What were Shakespeares poems about?

Answer 1

He wrote about sex in his long poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece and love more generally in his sonnets. Many of his plays, especially comedies like Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It and tragedies like Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra have love as a main theme.

The theme of political instability following an illegitimate succession is a common theme of the history plays: Richard II, Henry VI Part III, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Macbeth are examples.

Many plays revolve around things which are not what they seem to be: women disguised as men in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night and As You Like It, the seemingly honest Iago in Othello, the seemingly just and upright Angelo in Measure for Measure, the apparently mad and destitute Edgar and the apparently powerful king in King Lear.

Along the way, Shakespeare deals with a broad spectrum of topics from the coarse (the effect of drinking on sexual performance) to the elevated (Is there divine justice?)

Answer 2

Shakespeare wrote about love, passion, hate, guilt, greed, jealousy and nearlly everyother human emotion. He wrote about kingdoms rising up and kingdoms falling. He wrote about murders, suicides, ghosts and madmen. He was truly a great poet/Playwrite.

Answer 3

The subject matter of Shakespeare's plays is very diverse: even the same play may be "about" a number of different things. Many of the plays are based on historical events in English and Roman history particularly. However that does not come close to explaining what is actually of interest in the plays: yes, the two plays about the reign of Henry IV may be about the reign of that king, but what is getting our attention is Henry IV's son Hal and how he is growing up and preparing himself to become king, and his relationship with the fat and knavish knight Sir John Falstaff. These are the only two plays which are about the son of a king preparing to be a king--Shakespeare does not write about that anywhere else.

Answer 4

All kinds of subjects. His characters are young and old, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, and get themselves into a huge variety of situations. People find themselves talking about things which are not a part of the main action of the story, which increases the broad appeal of the plays. Some of the main categories of stories Shakespeare wrote about are:

1. Love Stories. Who doesn't like a love story? Eternal triangles (Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Two Noble Kinsmen), reluctant couples (Much Ado About Nothing, Taming of the Shrew), tragic stories (Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Troilus and Cressida, Two Noble Kinsmen), jealousy (Othello),pastoral romance (As You Like It), flirting (Love's Labour's Lost), even homosexual relationships (Troilus and Cressida)--Shakespeare wrote every kind of love story.

2. Political Stories. All those history plays, as well as many of the tragedies, have to do with politics, especially the question of transfer of power from one generation to the next. Coriolanus deals with the false face a politician must wear to please the voters, Henry V with war as a political tool, Macbeth with the effect of paranoia on a leader. Henry VI part II deals with the popular uprising which condemns all learned men, anticipating Pol Pot by three centuries.

3. Parents and Children. Romeo and Juliet explores children caught up in their parents' quarrel, King Lear the problems of retirement, and a large number of plays have to do with parents whotry to organize their children's love lives (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Merry Wives of Windsor, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Taming of the Shrew)

4. Reunion of Broken Families. This was the subject of many of Shakespeare's later plays, when he perhaps had the reunion of his own family on his mind, including Cymbeline, Pericles and The Winter's Tale. Also one of his early plays, The Comedy of Errors.

5. War. Henry V is possibly the best play about war ever written, but Shakespeare also deals with this subject in Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Henry VI Part 3.

6. Justice. Measure for Measure is primarily about this subject. The Tempest is also driven by Prospero's desire to mete out justice to those who exiled him.

Answer 5

The long poems are about sex. The sonnets are often about love, death and aging.

Answer 6

Paper. They had it then.