Well-known Facts about Will

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Well-known Facts about Will

• One of greatest writers of England
• Plays translated into all languages, musicals,
  ballets
• Born Stratford-upon-Avon
• Well-to-do, affluent most of the time while alive
• Most quoted, next to the Bible

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Lesser-known Facts

• Teen father married pregnant 26 year old Anne
  Hathaway when he was 18
• Deadbeat dad Left wife and children for London
  stage career
• Father of 3 kids including twins Hamnet and
  Judith
• Hamnet died at age 11
• Elizabethan rapper uses rhythm and rhyme
• Plagiarism ? Based plays of Greek plays and
  other workssome say stole work from other
  playwrights of his time.

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Competitions of the time 1500 1600 hundreds

• Bear-baiting
• Races
• Gambling
• Music
• Drinking/socializing
• Prostitution
• Public executions

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Conditions in London-HORRIBLE!

• Thames River polluted with raw sewage
• Trees used up for fuel
• Extreme Poverty
• Lack of clean water

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Personal hygiene/health

• Bathing considered dangerous
• Body odor strong
• Childhood diseases
• Children often died before 5 years
• Small Pox
• Bubonic Plague

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Living Conditions

• No running water
• Chamber Pots (Ladies walked on inside or right)
• Open Sewers
• Crowded

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Clothes

• One set used all year long, rarely washed
• Underclothing slept in, infrequently changed
• Clothes handed down from rich to poor

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Theater in London

• Performed in courtyards of inns
• The Theater-first public theater-1576
• Daytime/open air
• Limited set design
• Relied on music, sound, costumes, props and great
  description

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The Globe

• Built in 1599
• Across the Thames (Tams)- Wrong side of town
• Kings Players - Shakespeares company
• Penny admission

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Actors

• All men
• Female parts played by young boys
• No actual kissing or hugging on stage
• Women not allowed on stage until after 1660.

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The groundlings

• Poor audience member
• Stood around stage in the pit (on the ground)
• Women not allowed (had to dress up as men to
  attend)
• Threw rotten vegetables at bad performances

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Romeo and Juliet

• Tragedy
• Written in 1595
• Set in Verona, Italy
• Themes parental control/rebellious teens
  fate/freewill impulsive behavior/self-control

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Othello

• Othello Iago

• Racism
• Love and Betrayal
• Isolation
• Truth versus Lies/Rumors
• Anger and Bad Choices
• Parental Control
• Setting Venice then Cyprus
• Genre Tragedy
• Time 1601 -1604

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Plays source

• Widely held belief that the inspiration for
  Othello came from the 1566 Venetian novel
  Hecatommithi, authored by Giraldi
• Shakespeare reworks the plot to reveal a stunning
  psychological depth, the fragility of love and
  power as well as, the effect that the destructive
  demons of self-deception, doubt and suspicion can
  have on a marriage.

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Queen Elizabeth

• Bastard daughter of King Henry VIII
• And Ann Boleyn (2nd of 6 wives)
• Henry had Ann beheaded for treason
• Younger sister of Bloody Mary.
• Virgin Queen?
• A tease and a player

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Her loving parents
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The Renaissance

• 1500-1650
• Rebirth of arts, culture, science
• Discovery of New World
• Copernicus Sun-centered Universe (1543)
• King Henry VIII renaissance man (ideal)
• Reformation of Catholic Church

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Possible Faces of William
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Other Possible Candidates
http//www.elizabethanauthors.com/problem.htm