YOU MUST KNOW ABOUT SHAKESPEARE….!
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BY ANIL S AWAD
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1. Wrote 154 sonnets
2. Born on April 23, 1564
3. Died on April 23, 1616
4. Stratford-upon-Avon was his birthplace
5. Parents were John and Mary Shakespeare
6. Had seven brothers and sisters
7. Sister Joan was born in 1558
8. Margaret was born in 1562
9. Gilbert was born in1566
10. Joan II was born in 1569
11. Anne was born in 1571
12. Richard was born in 1574
13. Edmund was born in 1580
14. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway
15. He was 18 when married and Anne was 26
16. Had eight children
17. Susannah born in 1583
18. Twins, Hamnet and Judith, born in 1585
19. His first published play was Henry VI, Part
II
20. Wrote 37 plays
21. He was good friends with Elizabeth I, queen
during his life
22. Lived in England during the Renaissance
23. Was affiliated with a theatre group known as
the Lord Chamberlains Men
24. Wrote plays for the Globe Theatre
25. Was buried in Stratford
26. After Queen Elizabeth I died, Shakespeare
lived during the reign of King James I
27. His house was called New Palace
28. Daughter Susannah married Dr. John Hall
29. Lord Chamberlains Men bought the Blackfriars
Theatre
30. His Collective Sonnets were first published
in 1609
31. His daughter Judith married Thomas Quiney
1616
32. Grandfathers name was Richard
33. Grandfather owned a farm in Snitterfield
34. Baptized at Holy Trinity Parish Church in
Stratford
35. Child Hamnet died at age eleven
36. Refers to poet Christopher Marlowe’s death in
As You Like It
37. Father John Shakespeare was granted Coat of
Arms in1596
38. The Globe Theatre burned down in 1613, but
was rebuilt in 1614
39. The Globe Theatre was demolished in 1644
40. The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s
shortest play
41. Shortest play is 1770 lines long
42. Othello was one of the most popular of his
plays throughout the 18th and 19th centuries
43. Troilus and Cressida was originally written
as a Tragedy
44. Contain over 600 references to birds
45. May have translated Psalm 46
46. Was known as the Bard of Stratford
47. Famous poet John Keats kept a bust of
Shakespeare near his desk in hopes that the play write would spark his
creativity
48. The Comedy of Errors was said to inspirer
Rodgers and Hart's popular musical, The Boys from Syracuse
49. Used the word dog or dogs over 200 times in
his works
50. King Lear was banished from the English stage
for making fun of the monarchy and King George III
51. Love's Labour's Lost has the highest
percentage of rhyming lines of all of his plays
52. There is no record of Alls Well that Ends
Well ever being performed in Shakespeare’s lifetime
53. Invented the word assassination
54. Never attended a University
55. Lived through the Black Death
56. Sonnets were published in 1609 without his
permission
57. Wrote roughly one and a half plays between
1589 and 1616
58. Never published any of his own plays, they
were all published by his fellow actors
59. Did not die in poverty, unlike many of his
fellow authors of the time
60. Performed plays by play write Ben Jonson, in
addition to his own.
61. Performed many time before Queen Elizabeth I
and King James I
62. Had many quarrels with play critic Robert
Greene
63. Has instances of suicide an unlucky thirteen
times in his works.
64. None of his plays were acted out by women
65. Had an earring in his left ear
66. Village he grew up in had a population of
over 1500 people and only about 200 houses
67. Interest in theatre started at an early age,
his father took him and his siblings to
see traveling shows
68. Marriage certificate was issued on November
27, 1582
69. Buried in the Holy Trinity Church in
Stratford-upon-Avon
70. Is believed to have died on his birthday
71. Was rumored to have created over 1,700 words
for the English language.
72. Has no actual known birth, but based on birth
records historians believe it was April
23, 1564.
73. Only two authentic portraits of William
Shakespeare
74. Was a popular last name, their were two
non-related Shakespeare families.
75. Wrote his first play when he was 25 years old
76. Was not credited with all his work, the play
Cardenio has never been recorded.
77. Performed in many of his own plays
78. One of the most identified icons of England
79. Wrote before Websters first published
Dictionary
80. First child, Susannah, was born six months
after Shakespeare and his wife were married.
81. Many didnt like Macbeth, because they were
afraid of witches
82. No one knows how Shakespeare died
83. Was a Roman Catholic
84. When Shakespeare was alive, the town was
called Stratford, not Stratford-upon- Avon
85. The motto of the Globe Theatre was totus
mundus agit histrionem (all the world's a stage)
86. Was a Baptist when he was born, but was a
Roman Catholic when he died.
