Interesting facts about Shakespeare
William Shakespeare Profile
Full Name: William Shakespeare
Birth Date: Exact date Unknown ( April 26, 1564)
Date of Baptist: 26 April 1564
Birth Place: Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died Date: April 23, 1616
Death Place: Stratford-up-on-Avon, England
Buried Place: Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon
Death Age: 52 Years
Cause of Death: Unknown
Alma maters :
1. King Edward VI School
2. Stratford-upon-Avon
1. King Edward VI School
2. Stratford-upon-Avon
Parents: John Shakespeare, Mary Shakespeare
Number of Siblings: 6
Brothers :
1. Gilbert Shakespeare
2. Edmund Shakespeare
3. Richard Shakespeare
1. Gilbert Shakespeare
2. Edmund Shakespeare
3. Richard Shakespeare
Sisters :
1. Joan Shakespeare
2. Margaret Shakespeare
3. Anne Shakespeare
1. Joan Shakespeare
2. Margaret Shakespeare
3. Anne Shakespeare
Wife: Anne Hathaway (b.1582-1616)
Number of Children: Three
Daughter: 1. Susanna Hall
Son: 1. Hamnet Shakespeare
2. Judith Quinn
Occupation: Playwright, Poet, Actor
Literature Era: Elizabethan and Jacobean
Movement: English Renaissance
Years active: 1585-1613
Number of Writing: 37 plays, 154 Sonnets, 2 Narrative Poems.
Unknown facts about William Shakespeare
✓William Shakespeare (Baptism 23 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright.
✓His exact date of birth is unknown.
✓However, on 23 April, it is customary to celebrate his birthday on St. George's Day.
✓In the eighteenth century, a researcher incorrectly mentioned this date as Shakespeare's birthday.
✓The date then creates a special appeal to the biographers. Because, Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616.
✓He was the third child of eight children with his parents
✓He is considered one of the greatest literary writers of the English language and one of the leading dramatists on the planet.
✓He is otherwise called “National Poet” in England and also called “Bard of Avon,”.
✓William Shakespeare's father John Shakespeare was a successful glover and alderman.
✓His original home was in Snitterfilde. Shakespeare's mother Mary Arden was a wealthy landowner of the farming family
✓Shakespeare's birth and growing Stamford On-Avon.
✓He composed Thirty-eight plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poem and a few other verses.
✓William Shakespeare wrote some of the writings jointly with other writers.
✓His play has been translated into each major language and has been staged quite the other dramatist in the world.
✓At the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway.
✓On November 27, 1582, the Consistory Court of the Anglicans of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage license.
✓Two days later, Hathaway's neighbours posted a bond saying that there is no legal claim for marriage.
✓Their wedding ceremony was completed very fast.
✓Worcester Chancellor “Marriage Bans” allowed it to be read-only once in a conventional three-sentence study.
✓After six months of marriage, Anne gave birth to a girl named Suzanne.
✓Anne had three children in Shakespeare. They're Susanne and two twins named Hamnet and Judith.
✓Their baptism took place on February 2, 1585.
✓Hamnet died at the age of eleven.
✓The cause of his death is unknown.
✓He was buried on August 11, 1596.
✓Between 1585 and 1592, he accomplished massive achieved considerable popularity in London as an actor and playwright.
✓He turned into a co-owner of lord chamberlain's Men, a drama company.
✓This company was later known As ruler's men. in 1613, he ventured down from the show and returned To Stratford 3 years later, he died there.
✓Documented information about Shakespeare's personal life is not especially accessible.
✓His works, sexual introduction, ideology, even his play, his plays or others' writings have been studied and done.
✓Most of Shakespeare's familiar works were staged in between 1589 and 1613.
✓His early works were largely a melodramatic and historical drama.
✓In the latter part of the sixteenth century, these two streams were merged with artistry and nobility.
✓Then he wrote several tragedies, mainly from 1608.
✓Some of his greatest writings in this section include Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth.
✓In the last phase of his life, he devoted himself to the writing of tragicomedies.
✓These works are also known as romance.
✓During this time, he worked in several plays jointly with other playwrights.
✓The standard and authenticity of the plays published in his lifetime were not the same everywhere.
✓In 1623, two of his former comedies published the first folklore of Shakespeare's entire dramatic literature except for two plays.
✓In his time, Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright.
✓In his time, Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright.
✓But after his death, his popularity got diminished.
✓Finally, in the nineteenth-century his popularity back.
