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William Shakespeare
1564-1616
Popular Entertainer
• No cinema, no television, no football
– Wealthy people hired musicians, actors, dancers and
fencers
– Everyone else had to find entertainment: In London,
it was
Theater
Today: Go to a movie, then a bar or nightclub
Then: Go to a play, then a tavern
Shakespeare’s Works
• Sonnets (poems)
–14 lines
–iambic pentameter
–abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme
• Plays
–Histories
–Tragedies
–Comedies
Blank verse – iambic pentameter
• “These times of woe afford
no time to woo.” -- Paris
Names of a few of His Plays
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Julius Caesar
Macbeth
Hamlet
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
King Lear
Othello
The Tempest
The Theater in Shakespeare’s Time
• “The Theatre”—the first permanent theater
in England
• 1599, The Theatre was torn down
• From many of the timbers of “The
Theatre,” Shakespeare and his company
built the Globe Theatre
The Wooden “O”
• The Globe Theatre was a large,
round (or polygonal) building
• Three stories high
• Large platform stage
• Curtained-off inner stage
• Small balcony or upper stage
• Trap doors
• Plays were performed in the
afternoon
• Stage was open to the sky
• Very few sets, very little scenery
• The stage was “set” by the language
• Costumes were often elaborate
• Female parts played by young men or
boys
• Groundlings stood at the foot of the
stage
Terms
• Blank verse—poetry that is
written in iambic pentameter but
does not rhyme
• Motif—a small, recurring theme;
repeated patterns of images.
(stars, seasons, fate, feud, etc.)
• Foil—any character who by
contrast emphasizes the
distinctive qualities of another
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo & Juliet
• Shakespeare took the plot from a
poem entitled “The Tragicall Historye
of Romeus and Juliet” by Arthur
Brooke
• Takes place in Verona, Italy
• Takes place in the 1500’s
Themes in R & J
• Themes are based on:
–Youth and old age
–Public and private
–Love and hate
–Fate or destiny
–Love
–The dual nature of all creation
The End