Shakespeare

SHAKESPEARE. HIS LIFE AND PLAYS

Will Fowler

Summary

By Marco V. Manotoa Benavides

William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and died in 1616. He was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, the authorship of some of which is uncertain. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.

In 1623, Heminges and Condell published eighteen of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays. Then, Ben Jonson was a friend and rival of Shakespeare. He said, “Shakespeare was not of an age but all time”. He did not only belong to his own time. His work will live for ever. Actually, many modern directors change the meaning of his plays in performance to suit their own opinions. So Jonson was right that Shakespeare was not only a man of his own time. But he was also in the sense that Shakespeare’s plays give pleasure to people at all times and help them to understand better.

This is partly because the plays are full of exciting scenes and wonderful speeches, and the characters are still real for us because they have a special way of speaking that suits them personally. Shakespeare was never satisfied with one form of play, and so almost all of his plays contain something new and different. He studied the successes of other dramatics and improved on them. He read the Greek and Latin’s writers, especially Eurípides, Sófocles, Esquilo, Séneca, Plauto, Lucio Accion, and many more.

Finally, he was a great dramatist because he was an actor. In some of his sonnets, he seems ashamed of his profession. He wanted to be known as a gentleman. But his plays are great because he always imagined them on the stage while he was writing and he knew which actor was going to play each part.

Shakespeare understood the minds of men and women and can help us to understand them. Because he was an actor and spent his life studying people and listening to them, he could imagine the thoughts

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