✓The romanticists were grateful for his writings. The Victorians worshipped him as usual; In the language of George Bernard Shaw which was “bardolatry” In the twentieth century, efforts were made to revive his writings from various perspectives of research and drama presentations.
✓Today his plays are very popular and multicultural. These plays are the stereotype and inferred in the various cultural and political context of various places around the world.
Shakespeare Famous Quotation
👉Fair is foul, and foul is fair._ Macbeth
👉Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player._ Macbeth
👉To be or not to be that is the question. _Hamlet
👉Frailty, thy name is women!_Hamlet
👉Brevity is the soul of wit._Hamlet
👉Though this be madness, yet there is method in it._Hamlet
👉There is divinity that shapes our ends._Hamlet
👉I will speak daggers to her, but use none._Hamlet
👉I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins and worse remains behind. _ Hamlet
👉There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so._ Hamlet
👉All the world's stage and all the men and women merely players. _As you like it
👉Sweet are the uses of adversity._ As You Like It.
👉There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. _ As You Like It.
👉True is that we have seen better days._ As You Like It.
👉When we are born, we cry, that we are come to this great stage of fools._King Lear
👉My love's more richer than my tongue._King Lear
👉My love's more richer than my tongue._King Lear
👉Nothing will come of nothing._King Lear
👉A young man married is a man that's marred._ All's Well that Ends Well
👉Cowards die many times before their deaths._ Julius Caesar
👉A dish fit for the gods._Julius Caesar
👉For Brutus is an honourable man; so are they all honourable._Julius Caesar
👉It is the east, and Juliet is the sun._Romeo and Juliet
👉Tempt not a desperate man._Romeo and Juliet
👉For you and I are past our dancing days._Romeo and Juliet
👉What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet._Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare Melodrama or comedy
2. As you like it
3. The Comedy of Errors
4. Love's Labor's Lost
5. Measure for Measure
6. The Merchant of Venice
7. The Mary Wives of Windsor
8. A Midsummer Night's Dream
9. Much Ado About Nothing
10. Pericles
11. Prince of Tire
12. The Taming of the Trouble
13. The Tempest
14. Twelfth Night
15. The Two Gentlemen of Verona
16. The Two Noble Kinsmen
17. The Winter's Tale
Shakespeare Historical drama
1. King John
2. Richard the Second
3. Henry the Fourth, the first part
4. Henry the Fourth, the second part
5. Henry the Fifth
6. Henry the Sixth, First Part
7. Henry the Sixth, the second part
8. Henry the Sixth, the third part
9. Richard the Third
10. Henry the Eight
Shakespeare tragedy
2. Coriolanus
3. Titus Andronicus
4. Timon Of Athens
5. Julius Caesar
6. Macbeth
7. Hamlet
8. Troilus and Cressida
9. King Lear
10. Othello
9. King Lear
10. Othello
11. Anthony and Cleopatra
12. Symbian line
1. Shakespeare Sonnet
2. Venus and Adonis
3. The Rape of Lucretia
4. The Passionate Pilgrim
5. The Phoenix and the Turtle
6. A Liver's Complaint
1. Love's Lever's Win
2. Cardenio
12. Symbian line
Shakespeare Poems
2. Venus and Adonis
3. The Rape of Lucretia
4. The Passionate Pilgrim
5. The Phoenix and the Turtle
6. A Liver's Complaint
Shakespeare Lost drama
2. Cardenio
Shakespeare Apocryphal composition
2. The Birth of Marlin
3. Leucine
4. The London Prodigal
5. The Puritan
6. The Second Maiden's Tragedy
7. Sir John Oldscall
8. Thomas Lord Cromwell
9. The Yorkshire Tragedy
10. Edward the Third
11. Sir Thomas More
10 Interesting facts about Shakespeare
Shakespeare was bisexual
Shakespeare’s sexuality has been the subject of much academic discussion. The Bard addressed 126 of his sonnets to a mysterious young man, often referred to as the ‘Fair Youth’, despite being married to Anne Hathaway, the mother of his 3 children.
Included in this selection was the iconic Sonnet 18 ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ Commentators have noted the romantic language used in the poems and suggested that there was a sexual relationship between Shakespeare and the boy. Others have argued them to be demonstrations of platonic love and admiration.
