SHAKESPEARE, YAY!

Here's a snapshot of what we talked about in class today..........

Did you know the word 'housekeeping' was a Shakespeare invention?
Believe it or not, Shakespeare literally invented 1,700 words in the English language. He was the first person to use words like - aerial, critic, submerge, majestic, hurry, lonely, road, assassination, laughable, reliance, exposure...... 'Break the ice', 'All that glitters is not gold', 'Hot-blooded', 'In the mind’s eye', 'Housekeeping', 'It’s all Greek to me', 'The naked truth', 'One fell swoop', 'Method in his madness'..... There you go. Shakespeare is probably in all our lives in some way every day. Even those of us who’ve never seen one of his plays or read one of his sonnets.

Box Office!
Ever hear of a box office? Of course you have! Know where the name comes from? Well...... In Elizabethan times many of Shakespeare’s plays were performed at The Globe Theatre in London. To get in, you put one penny in a box by the door. Then you could stand on the ground in front of the stage. To sit on the first balcony, you put another penny in the box held by a man in front of the stairs. To sit on the second balcony, you put another penny in the box held by the man by the second flight of stairs. Then when the show started, the men went and put the boxes in a room backstage - the box office.

'The Globe' The Globe Theatre didn’t just show plays. It ‘acted’ as a bear pit, brothel, and a gambling house.

No Copyright In Shakespeare’s time copyright didn’t exist, so the actors only got their lines as the play was in progress. They only got to know who else was playing what the day of the performance. Many times they didn't even get their own lines. They did "cue acting", which meant that there was a person backstage that whispered the lines to the person right before he was going to say them. Actors were not considered trustworthy people, and the market for good plays was large.

No women allowed, ewwww girls have cooties! The actors were all men in Shakespeare's day. The parts of women were played by boys who still had light voices.


Birthday Nobody knows Shakespeare’s true birthday. By tradition and guesswork, William is assumed to have been born on April the 23rd, a date now commonly used to celebrate the famous Bard's birthday. He also died on 23 April

Images of him There are only two authentic portraits of William Shakespeare. An engraving of him by Martin Droeshout first published on the title page of the 1623 First Folio, yes you're looking at it right there!And the monument of the great playwright in Stratford's Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. I've seen the engraving.....it's at the National Portrait Gallery in London. However, it is often traveling and can be found in places like Connecticut!

An older woman! William married a much older woman. Anne Hathaway was 26 years old when William married her at age 18. They married at Temple Grafton, a village approximately five miles (8 km) from Stratford. Anne Hathaway was said to be from Shottery.

No BA Shakespeare, one of literature’s greatest figures, never went to university. This doesn't mean you shouldn't go to college though!

His first play? Most academics agree that William wrote his first play, Henry VI, Part One around 1589 to 1590 when he would have been roughly 25 years old. I'm almost 25 and i can't begin to imagine ever writing a play......ever.

Survivor William lived through the Black Death. This epidemic killed over 33,000 in London alone in 1603 when Will was 39.

Shakespeare lost a play The play Cardenio that has been credited to him and which was performed in his life, has been completely lost to time. Today we have no written record of its story whatsoever.

Death
Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of 52. He wrote on average 1.5 plays a year since he first started in 1589. His last play The Two Noble Kinsmen is thought to have been written in 1613 when he was 49 years old.

Nearly missed out William never published any of his plays. We read his plays today only because his fellow actors, posthumously recorded his work as a dedication to their fellow actor in 1623, publishing 36 of William’s plays.
This collection known as The First Folio is the source from which all published Shakespeare books are derived and is an important proof that he authored his plays.

His Booty Shakespeare left most of his property to Susannah, his first child and not to his wife Anne Hathaway. Instead his loyal wife infamously received his "second-best bed". The Bard's second best bed wasn’t so bad, it was his marriage bed; his best bed was for guests.

Doom and gloom
Suicide occurs an unlucky thirteen times in Shakespeare’s plays.

It occurs in Romeo and Juliet where both Romeo and Juliet commit suicide.In Julius Caesar where both Cassius and Brutus die by consensual stabbing, as well as Brutus’ wife Portia.

In Othello, where Othello stabs himself, in Hamlet where Ophelia is said to have "drowned" in suspicious circumstances, in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth dies, and finally in Antony and Cleopatra where suicide occurs an astounding five times (Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras and Eros.