Shakespeare

Shakespeare is the greatest English playwriter. We don't know many things about his life.

Born in Strattford Upon Avon in 1564, there went to local grammar school and learnt some Latin and Greek from priests.

He belonged to the middle class and so he couldn't be an university wit, but he was the some, very famous.

Marlowe ' s birth date is the same as Shakespeare's . M. dead in the year in which S. started to be known. Maybe S. was simply a pen-name to hide M. identity.

When S. Was 18 he was obliged to marry a woman 8 years older than him and they had a doughter called Susanna and two twins.

There are a lot of legends that hells he had gone away from Strattford because he had killed an animal of a lord and so the lord, in revenge, wanted to kill min.

He went to London where he started working as an actor outside teatre. In 1592 he probably has been in Italy. I knew Verona (that's the setting of Romeo and Juliet) and Venezia. When he went back London he becomes immediately so popular as to buy a theatre: The Globe.

On the top of the theatre there were a statue hanging a globe where it was written: totus mundi agit istrionem.

Then he becomes more famous and could buy the largest house in Strattford.

When he had money and he was very popular he retired with his wife in Strattford.

At his time there were non copyright on playwright, so, there were nothing written about his plays.

After his death, two famous actors wrote down his plays (36).

In this edition there are a lot of mistakes.

We don't know when this plays were played. We can understand it from internal or external evidences.

Internal evidence is when, in the play, the plot refers to some king, queen, event, that can help us in recognizing the historical period.

External when we find something like a diary or a critic about the play.

S. started writing using a lot of rhymes, but the last compositions don't rhymes at all because he wanted to use a language similar to the every day one. This is an other useful element that can help us in understanding when he wrote certain plays.

In S. works Characters were not tips, but real people capable of suffering and fell joys.

We can divide his works in:

Comedies written after his visit to Rome

Roman Plays about roman history

Tragedies written after a bad event happened in his life

Romances written when he reconciled with his life

Historical plays that tells about history of England: Plantagenets

kings and War of Roses.