87. First job was holding horses outside the
theatres
88. Wrote King John the same year his son died
89. Coined the phrase the beast with two backs
90. Died 52
91. Last play he wrote was Two Noble Kinsmen
92. Only left his wife a bed when he died
93. Was married at Temple Graston
94. His tomb was inscribed with a curse
95. Some believe Queen Elizabeth wrote some of
his plays
96. Lived on Henley Street
97. wrote Romeo and Juliet when he was around 30
years old
98. 15 of his plays had been performed by 1597
99. Racisms pops up frequently in work
100. Rumored to copy many of his famous plays from
other writers
101. There is documentary proof that Shakespeare was
baptised on 26th April 1564, and scholars believe that, in keeping with the
traditions of the time, he would have been baptised when he was three days old,
meaning Shakespeare was probably born on April 23rd. However, as Shakespeare
was born under the old Julian calendar, what was April 23rd during
Shakespeare’s life would actually be May 3rd according to today’s Gregorian
calendar.
102. Shakespeare’s parents were John and Mary
Shakespeare (nee Arden). John came to Stratford from Snitterfield before 1532
as an apprentice glover and tanner of leathers. He prospered and began to deal
in farm products and wool before being elected to a multitude of civic
positions.
103. Shakespeare had seven siblings: Joan (b 1558);
Margaret (b 1562); Gilbert (b 1566); another Joan (b 1569); Anne (b 1571);
Richard (b 1574) and Edmund (b 1580). .
104. One of Shakespeare’s relatives on his mother’s
side, William Arden, was arrested for plotting against Queen Elizabeth I,
imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed.
105. Shakespeare married his wife Anne Hathaway when
he was 18. She was 26 and three months pregnant with Shakespeare’s child when
they married. Their first child Susanna was born six months after the wedding.
106. Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway had three children
together – a son, Hamnet, who died in 1596, and two daughters, Susanna and
Judith. His only granddaughter Elizabeth – daughter of Susanna – died childless
in 1670. Shakespeare therefore has no descendants.
107. There are more than 80 variations recorded for
the spelling of Shakespeare’s name. In the few original signatures that have
survived, Shakespeare spelt his name “Willm Shaksp,” “William Shakespe,” “Wm
Shakspe,” “William Shakspere,” ”Willm Shakspere,” and “William Shakspeare”.
There are no records of him ever having spelt it “William Shakespeare”, as we
know him today.
108. Few people realise that apart from writing his
numerous plays and sonnets, Shakespeare was also an actor who performed many of
his own plays as well as those of other playwrights. There is evidence that he
played the ghost in Hamlet and Adam in As You Like It.
109. During his life Shakespeare performed before
Queen Elizabeth I and, later, before James I who was an enthusiastic patron of
his work.
110. Shakespeare lived a double life. By the
seventeenth century he had become a famous playwright in London but in
hishometown of Stratford, where his wife and children were, and which he
visited frequently, he was a well known and highly respected businessman and
property owner.
111. It’s likely that Shakespeare wore a gold hoop
earring in his left ear – a creative, bohemian look in the Elizabethan &
Jacobean eras. This style is evidenced in the Chandos portrait, one of the most
famous depictions of Shakespeare.
112. During his lifetime Shakespeare became a very
wealthy man with a large property portfolio. He was a brilliant businessman –
forming a joint-stock company with his actors meaning he took a share in the
company’s profits, as well as earning a fee for each play he wrote.
113. Shakespeare’s family home in Stratford was
called New Place. The house stood on the corner of Chapel Street and Chapel
Lane, and was apparently the second largest house in the town
114. Sometime after his unsuccessful application to
become a gentleman, Shakespeare took his father to the College of Arms to
secure their own Shakespeare family crest. The crest was a yellow spear on a
yellow shield, with the Latin inscription “Non Sans Droict”, or “Not without
Right”.
115. On his death Shakespeare made several gifts to
various people but left his property to his daughter, Susanna. The only mention
of his wife in Shakespeare’s own will is: “I gyve unto my wief my second best
bed with the furniture”. The “furniture” was the bedclothes for the bed.
116. Shakespeare’s burial at Holy Trinity Church in
Stratford Upon Avon is documented as happening on 25th April 1616. In keeping
with traditions of the time it’s likley he would have been buried two days
after his death, meaning Shakespeare likely died 23rd April 1616 – his 52nd
birthday.
