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Shakespeare as an Actor and his “Lost Years” (1)

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Shakespeare as an Actor and his “Lost Years” (1)

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This article examines Shakespeare's "Lost Years", a seven-year period in which all accounts of that time are unreliable rendering that time non-existent or "lost". The first known biography that attempts to piece together the pieces came from Nicholas Rowe and consisted of anecdotes and gossip without any absolute validity. Accounts of the Lost Years blatantly and vaguely state that he left his family and children and left London for acting. A job which at the time was looked at as very ignoble. So it doesn't make since for him to leave. His disappearance in that time period still puzzles historians today.

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We know where Shakespeare grew up and what kind of family he grew up in, we know that he was married and had three children, one of whom died at the age of eleven. We know when he was first seen in London, when he retired to Stratford and when Shakespeare died. We know some details of his family - his parents, his siblings, and his daughters' husbands. But regarding the man himself, there is a gap in the timeline scholars have constructed - a seven-year period during which we know nothing at all about where he was and what he was doing, although there is much, unsupported, conjecture about it. Those years have been labeled 'the lost years.'

We see him as a young man, married with three children and living in Stratford. Seven years later we find him working in London as an actor, playwright and part-owner of a theatre. Nobody knows what he was doing during the years in between. It wasn't until 1709, nearly a century after his death that we have the first attempt at a biography of the writer, by Nicholas Rowe. Most of the source material for that consisted of anecdotes and gossip without any documented evidence. Shakespeare's direct line and all those who had known him personally had died well before that so there was no-one to help create a picture of him.

Accounts of Shakespeare's activities during those lost years are confused and, at times, totally unbelievable. Why he left his wife and children and went to London is a question that is tantalising and unanswerable. And why acting? It was an occupation associated with disreputable, beggarly men who were regarded as the lowest of the low. Shakespeare came from a respectable background and would have been expected to follow in his father's footsteps and take up a trade in Stratford, and perhaps enter into local political life, thereby becoming a respectable citizen like his father. And yet, here he was, in a strange and, to some, terrifying, place, associating with down-market people. One theory is that he fled from Stratford due to poaching activities that had got him into trouble and he ran away to avoid prosecution.

Possibly. But why London? London players often toured and it is known that Stratford had frequent visits from theatre companies. Given that Shakespeare turned out to be the greatest playwright in history it is reasonable to think that he would have been interested in plays and their performances from an early age. Perhaps he went to a performance, got chatting to members of the company and, wanting to get away from Stratford, joined them and began his acting apprenticeship at that point. Leaving his wife and children looks like a fairly desperate move so that lends credibility to the idea that he was in a hurry to get out of town. And then we don't hear anything about him because it would have taken him quite a few years to emerge as a playwright worthy of note. Being an intelligent young man with a huge talent for writing, meeting so many hard-working, also talented, writers gathered into a closed community in London's theatreland, he was given the opportunity to join them and work with them. And then, seven years after joining them, we hear of him as a blossoming London dramatist and we begin to have sightings of him and comments about him from fellow actors and playwrights. And the rest is history.

However, speculation about those years abound. Theories range from his having been a teacher, having enlisted in the army and having been in Italy, but none of them are based on any evidence and have no credibility. Such theories assert, as evidenced in his plays, that he knew a lot about such things as military affairs and Italy, but he is also known to have been a great reader so knowledge about those things could have been acquired by reading, in the same way as his very extensive knowledge of history was acquired by his extensive reading.

Talk of his having been a soldier or a teacher or an Italian tourist doesn't make sense as we should remember that in order to produce the incredible creative output that we know Shakespeare produced means that he must have done very little else but write plays. And it isn't possible suddenly to become such a dazzling star out of nowhere without a lot of groundwork, so he must have been working hard at writing and learning about theatre writing during those seven years. His native poetic genius is one thing but channeling it into a commercial mode - bestselling plays that would bring the audiences in droves - requires years of hard work.

The conclusion to the problem of the lost years can only be that we don't know. However, it was during those years that he transformed himself from a country youth into a sophisticated playwright and businessman so it is highly probable that those years were spent in London learning his trade as a writer.

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We know where Shakespeare grew up and what kind of family he grew up in, we know that he was married and had three children, one of whom died at the age of eleven. We know when he was first seen in London, when he retired to Stratford and when Shakespeare died.

