10 things you should know about Shakespeare
I’m sure you’ve heard of William Shakespeare. If you haven’t, he’s only Britain’s most famous writer of all time, and a bit of a national hero. Every child in Britain reads at least one of his plays during their school years. You’ve probably heard of a few of them… Hamlet, MacBeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and many more.
Well, here are 10 things you may or may not know about the bard.
Shakespeare was born on 23rd April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. In the same year, plague was spreading through Stratford-upon-Avon and may have killed as many as 20% of the population. Shakespeare was lucky to survive past his first birthday.
Theatres didn’t exist when Shakespeare was born. The first one was built in 1576. You could say that Shakespeare was in the right place at the right time, just like many social media influencers today.
Shakespeare was from a middle class family. His father was a glover (a person who makes gloves) and later became the High Bailiff (equivalent to mayor) of Stratford upon Avon. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy farmer. As the child of middle-class parents he attended school.
For the first 39 years of Shakespeare’s life, the monarch was Queen Elizabeth I. Since she was unmarried and had no children, Shakespeare was worried what would happen if she died. His big fear was that there would be a civil war. For this reason, many of Shakespeare’s plays end with a new king taking the stage, so that the audience feel that order is restored.
Shakespeare believed in something called the great chain of being. This meant that every man, woman and animal had a place in the universe, and they should not try to climb to a higher position. This can be seen in plays like Macbeth, where the hero kills the king in order to become the new king. After he does this, chaos breaks out.
Few women were actors in Shakespeare’s time. This means that in most plays at the time, the female roles were played by boys who were learning to be actors.
Shakespeare added a lot to the English language - around 1700 words and many phrases that we use everyday.
Shakespeare created complicated characters. Before his time, heroes were normally perfect people, while the villains were usually pure evil. Shakespearean characters are not so easy to categorise. If we didn’t have these more complex characters, we might never have had anti-heroes like Deadpool and Wolverine in the Marvel universe.
Shakespeare made great use of the soliloquy. This is where one character remains on stage and talks about their thoughts and emotions. Since there are no other characters on stage, this is really for the audience. Nowadays, occasionally a character in a film or TV show might talk to the audience (such as Deadpool) and we call this breaking the fourth wall.
Shakespeare is often also called “the bard” and an “upstart crow”. A bard is simply a poet or storyteller. The phrase upstart crow was actually intended as an insult which accused Shakespeare of stealing ideas from writers who had gone to university.
Which of the facts about Shakespeare did you find most interesting?
Our Academic Manager, Alex, teaching a lesson about Shakespeare.
