1564:born in Stratford-upon-Avon. 1582:married th

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England's national poet and the
"Bard of Avon" William Shakespeare

• 1564 1616

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Early life

• 1564born in Stratford-upon-Avon
• 1582married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway

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Shakespeare's lost years

• 1585 -1592
• fled the town for London to escape prosecution
  for deer poaching
• started his theatrical career minding the horses
  of theatre patrons in London

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London and theatrical career

• 1592-1605
• 1592plays were on the London stage
• 1596only son, Hamnet died of unknown causes
• 1598a selling point

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Later years and death

• 1606-1616
• wrote fewer plays, and none
• are attributed to him after 1613
• buried in the chancel of the
• Holy Trinity Church

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Plays

• four periods
• Until the mid-1590scomedies and
  history plays
• 1595-1599greatest comedies and histories
• 1600-1608tragic period
• 1608-1613 tragicomedies called romances

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Famous comedies

• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• The Merchant of Venice
• Much Ado About Nothing
• The Tempest

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Famous tragedies

• Hamlet
• Othello
• King Lear
• Macbeth

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Poems

• Sonnets the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic
  works to be printed
• a profound meditation on the nature of love,
  sexual passion, procreation, death, and time

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art
more lovely and more temperate...
Sonnet 18
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Influence

• a lasting impression on later theatre and
  literature
• expanded the dramatic potential of
  characterisation, plot, language, and genre
• influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy,
  William Faulkner and Charles Dickens
• shape modern English

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• Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to showTo
  whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.He was not
  of an age, but for all time!
• Ben Jonson

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Thanks for your attention

• http//tw.youtube.com/watch?vvQGATTeg1Os
• http//tw.youtube.com/watch?vS8Osse7w9fsfeature
  related