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Shakespeare as an Actor and his “Lost Years” (2)

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Shakespeare as an Actor and his “Lost Years” (2)

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This article also examines many theories popular for what happened to Shakespeare during this time. Some believe that he took the job of a teacher, perhaps that's why his literature was so magnificent. Others believe he enlisted in the army and has been in Italy. Yet all these theories are based on loose correlation and not causation. The theories are built around the fact that some themes and details were eerily incorporated into his play which could've possibly been known from his experience. Or simply he acquired it by reading, in the same way as his very extensive knowledge of history was acquired by his extensive reading. Perhaps ironically the greatest mystery he created was his own life for we will never be 100% sure.

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We know where Shakespeare grew up and what kind of family he grew up in, we know that he was married and had three children, one of whom died at the age of eleven. We know when he was first seen in London, when he retired to Stratford and when Shakespeare died. We know some details of his family - his parents, his siblings, and his daughters' husbands. But regarding the man himself, there is a gap in the timeline scholars have constructed - a seven-year period during which we know nothing at all about where he was and what he was doing, although there is much, unsupported, conjecture about it. Those years have been labeled 'the lost years.'

We see him as a young man, married with three children and living in Stratford. Seven years later we find him working in London as an actor, playwright and part-owner of a theatre. Nobody knows what he was doing during the years in between. It wasn't until 1709, nearly a century after his death that we have the first attempt at a biography of the writer, by Nicholas Rowe. Most of the source material for that consisted of anecdotes and gossip without any documented evidence. Shakespeare's direct line and all those who had known him personally had died well before that so there was no-one to help create a picture of him.

Accounts of Shakespeare's activities during those lost years are confused and, at times, totally unbelievable. Why he left his wife and children and went to London is a question that is tantalising and unanswerable. And why acting? It was an occupation associated with disreputable, beggarly men who were regarded as the lowest of the low. Shakespeare came from a respectable background and would have been expected to follow in his father's footsteps and take up a trade in Stratford, and perhaps enter into local political life, thereby becoming a respectable citizen like his father. And yet, here he was, in a strange and, to some, terrifying, place, associating with down-market people. One theory is that he fled from Stratford due to poaching activities that had got him into trouble and he ran away to avoid prosecution.

Possibly. But why London? London players often toured and it is known that Stratford had frequent visits from theatre companies. Given that Shakespeare turned out to be the greatest playwright in history it is reasonable to think that he would have been interested in plays and their performances from an early age. Perhaps he went to a performance, got chatting to members of the company and, wanting to get away from Stratford, joined them and began his acting apprenticeship at that point. Leaving his wife and children looks like a fairly desperate move so that lends credibility to the idea that he was in a hurry to get out of town. And then we don't hear anything about him because it would have taken him quite a few years to emerge as a playwright worthy of note. Being an intelligent young man with a huge talent for writing, meeting so many hard-working, also talented, writers gathered into a closed community in London's theatreland, he was given the opportunity to join them and work with them. And then, seven years after joining them, we hear of him as a blossoming London dramatist and we begin to have sightings of him and comments about him from fellow actors and playwrights. And the rest is history.

However, speculation about those years abound. Theories range from his having been a teacher, having enlisted in the army and having been in Italy, but none of them are based on any evidence and have no credibility. Such theories assert, as evidenced in his plays, that he knew a lot about such things as military affairs and Italy, but he is also known to have been a great reader so knowledge about those things could have been acquired by reading, in the same way as his very extensive knowledge of history was acquired by his extensive reading.

Talk of his having been a soldier or a teacher or an Italian tourist doesn't make sense as we should remember that in order to produce the incredible creative output that we know Shakespeare produced means that he must have done very little else but write plays. And it isn't possible suddenly to become such a dazzling star out of nowhere without a lot of groundwork, so he must have been working hard at writing and learning about theatre writing during those seven years. His native poetic genius is one thing but channeling it into a commercial mode - bestselling plays that would bring the audiences in droves - requires years of hard work.

The conclusion to the problem of the lost years can only be that we don't know. However, it was during those years that he transformed himself from a country youth into a sophisticated playwright and businessman so it is highly probable that those years were spent in London learning his trade as a writer.

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We know where Shakespeare grew up and what kind of family he grew up in, we know that he was married and had three children, one of whom died at the age of eleven. We know when he was first seen in London, when he retired to Stratford and when Shakespeare died.

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It is quite universally known in the World of Literature that we owe Shakespeare for his many contributions to the English language. His impact was significant but how significant? Many, debate the accuracy and legitimacy of the number of words created. Some say as high as 1700 while the lowest say 420 words came directly from Shakespeare. We can't be sure because the English language at that time was quite a mess and some of the words Shakespeare used could have been common for his time but lost to history. Although we may not know for sure his true impact we do know that he truly did make a change.

