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The thoughts of the ignorant: The only book in the medieval times were the bible. And medieval literuture only talked about religion and Shakespeare only talked about love and sex.

Not true at all. Of course Shakespeare's works cover a lot of ground, and although they do talk about love and sex to be sure, they also talk about revenge, usurpation of power, leadership, the weight of command, revolution, democracy vs. Dictatorship, justice, cannibalism, magic, retirement, loansharks, and lots more.

And although people in the medieval period (which covers a really really long time, you know) did write about religion, they also wrote a LOT about love and sex. See for example Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, or Chretien de Troyes' Romances, or Malory's Morte D'Arthur, or Andreas Cappelanus's Art of Courtly Love. They also wrote a lot about fighting: The Song of Roland or Beowulf or again Malory for example.

Shakespeare's writing differed from medieval writing not in its themes so much, but more in its form. His most famous work is his plays which was a virtually unknown form right up to the beginning of the sixteenth century. Although medieval mystery plays like Everyman are actually quite good, nobody thought of them as literature at the time. His favourite poetic form was the sonnet, a form which arose in the Italian Renaissance with Petrarch and was not a medieval form at all. Only his long poems like Venus and Adonis or The Rape of Lucrece would have been in a form familiar to someone in the England of three centuries earlier.

Shakespeare's frequent use of Classical plots, themes and references also is atypical of medieval writing and more typical of the renasissance. But not wholly: two of his plays share Classical plots with the medieval writer Chaucer (who was much admired in Shakespeare's day).

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