William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was a very well known playwright. He was also a poet and businessman. He wrote roughly 37 plays and he also wrote 154 sonnets. He was known as the greatest playwright of all time because he had a wide variety of works. His works are usually categorized under one of three types which are histories, tragedies and comedy. One of Shakespeare’s plays was Hamlet. The famous saying “to be or not to be” came from this play. This play is considered one of his many tragedies. Hamlet is also one of his longest plays with 4,042 lines and is almost 5 hours long. During Williams’ time Hamlet was his most popular play. “Shakespeare may have been inspired to write Hamlet after the death of his only son in 1596. His
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It was written between 1591 and 1595. Romeo and Juliet is also another one of his tragic plays. Most everyone has either read, seen the play or have heard the famous line “O Romeo, Romeo wherefore art thou Romeo?”which comes from Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare's 10th play.
The last play I wanted to share about is All's Well That Ends Well and it is one of the many comedies he wrote. “It is believed that the drama was first performed between 1602 and 1603. In the Elizabethan era there was a huge demand for new entertainment and All's Well That Ends Well would have been produced immediately following the completion of the play.” (All’s Well That Ends Well play by William Shakespeare) A famous quote from the play All's Well That Ends Well is “Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie”. The main characters of this play are Bertram and an orphaned commoner called Helena.
In conclusion, William Shakespeare wrote many works. If you haven’t had the chance to read or see any of his works you should. He is famous because of his wide array/types of writing and because he has had the most works performed. His plays were sorted out into three different categories so there is something for everyone to enjoy. He was also a poet and a businessman. Find one of his works you think you would like and read/watch a work from the greatest playwright of all
created the play as a comedy, showing how the world might be in the times of the
Clark, W.G., and W. Aldis Wirhgt, eds. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Vol 2. USA: Nd. 2 vols.
William Shakespeare wrote the play that may have also influenced and inspired him to write. At
Clark, W. G. and Wright, W. Aldis , ed. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Vol. 1. New York: Nelson-Doubleday
Limited, Henneford Publications, Inc. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
The difference between comedy and tragedy, success and failure, good fortune and catastrophe often seems to turn on a seemingly chance event. In All's Well that Ends Well, Helene's pilgrimage to win back Bertram succeeds on the basis of her chance meeting with the mother of a virgin whom Bertram is courting. Time is another crucial determinant. Often a split second or brief interval is the difference between life and death. In this small but all important gap of time, the character of life is revealed most clearly. In As You Like It, Orlando came in time to save Oliver from the serpent that was winding around his neck. Out of context, these events would appear as a very thin and frail fabric upon which to build great comedy and tragedy were it not for the fact that they are true to a deeper level of causality in life. Suzanne Langer has called comedy 'an image of life triumphing over chance.' It may be otherwise stated that in comedy the seemingly chance events of life move in favor of a positive resolution, whereas in tragedy they seem to conspire toward disaster. Helene Gardner observes that 'comedy is full of purposes mistook, not "falling on the inventor's head" but luckily misfiring altogether. In comedy, as often happens in life, people are mercifully saved from being as wicked as they meant to be.' 5
William Shakespeare is a famous English playwright. His play Hamlet centers around Hamlet's decision on how to seek revenge for his father’s death. However, Hamlet is unsure of what course of action he wants to take to exact his revenge. He discusses the idea of suicide as a possible option in his “To be or not to be” soliloquy. In this soliloquy, Shakespeare uses metaphors, rhetorical questions, and repetition to express Hamlet’s indecision regarding what he should do.
Frank, Mike. “Shakespeare’s Existential Comedy.” Essays—Shakespeare: Late Plays. Tobias, Richard eds. Ohio University Press, 1974.
Shakespeare, William. "Hamlet." The Norton Shakespeare. Stephen Greenblatt, Ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. 1668-1756
“To be, or not to be? That is the question,” William Shakespeare authors this famous and widely used quote in his tragic play, Hamlet. In Hamlet, the main character is Hamlet, the prince of Denmark. Hamlet's father was murdered by his uncle, who then married Hamlet's mother as to become king. Hamlet is about Prince Hamlet's determination to follow through with avenging the death of his father.
The name most associated with excellence in theatre is William Shakespeare. His plays, more than any other playwright, resonate through the ages. It may be safe to say that he has influenced more actors, directors, and playwrights than any thespian in the history of the stage. But what were his influences? During the Middle Ages theatre was dominated by morality, miracle, and mystery plays that were often staged by the church as a means to teach the illiterate masses about Christianity. It wasn’t until the early sixteenth century that Greek tragedy experienced a revival, in turn, inspiring a generation of renaissance playwrights.
One of the themes that emerges from Shakespeare's comedy All's Well That Ends Well is the conflict between old and new, age and youth, wisdom and folly, reason and passion. As one critic points out, a simple glance at the characters of the play reveals an almost equally balanced cast of old and young. "In performance it is apparent that the youth of the leading characters, Helena, Bertram, Diana and Parolles, is in each case precisely balanced by the greater age of their counterparts, the Countess, the King of France, the Widow of Florence and the old counselor Lafeu."1 Indeed, the dialectic between youth and age is established in the first act as the Countess sees a mirror of her former self in Helena's love sick countenance in scene three when she exclaims "Even so it was with me when I was young," and Bertram's worthiness to the ailing King of France in the previous scene appears to hang upon his youthful resemblance to his deceased father. As the King explains, "Such a man might be a copy to these younger times,/Which followed well would demonstrate them now/But goers-backward" [I.2. 49-51].
William Shakespeare was a very talented man known for his various works of literature. His works include poems, plays, and sonnets. His works are then broken down into tragedies, comedies, and histories. Shakespeare left this world centuries ago, but his writings continue to live throughout the world today. He has greatly impacted the world of literature and his existence will forever be remembered.
William Shakespeare’s life has brought much curiosity to many. This is natural as he is considered to be the greatest figure of English Literature. William Shakespeare, in terms of his life and work, is the most written-about author in the history of Western civilization. His works include 38 plays, 154 sonnets, and 2 epic narrative poems, the First of which was published after his death in 1623 by two of Shakespeare's acting companions, John Heminges and Henry Condell. Since then, the works of Shakespeare have been studied, analyzed, and enjoyed as some of the finest work of art in the English language.
A significant influencing factor on drama of the eighteenth century was the changing nature of the audience. By the middle of the eighteenth century, a straitlaced middle class audience had imparted to drama its vision of morality and disapproval of anything immoral. Comedy had become watered down and sentimentalized. Furthermore, the audience’s rejection of unappealing facts following the ugly reality of the French Revolution and the American War of Independence, made emotionalism and tearfulness the order of the day. Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan were two playwrights who saw that if comedy were allowed free reign along this path of sentimentalism, it would signal the end of mirth. Both appreciated the power of pure comedy and the spirit of joyous laughter and wrote plays with situations that had no call for showing the redeeming features of vice and folly at the end, but just good healthy fun.