William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare is sometimes considered the greatest playwright of all
time. What is it that made Shakespeare so famous? In his plays he combined the
elements that people of his time loved and that people still like today. Many
things greatly influenced the writing of Shakespeare’s plays.
William Shakespeare had a very interesting life that undoubtedly greatly
affected his plays. He was born on April 23, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon and was
the third of eight children. Shakespeare went to grammar school and learned
Latin and literature. He went on and married a woman named Annie Hathaway on
November 27, 1582 and had three children. His first daughter was named Susanna
and was born on May 26, 1583 and then, two years later, he had twins-Hamnet and
Judith-that were born on February 2, 1585. By 1592, Shakespeare was a well-known
popular actor in the Elizabethan theatres. Without a doubt, this probably had a
significant effect on him when he later became a playwright. Shakespeare retired
completely in 1613. On April 23, 1616, three years after his retirement, and on
his fifty-second birthday, William Shakespeare died.
Shakespeare gathered ideas for some of his plays from other popular writers
of his time. Although this may not have made for one hundred percent
originality, his plays were interesting and became very popular. For the Winter’s
Tale, Shakespeare got the names for some of his characters from Sir Phillip
Sidney’s Arcadia. This was one of the most popular romances appealing to a
courtly audience. People of Shakespeare’s time enjoyed romances set in faraway lands, which was one of the reasons why people enjoyed Sir Phillip Sidney"
Arcadia so much. Such stories like, Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, Ahmadis of
Gaul, Palmerian of England, and many others may have also inspired The Winter’s
Tale.
Shakespeare was very smart to have taken ideas from other popular plays of
the time when writing The Winter’s Tale. Shakespeare used a very popular
technique of the time called pastoral romance. Pastoral romance is romance that
is not true to life and unreal. By using ideas from other popular plays and
using the popular writing technique of pastoral romance, Shakespeare’s the
Winter’s Tale, as many of his other plays, were sure to captivate the
audience.
Theatre in...
