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Is Shakespeare relevant today
Life & times of william shakespeare
Life & times of william shakespeare
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Recommended: Is Shakespeare relevant today
William Shakespeare lived a fascinating life during which he built up a good influential reputation. Most of his life was focused on his playwriting and acting career and his writings continue to be prominent even in today's culture. People wonder about his journey to becoming a playwright and what inspired him. It intrigues people how a man with only a simple grammar school education was able to write beautiful pieces. He wrote various plays and poems and is considered to be one of the most renowned writers of all time. Shakespeare’s influence has spread throughout generations and his works have been some of the most well known and well loved. Whether we have read his plays or not, his works are so prevalent that we are familiar with them.
A Brief Look at the Life and Times of William Shakespeare
“To be or not to be?, that is the question.” Many people may be familiar with this particular line because it’s something commonly heard within our lives. Whether it was covered in one’s high school English class or not, it is still well-known to people even if they have never read Hamlet. “His influence goes well beyond literature: he permeates our culture” (Hacht, 2006). William Shakespeare, perhaps one of the greatest playwrights in history, is a man who is known for his unique and powerful writing. The English playwright, poet, and actor is generally acknowledged to be the greatest of English writers and one of the most extraordinary creators in human history. His entire life was committed to the public theater. Nowadays, it seems as if people have really forgotten about the “original art form” of using beautiful words and poetic devices. When I was still in high school, I took a Shakespeare class and I ...
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It is harder to imagine a more universal writer than William Shakespeare. Rarely if ever is one of his many plays not being performed somewhere in the world and similarly rare is the tertiary English student who has not examined his work at length. His plays, sonnets and poems are common fodder for high school English departments across the globe.
Shakespeare has created stories that are so powerful, emotional, comedic, tragic and romantic that they are still continuously remembered and studied in the modern era. Though the essence of his talents does not lie in the simple themes behind his plays, but more so in
Arguably the greatest playwright of his time, perhaps in all of history, William Shakespeare's literary works have had a tremendous impact (see Appendix 2). Reaching into the pop culture of the modern world through movies and quotes used in everyday conversation, Shakespeare's influence is astounding (see Appendix 1). One rarely stops to think, however, about events that had an impact on Shakespeare's life, particularly his writing. The outbreak of the plague, social disparity, political unrest, just a few of the historical happenings that impacted Shakespeare's plays, including Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and Henry IV
Ed. Cambridge, GB: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 56-74 The Works of William Shakespeare, ed. Samuel Johnson, 8 vols. (London, 1765).
Wadsworth, Frank W. "Shakespeare, William." World Book Online American Edition. Online Edition. Online. Netzero. 26 Mar 2002.
The impeccable style and craft of Shakespeare’s writing has always been looked upon with great respect, and it continues to serve as an inspiration to writers and thinkers today even as it did when it was being first performed in London. Shakespeare’s modern audience, however, is far less diverse than the one for which he originally wrote. Due to the antiquity of his language, Shakespeare’s modern readership consists mostly of students and intellectuals, whereas in Shakespeare’s own time, his plays were performed in playhouses packed with everyone from royalty to peasants. Because of this, Shakespeare was forced to write on many different levels, the most sophisticated of which appealed to his more elite audience members, while the more straightforward and often more crude of which appealed to his less educated viewers, and the most universal of which still appeals to us.
Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Ed. W. G. Clark and W. Aldis Wright. 2 vols. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, n.d.
Shakespeare Studies 11 (1978): 53-76. MLA International Bibliography. Web. The Web. The Web.