The Life Of Shakespere Essay, Research Paper

On the date of April; 23, 1564 a child by the name of William Shakespeare was born in Strapford-On- Avon to his well-off parents . As a young child William was a fortunate boy who attended grammar school, learned Greek, Latin and French poetry. Shakespeare had and is still respected for having one of the largest vocabularies ever known in history. Shakespeare got his first taste of theater at a very young age when performing troops would travel from town to town performing short plays for excited crowds on the tops of wagons. The quality of these plays were very poor so Shakespeare was enchanted by the idea of improving them and becoming a play writer and actor himself. Several years later William met a man by the name of Birbage who owned one of the first permanent theaters built and simply called ” The Theater”. One of William’s first jobs was as an actor at ” The Theater”. Theaters in the 1500’s were thought to be as devils work and could only be of evil. The city council was very much against the idea of having a permanent theater for three main reasons, one being that they were evil, increased crime (especially pick pocketing) and that diseases would spread rapidly with so many people being crowded together in one place. The Theater was going to be forced to close so during one night they took the whole theater apart and sailed the wood across the river where they would build what is known as ” The Globe”. To build ” The Globe” they also needed some donations to help buy more constuction materials. No one was willing to donate money to a theater so when Shakespeare presented the idea that if a theater did not work that it would be used as a luxurious bear baiting pit people gladly gave donations. Bear baiting was theaters main competition, Bear baiting was a vicious blood shedding game of dogs and bears gruesomely killing each other that people loved. In order to draw attention to theater the plays had to be very interesting and capture the imagination and attention of audiences. Shakespeare was very good at writing dramatic comedy and tragic plays that could captivate a whole audience for hours at a time with his sense of reality. Performers had to practically yell and over dramatize parts so that every one could be aware of what was going on since there was no speakers or binoculars back then. Shakespeare almost instantly become a favorite of play writers therefor he had tremendous success in people wanting to come to his plays, Shakespeare had to be aware that people were willing to steal his plays so he only made one copy of a play which was posted behind the stage for actors to read off and practice parts, this limited the chances of any one else making copies of his plays. During the success of “The Globe” the whole theater was burned down when a cannon was shot into the sky during a military scene and the cannon being misdirected toppled on the theater causing the disaster of “The Globe”, miraculously only one person received a minor injury.

In all of Shakespeare’s life he wrote what we know of 36 plays that are all recorded in four priceless world treasures books simply entitled the “Folio”. Today Strapford-On- Avon is a highly visited attraction to many tourist and Shakespeare will always be remembered as adding a huge contribution to English literature.