Skaespeare
Uploaded by N_th_n on Feb 08, 2016
Life
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden and was baptised on 26 April, 1564. He was the third of eight children but went on to become the oldest as his two older siblings didn’t survive childhood. He was believed to have lived in a small house on Henley Street and it was believed that he went to King’s New School, although all attendance records have been lost.
Shakespeare was married to 26 year old Anne Hathaway, aged 18 on 15 November, 1582. She was already three months pregnant with their first child, Susanna. They went on to have two more children, Hamnet and Judith. Although Hamnet died at 11, the two girls lived past 65.
Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 aged 52, in Stratford-upon-Avon. His wife, Anne, also died in 1616, aged 60.
The Theatre -
In Elizabethan England
In Elizabethan England theatres were a lot different. For starters there were no female actors as it wasn’t seen as an honourable job. The roles of women were played by young males/ boys who hadn’t gone through puberty because they had high voices.
Another difference is that actors back then didn’t have time to learn their lines. They were usually given to them just before the performance or even during it. Someone sat behind the curtains whispering the actor’s lines; this was called ‘cue acting’.
There were three different seating options back then. The cheapest was to stand around the stage. People who stood to watch the play were called ‘Groundlings’. The next seating option was seats in the gallery. People in the gallery could pay one penny extra for a cushion. The most expensive option was to sit on a chair on the stage, right up close with the action.
Plays were done during the evening. This was because it was too bright to perform during the day as the sun was out fully and it was too dark to perform during the night as they didn’t have light-bulbs back then.
Plays
Shakespeare wrote three different types of plays: Comedy, Tragedy and History. His history plays were about famous kings including Henry V, Henry VIII, Richard II and King John. His comedies included: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest and Twelfth Night and usually they end in something happy like a marriage. His tragedies included: Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and...