117. Shakespeare penned a curse for his grave,
daring anyone to move his body from that final resting place. His epitaph was:
118. Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear,
119. To dig the dust enclosed here:
120. Blest be the man that spares these stones,
121. And curst be he that moves my bones.
122. Though it was customary to dig up the bones
from previous graves to make room for others, the remains inShakespeare’s grave
are still undisturbed.
123. Shakespeare’s original grave marker showed him
holding a bag of grain. Citizens of Stratford replaced the bag with a quill in
1747.
124. Although it was illegal to be a Catholic in
Shakespeare’s lifetime, the Anglican Archdeacon, Richard Davies of Lichfield,
who had known him wrote some time after Shakespeare’s death that he had been a
Catholic.
125. During his life, Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and
154 sonnets! This means an average 1.5 plays a year since he first started
writing in 1589.
126. Shakespeare is most often referred to as an
Elizabethan playwright, but as most of his most popular plays were written
after Elizabeth’s death he was actually more of a Jacobean writer. His later
plays also show the distinct characteristics of Jacobean drama.
127. Shakespeare has been credited by the Oxford English
Dictionary with introducing almost 3,000 words to the English language.
Estimations of his vocabulary range from 17,000 to a dizzying 29,000 words – at
least double the number of words used by the average conversationalist.
128. According to Shakespeare professor Louis
Marder, “Shakespeare was so facile in employing words that he was able to use
over 7,000 of them – more than occur in the whole King James Version of the
Bible – only once and never again.”
129. In Elizabethan theatre circles it was common
for writers to collaborate on writing plays. Towards the end of his career
Shakespeare worked with other writers on plays that have been credited to those
writers. Other writers also worked on plays that are credited to Shakespeare.
We know for certain that Timon of Athens was a collaboration with Thomas
Middleton; Pericles with George Wilkins; and The Two Noble Kinsmen with John
Fletcher.
130. Shakespeare’s last play – The Two Noble Kinsmen
– is reckoned to have been written in 1613 when he was 49 years old.
131. The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s shortest
play at just 1,770 lines long.
132. Some scholars have maintained that Shakespeare
did not write the plays attributed to him, with at least fifty writers having
been suggested as the “real” author. However, the evidence for Shakespeare’s
having written the plays is very strong.
133. Although Shakespeare is almost universally
considered as one of the finest writers in the English language, his
contemporaries were not always as impressed. The first recorded reference to
Shakespeare, written by theatre critic Robert Greene in 1592, was as an
“upstart crow, beautified with our feathers”.
134. Suicide occurs an unlucky thirteen times in
Shakespeare’s plays. It occurs in Romeo and Juliet where both Romeo and Juliet
commit suicide, in Julius Caesar where both Cassius and Brutus die by
consensual stabbing, as well as Brutus’ wife Portia.
135. There are only two Shakespeare plays written
entirely in verse: they are Richard II and King John. Many of the plays have
half of the text in prose.
136. It is likely that Shakespeare wrote many plays
that have been lost. It’s certain that he wrote a play titled Cardenio, which
has been lost, but scholars think he wrote about twenty that have gone without
a trace.
137. Shakespeare’s shortest play, The Comedy of
Errors is only a third of the length of his longest, Hamlet, which takes four
hours to perform.
138. Two of Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet and Much Ado
About Nothing, have been translated into Klingon. The Klingon Language
Institute plans to translate more!
139. The National Portrait Gallery in London’s first
acquisition in 1856 was the ‘Chandos’ portrait of Shakespeare, attributed to
the artist John Taylor. It’s now considered the only representation of the
writer that has any real claim to having been painted from life.
140. In the King James Bible the 46th word of Psalm
46 is ‘shake’ and the 46th word from the end of the same Psalm is ‘spear’. Some
think this was a hidden birthday message to the Bard, as the King James Bible
was published in 1611 – the year of Shakespeare’s 46th birthday.
141. The moons of Uranus were originally named in
1852 after magical spirits from English literature. The International Astronomy
Union subsequently developed the convention to name all further moons of Uranus
(of which there are 27) after characters in Shakespeare’s plays or Alexander
Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.
142. Shakespeare had close connections with King
James I. The King made the actors of Shakespeare’s company ‘Grooms of Chamber’,
in response to which Shakespeare changed the company’s name from the ‘Lord
Chamberlain’s Men’ to the ‘King’s Men’. The new title made Shakespeare a
favourite with the King and in much demand for Court performances.
143. The Royal Shakespeare Company sells more than
half a million tickets a year for Shakespeare productions at their theatres in
Stratford-on-Avon, London and Newcastle – introducing an estimated 50,000
people to a live Shakespeare performance for the first time each year.