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Inventors get a lot of love. Thomas Edison is held up as a tinkering genius. Steve Jobs is considered a saint in Silicon Valley. Hedy Lamar, meanwhile, may have been a Hollywood star but a new book makes clear her real legacy is in inventing the foundations of encryption. But while all these people invented things, it's possible to invent something even more fundamental. Take Shakespeare: he invented words. And he invented more words-words that continue to shape the English language-than anyone else. By a long shot.

But what does it mean to "invent" words? How many words did Shakespeare invent? What kind of words? And which words are those exactly? Rather than just listing all the words Shakespeare invented, this post digs deeper into the how and the why (or "wherefore") of Shakespeare's literary creations.

How Many Words Did Shakespeare Invent?

1700! My, what a perfectly round number! Such a large and perfectly round number is misleading at best, and is more likely just wrong-there is in fact a bunch of debate about the accuracy of this number.

So who's to blame for the uncertainty around the number of words Shakespeare invented? For starters, we can blame the Oxford English Dictionary. This famous dictionary (often called the OED for short) is famous, in part, because it provides incredibly thorough definitions of words, but also because it identifies the first time each word actually appeared in written English. Shakespeare appears as the first documented user of more words than any other writer, making it convenient to assume that he was the creator of all of those words.

In reality, though, many of these words were probably part of everyday discourse in Elizabethan England. So it's highly likely that Shakespeare didn't invent all of these words; he just produced the first preserved record of some of them. Ryan Buda, a writer at Letterpile, explains it like this:

But most likely, the word was in use for some time before it is seen in the writings of Shakespeare. The fact that the word first appears there does not necessarily mean that he made it up himself, but rather, he could have borrowed it from his peers or from conversations he had with others.

However, while Shakespeare might have been just the first person to write down some words, he definitely did create many words himself, plenty of which we still use to this day. The list a ways down below contains the 420 words that almost certainly originated from Shakespeare himself.

But all this leads to another question. What does it even mean to "invent" a word?

How Did Shakespeare Invent Words?

Some writers invent words in the same way Thomas Edison invented light bulbs: they cobble together bits of sound and create entirely new words without any meaning or relation to existing words. Lewis Carroll does in the first stanza of his "Jabberwocky" poem:

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Carroll totally made up words like "brillig," "slithy," "toves," and "mimsy"; the first stanza alone contains 11 of these made-up words, which are known as nonce words. Words like these aren't just meaningless, they're also disposable, intended to be used just once.

Shakespeare did not create nonce words. He took an entirely different approach. When he invented words, he did it by working with existing words and altering them in new ways. More specifically, he would create new words by:

Conjoining two words

Changing verbs into adjectives

Changing nouns into verbs

Adding prefixes to words

Adding suffixes to words

The most exhaustive take on Shakespeare's invented words comes from a nice little 874-page book entitled The Shakespeare Key by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke.Here's how they explain Shakespeare's literary innovations:

Shakespeare, with the right and might of a true poet, and with his peculiar royal privilege as king of all poets, has minted several words that deserve to become current in our language. He coined them for his own special use to express his own special meanings in his own special passages; but they are so expressive and so well framed to be exponents of certain particulars in meanings common to us all, that they deserve to become generally adopted and used.

We can call what Shakespeare did to create new words "minting," "coining" or "inventing." Whatever term we use to describe it, Shakespeare was doing things with words that no one had ever thought to do before, and that's what matters.

Shakespeare Didn't Invent Nonsense Words

Though today readers often need the help of modern English translations to fully grasp the nuance and meaning of Shakespeare's language, Shakespeare's contemporary audience would have had a much easier go of it. Why? Two main reasons.

First, Shakespeare was part of a movement in English literature that introduced more prose into plays. (Earlier plays were written primarily in rhyming verse.) Shakespeare's prose was similar to the style and cadence of everyday conversation in Elizabethan England, making it natural for members of his audience to understand.

In addition, the words he created were comprehensible intuitively because, once again, they were often built on the foundations of already existing words, and were not just unintelligible combinations of sound. Take "congreeted" for example. The prefix "con" means with, and "greet" means to receive or acknowledge someone.

It therefore wasn't a huge stretch for people to understand this line:

That, face to face and royal eye to eye.
You have congreeted.

( Henry V, Act 5, Scene 2)

Shakespeare also made nouns into verbs. He was the first person to use friend as a verb, predating Mark Zuckerberg by about 395 years.

And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do, to express his love and friending to you

( Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5)

Other times, despite his proclivity for making compound words, Shakespeare reached into his vast Latin vocabulary for loanwords.

His heart fracted and corroborate.

( Henry V, Act 2, Scene 1)

Here the Latin word fractus means "broken." Take away the - us and add in the English suffix - ed, anda new English word is born.

