Why did shakespeare use exotic names and places in his plays?

Answer 1

Because it made it more interesting. Or because that was where the story was set in his source. If he wanted to write a play around the story of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, he could hardly set it in England.

Answer 2

Shakespeare got most of his plots from earlier plays, stories and poems, and he quite often kept the setting of those stories. Hamlet, for example, is a story which had always been set in Denmark. His source for Romeo and Juliet, Brooke's poem Romeus and Juliet, was also set in Italy.

Answer 3

Thirteen of Shakespeare's plays were set or partly set in England, which was not a foreign country to Shakespeare . That is more than a quarter of them. The fact is that Shakespeare tended to set his plays where they were set in the sources he got them from. And Shakespeare used a lot of sources which were derived from Italian stories or classical stories which were set in Italy or ancient Rome or Ancient Greece. The only plays which are not at least partly set in Italy, Greece or England are As You Like It (France), Hamlet (Denmark), and Measure for Measure (Austria).

Answer 4

He would not have been able to make a living as an actor and playwright in Stratford. He had to go to London where the professional theaters were, just as a young person today has to go to New York or LA to make a living as an actor or playwright. He may have left Stratford touring with The Queens Men, joining them when they were on tour in Stratford.

Answer 5

In my opinion it has to do with two factors:

• Suspension of disbelief. Some of Shakespeare's plays are silly and in that time people would be much more willing to believe that foreigners could be that stupid and silly rather than their neighbors.
• Some were about shocking murders and misbehaving royalty. If he set his plays as being English royalty he would likely be beheaded.

However, he did set ten history plays full of shocking murders and misbehaving royalty in England, so that was ok, just so long as the misbehaving royalty in question was not the current monarch or his or her near relatives.

He also did set one play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, which is full of stupid and silly people, in contemporary England, and it was reasonably popular (especially because of the presence of Falstaff in it). But that was the only time he set a play contemporaneously.

Another factor worth considering is:

• Shakespeare took a lot of his plots from sources that had already set the plays in Italy, Denmark, France, Greece, Ancient Rome and so on. He just didn't bother to change them.

Answer 6

He didn't always. The names and places in the history plays were familiar to Englishmen. One play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, takes place in contemporary England, and the characters have such prosaic names as Mrs. Page and Mrs. Ford.

Where the plays are set elsewhere, this is often because that is where they were set in the sources Shakespeare got his story from. This is true of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet.

Sometimes people are given names which give you a clue as to what kind of person they are. My favourite is the name Supervacuo from Thomas Middleton's play The Revenger's Tragedy. The names Subtle and Face in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist are like this. Shakespeare used this kind of name less, but there are such characters as Mouldy, and Slender, and Shallow, as well as Bottom, who gets turned into an ass.

Answer 7

Because Poms are boring, whinging bastards