Never being a big fan of Shakespeare, this brief biography made me appreciate his work a bit more
Learned:
-hundreds of words and phrases were coined by Shakespeare (e.g. cold-blooded, love letter, puppy dog, zany, knock knock knock! Who’s there?, too much of a good thing, wild goose chase, etc.)
-he was born in Stratford, England in 1564
-his dad was a glove maker (and belts, purses, aprons)
-he married Anne Hathaway when he was 18 and she was 26
-he fathered Susanna then twins — Hamnet and Judith
-soon after the twins were born, he left Stratford and the family for England (famine was severe and they needed money)
-he became a playwright and wrote in the new poetic style called blank verse which doesn’t rhyme but has rhythm; Shakespeare specifically mastered iambic pentameter (if clapping, every other beat would be loud and this pattern repeats five times in each line)
-his plays were bold because they spoke of what happened in his country and time rather somewhere distant like most plays
-his characters make his plays interesting, making them as complicated as real people
-tragedy, comedy, history — he could write anything, and the audiences loved it
-the Black Death (bubonic plague) swept London 1592-1594 claiming 200,000+ lives (and almost a third of Europe in 3 years) and shut down theaters; people fled the city for the countryside
-not being able to conduct plays, he then became taken seriously as a poet, writing 154 sonnets over the years (14 line poems with complicated rhyme patterns)
-theaters re-opened, and he joined an acting group called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, with whom he’d remain for the rest of his career
-he helped his father John get a coat of arms (to move up in social class and be thought of as gentlemen, based on family background and noble deeds, sometimes very expensive)
-he continued writing great plays, constantly showing that nothing in life is clear and simple
-his greatest comic role he created was John Falstaff, a lying, cheating, drunken old knight
-the theater him and the LCM owned was on land they didn’t own, so they carried all the parts of the theater and rebuilt it and called it The Globe
-on play days they would raise flags: black for tragedy, white for comedy, and red for history plays
-when Queen Elizabeth died, she chose King James of Scotland to succeed her; he changed the LCM name to the King’s Men
-in 1610 after more than 20 years in London (and sending money to the family), Shakespeare returned home to Stratford; he died in 1616 at the age of 52