TOPIC 44 SHAKESPEARE’S LIFE & WORLD. MOST REPRESENTATIVE WORKS.

I will start telling you about the justification of this topic. According to our current legislation POETRY
based on LOMLOE from 2020, the teaching of a foreign language must be based on the Based on romantic ideas & melodramas, expression of poet’s own thoughts & feelings.
teaching through plurilingualism, interculturality and communication, for that reason it is Imagination & intense emotion.
not only important to teach grammar but to make students understand why is the language - Thomas Wyatt, responsible for many innovations in English poetry. He experimented with
spoken in the way it is and showing them the historical aspect of the learned language they
the English language. Alongside, Earl of Surrey introduced the sonnet from Italy into England
can acquire the language easily. So, the historical, literature and cultural aspects of the
learned language is essential for our students. Once the justification is done, we are ready in the early 16th century. Wyatt took subject matter from Petrarch's sonnets but not from his
to start… rhyme and this was the beginning of English sonnet.
1. SHAKESPEARE’S WORLD: ELISABETHAN PERIOD (1558-1603) - Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the
Elizabeth was Henry VIII & Anne Boleyn’s daughter. She became queen at 25 Tudor dynasty. The Shepheardes Calender, each for each month with represents the turning
after her sister Mary died (Catholic). She was protestant & tried no to oblige people of seasons.
to convert. She had to face problems: her cousin Mary of scots (beheaded). Her - Sir Philip Sidney, an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the
reign was characterised by the claiming about the importance of having an heir, most prominent of the Elizabethan Age. His works include Astrophel and Stella, The Defence of
but she declined marriage. She married only to her people. The Tudor dynasty Poetry, and The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. Poems intended to be set to music as songs.
ended with her. During her reign the Spanish Armada attacked England: Phillip - Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson & Shakespeare also wrote poetry, but they were brilliant in drama.
II (her uncle & catholic) and that brought religious changes on her country. This DRAMA:
period is known as the Golden Age: economically healthy, flowering of music & During Elisabeth reign, some playwrights were able to make a comfortable living by receiving royal
patronage. There was a great deal of theatrical activity at Court, and many public theatres were also built
literature, age of exploration & expansion: The English Renaissance. England on the outskirts of London. Theatre was a popular pastime, and people of all walks of life attended.
was an imperial powerful country. Its national identity influenced Shakespeare Although women were not allowed onstage, they did attend performances and often made up a substantial
and other important authors. Elizabeth died & was succeeded by James I Stuart: part of the audience. The theatre also drew many unsavoury characters, including pickpockets, cutpurses,
Mary’s son. and prostitutes. Because of the perceived bad influence of the theatres, the Puritans were vocally opposed
JACOBEAN PERIOD to them and succeeded in shutting them down in 1642.
James I of England & VI of Scotland made possible the union of Scotland and The earliest Elizabethan plays include: Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. Highly popular and
England & Ireland. King of Great Britain & Ireland. During this period it appeared influential in its time, established a new genre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. Its plot contains several
violent murders and includes as one of its characters a personification of Revenge.
the translation of the Bible: The Authorised Version of the Bible (1611) It
Elizabethan period plays were Miracle Plays presenting stories form the Bible & lives of saints & Morality
influenced the religious & political issues of that time & specially Shakespeare. In plays which taught lessons. By the time Elizabeth died there were more than 20 theatres in London. New
his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and English colonisation of the Americas topics started to appear. The plays were about human beings doing good & bad things, loving, murdering,
began. The Golden Age of the Elizabethan period continued. stealing, cheating, like the audience itself. W Shakespeare stands out in this period both by poet &
THE GOLDEN AGE OF LITERAURE playwright. Shakespeare wrote plays in a variety of genres, including histories, tragedies, comedies and
One of the most splendid periods of English literature. The Elizabethan age saw the late romances, or tragicomedies. Christopher Marlowe's subject matter is different from Shakespeare's
the flowering of poetry (the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, dramatic blank verse), as it focuses more on the moral drama of the Renaissance man. Tamburlaine the Great, The Jew of
was a golden age of drama (especially for the plays of Shakespeare), and inspired Malta, Edward II, Doctor Faustus (about a scientist and magician who, obsessed by the thirst of
a wide variety of splendid prose (from historical chronicles, versions of the Holy knowledge and the desire to push man's technological power to its limits, sells his soul to the Devil.) Ben
Johnson, He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in
Scriptures, pamphlets, and literary criticism to the first English novels). From
His Humour, Volpone, or The Fox.
about the beginning of the 17th century a sudden darkening of tone became THE FIRST THEATRES
noticeable in most forms of literary expression, especially in drama, and the As the Renaissance gathered force, Roman Drama began to be revived in the schools, comedies, and the
change more or less coincided with the death of Elizabeth. English literature from Inns of Court, tragedies. The noblemen of the time were beginning to attend the public theatres, and their
1603 to 1625 is properly called Jacobean, after the new monarch, James I. tastes demanded a better class of play. Plots and conventions were borrowed from classical drama. The
PROSE theatre might be a schoolroom, a college hall, the social hall of one of the London legal societies, or of some
Was the principal medium of writing. Influenced by those expeditions & great house or palacea galleried yard, an inn or the choirboys’ concert chamber. The stage and auditorium
discoveries of the English nation. of the Elizabethan theatre were based on combined features of both the hall and the inn-yard. The first
public theatre in London was The Theatre, built in 1576. By 1594, there were two more theatres: The
- John Lyly, The Anatomy of Wit & Euphues and His England. Lyly's Curtain and The Rose; by the end of the century there were some eight playhouses, on both banks of the
mannered literary style is known as euphuism. Lyly must also be considered Thames.
