Long Live The Bard!
If Shakespeare were alive today April 23, 2019 he’d be 455 years old and we’d (hopefully) have about 296 more of his plays! He wrote 37 in total and lived to be 51, so if you do the math, it would work out to something like that. Can you imagine?
Heck, if he’d even lived another twenty years we’d have perhaps even a dozen more. 51 is awfully young to die, even back then. The cause of his death is unknown, but an entry in the diary of John Ward, the vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford (where Shakespeare is buried), tells us that, “Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.”
Here’s a bit from Wiki to give us the facts about the ol’ scribbler:
He was a playwright and an actor, and now is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s greatest dramatist. His works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 39 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. And he is the best selling non-fiction writer of all time! JK Rowling might be a distant second . . . 😉
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. Until about 1608, he wrote mainly tragedies, among them Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare’s plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy in his lifetime. However, in 1623, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare’s, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare’s dramatic works that included all but two of his plays. The volume was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Jonson presciently hails Shakespeare in a now-famous quote as “not of an age, but for all time”.
Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, Shakespeare’s works have been continually adapted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain popular and are studied, performed, and reinterpreted through various cultural and political contexts around the world.
Actor and Playwright
OK, we’re done with Wiki, now it’s back to me. I love the fact that Shakespeare was an actor. And probably an actor first before he was a playwright. To me that makes a lot of sense. Of course there are amazing playwrights out there who never were actors, but I can imagine Shakespeare’s journey to become a playwright . . .
Picture this, a young boy taken with the stage back in Elizabethan England. He maybe starts with seeing a play for the first time, falls instantly in love with it — as many of us actors do. Then figures out how to get in to one of those amazing, world-shifting works of wonder and finds himself perhaps playing a spear carrier, or a messenger with a few brief lines. The powers that be notice they’ve got a talent here and give him some bigger roles. He steals the show consistently and they have to start giving him leads, all the while Shakespeare’s little mind is a whir . . . “I really like this bit of the play where my character does X, Y, Z — but then it kind of goes south, loses the action. What if I were to suggest a rewrite . . ?” And he does and the play is suddenly much better! The audience goes wild with the new sections thrown in, the play runs smoother, tighter. It’s a hit!
Suddenly Shakespeare starts to realize . . . “Hey, maybe I’m good at this playwriting thing . . .” And the rest is history.
Well, of course I have no idea if it happened that way, BUT sounds like a nice pitch for a movie . . . hum, I better get writing!
Death
He also died on April 23rd, btw. As we said, we don’t know what he died of exactly. And in fact they don’t have a death certificate. All that is known is he was buried on April 25th and so they assume he died two days before as it was customary to bury the body two days after they passed away.
But look what he left us! Where would we be without his dazzling canon of work?
Of course some people say that he didn’t actually write anything, that William Shakespeare was just the pen name of some nobleman who didn’t want to sully his name with being thought of as a playwright. The frontrunner in that debate touted by certain scholars is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, This argument used to get me up in arms. But after further reading I can see a bit of method in thier madness regarding the idea. However, that is a subject for another blog post.
Let us know, which are your favorite Shakespearean plays? And top three of his characters.
My fave plays are: Macbeth, Othello and King Lear
My Fave Characters: Kate from Taming of the Shrew (I had the privilege of playing her in High School), Queen Margaret from the Henry history plays, and Igao from Othello (both of which I hope one day to play!)
Also as a bonus check out this FREE SHAKESPEARE EBOOK from our good buddies at STAGE MILK. Thanks Andrew Hearle!
