William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
One of the best known English playwrights. William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, at Stratford-upon-Avon. He had one sister and one brother. He attended the local grammar school and when he was 18 he married Anne Hathaway, eight years older girl from a nearby village. They had two daughters – Susan and Judith and a son Hamnet. Hamnet and Judith were twins, but Hamnet died at the age of eleven. In 1592 he left his wife and children and became an actor and playwright in London where existed two very favourite theatres - The Theatre and The Swan - under the patronage of the King.

Shakespeare joined a group of actors called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1594 and worked as their leading actor and dramatist. This all-male company of experienced and talented players built their own theatre - the Globe. It was open to the sky and its owners, including Shakespeare, shared its profits.
For the next decade the Globe, on the Thames at Bankside, became one of the main London’s theatre and the home of Shakespeare’s work. Many of his greatest plays were written during those ten years, and were acted here.
In 1613 the Globe was destroyed by fire but the former Lord Chamberlain’s Men, by now called the King’s Men (under the patronage of James I), had leased another smaller playhouse.

After his son's death he went back to Stratford and lived a quiet life with his family. He bought a new fine house in Stratford- New Place, the second largest house in Stratford.. He died on the same date as he was born on April 23, 1616. The legend says that Shakespeare died after the noisy birthday celebrations with his friends. He is buried at Hole Trinity Church in Stratford. A Shakespeare Festival is held every summer in Stratford.
 
He wrote 37 plays, mostly in blankverse, which can be divided into tragedies which show us the negative side of the new society, the mood of pessimism; comedies express the typically spirit of the Renaissance, the pleasant aspect of the happy an beautiful life; others are historical plays and romances, which is something between tragedy and comedy.
Beside the plays Shakespeare wrote also sonnets in his own special forms.
 
The best and the most known of them are:
Comedies: The Merchant of Venice, As you like it, A Midsummer Night´s Dream,The Taming of the Shrew
Tragedies: Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear
Historical plays: Richard II, Henry IV, Richard III ® which deal with English history
Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus ® which deal with with Roman history, plays which are something between tragedy and a historical play
Romances: The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest
 
Romeo and Juliet:
I think that this is the best known tragedy all over the world. It is about the unhappy love and death. The story tells us about the long hate between the two powerful houses in Verona - the House of Montague and the House of Capulet. The main character are Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet the only children of this houses. Romeo falls in love with Juliet at the ball and secretly marries her. Juliet’s cousin Tybalt challenges Romeo to a duel. Romeo refuses but his friend Mercucio fights and is killed. In anger and revenge, Romeo kills Tybalt. Prince of Verona sends Romeo to the exile outside Verona and Juliet is forced to get married to a young nobleman Paris.

She asks Friar Laurence, who had secretly married them, for help again and he gives her magic drops after which she fells asleep for several hours and looks as if she was dead. Romeo mistakenly believes that Juliet is really dead, kills Paris at her graveside and than take poison. Then Juliet wakes up and when she sees Romeo dead, she kills herself too. After this horrible events the warring families made peace.