influence on the plays of Shakespeare, particularly, the romantic comedies. In addition to the public playhouses, there were others within the City, which were called private
- Thomas Nashe, considered the greatest of the English Elizabethan playhouses, which were destined for wealthier and smaller audiences, offering seats and roofing for all,
pamphleteers. elaborate music and stage lighting. Examples of these are the ones used by the Children of Paul’s, dramatic
He was a playwright, poet, & satirist, who is best known for his novel The entertainments, and the two Blackfriars enterprises. Almost every playwright of importance had his work
Unfortunate Traveller. played by the children.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE PLAYS
We know little enough about Shakespeare’s biography, since it has many blank passages. The eldest Shakespeare's plays portray recognisable people in situations that we can all relate to - including
son and third child of John Shakespeare and Mary, daughter of a well-to-do farmer, William love, marriage, death, mourning, guilt, the need to make difficult choices, separation, reunion and
Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, and baptised on 26 April, 1564. His father was a reconciliation. They do so with great humanity, tolerance, and wisdom. They help us to understand
yeoman, glover, butcher and a wool dealer in Stratford and he held various municipal offices. what it is to be human, and to cope with the problems of being so.
Shakespeare was educated at the free Grammar School of Stratford. He married Anne Hathaway in - History plays: King John, Richard III, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Richard III, Henry VIII.
1582, and their first child, Susannah, was baptised the next year. He left Stratford about 1585 He outlined the Tudor dynasty.
having spent, it has been suggested, some time as a school master, and is next heard of in London - Works influenced by other Elizabethan dramatists: A Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the
where he became acquainted with Lord Southampton, his principal patron. He was probably Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
engaged in some subordinate capacity at one of the two theatres, The Theatre and The Curtain, - Tragedies: MacBeth, or also called The Scottish Play (superstition cursed); Romeo and Juliet,
then existing in London, and afterwards became a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company of Hamlet, King Lear, Othello.
Players, which acted at The Theatre, The Curtain, The Globe, which will be the main setting of the - Comedies: The Taming of Shrew. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Much Ado About Nothing,
company, and from 1609 The Blackfriars Theatre. This company would change its name to that The Merry Wives of Windsor and As You Like It. The Tempest.
of The King’s Men about 1603. It is established that by 1592 he was both an actor and a playwright.
By 1598 he was prominent enough in the company to share the establishment of the new Globe SONNETS
Theatre on the river south bank-side. His earliest work as a dramatist, the three parts of Henry VI, Shakespeare’s Sonnets are often breath-taking, sometimes disturbing and sometimes puzzling and
dates from 1590-91. In 1596 he applied for a grant of arms in his father’s name, and in 1599 the elusive in their meanings. As sonnets, their main concern is ‘love’, but they also reflect upon time,
Shakespeare family were given the right to impale the arms of Arden, his mother’s family. He change, aging, lust, absence, infidelity and the problematic gap between ideal and reality when it
purchased New Place, the second largest house in Stratford, in 1597. comes to the person you love.
In London he had a good reputation as a playwright, even at the court. There, he performed some Shakespeare was in London when his son died. He went back home & he was already buried. I like
plays and it is said that the Queen was so enchanted by one of his characters, Falstaff, that she to imagine Shakespeare in his room when everybody is in bed and he stays with a candle and a
asked to write a play where Falstaff was the main character, The Merry Wives of Windsor. Around quill pen thinking about his son writing about eternity as in his sonnet: “Shall I compare thee to
1610 he abandoned dramatic composition. He spent the concluding years of his life (1611 -1616) a Summer’s Day”
mainly in Stratford, but paid frequent visits to London until 1614. He continued his relations with Thomas Thorpe published the Shakespeare’s sonnets. A collection of 154 sonnets with covered
themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. The structure he used: 3 quatrains
actors and poets until the end. He purchased a house in Blackfriars in 1613, which was later
+ 1 couplets. With rhyme ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG. His sonnets are considered a continuation of
changed into another theatre for his company. He died on 23 April 1616 and was buried at
the sonnet’s tradition through the Renaissance from Petrarch.
Stratford’s church, where before 1623 a bust to his memory was erected.
SHAKESPEARE CONTRIBUTION ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
THE GLOBE THEATRE
Shakespeare’s works contributed to standardize English language rules & grammar in the 17th &
The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with W illiam Shakespeare. It was built in
1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men. 18th C.
The words & phrases that he wrote embedded in the language especially in A Dictionary of the
Usually polygonal in plan to give an overall rounded effect, three levels of inward-facing galleries
English Language by S Johnson.
overlooked the open centre into which jutted the stage—essentially a platform surrounded on three The introduction of the new words as well as phrases had greatly enriched the English language
sides by the audience, only the rear being restricted for the entrances and exits of the actors and which made it more expressive & colourful.
seating for the musicians. The upper level behind the stage could be used as a balcony, as in Romeo About 1700 words were created by borrowing from other languages, changing verbs into adjectives
and Juliet, or as a position for a character to harangue a crowd, as in Julius Caesar. or nouns, adding prefixes & suffixes.

CONCLUSION: The English spoken today is a reflection of a historical moment of the country.
Through language we can not only know where people come from but we can also know the history
of their countries, the influence of other cultures, through a language we can see the past. As we
have seen in this topic, Shakespeare contribution to the English language is immense.

Alexander, M. A History of English Literature. Macmillan Press. London, 2000.

Sanders, A. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. Oxford University
Press, 1996.
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