14. William Shakespeare

14. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

• was a famous playwright, poet and actor

• his plays and sonets have been translated and read all over the world

• he wrote about 40 plays and over 150 sonnets

• LIFE:

  • he was born in Stratford upon Avon in 1564

  • he was only 18 when he married Anne Hathaway who was 8 years older

  • they had 3 children together: Susanna and twins – Hamnet and Judith

    • Hamnet died ath the age of 11 and his death made William write the play Hamlet

  • later he moved to a London

  • he was also part owner of a company called the Lord Chamberlain’s men

    • the company built their own theatre called the Globe

  • in the end of his life he moved back to Stratford and he died in 1616

  • after his death many people began to say the work by Shakespeare was not written by him and even now we can’t be 100% sure that he really wrote all of his plays

• HIS WORK:

  • is divided into 3 parts

  • the first part includes comedies and historical plays

    • A Midsummer-Night’s Dream

    • The Taming of the Shrew

    • Henry IV.

    • Julius Caesar

  • the second part includes sonnets (which are 14 lines poems about love) and tragedies

    • Romeo and Juliet

    • Macbeth – is about the path to power through a crime

    • Hamlet – is about a prince who takes revenge for murdering his father

    • Othello – shows us human betrayal and manipulability

    • King Lear

  • and in the third part there are mostly fairly tales

    • The Tempest

    • The Winter’s Tale

ROMEO AND JULIET

• the tragedy Romeo and Juliet is about unhappy love and hatred between 2 houses in Verona

• Romeo is from the house of Montague and Juliet is from the house of Capulates

• one day Romeo meets Juliet at the ball and they immediately fall in love with each other

• and later they get secretly married

• Romeo unfortunatelly kills Juliet’s cousin Tybalt and he is sent to the exile

• Juliet’s parents want her to marry a rich man Paris but she doesn’t want to because she loves Romeo

• she asks Friar for help and he gives her a potion that will make her look dead

• Romeo finds about about Juliet’s death, buys a poison and goes to say the last goodbye to her

• he kills himself and when Juliet wakes up and sees Romeo dead she takes his knife and kills herself too

• Montague and Capulet Houses finally reconcile in the end