New Words Are Nothing New

Shakespeare certainly wasn't the first person to make up words. It's actually entirely commonplace for new words to enter a language. We're adding new words and terms to our "official" dictionaries every year. In the past few years, the Merriam-Webster dictionary has added several new words and phrases, like these:

So inventing words wasn't something unique to Shakespeare or Elizabethan England. It's still going on all the time.

But Shakespeare Invented a Lot of New Words

So why did Shakespeare have to make up hundreds of new words? For starters, English was smaller in Shakespeare's time. The language contained many fewer words, and not enough for a literary genius like Shakespeare. How many words? No one can be sure. One estimates, one from Encyclopedia Americana, puts the number at 50,000-60,000, likely not including medical and scientific terms.

During Shakespeare's time, the number of words in the language began to grow. Edmund Weiner, deputy chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, explains it this way:

The vocabulary of English expanded greatly during the early modern period. Writers were well aware of this and argued about it. Some were in favour of loanwords to express new concepts, especially from Latin. Others advocated the use of existing English words, or new compounds of them, for this purpose. Others advocated the revival of obsolete words and the adoption of regional dialect.

In Shakespeare's collected writings, he used a total of 31,534 different words. Whatever the size of the English lexicon at the time, Shakespeare was in command of a substantial portion of it. Jason Kottke estimates that Shakespeare knew around 66,534 words, which suggests Shakespeare was pushing the boundaries of English vocab as he knew it. He had to make up some new words.

The Complete List of Words Shakespeare Invented

Compiling a definitive list of every word that Shakespeare ever invented is impossible. But creating a list of the words that Shakespeare almost certainly invented can be done. We generated list of words below by starting with the words that Shakespeare was the first to use in written language, and then applying research that has identified which words were probably in everyday use during Shakespeare's time. The result are 420 bona fide words minted, coined, and invented by Shakespeare, from "academe" to "zany":

Words That Shakespeare Invented - Resource List

Words, words, words.

( Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2)

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The 420 Words That Shakespeare Invented - The LitCharts Blog

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Inventors get a lot of love. Thomas Edison is held up as a tinkering genius. Steve Jobs is considered a saint in Silicon Valley. Hedy Lamar, meanwhile, may have been a Hollywood star but a new book makes clear her real legacy is in inventing the foundations of encryption.

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This article also explores the method and "invention" of new words for both writers of this time and Shakespeare's unique approach. Writers of the time such as Lewis Carroll were the first to use what the article describes as "nonce words" which "aren’t just meaningless, they’re also disposable, intended to be used just once". Words like brillig, slithy, toves, and mimsy were all very much made up and had no significant meaning outside of the poem's context. On the other hand, Shakespeare was ingenious in his approach he used a mesh of conjoining two words, changing verbs into adjectives, changing nouns into verbs, adding prefixes to words, and adding suffixes to words. All brilliant and clever ways he

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Inventors get a lot of love. Thomas Edison is held up as a tinkering genius. Steve Jobs is considered a saint in Silicon Valley. Hedy Lamar, meanwhile, may have been a Hollywood star but a new book makes clear her real legacy is in inventing the foundations of encryption. But while all these people invented things, it's possible to invent something even more fundamental. Take Shakespeare: he invented words. And he invented more words-words that continue to shape the English language-than anyone else. By a long shot.

But what does it mean to "invent" words? How many words did Shakespeare invent? What kind of words? And which words are those exactly? Rather than just listing all the words Shakespeare invented, this post digs deeper into the how and the why (or "wherefore") of Shakespeare's literary creations.

How Many Words Did Shakespeare Invent?

1700! My, what a perfectly round number! Such a large and perfectly round number is misleading at best, and is more likely just wrong-there is in fact a bunch of debate about the accuracy of this number.

So who's to blame for the uncertainty around the number of words Shakespeare invented? For starters, we can blame the Oxford English Dictionary. This famous dictionary (often called the OED for short) is famous, in part, because it provides incredibly thorough definitions of words, but also because it identifies the first time each word actually appeared in written English. Shakespeare appears as the first documented user of more words than any other writer, making it convenient to assume that he was the creator of all of those words.

In reality, though, many of these words were probably part of everyday discourse in Elizabethan England. So it's highly likely that Shakespeare didn't invent all of these words; he just produced the first preserved record of some of them. Ryan Buda, a writer at Letterpile, explains it like this:

But most likely, the word was in use for some time before it is seen in the writings of Shakespeare. The fact that the word first appears there does not necessarily mean that he made it up himself, but rather, he could have borrowed it from his peers or from conversations he had with others.

