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Intro to Shakespeare. A list of fun facts and info to help you understand why The Bard is important, interesting & relevant. Personal Life.
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Intro to Shakespeare A list of fun facts and info to help you understand why The Bard is important, interesting & relevant.
Personal Life • The mystery begins - William Shakespeare was born in 1564...maybe. - He was baptized on April 26 of that year, so his birth probably occurred shortly before that. • Shakespeare was eighteen when he married Anne Hathaway in 1582. She was 26 and expecting his baby. SCANDAL! The couple had a baby girl (Sussana), then had twins, a boy (Hamnet – weird name, right?) and a girl (Judith), in 1584. • Between 1585 and 1592 Shakespeare seemed to disappear. Many believe he might have become a sailor due to the highly descriptive nautical scenes in his work…and he is often depicted with an earring. Sailors, as a rite of passage, often pierced their ears when they crossed the equator for the first time.
Education & Work Life • In 1592, Shakespeare was recognized as an up-and-coming playwright in the London theatrical scene. He went on to become one of the most prolific writings of his time, writing 38 plays, 154 sonnets (a 14 line poem that uses a very specific rhyme scheme…Shakespeare loved his rhyme schemes) • Shakespeare did not go to college…but was admired for his extensive vocabulary. Over 30,000 different words appear in his 38 plays. In contrast, the average teenager knows roughly 10,000 -15,000 words.
Influence & Impact • It is said that at any second of any day a Shakespeare play is being performed somewhere in the world. • Even Hollywood loves William! His plays have inspired many films such as 'Yellow Sky', 'Forbidden Planet’, 'Prospero's Books, Akira Kurosawa's 'Ran’ and 'Throne of Blood’, 'Kiss Me Kate’, '10 Things I Hate About You’, 'She's the Man', 'Carry on Cleo', 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead', 'A Double Life', 'West Side Story', ‘Gnome & Juliet’, 'My Own Private Idaho', 'The Lion King', 'O.’ Even the fan favorite ‘Twilight’ (read as sarcasm) is a rip off of Romeo and Juliet. • He is also credited with creating over 3,000 words and phrases that we still use today. For instance: • Eyeball, to elbow, to drug, buzzer, bedroom, coldhearted, gloomy, howl, “The world's my oyster”, “Naked truth”, “Love is blind”, and “In a pickle” to name a few.
Thou Momma is so fat! • Shakespeare was praised for his biting insults such as: • "You should be women and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so." • "Methinks thou art a general offence, and every man should beat thee.” • "Thou art a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver'd, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super serviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way" • "Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood."