Shakespeare

• Shakespeare remains one of the most influential playwrights in the history of English Literature.
• Shakespeare's work is renowned for both being indicative of a particular ‘Golden Age’ of England’s history, as well as ‘transcendental’ – appealing to many different people across time and place.
• William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.
• He married at eighteen to a woman called Anne Hathaway, who was several years older than him.
• It is unclear when Shakespeare began to write, or the exact date he wrote many of his plays.
• It is known that he became an important member of a theatre troupe called ‘The Lord Chamberlain’s Men’.
• This troupe later became popular with the King at the time (King James I) who granted them status of ‘The King’s Men’ as they performed in his court as the most important theatre company in the country.
• Shakespeare died in 1616 as a rich and successful businessman and writer.
• William Shakespeare remains one of the most influential playwrights in the history of English Literature. His work is both indicative of a ‘Golden Age’ of England’s history, as well as being ‘transcendental’.
• Shakespeare wrote three main types of play:

  • Comedies.
  • Tragedies.
  • Histories.
• The first group of plays he wrote were primarily comedies involving young, romantic love stories that often ended happily.
• Towards the end of the sixteenth century Shakespeare began writing tragedies, perhaps inspired by some personal sadness as one of his children died in 1596.
• James I became King in 1603, and he continued to write dramatic tragedies, many of which he is most famous for (such as Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Othello).
• Many of these were inspired by the strife and conflict of the Jacobean era.
• So few facts are known about Shakespeare’s life that it is more relevant to focus on how Shakespeare’s society and the beliefs of the time influenced his work.
• Much of Shakespeare’s continued popularity today is credited to his ability to write ‘transcendental’ literature – poetry and plays whose themes (including love, death, madness, family relationships, power, ambition, fate, and the supernatural) span across time and place to be relevant to all.
• Whilst Specification A and B require you to know something about the author of the play, it is not necessary to know the full details of his life.
• We always need to be careful about fully connecting the author’s life to the text of a play because this can be a dangerous thing to do.
• What the author has written may be ‘imagined construction’ only, and actually have very little to do with the author’s life.
• You should not, in either Specification, spend too long talking about the background to of the life of the author, as you will not gain many marks in this way.
• However, it is still important to note a few things about the author, so that you are more fully aware of the context of its construction.