However, while Shakespeare might have been just the first person to write down some words, he definitely did create many words himself, plenty of which we still use to this day. The list a ways down below contains the 420 words that almost certainly originated from Shakespeare himself.

But all this leads to another question. What does it even mean to "invent" a word?

How Did Shakespeare Invent Words?

Some writers invent words in the same way Thomas Edison invented light bulbs: they cobble together bits of sound and create entirely new words without any meaning or relation to existing words. Lewis Carroll does in the first stanza of his "Jabberwocky" poem:

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Carroll totally made up words like "brillig," "slithy," "toves," and "mimsy"; the first stanza alone contains 11 of these made-up words, which are known as nonce words. Words like these aren't just meaningless, they're also disposable, intended to be used just once.

Shakespeare did not create nonce words. He took an entirely different approach. When he invented words, he did it by working with existing words and altering them in new ways. More specifically, he would create new words by:

Conjoining two words

Changing verbs into adjectives

Changing nouns into verbs

Adding prefixes to words

Adding suffixes to words

The most exhaustive take on Shakespeare's invented words comes from a nice little 874-page book entitled The Shakespeare Key by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke.Here's how they explain Shakespeare's literary innovations:

Shakespeare, with the right and might of a true poet, and with his peculiar royal privilege as king of all poets, has minted several words that deserve to become current in our language. He coined them for his own special use to express his own special meanings in his own special passages; but they are so expressive and so well framed to be exponents of certain particulars in meanings common to us all, that they deserve to become generally adopted and used.

We can call what Shakespeare did to create new words "minting," "coining" or "inventing." Whatever term we use to describe it, Shakespeare was doing things with words that no one had ever thought to do before, and that's what matters.

Shakespeare Didn't Invent Nonsense Words

Though today readers often need the help of modern English translations to fully grasp the nuance and meaning of Shakespeare's language, Shakespeare's contemporary audience would have had a much easier go of it. Why? Two main reasons.

First, Shakespeare was part of a movement in English literature that introduced more prose into plays. (Earlier plays were written primarily in rhyming verse.) Shakespeare's prose was similar to the style and cadence of everyday conversation in Elizabethan England, making it natural for members of his audience to understand.

In addition, the words he created were comprehensible intuitively because, once again, they were often built on the foundations of already existing words, and were not just unintelligible combinations of sound. Take "congreeted" for example. The prefix "con" means with, and "greet" means to receive or acknowledge someone.

It therefore wasn't a huge stretch for people to understand this line:

That, face to face and royal eye to eye.
You have congreeted.

( Henry V, Act 5, Scene 2)

Shakespeare also made nouns into verbs. He was the first person to use friend as a verb, predating Mark Zuckerberg by about 395 years.

And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do, to express his love and friending to you

( Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5)

Other times, despite his proclivity for making compound words, Shakespeare reached into his vast Latin vocabulary for loanwords.

His heart fracted and corroborate.

( Henry V, Act 2, Scene 1)

Here the Latin word fractus means "broken." Take away the - us and add in the English suffix - ed, anda new English word is born.

New Words Are Nothing New

Shakespeare certainly wasn't the first person to make up words. It's actually entirely commonplace for new words to enter a language. We're adding new words and terms to our "official" dictionaries every year. In the past few years, the Merriam-Webster dictionary has added several new words and phrases, like these:

So inventing words wasn't something unique to Shakespeare or Elizabethan England. It's still going on all the time.

But Shakespeare Invented a Lot of New Words

So why did Shakespeare have to make up hundreds of new words? For starters, English was smaller in Shakespeare's time. The language contained many fewer words, and not enough for a literary genius like Shakespeare. How many words? No one can be sure. One estimates, one from Encyclopedia Americana, puts the number at 50,000-60,000, likely not including medical and scientific terms.

During Shakespeare's time, the number of words in the language began to grow. Edmund Weiner, deputy chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, explains it this way:

The vocabulary of English expanded greatly during the early modern period. Writers were well aware of this and argued about it. Some were in favour of loanwords to express new concepts, especially from Latin. Others advocated the use of existing English words, or new compounds of them, for this purpose. Others advocated the revival of obsolete words and the adoption of regional dialect.

In Shakespeare's collected writings, he used a total of 31,534 different words. Whatever the size of the English lexicon at the time, Shakespeare was in command of a substantial portion of it. Jason Kottke estimates that Shakespeare knew around 66,534 words, which suggests Shakespeare was pushing the boundaries of English vocab as he knew it. He had to make up some new words.

