William Shakespeare


Drama had become very popular in England during the later Middle Ages, beginning with morality plays and evolving into a more secular-based entertainment as the power of the Church weakened. In 1534, "...King Henry VIII...renounced the sovereignty of the Pope and declared himself the head of the English Church....Between 1536 and 1542 all the religious institutions were seized and their possessions confiscated by the Crown. By degrees the English language, instead of Church Latin, became the language for religious offices" (Bell and Grebanier, English Literature: The Beginnings to 1800, 62).  By the time of the High Renaissance, acting companies had been formed, many theatres had been built, and universities were offering studies in classic Roman drama.

The typical Elizabethan theatre was a round or octagonal wood-and-thatch construction with a semi-roofed stage area and a roofed three-story gallery. The stage itself was a raised platform backed by a tiring-house which served as an actors' dressing room as well as providing background scenery space, complete with balcony if necessary. Actors entered and exited the stage via the tiring-house, or in special circumstances from trap doors in the stage floor, or from the ceiling, also called the shadow or heavens. The stage was open on three sides, and a penny admission would garner standing room (for the "groundlings") in the open yard area, with gallery seating available at double that price. Topping the tiring-house was a turret or small hut from which a flag flew or a trumpeter blew to announce the day's performance, always performed between the hours of two and four or five in the afternoon. The Globe Theatre, built at Bankside, south of the Thames, in 1598-99, is most often associated with Shakespeare, as he was both a shareholder and an actor there. The Globe was destroyed when it caught fire during a performance of Henry VIII in 1613; it was rebuilt the following year, then closed by the Puritans in 1642, and demolished in 1644. A faithful reconstruction of the Globe Theatre was opened on the South Bank in London in June 1997.

An adaptation of Johannes de Witt's sketch of the Swan Theatre, c. 1596




William Shakespeare is universally recognized as the world's greatest playwright/poet, producing perhaps the most famous sonnets in the world and, with his 36 plays, proving equally adept at comic, tragic, and historic drama.

The First Folio of 1623 provides the only text for 18 of Shakespeare's plays. Approximately 125 copies of the Folio are still existence worldwide, and about 75 of the copies are in the Folger Library in Washington. No authorial handwritten (signature) versions of any of the plays exist. Dating the composition of Shakespeare's plays with any pretense to accuracy is difficult at best and impossible at worst. To approximate a date, we must rely on a number of possibilities:
  1. terminus a quo — the point from which it could be written (1589-1593)
  2. terminus a quin — the limit to which it could be written
  3. Revel's account — Master of the Revels was the sole issuer of theatrical licenses from the reign of Henry VII until 1737.
  4. reference to contemporary events
  5. indebtedness to earlier plays
  6. author's style and progress as a writer
  7. Stationer's Register
  8. scattered reference to plays in publications of the time


Shakespeare's importance: Neither before nor since has a writer demonstrated such universal appeal as William Shakespeare. His vocabulary is drawn from every walk of life, as are his characters. His comedies almost always contain tragic elements, just as his tragedies almost always contain comic elements. He plumbs the depths of the human heart and soars the heights of the human spirit.
 


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