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People would desperately love to find connections between Shakespeare's life and events in his plays, but unfortunately the answer is almost certainly no, the events in Shakespeare's plays have nothing at all to do with the events in his life. Shakespeare borrowed the main plots of virtually all his plays from somewhere else, often from older plays. He did, of course invent episodes for dramatic purposes. An early example is the scene in Henry VI Part 3 where a man discovers that he has killed his father, who was fighting on the other side, and another man discovers that he has killed his son. Shakespeare added this scene to dramatise how civil war can break up families, but Shakespeare did not kill his father nor did his father kill him. To the best of our knowledge, Shakespeare never fought in a war. He invented the scene from his imagination.
Some people try to connect the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet with things Shakespeare wrote. No such connection is feasible. Shakespeare did start to write more tragedies and darker comedies at about the time the Globe Theatre was built, but this was three years after Hamnet's death during which time Shakespeare had been writing some of his most joyous and carefree comedies. It is much more plausible that the change in mood reflected a change in the national mood as the Queen neared death, and the question of succession to the throne was a worry to everyone.
The desire to match events in the plays with events in Shakespeare's life may account for the "authorship controversy". For some people, if the events in Shakespeare's life cannot be matched up with the events in the plays, then it becomes necessary to propose someone else as the author whose life can be used in this way.
But the truth is that the critical school that holds that in order to understand the literature you must minutely examine the life of the author is the real problem here. Although it may give insight into the works of some authors, in other cases it doesn't and Shakespeare is one of those. His plays are perfectly enjoyable and immensely deep and wide-ranging without the audience or reader knowing the first thing about him. Such critics need to acknowledge that his genius was that he was quite able to imagine the feelings, motivations and concerns of people caught in situations which he himself had never experienced, and to express them in an astonishingly vivid way.
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∙ 12y ago
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What would be a good present for Shakespeare?
A good present for shakespeare would be a do-over in life, because many of his later plays, such as King Lear, reflect a flawed father daughter relationship implying his own relationships with his family was not what he wished it to be.
What did Shakespeare achieve?
He achieved the creation of plays whcih come to life.
What facts about Shakespeare are unusuel?
He had 7 brothers and sisters! Shakespeare never published any of his plays! Shakespeare's family were all illiterate! During his life, Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets! The words "assassination"and "bump" and "bubble" were invented by Shakespeare.
Were some of William Shakespeare's books based on his life?
No. None of Shakespeare's plays are in any way based on his life. They can almost all be traced to some previous book where he got the story. The ones that cannot are fantasy stories involving a lot of magic. It is probably fair to say that he did not experience having anyone he knew be turned into a donkey. Some people argue that Shakespeare's sonnets reflect events in his life; although this may be plausible, we just don't know enough of the details of his personal life to make any guesses as to what the connection, if there is one, might be. However, neither the plays or the sonnets are really "books" in any sense. The sonnets were individual poems he passed around to his friends, and which someone collected and published, while the plays were written with the intention that nobody should be able to get a written copy. They wanted people to pay money to come and watch the plays, not to read them. The only "books" Shakespeare wrote intending that they should be published and sold and read by people were actually his long poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, both of which are well-established Classical Roman stories which have nothing to do with Shakespeare's life.
How do the places in Shakespeare's life show up in his writing?
Rarely. Shakespeare almost never refers to himself or his life in his plays, unless you count one of his favourite metaphors: life is like a theatre and people are like actors.
What is contemporary plays?
Plays that reflect life today.
What would be a good present for Shakespeare?
A good present for shakespeare would be a do-over in life, because many of his later plays, such as King Lear, reflect a flawed father daughter relationship implying his own relationships with his family was not what he wished it to be.
How were Shakespeare's life events represented in his plays?
They were not. We do not know a lot about Shakespeare's life, but what we know does not match events in the plays. Nobody in the plays has to get married at an early age because his girl is pregnant. Shakespeare's plays do not have plots about people leaving country towns to make their fortune in the big city, although stories of this nature abound. Although twins do make an appearance in the Comedy of Errors, they are identical twins, not fraternal. And the brother and sister pair in Twelfth Night are not twins. Shakespeare did not use events in his life as a basis for his plots. And, although people get excited about this, he did not use the names of his family members for his characters. The character Hamlet was not at all based on Shakespeare's son Hamnet. It's just a coincidence that they have similar names. It would be absurd to suggest that Shakespeare named King John after his father, or Ann Bullen after his wife, or Richard III after his brother. It is equally absurd to think that Hamlet is called that for any other reason than that he had always been called that. The nearest one might get to associating the plays with Shakespeare's life is to note that many of the late plays, especially Pericles, Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, have themes about the reuniting of families long sundered, something that Shakespeare was planning for his own life at the time these plays were written. Of course, the same theme appears in The Comedy of Errors, one of Shakespeare's earliest plays, and Twelfth Night, a play from the middle of his career.
What significant events occured during Shakespeare's life?
The Gunpowder Plot
What did Shakespeare achieve?
He achieved the creation of plays whcih come to life.
When was William Shakespeare interested in plays?
Shakespeare displayed an interest in plays throughout his working life in London, basically from some time before 1592 and 1614.
What facts about Shakespeare are unusuel?
He had 7 brothers and sisters! Shakespeare never published any of his plays! Shakespeare's family were all illiterate! During his life, Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets! The words "assassination"and "bump" and "bubble" were invented by Shakespeare.
What are some major events in shakespeare early life that had an impact on the rest of his life?
Some of Shakespeares major life events were that he wrote many plays and sonnets. he did all of this in the time that the plague against the Globe teater. During this time many of his best works were created such as: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and many others.
What country did shakespeare write most of his plays in?
Shakespeare wrote all of his plays in England, since he lived his entire life there. He also set more of his plays in England than anywhere else.
How does Shakespeare's life tie into romeo and Juliet?
It doesn't. It is flawed thinking that thinks that all of an artist's production must be connected with his personal life, and that we can only understand the artwork by understanding the artist better. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, we know so little about Shakespeare's life that we cannot interpret the plays by reference to events in it. This is perhaps unfortunate because some people are so desperate to know something about the author's personal life that they start to imagine that the plays were written by someone we know better than Shakespeare. On the other hand, people have been enjoying and getting an awful lot out of these plays for 400 years, even though there is no connection with Shakespeare's life, so maybe we are better off.
When did Shakespeare started to publish novels?
He didn't. Shakespeare never wrote a novel in his life. I'm serious. He wrote plays and poetry, and didn't even publish the plays himself.
Was his plays based on shakespeares love life?
No. Shakespeare never ever based his plays on his own life. This is probably a good thing as his life was probably pretty boring.
