William Shakespeare Early Years

1
William Shakespeare Early Years

• Born unknown exactly, probably around April
  1564 in Stratford, England
• Parents John and Mary Shakespeare
• Fathers Occupation Glover
• Parents had 8 children, 5 reached adulthood
• Shakespeares education
• Went to Stratford Grammar School
• Taught primarily in Latin
• Left school at age 13

2

• Marriage
• Anne Hathaway
• Rumor has it she was pregnant
• She was 26, he 18
• Had 3 children, one died at age 11
• The Lost Years
• 1585-1592
• No one knows what he did for sure
• Some guesses are teacher, lawyer, soldier,
  sailor, preacher, and butcher

3
Literary Career

• 1592 until close to 1613
• Acted and wrote plays for the Lord Chamberlains
  Men and Kings Men in London
• Wrote around 38 plays
• Genres
• Comedy, history, tragedy
• Wrote Romeo and Juliet around 1595
• Used 17,677 words in all his plays and poems.
• of that number, 1,700 were first used by
  Shakespeare

4
Words Shakespeare Created

• accommodation
• aerial
• amazement
• apostrophe
• assassination
• baseless
• bloody
• bump
• changeful
• countless
• courtship
• critic
• critical
• dishearten
• dislocate
• dwindle
• eventful
• exposure
• fitful

• frugal
• generous
• gloomy
• hurry
• impartial
• indistinguishable
• lapse
• laughable
• lonely
• majestic
• misplaced
• obscene
• pious
• premeditated
• radiance
• reliance
• submerge
• suspicious

5
Phrases Shakespeare Created

• all that glitters isnt gold
• break the ice
• breathe ones last breath
• catch a cold
• disgraceful conduct
• eat out of house and home
• elbow room
• fair play
• green-eyed monster
• heart of gold
• heartsick
• hot-blooded
• housekeeping

• it smells like heaven
• its Greek to me
• leapfrog
• method in his madness
• minds eye
• naked truth
• one fell swoop
• pitched battle
• to thine self be true
• too much of a good thing
• wearing ones heart on ones sleeve

6
Later Years

• Performed his last play, Henry VIII in June
  1613
• Went back to Stratford
• 1616 died at the age of 52
• Left wife second-best bed
• Buried in Holy Trinity Church

7
Good friend for Jesus sake forbear, To dig the
dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man who
spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves
my bones.
8
Structure

• Octagonal
• Contained three main sections of the stage
• Heavens
• Above the stage
• Where special effects happened
• Earth
• Stage where most of the action happened
• Hell
• Under the stage
• Not a pleasant place to be!!!!

9
Heavens
Hut
Inner above
Inner below
Galleries
Trap door
Pit
Hell
Main Stage
Side balcony
10
Seating

• Three rows of tiered seating
• Cost between 3-5 pence including a cushion
• Only the wealthy could afford these
• The pits/penny seats
• Commoner (aka groundlings)
• People stood in the area around the stage

11
What was it like?

• Flags on the hut announcing type of play
• White comedy
• Black tragedy
• Red history
• At 2 oclock, the plays would start
• Audience
• Noisy
• Ate and drank then threw trash on ground or at
  the actors (if they were bad)
• Bathrooms (aka a bucket) were where the
  groundlings stood

12
Actors

• Considered thieves and liars
• because they pretended to be what they were not
• It was illegal to perform unless they were
  servants of a nobleman
• masterless actors were whipped and had their
  right ear burned
• Women were not allowed to act
• adolescent boys would play girl parts