The Complete List of Words Shakespeare Invented

Compiling a definitive list of every word that Shakespeare ever invented is impossible. But creating a list of the words that Shakespeare almost certainly invented can be done. We generated list of words below by starting with the words that Shakespeare was the first to use in written language, and then applying research that has identified which words were probably in everyday use during Shakespeare's time. The result are 420 bona fide words minted, coined, and invented by Shakespeare, from "academe" to "zany":

Words That Shakespeare Invented - Resource List

Words, words, words.

( Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2)

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The 420 Words That Shakespeare Invented - The LitCharts Blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Inventors get a lot of love. Thomas Edison is held up as a tinkering genius. Steve Jobs is considered a saint in Silicon Valley. Hedy Lamar, meanwhile, may have been a Hollywood star but a new book makes clear her real legacy is in inventing the foundations of encryption.

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Life during Shakespeare's time was an extremity of pure repulsion and spectacle. The City of Tudor London to say it was disgusting is an understatement. London, according to the article, had "streets (that) were narrow, cobbled, slippery with the slime of refuse". All of the living spaces were jammed together with no drainage causing the disgust to just indulge in itself making London seem in such a poor state. However also according to the article, a report from a Venetian envoy in 1500 described the place "with a wonderful quantity of wrought silver" and that it "abounds with every article of luxury, as well as with the necessities of life" so in some way or form was "livable".

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From Shakespeare, Anthony Burgess, 1978:

...T he city meant roughly what we mean by the City of London--a crammed commercial huddle that smells the river. The Thames was everybody's thoroughfare. The Londoners of Chaucer's time had had difficulty bridging it; the Elizabethans had achieved only London Bridge. You crossed normally by boat-taxi, the boatmen calling 'Eastward-ho' and 'Westward-ho'. There was commerce on the river, but also gilded barges, sometimes with royalty in them. Chained to the banks there were sometimes criminals, who had to abide the washing of three tides. The river had to look on other emblems of the brutality of the age--the severed heads on Temple Bar and on London Bridge itself.

The streets were narrow, cobbled, slippery with the slime of refuse. Houses were crammed together, and there were a lot of furtive alleys. Chamber pots, or jordans, were emptied out of windows. There was no drainage. Fleet Ditch stank to make a man throw up his gorge. But the City had its natural cleansers--the kites, graceful birds that made their nests of rags and refuse in the forks of trees. They scavenged, eating anything with relish. ... And countering the bad, man-made odors, the smells of the countryside floated in. There were rosy milkmaids in the early morning streets, and sellers of newly gathered cresses.

It was a city of loud noises--hooves and raw coach wheels on the cobbles, the yells of traders, the brawling of apprentices, scuffles to keep the wall and not be thrown into the oozy kennel. Even normal conversation must have been loud since everybody was, by our standards, tipsy. Nobody drank water, and tea had not yet come in. Ale was the standard tipple, and it was strong. Ale for breakfast was a good means of starting the day in euphoria or truculence. Ale for dinner refocillated the wasted tissues of the morning. Ale for supper ensured a heavy snoring repose. The better sort drank wine, which promoted good fellowship and led to sword fights. It was not what we would call a sober city.

From the report of a Venetian envoy, about 1500:

It abounds with every article of luxury, as well as with the necessities of life. But the most remarkable thing in London is the wonderful quantity of wrought silver. I do not allude to that in private houses, but to the shops of London. In one single street, named the Strand, leading to St Paul's, there are fifty-two goldsmith's shops, so rich and full of silver vessels, great and small, that in all the shops in Milan, Rome, Venice, and Florence put together, I do not think there would be found so many of the magnificence that are to be seen in London. And these vessels are all either salt cellars or drinking cups or basins to hold water for the hands, for they eat off that fine tin [ pewter] which is a little inferior to silver.

These great riches of London are not occasioned by its inhabitants being noblemen or gentlemen; being all, on the contrary, persons of low degree, and artificers who have congregated there from all parts of the island, and from Flanders and from every other place.

A London and Westminster Directory
A Map of Tudor London
Shopping in London

MaggiRos
26 March 2008 mps

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From Shakespeare, Anthony Burgess, 1978: ...T he city meant roughly what we mean by the City of London--a crammed commercial huddle that smells the river. The Thames was everybody's thoroughfare. The Londoners of Chaucer's time had had difficulty bridging it; the Elizabethans had achieved only London Bridge.

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This article also expands the conversation about Shakespeare's genres. It explains that perhaps regarding it as a subgenre Shakespeare wrote of Roman Plays. For example one of his most esteemed plays "Antony and Cleopatra", as the article states "shows the ultimate genius of a mind that doesn’t respect classification boxes in that it produces a real tragic feeling from a completely comic structure." meaning that although it is produced on a very comedic element it allows it's respective characters to plunge into a tragedy. This play is only the first of 4 "Roman plays" Shakespeare wrote, of which all are enticing and intricate.