Shakespeare took drugs
Recently the scientific analysis of William Shakespeare’s possessions has discovered traces of cocaine and cannabis in his smoking pipes. At the time, the chemicals in question were commonly used in the production of rope, clothing, paper, and medicines. However, the emergence of pipes laced with the narcotics points to people using drugs for pleasure. Historians have speculated that Shakespeare may have used the substances to help him cope with the stress of being an in demand playwright, or possibly even as a hallucinogenic source of inspiration.
Shakespeare's cousin tried to kill the Queen
Edward Arden - cousin to Shakespeare through his mother Mary - was involved in a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth the first. Arden’s son-in-law John Somerville had a plan to kill the monarch but was arrested before he could attempt it. Under interrogation, Somerville confessed that he had been put up to the crime by Arden, who it also emerged as a secret Catholic, as some scholars suspect Shakespeare may have been. Arden was found guilty of treason and gruesomely hanged, drawn and quartered in December 1583. Shakespeare's head was placed on a spike on London Bridge.
Shakespeare's tomb is cursed
Engraved on Shakespeare’s tomb is a poem, stating ‘curst be he that moves my bones’. Although - at the time - it was standard practice to dig up bodies from old graves to make room for new ones, Bard’s final resting place remained undisturbed for hundreds of years. That was, however, until archaeologists in 2016 performed a non-invasive exploration and made a startling discovery… Shakespeare’s head appears to be missing. It is most probable that the playwright’s skull was stolen from his shallow grave by trophy hunters in the 18th century.
Shakespeare' may have had an illegitimate son
Many have speculated that playwright and Poet Laureate Sir William Davenant was - in actual fact - a secret love child of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a frequent customer of an Oxford tavern and contemporary accounts describe him as being close to the tavern owner’s wife, Jane Davenant. When Jane gave birth to a child in 1606, Shakespeare was named the boy’s Godfather. As William Davenant grew up showing literary talent comparable to the Bard himself, suspicions grew, which the young poet didn’t deny.
Shakespeare invented swag
Shakespeare has been credited with adding almost 3,000 words and phrases to the English language, including ‘what the dickens’, ‘wild-goose chase’, ‘puking’ and ‘swagger’. Whether Shakespeare actually invented the terms or his works were simply the first known record of them, is a mystery. Linguists have estimated that Shakespeare’s vocabulary consisted of between 17,000 and 9,000 words, which is comparable to the average English speaker today. Behind the collaborative authors of the Bible, Shakespeare is currently the most quoted writer in the English language.
Shakespeare's caused a plane crash
In 1890, literary enthusiast Eugene Schieffelin [Shee-fell-in] attempted to introduce to America all species of songbird mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays, including the starling. Thanks to Schieffelin, within just 50 years, there were a whopping 200 million starlings in America and they can now be found from Alaska to Florida. Unfortunately, Schieffelin’s project was to have tragic consequences. In October 1960, a plane taking off from Boston Airport startled a flock of 10,000 starlings, which choked the engines and caused the plane to crash. 62 people were killed in the disaster.
Shakespeare's globe also held bear-baiting shows
Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, built by his playing company in 1599, was not just used to stage his plays. It was also used for bear-baiting sessions, which saw vicious dogs being forced to attack captive bears for the delight of paying audiences. When he visited the iconic theatre, writer Thomas Platter was shocked to find 120 ferocious dogs and 12 large bears, one of which was blind, being kept backstage. Shakespeare even referenced the cruel spectator sport in his plays, for example in both Julius Caesar and Macbeth.
Shakespeare never spelt his name ‘William Shakespeare’
Shakespeare very rarely spelt his name the same way twice. Records show more than 80 different spellings, including ‘Willm Shaksp’, ‘Wm Shakspe’ and ‘Willm Shakspeare’ Oddly, there are no records of him ever actually spelling his name ‘William Shakespeare, as we know him today. That spelling came from the First Folio, which was published seven years after his death, in 1623. Despite the variety of spellings, an authentic Shakespeare signature is currently worth up to $5 million.
Shakespeare may have been a fraud
In 1785, Oxford scholar James Wilmot suggested that Shakespeare’s apparent knowledge of law and history was inconsistent with the upbringing of a glove-maker son from a small English town. Since then, around 5,000 books have discussed whether Shakespeare was actually a fraud. Numerous figures have been suggested as the true writer of the iconic works. For example Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who had experience in politics and law and had even lived in Italy - where many Shakespearean plays are set. However, there is no definitive evidence to support this theory, particularly as de Vere died in 1604, before plays such as King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest were supposedly written.