144. Shakespeare never actually published any of his
plays. They are known today only because two of his fellow actors – John
Hemminges and Henry Condell – recorded and published 36 of them posthumously
under the name ‘The First Folio’, which is the source of all Shakespeare books
published.
145. The United States has Shakespeare to thank for
its estimated 200 million starlings. In 1890 an American bardolator, Eugene
Schiffelin, embarked on a project to import each species of bird mentioned in
Shakespeare’s works that was absent from the US. Part of this project involved
releasing two flocks of 60 starlings in New York’s Central Park.
146. The American President Abraham Lincoln was a
great lover of Shakespeare’s plays and frequently recited from them to his
friends. His assassin, John Wilkes Booth was a famous Shakespearean actor.
147. Candles were very expensive in Shakespeare’s
time so they were used only for emergencies, for a short time. Most writers
wrote in the daytime and socialised in the evenings. There is no reason to
think that Shakespeare was any different to his contemporaries.
148. Rumour has it that poet John Keats was so
influenced by Shakespeare that he kept a bust of the Bard beside him while he
wrote, hoping that Shakespeare would spark his creativity.
149. It was illegal for women and girls to perform
in the theatre in Shakespeare’s lifetime so all the female parts were written
for boys. The text of some plays like Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra refer to
that. It was only much later, during the Restoration, that the first woman
appeared on the English stage.
150. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre burnt down on 29th
June 1613 after a cannon shot set fire to it during a performance of Henry
VIII.
151. The original Globe Theatre came to a premature
end in 1613 during a performance of Henry VIII, when a cannon set light to the
thatched roof. Within two hours the theatre was burnt to the ground, to be
rebuilt the following year.
152. An outbreak of the plague in Europe resulted in
all London theatres being closed between 1592 and 1594. As there was no demand
for plays during this time, Shakespeare began to write poetry, completing his
first batch of sonnets in 1593, aged
153. ‘William Shakespeare’ is an anagram of ‘I am a
weakish speller’.
154. According to the Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations, Shakespeare wrote close to a tenth of the most quoted lines ever
written or spoken in English. What’s more, according to the Literature
Encyclopaedia, Shakespeare is the second most quoted English writer after the
writers of the Bible.
155. Copyright didn’t exist in Shakespeare’s time,
as a result of which there was a thriving trade in copied plays. To help counter
this, actors got their lines only once the play was in progress – often in the
form of cue acting where someone backstage whispered them to the person shortly
before he was supposed to deliver them.
156. Shakespeare’s father held a lot of different
jobs, and at one point got paid to drink beer.
The
son of a tenant farmer, John Shakespeare was nothing if not upwardly mobile. He
arrived in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1551 and began dabbling in various trades,
selling leather goods, wool, malt and corn. In 1556 he was appointed the
borough’s official “ale taster,” meaning he was responsible for inspecting
bread and malt liquors. The next year he took another big step up the social
ladder by marrying Mary Arden, the daughter of an aristocratic farmer who
happened to be his father’s former boss. John later became a moneylender and
held a series of municipal positions, serving for some time as the mayor of
Stratford. In the 1570s he fell into debt and ran into legal problems for
reasons that remain unclear.
157. Shakespeare married an older woman who was
three months pregnant at the time.
In
November 1582, 18-year-old William wed Anne Hathaway, a farmer’s daughter eight
years his senior. Instead of the customary three times, the couple’s intention
to marry was only announced at church once—evidence that the union was hastily
arranged because of Anne’s eyebrow-raising condition. Six months after the
wedding, the Shakespeares welcomed a daughter, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and
Judith followed in February 1585. Little is known about the relationship
between William and Anne, besides that they often lived apart and he only
bequeathed her his “second-best bed” in his will.
158. Shakespeare’s parents were probably illiterate,
and his children almost certainly were.
Nobody
knows for sure, but it’s quite likely that John and Mary Shakespeare never
learned to read or write, as was often the case for people of their standing
during the Elizabethan era. Some have argued that John’s civic duties would
have required basic literacy, but in any event he always signed his name with a
mark. William, on the other hand, attended Stratford’s local grammar school,
where he mastered reading, writing and Latin. His wife and their two children
who lived to adulthood, Susanna and Judith, are thought to have been
illiterate, though Susanna could scrawl her signature.
159. Nobody knows what Shakespeare did between 1585
and 1592.