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What types of plays did Shakespeare write?

There have been many attempts to classify Shakespeare's play types, using labels to place them into categories to define or restrict the ways in which we think about each play. Traditionally Shakespeare play types are defined as:

with a number of additional categories proposed over the years:

Here are the types of Shakespeare plays grouped by the standard comedy, history and tragedy classifications:

Shakespeare's Comedy Plays

Shakespeare's comedies are generally identifiable as plays full of fun, irony and dazzling wordplay. They also abound in disguises and mistaken identities, with very convoluted plots that are difficult to follow with very contrived endings.
Read more about Shakespeare's Comedy plays

Shakespeare's Tragedy Plays

The plays grouped as Shakespeare tragedies follow the Aristotelian model of a noble, flawed protagonist (the tragic hero) who makes a mistake and suffers a fall from his position, before the normal order is somehow resumed. These plays (and many others) are filled with tragic Shakespeare moments:

When it comes to Shakespeare tragedies and Shakespeare comedies there are a broad range of dramatic types in each and, whatever those two terms may mean, none of the plays fits comfortably into either of them.

Antony and Cleopatra, shows the ultimate genius of a mind that doesn't respect classification boxes in that it produces a real tragic feeling from a completely comic structure. That play alone confounds the efforts of all the scholars bent on classifying Shakespeare's dramas.

The Merchant of Venice, for example, traditionally a comedy, features Shylock, a tragic figure in every way, while the comic elements are only there to frame and heighten the tragic feeling. On the other hand, one of the 'great' tragic plays,

A Midsummer Night's Dream, with its forbidden love, threatens to fall into a dark chasm of unhappiness for the characters but survives that danger amidst hilarity and joy.

Much Ado About Nothing teeters on the brink of darkness but then comes out of it and proceeds towards a felicitous climax.

(Read about more Romeo and Juliet with the same theme of forbidden love seems to be developing towards a joyful conclusion but suddenly and unexpectedly falls into the deepest darkness. Romeo and Juliet themes.)

Read more about Shakespeare's Tragedy plays

Shakespeare's History Plays

The history plays normally refer to the ten plays that cover English history from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, and the 1399-1485 period in particular. Each play is named after, and focuses on, the reigning monarch of the period.

Certainly, we can justify calling the Henry plays, the Richard plays and King John Shakespeare's 'history plays' although that would be the most superficial kind of description, given the variety of action, mood, feeling, tone and structure within and between the plays.
Read more about Shakespeare's History plays

Shakespeare's Roman Plays

The category of Shakespeare's 'Roman plays' is simply a convenient description that scholars and critics have given to the four plays that Shakespeare set in ancient Rome - although Shakespeare experts don't always agree on this.
Read more about Shakespeare's Roman plays

Additional Shakespeare Play Categories

The original classification of Shakespeare's plays - ' Comedies', ' Tragedies', ' Histories' and ' Roman plays' - don't adequately describe all of Shakespeare's plays, and scholars have come up with more names to do so. A nineteenth century critic, F.S. Boas, desperate to classify everything, coined the term 'problem plays' for some of them because of the difficulty he had squeezing them into any of the conventional slots. The plays Shakespeare wrote between 1601 and 1603 - All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida - seemed confusing to him as they lurch back and forth between dark drama and a light comic tone.

The most widely used categories are ' Romance plays', ' Problem plays', and Shakespeare's 'Tragicomedy Plays'. The plays in those categories have much in common, but there are enough differences to prevent some of them to fall into all three. The Winter's Tale, for example is a play that does have the features of all three, however. The Winter's Tale is usually put into the 'problem play' category as well.

Other people have also placed the Bard's plays into other categories, such as ' Lost plays', ' Roman plays', ' Romance plays", ' Tragicomedy plays', ' Problem plays' and ' Masque plays '.

Here you can see the generally accepted categorization of these play types, along with further information:

Shakespeare's Lost Plays

Shortly after Shakepeare's death what is known as the First Folio was printed. We know, now, that he wrote several plays that were not included in that volume - plays that are often referred to as Shakespeare's 'lost plays'.
Read more about Shakespeare's Lost plays

Shakespeare's Masque Plays

A masque is a form of courtly entertainment containing music, dancing, singing and acting out a story. It was popular in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although it originated in Italy.
Read more about Shakespeare's Masque plays

Shakespeare's Problem Plays

In the problem plays the journey we take when we watch them we take on a dark road. While most of the protagonists end up in a reasonable place they are almost irretrievably scarred by the experience we have watched them endure.

