England… This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land • The mayor of London was always looking for a reason to close the theatres. • In 1592 the plague struck London and the mayor closed the immoral theatres for two years. Many acting companies went bankrupt and those that didn’t performed in the countryside outside of London. • While the theatres were closed, Shakespeare wrote poetry for the Earl of Southampton. – He could have become extremely rich from writing and publishing poetry. – As soon as the theatres re-opened in 1594, he joined an acting company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and for the rest of his career, he wrote plays for this company. The London literary critics could never move past their prejudice that Shakespeare didn’t have a university education, and therefore, could not be a good writer. The ordinary people loved Shakespeare’s work. • The Lord Chamberlain’s Men: • Each actor was treated as an equal. • Will Kempe was the most popular comic actor of his time. • Richard Burbage was the idol of the theatre crowd. • John Heminges was the business manager. • Henry Condell was another actor; after Shakespeare died, Condell and Heminges published a complete edition of his plays to keep his memory alive. • The acting profession had a bad reputation but most of the men in Shakespeare’s company were honest family men and highly respected citizens. – Most of them had large families that lived in London. • Like all playwrights in Elizabethan times, Shakespeare took familiar stories and turned them into plays. • For example, Romeo and Juliet was inspired by a popular poem by Arthur Brooke about two young lovers named Romeus and Juliet. • Shakespeare added splashes of comedy into the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, which was a new convention in drama. • Shakespeare’s first play was Henry VI, and it was an instant success. – It was produced at the Rose Theatre on March 3, 1592. – The most expensive item for acting companies were the costumes. – There was no scenery so the actor’s lines had to describe the scene and the costumes had to give an illusion of far-off times and distant places. • Advertisements for plays were done on printed playbills that could be attached to posts. • The acting company flew a silk flag on the top turret of their play house to announce that a play would be put on that day. • Different colored flags indicated what kind of play it was going to be. A black flag stood for a tragedy, a red flag meant a history play, and a white flag indicated a comedy. • People began to arrive two hours before the play began (around 2 p.m.) – Most brought food with them to eat. – There were no toilet facilities. • People from all levels of society attended plays and were seated by how much they could afford to pay. – Nobles sat in the highest row of the tiered seats, and if they paid extra, they could sit on a cushion. • Noblewomen often wore masks to disguise themselves. – The middle class sat in the lower rows. – The lower class (groundlings or stinkards) stood on the floor between the stage and the tiered seats. • Elizabethan theatres held about 1,500 people who were packed together in either seats or stood, packed together, on the floor around the stage. • The Elizabethan audience was restless, excitable, and opinionated. – If they disapproved of a play, they threw food at the actors. Shakespeare always gave his audiences what they liked--excitement, lots of deaths, bawdy comedy. – If the audiences liked a play, the acting company would repeat it two or three more times a season. • The Queen never went to the public theatres. – Once a year, during the Christmas season, royal performances of the best plays were staged in a lighted hall at night. – These productions for the Queen were elaborate. • • • • Scenery was built and painted Costumes were more elaborate. Actors had to wear gloves The opening play was December 26, and the best one was performed first. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men usually had the first play. • Shakespeare made money as a playwright and an actor. – Even though London was in an economic depression, Shakespeare was able to purchase a coat-of-arms for his father. – He bought his family the second largest house in Stratford. – He also invested his money in a new business venture and bought a theatre. • Shakespeare and four other actors in the Chamberlain’s Men tore down the Rose Theatre and rebuilt it on the south side of the Thames River. • The new theatre was called the Globe and it became the finest theatre in the London area. • Hamlet was published in 1603, the year that Queen Elizabeth died. • King James, Elizabeth’s cousin, shared her love of the theatre. • King James formed a company of actors that would be known as the King’s Men. • The King’s favorite actor was Lawrence Fletcher, and his second favorite actor was William Shakespeare. • Now that the king was sponsoring an acting company, the Master of Revels did not dare close the theatres. • The king began the play performances for the royal court in November rather than waiting for December 26. • The plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of King James were never printed in pamphlet form since the acting company did not need to make money from the sale of the plays. – Instead, Shakespeare’s plays were bound in manuscript form and stored by the acting company. • Shakepeare wrote one play after he retired and returned to Stratford. – This play was Henry VIII – In the first act of the play, the actors fired a canon to signal the King’s entrance. – No one noticed that the firing of the canon ignited a piece of paper that then blew to the thatched roof of the theatre and set it on fire. – The patrons made it out of the theatre, but the Globe burned to the ground. • Shakespeare invested money in building a new theatre, but he never wrote another play. • Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, in Stratford and is buried inside Trinity Church. • In his will, he left money for his fellow actors, Heminges, Burbage, and Condell money to purchase memorial rings to wear in his memory. • His plays belonged to the acting company. • In 1622, Heminges and Condell had Shakespeare’s plays printed in book form. A famous writer of the Elizabethan Era, Ben Jonson, wrote a forward for the book, and put Shakespeare in the same category as the ancient Greek writers. He said of Shakespeare: “He was not of an age, but for all time.” • Thankfully, Shakespeare’s works were preserved because just nineteen years later, the Puritans took control of London and closed all of the theatres.