William Shakespeare

In AP lit we are about to begin to read Hamlet a play by William Shakespeare who is one of the greatest and most unique play writers the world has ever seen. Since Shakespeare has a very unique style and a vast vocabulary I decided that I should do a little bit more research on him for my blog so that I can better understand his writing and language that he uses. To understand some of the most confusing works I figured it would be most beneficial to know all the background on Shakespeare and his time period. To start William Shakespeare was born in Stratford in 1564, and was son to a leather sales man and a local landed heiress. Although people are not sure where Shakespeare received his education, many believe that he got it from the King’s New School. When Shakespeare was 18 he got married to 26 year old Anne Hathaway. Together they had 3 children together, the second 2 being twins. One of the twins died at age 11. After the birth of the twins there is a gap of seven years in which there are no records of William Shakespeare anywhere. These are called the “lost years”. Some believe that he went into hiding for poaching game of the local landlord. Others believe that he was working as a school master at Lancashire. By 1592 Shakespeare began to build his wealth in London from being a play write and an actor. In the 1590’s he began managing an acting group in London that was called the King’s Men. Within 7 years he had written 15 of his 37 plays and there is record that he bought one of the largest house in Stratford, which was a 4 day ride from London where he worked. Some believe that he spent most of his time writing and acting in the city and then came home once a year for 40 days when the theatres were closed. As he began writing his first plays he wrote with a conventional style of the day, but after a while he became very innovative and adapted the traditional styles with his own purpose to make his own style of play.  Shakespeare’s early work mainly consisted of histories and comedies from the 1590s. Later in his career he began to focus more on dramas and tragedies. In total he wrote 37 plays and many sonnets. It is also interesting that many believe that he died on his birthday and left most of his stuff to his eldest daughter.