All's Well That Ends Well
Measure for Measure
Troilus and Cressida
The Winter's Tale
Read more about Shakespeare's Problem plays

Shakespeare's Romance Plays

Shakespeare's later plays had elements of comedy and tragedy as well as having a wider view of life. They have become a new classification, named Romance plays by scholars.
Read more about Shakespeare's Romance plays

Shakespeare's Tragicomedy Plays

A tragicomedy is a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy, although it has the features of both. Whilst plays that fall between these two stools of tragedy and comedy are generally referred to as Shakespeare's tragedies, they are sometimes referred to as ' Problem plays ', making the whole area of play classification something of a grey area.
Read more about Shakespeare's Tragicomedy plays

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Shakespeare's Play Types: Comedies, Tragedies & Histories✔️

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What types of plays did Shakespeare write? There have been many attempts to classify Shakespeare's play types, using labels to place them into categories to define or restrict the ways in which we think about each play.

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The London streets were crowded and very loud, people were hustling for their jobs and such while traders were screaming. This article shows how "Hooves clacking on the stone, wooden wheels bouncing around, and people yelling were all common sounds." for Tudor London. During that time getting drunk at alehouses, bear baiting, gambling dens, and brothels was not uncommon nor frowned upon. It was truly a mess. Water also wasn't the main drinking source for the people of that time, instead, its substitute was Ale making people, what we would consider now, "tipsy".

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The cobble streets of London in Elizabethan times were narrow and crooked. The slippery slime from the refuse of people added a not-so-silver lining in the walking space. People were hustling and bustling. They were the equivalent of New York, except worse.

The housing was mainly apartment buildings, all crammed together in odd arrangements on the street. There seemed to be little planning with much expansion. People were migrating in and out of various building and shops constantly.

There was no drainage or sewage, so what one stepped in was most likely what someone had once ate. Chamber pot feces were tossed out windows and onto the shuffling people below. The only source of cleaning was the scavenging birds.

Hooves clacking on the stone, wooden wheels bouncing around, and people yelling were all common sounds. Urban environments were obnoxious, to put it nicely. Apprentices yelled and people laughed all with no common courtesy for the rest of the citizens.

Common street festivities consisted of getting drunk at alehouses, bear baiting, gambling dens, and brothels. All of which were not even frowned upon.

A drink to quench your thirst was not the traditional water. Wine literally ran like water in these times. Only for the rich, that is. Middle class people were always drinking some type of alcohol, and being tipsy was an everyday occurrence. In a city of 130,000 - 150,000, most of them drunk, the city was most definitely not sober.

Cities contained the best and worst living. There were luxurious rich people up in palaces. But a few blocks down was a starving beggar, pickpocketing whatever he could law his paws on (Secara).

This is a map of Elizabethan London. It does not look very large, yet this was the largest city in Europe at the time. As you can see, everything comes from and is around the Thames River. This was the central part of the city where trade happened and people got water and so forth. The streets were very condensed in the river area, and a lot went on in those small places. There is, of course, the country side where the farmers and field workers stayed. The Globe Theatre is located, on this map, across the river and right off the road from the London Bridge ("Elizabethan London")

The people of London were not the smartest people in the world. Most, in fact, were illitarerate. Only the extreamly welathy ones had enough money for private schooling. Now a day, we have billboards to advertise and tell us about upcoming events. People then could not read, so that did not work. They used flags and symbols to communicate to the people. The Globe Theatre used flags to tell people that a play was coming that day. A different color meant a different type of play. Black was tragedy, white was comedy and red was history. People would always be flocking outside the Globe Theatre, as it was very busy around there. Many vendors sold merchendise and buyers were all over the place. It was very crowded, and people could see the flag. They then determined the whether to see the play or not. This attratced people and could let them know what was happeneing ("Globe Theatre")

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The cobble streets of London in Elizabethan times were narrow and crooked. The slippery slime from the refuse of people added a not-so-silver lining in the walking space. People were hustling and bustling. They were the equivalent of New York, except worse. The housing was mainly apartment buildings, all crammed together in odd arrangements on the street.

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This article deeply delves into the grey area of William Shakespeare's plays' genres. They all were not very standard for the time. Although we can safely assume that all of them incorporated at least one of the apparent, tragedy, comedy, and history, they are very inconveniently mushed. For example,  "Much Ado About Nothing" begins like a comedy but then switches into a tragedy. On the other hand, quite ludicrously, in his tragedies, some passages or characters have the job of lightening the mood, even though the tone of the overall play is quite serious.

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How to Know if It’s a Tragedy, Comedy, or History

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William Shakespeare’s plays were put into three categories when they were first compiled: tragedies, comedies, and histories; they’ve changed in time.