Transcript William Shakespeare

England's national poet
and the "Bard of Avon"
William Shakespeare
1564 – 1616
Early life
1564：born in Stratford-upon-Avon
 1582：married the 26-year-old Anne
Hathaway

Shakespeare's lost years
1585 -1592
 fled the town for London to escape
prosecution for deer poaching
 started his theatrical career minding the
horses of theatre patrons in London

London and theatrical career
1592-1605
 1592：plays were on the London
stage
 1596：only son, Hamnet died of
unknown causes
 1598：a selling point

Later years and death
1606-1616
 wrote fewer plays, and none
are attributed to him after 1613
 buried in the chancel of the
Holy Trinity Church

Plays
four periods
 Until the mid-1590s：comedies
and history plays
 1595-1599：greatest comedies and
histories
 1600-1608：tragic period
 1608-1613： tragicomedies called
romances

Famous comedies
A Midsummer Night's Dream
 The Merchant of Venice
 Much Ado About Nothing
 The Tempest

Famous tragedies
Hamlet
 Othello
 King Lear
 Macbeth

Poems
Sonnets ：the last of Shakespeare's nondramatic works to be printed
 a profound meditation on the nature of
love, sexual passion, procreation, death,
and time

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate...“
Sonnet 18
Influence
a lasting impression on later theatre and
literature
 expanded the dramatic potential of
characterisation, plot, language, and
genre
 influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy,
William Faulkner and Charles Dickens
 shape modern English


Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to
show
To whom all scenes of Europe homage
owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
~Ben Jonson
~Thanks for your attention~
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