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Shakespeare found nature an inspiration, and peoples' different reactions to love and life. While most stories in those days finished with a 'happily ever after,' Shakespeare realised that a total opposite could happen, so Shakespeare explored the many ways a romance story could end.

The ideas for Shakespeare's plots were almost all taken from earlier stories, poems or plays. The English histories as well as the semi-historical King Lear and Macbeth were drawn from Holinshed's Chronicles. The story of Romeo and Juliet was from a poem written by Arthur Brooke in 1562. Hamlet was probably based on an earlier play which was itself based on a story by Saxo Grammaticus. We have an alternate Taming of the Shrew which is very similar to Shakespeare's. Roman historians provided the source for Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra.

Nowadays we tend to think that it was the stories which Shakespeare created, so that he deserves credit for any story of a brother of a king who murders the king and marries the widow. This is not so. Shakespeare created words for these people to say, which words showed them to be much more complex than any characters created beforehand and most created since.
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Related Questions

What Renaissance ideas did Shakespeare's work address?

What Renaissance ideas did Shakespeare's work address?


Were Shakespeare's ideas accepted immidiatly?

Shakespeare was not known for his ideas. He was known for his plays, which were indeed immediately popular.


Where did Shakespeare get my ideas from?

somewhere


Where did shakespeare get most of his ideas from?

He got most of his ideas from books he had read.


Were did will Shakespeare get his ideas from?

From the things and people around him.


Where did Shakespeare get his ideas to write Julius Caesar?

It is said that Shakespeare used the writings of Plutarch for ideas for his ancient history plays.


Where did shakspeare get his ideas for his plays?

Shakespeare often got ideas from history or he adapted already-written plays.


What was Shakespeare's formative experiences?

We have no record of Shakespeare's early life, and any ideas about what experiences he had and whether they formed his character are complete guesswork.


According to Michael Kahn from which writer did Shakespeare borrow his story ideas?

Ovid Holinshed Plutarch


William Shakespeare Project Ideas?

well, make it interactive, and make it revolved around poetry :)


Were did willam shakespeare get his ideas from?

He got his ideas almost exclusively from books he had read and other plays he had seen. Very few of his plays are inspired by his his own experiences.


How did William Shakespeare change peoples ideas?

He didn't, really. Some highly pretentious authors, like Harold Bloom, have claimed that he did, but what Bloom is claiming is that Shakespeare invented Victorian literary criticism, which is not only ridiculous but impossible. With Shakespeare, people take their own ideas to the plays and find them reflected there and articulated better than they could articulate them themselves. Shakespeare, in his own words, "holds the mirror up to nature" but he does not create nature. He did not create Harold Bloom's Victorian outlook on literature, but when Bloom looks at Shakespeare, he finds his outlook reflected back to him, and imagines that Shakespeare must have invented it.