Transcript Slide 1
A plague on both your houses… What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of William Shakespeare, or Romeo and Juliet? …old and boring …tragic love story …hard to understand …stuck up ..two feuding families …romance …Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? ….play with old costumes …who? Huh? So about this Shakespeare.. • William Shakespeare was an unknown man from Stratford on Avon, who ended up becoming a famous playwright in London • When he was 18 he married 26 year old Anne Hathaway, their daughter Susanna was born 6th months later. They also had twins, Judith and Hamnet, but he died at age 11 • He spent much of his life in London, as an actor and author, at the Globe theater, and when he died he left his wife the 2nd best bed in his will He wrote his own epitath… "Good Friends, for Jesus' sake forbear, To dig the bones enclosed here! Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones." Elizabethan Theater…all the world’s a stage • In Shakespeare’s time, theaters were on the south side of London, along with bearbaiting, taverns, and some very friendly women • Theaters were sometimes closed to try to stop the threat of plague, or because they were “immoral” • All of the actors were men, it was illegal for women to be onstage…so Juliet was being played by a teenage boy in a dress…there’s a reason Shakespeare’s plays have lots of talking, but not too much kissing onstage • You could get into the Globe theater for a penny, and stand during the whole play, or pay a bit more for a seat, most stood, and were called “groundlings” • Food was sold, and if the play wasn’t good or exciting, the audience would heckle or throw things at the actors A way with words • Shakespeare added over 2,000 words to the English language in his plays, if he needed a new word, he made one up, you may recognize… Eyeball, dwindle, watchdog, gloomy, hobnob, swagger, rant, moonbeam, fashionable • There are also expressions he coined that are very common today, like “a heart of gold,” “wild goose chase,” “vanish into thin air,” “good riddance,” “break the ice,” “a laughing stock,” “clothes make the man,” “dead as a doornail”