Shakespeare
The era starting around 1500 is the period that is in literature known as the Renaissance.
King Henry the 8th ushered in a new dynasty and a new period of prosperity and stability for England. His son, Henry the 9th, was a different person altogether. He found himself soon in a financial bind. He turned to the Church as a quick way to raise the funds he so needed. Henry persuaded the English bishops to make him the Head of the Church of England, gradually severing the links to Rome. England became politically Protestant but popularly Catholic. But Henry soon shut down all the Catholic monasteries and confiscated their wealth, distributing their lands among other landowners and merchants, thus improving his popularity and solving his financial problems.
After short reigns by Queen Mary (Bloody Mary), Queen Elizabeth started her rule. She was a force of peace and prosperity. She encouraged the creation of colonies abroad. The era of her age is called the Elizabethan Age.
The primary literary form of the great Elizabethan Age was drama. Several plays had been written which were important in helping form the literary backbone of the English drama. Playwrights such as Nicholas Udall, Thomas Sackville and Thomas Kyd set the stage for Shakespeare and his peers by creating just the right atmosphere and conditions for him to conquer the world of English drama.
William Shakespeare is considered by most to be the greatest playwright of the English language. No other playwright’s works have influenced the world in such way as Shakespeare’s. Today, his plays can bee seen in many different languages. Also cinemagoers can see his plays in modern-day films, though many of them do not realize it.
William Shakespeare was born to the family of a glove-maker in Stanford-upon-Avon in England in 1564. He married and hat three children.
Close to the turn of the centuries, after moving to London, he established himself as a playwright and even an actor. He became a member of Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a local theatre group, where he continued acting and writing plays. The group owned its own theatre, which was called the Globe. The Globe would play an important in Shakespeare’s life, for it was there, that his greatest plays were performed. The audience included royalty, namely Queen Elizabeth the 1st and her husband James the 1st, which were both very fond of Shakespeare.
Tragedy struck the Globe theatre in the form of a fire. The theatre group later moved to another theatre, the Blackfriars. Shakespeare eventually returned to his wife and children in Stratford, where a new house he bought became his residence until his death in 1616.
Shakespeare’s works include poems, sonnets and plays. His plays can be classified into 4 types of plays: Tragedies (Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear), Comedies (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, The Merry Wives Of Windsor), Romances ( The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest) and Historical Plays (Julius Caesar, Richard the 2nd, 3rd, Henry the 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th) .
One of the most famous plays by Shakespeare is Romeo and Juliet. It is often called the ultimate tragedy. It tells the story of Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, who are unfortunate to be born into feuding families. Romeo and Juliet fall in love and marry secretly. But Juliet’s father has promised her to Count Paris. To avoid the marriage she drinks a poison, which will make her appear dead for 48 hours. Romeo, who was supposed to warned about the plan but wasn’t, arrives to find his Juliet dead. Thinking her dead to be real, he kills himself by drinking a poison. Juliet then awakens to find her true love dead and subsequently takes her own life with a dagger. This tragedy then draws the families together, at last.
(Hamlet: To be or not to be, that is the question. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Henry IV.: Uneasy lays the head that wears the crown. Richard III.: Kingdom for a horse.)