Well-known Facts about Will

1
Well-known Facts about Will

• Great writer of England
• Plays translated into all languages, musicals,
  ballets
• Born Stratford-upon-Avon
• Well-to-do, affluent while alive
• Most quoted, other than the Bible

2
Shakespeares Career

• By 1592- actor and playwright
• 1594- charter member of Lord Chamberlain's Men
• 1603- Changed to Kings Men
• Retired in 1612
• Wrote 37 plays
• Julius Caesar written in 1599

3
Lesser-known Facts

• Teen father married pregnant 26 year old Anne
  Hathaway when he was 18
• Deadbeat dad Left wife and children for London
  stage career
• Father of twins
• Elizabethan rapper uses rhythm and rhyme
• Plagiarism ?

4
The Competition

• Shakespeare fought to steal audiences from
• Bear-baiting
• Races
• Gambling
• Music
• Drinking/socializing
• Prostitution
• Public executions

5
Conditions in London-BAD!

• Thames River polluted with raw sewage
• Poverty

6
Personal hygiene/health

• Bathing considered dangerous
• Body odor strong
• Childhood diseases
• Children often died before 5 years
• Small Pox
• Plague

7
Living Conditions

• No running water
• Chamber Pots
• Open Sewers
• Crowded

8
Clothes

• One set used all year long, rarely washed
• Underclothing slept in, infrequently changed
• Clothes handed down from rich to poor

9
Elizabethan Beliefs

• Life in Elizabethan England could be cruel and
  hard. The poor often went hungry, disease was
  widespread, medical remedies often felt more like
  tortures, and many women died in childbirth. But
  through their beliefs, people found ways of
  making sense of their existence.

10
Elizabethan Beliefs-Religion

• People were, in general, much more religious than
  people today.
• Almost everyone believed in God and expected to
  go to heaven or hell after death.

11
Elizabethan Beliefs

• The Chain of Being
• God created everything in a strict hierarchy, or
  chain, that stretched from God himself down to
  the lowest things in existence.
• The monarch was the highest
• Nobles and churchmen below
• Gentlemen
• Commoners
• All women were considered to be inferior to men,
  with the obvious exception of Elizabeth I.

12
Elizabethan Beliefs

• Chain of Being, cont.
• Accepting ones place in the chain was a duty
  that would be rewarded by God in heaven.

13
Elizabethan Beliefs

• Myths and Magic
• Fairies, magic, witches, spells and prophecies
  all formed part of their view of life.
• Folklore and superstition were often as important
  to people as the official religious beliefs
  taught by the Church.

14
Theater in London

• Performed in courtyards of inns
• The Theater-first public theater-1576
• Daytime/open air
• Limited set design
• Relied on music, sound, costumes, props and great
  description

15
The Globe

• Built in 1599
• Across the Thames- Wrong side of town
• Kings Players - Shakespeares company

16
Admission

• 1 shilling to stand
• 2 shillings to sit in the balcony
• 1 shilling was 10 of their weekly income
• Broadway Today
• 85 Orchestra
• 60 Balcony
• 10 of a teachers weekly salary

17
Actors

• All men
• Female parts played by young boys
• No actual kissing or hugging on stage

18
The Groundling

• Poor audience member sat in the cheaper seats
• Stood around stage in the pit
• Women not allowed (had to dress up as men to
  attend)
• Threw rotten vegetables at bad performances

19
Queen Elizabeth

• Bastard daughter of King Henry VIII
• And Ann Boleyn (2nd of 6 wives)
• Henry had Ann beheaded for treason
• Younger sister of Bloody Mary.
• Virgin Queen?
• A tease and a player

20
Her loving parents
21
The Renaissance

• 1500-1650
• Rebirth of arts, culture, science
• Discovery of New World
• King Henry VIII renaissance man (ideal)
• Reformation of Catholic Church

22
What Kind of Plays?

• Tragedy
• Ends in the death of one or more of the main
  characters.
• Most of his tragedies involve historical
  individuals and events

23
Tragic Hero

• Often a man of high rank, such as a king or
  prince
• Creates, or is put into, a difficult situation
  which he must try to resolve.
• A combination of bad luck and bad decisions lead
  to his death.
• Often a relatively sympathetic figure. His
  soliloquies show his feelings and motives, and
  show the audience how easy it would be to make
  similar mistakes.

24
Doom and Destiny

• Many people believed in fate, or destiny, and in
  the power of the stars to foretell the future.
• Shakespeare uses the idea of fate or destiny to
  add excitement and anticipation to the tragedies
• Uses a prophecy as a way of holding the
  audiences interest, because everyone wants to
  see if it will be fulfilled.

25
Tragic Endings

• Tragedies give a very bleak view of the world.
• At the end, the hero, and usually several other
  characters, are dead, and the survivors are left
  to start again without them.
• Although most tragic heroes are partly to blame
  for their own fates, death can be a very high
  price to pay for what may have seemed initially
  like a small failing.
• In most tragedies, there is also a feeling that
  some good may have come out of the terrible
  suffering.

26
Language of Shakespeare

• Early Modern English (NOT Middle English, like
  Chaucer)
• Lack of standardized spelling
• Puns and references to current events of his time
  make it difficult
• You know more than you think you do!

• Poetry of the sonnets and plays
• Iambic Pentameter (lines of five metrical feet,
  each one an iamb)
• Not perfect, or it would be sing-songy
• Blank Verse (unrhymed Iambic Pentameter)
• Lower Classes speech, or that of characters in
  emotional extremis, is in prose