To
the dismay of his biographers, Shakespeare disappears from the historical
record between 1585, when his twins’ baptism was recorded, and 1592, when the
playwright Robert Greene denounced him in a pamphlet as an “upstart crow.” The
insult suggests he’d already made a name for himself on the London stage by
then. What did the newly married father and future literary icon do during
those seven “lost” years? Historians have speculated that he worked as a
schoolteacher, studied law, traveled across continental Europe or joined an
acting troupe that was passing through Stratford. According to one 17th-century
account, he fled his hometown after poaching deer from a local politician’s
estate.
160. Shakespeare’s plays feature the first written
instances of hundreds of familiar terms.
William
Shakespeare is believed to have influenced the English language more than any
other writer in history, coining—or, at the very least, popularizing—terms and
phrases that still regularly crop up in everyday conversation. Examples include
the words “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for
Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As You
Like It”); and the expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle”
(“The Tempest”), “wild goose chase” (“Romeo and Juliet”) and “one fell swoop”
(“Macbeth”). He is also credited with inventing the given names Olivia,
Miranda, Jessica and Cordelia, which have become common over the years (as well
as others, such as Nerissa and Titania, which have not).
161. We probably don’t spell Shakespeare’s name
correctly—but, then again, neither did he.
Sources
from William Shakespeare’s lifetime spell his last name in more than 80
different ways, ranging from “Shappere” to “Shaxberd.” In the handful of
signatures that have survived, the Bard never spelled his own name “William
Shakespeare,” using variations or abbreviations such as “Willm Shakp,” “Willm
Shakspere” and “William Shakspeare” instead. However it’s spelled, Shakespeare
is thought to derive from the Old English words “schakken” (“to brandish”) and
“speer” (“spear”), and probably referred to a confrontational or argumentative
person.
162. Shakespeare’s epitaph wards off would-be grave
robbers with a curse.
William
Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, at the age of 52—not bad for an era when
the average life expectancy ranged between 30 and 40 years. We may never know
what killed him, although an acquaintance wrote that the Bard fell ill after a
night of heavy drinking with fellow playwright Ben Jonson. Despite his swift
demise, Shakespeare supposedly had the wherewithal to pen the epitaph over his
tomb, which is located inside a Stratford church. Intended to thwart the
numerous grave robbers who plundered England’s cemeteries at the time, the
verse reads: “Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbeare, / To dig the dust enclosed
here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, / And cursed be he that
moves my bones.” It must have done the trick, since Shakespeare’s remains have
yet to be disturbed.
163. Shakespeare wore a gold hoop earring—or so we
think.
Our
notion of William Shakespeare’s appearance comes from several 17th-century
portraits that may or may not have been painted while the Bard himself sat
behind the canvas. In one of the most famous depictions, known as the Chandos
portrait after its onetime owner, the subject has a full beard, a receding
hairline, loosened shirt-ties and a shiny gold hoop dangling from his left ear.
Even back in Shakespeare’s time, earrings on men were trendy hallmarks of a
bohemian lifestyle, as evidenced by images of other Elizabethan artists. The
fashion may have been inspired by sailors, who sported a single gold earring to
cover funeral costs in case they died at sea.
164. North America’s 200 million starlings have
Shakespeare to thank for their existence.
William
Shakespeare’s works contain more than 600 references to various types of birds,
from swans and doves to sparrows and turkeys. The starling—a lustrous songbird
with a gift for mimicry, native to Europe and western Asia—makes just one
appearance, in “Henry IV, Part 1.” In 1890 an American “bardolator” named
Eugene Schiffelin decided to import every kind of bird mentioned in
Shakespeare’s oeuvre but absent from the United States. As part of this project,
he released two flocks of 60 starlings in New York’s Central Park. One hundred
twenty years later, the highly adaptable species has taken over the skies,
becoming invasive and driving some native birds to the brink of extinction.
165. Some people think Shakespeare was a fraud.
How
did a provincial commoner who had never gone to college or ventured outside
Stratford become one of the most prolific, worldly and eloquent writers in
history? Even early in his career, Shakespeare was spinning tales that displayed
in-depth knowledge of international affairs, European capitals and history, as
well as familiarity with the royal court and high society. For this reason,
some theorists have suggested that one or several authors wishing to conceal
their true identity used the person of William Shakespeare as a front. Proposed
candidates include Edward De Vere, Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Mary
Sidney Herbert. Most scholars and literary historians remain skeptical about
this hypothesis, although many suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with
other playwrights.
(Source – Google Internet)
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COLLECTION BY
BY ANIL S AWAD
ENGLISH NET/SET
CONSULTANT
9922113364 (ALSO
WHATSAPP)
9423403368 (BSNL)
anilawad123@gmail.com
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