SHAKESPEARE

PERSONAL BACKGROUND

• Stratford-upon-Avon
• Son of a guildsman
• Educated at the local school
• Married Anne Hathaway at eighteen

THEATRICAL BACKGROUND

• 1590: Acting company
• 1597: Fifteen plays published
• 1599: The Globe Theater

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

• Elizabethan England
• Golden Age
• James 1
• The plague
• Religious tension

Cultural Trends

• Landowning & wealth
• Urban culture
• The arts
• Humanism

HIS AUDIENCE

• Groundlings to Nobles
• Every kind of trade & worker
• Boisterous
• Escaping life
• Interactive

Social Impact

• Radically transformed the English language
• Writing is still studied and performed
• "Bardolatry"

HIS DEVICES

• Metre
• Rhyme scheme
• Language

His Tricks

• Rewrote stories
• Plot twists
• Puns
• Legal terms & slang
• Stereotypes

His Characters

• Names had meaning
• Relatable

My Characters

• Flavian
• Reid
• Duffy