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William Shakespeare: The Life and Times Of (FULL MOVIE)

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William Shakespeare - Playwright | Mini Bio | BIO

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Music in the Elizabethan era - Wikipedia

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During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), English art and high culture reached a pinnacle known as the height of the English renaissance. Elizabethan music experienced a shift in popularity from sacred to secular music and the rise of instrumental music. Professional musicians were employed by the Church of England, the nobility, and the rising middle-class.

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Listen to the Music of Shakespeare's Time

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Listen to the Music of Shakespeare's Time

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English Renaissance Music - Shakespeare´s Time (Album)

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Elizabethan Dance - Dance and Music in Elizabethan Era

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After millennia of Dark Ages, the culture of Europe dance remained stagnant and undeveloped, but all that changed with the arrival of 13th century. During that time, strong economic growth, establishment of safe trade routes, and technological advancements finally enabled the birth of the high class of Italian merchants and nobles whoto set their sights on art, music and dance. After their initial steps in creating 13th century Renaissance of European continent, their efforts quickly spread across the western lands, finally coming to the England where dance was accepted with open arms.

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We could probably keep running blog posts about Shakespeare's use of words from now until the end of the internet and never run out of new gems to mine from his illustrious back catalog.

It all depends which tack you want to take. There are the insults, the terms, words and phrases he minted that have become common parts of the English language, and now this, a collection of poetic ways to say the sort of things people usually employ slang to describe.

Which means quite a lot of big talk and some really creative nicknames. Your job is to bring them back into active service:

"I'll tickle your catastrophe"
From: Henry IV Part 2
Translation: I'll not only bring about your downfall, I'll enjoy it too.

"Fustilarian"
From: Henry IV Part 2
Translation: A smelly old woman.

"Candle-waster"
From: Much Ado About Nothing
Translation: Someone who works or reads late into the night, a burner of the midnight oil.

Source: Shakespeare's words

See more:
WATCH: If Shakespearean Insults Were Used Today...
12 British Actors Reading Shakespeare for Shakespeare Day
9 TV Characters Who Owe It All to Shakespeare
Personality Quiz: Which Shakespearean Tragedy Art Thou?

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15 Shakespearean Slang Terms We Should Use Today | BBC America

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We could probably keep running blog posts about Shakespeare's use of words from now until the end of the internet and never run out of new gems to mine from his illustrious back catalog. It all depends which tack you want to take.

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Language: 20 Words We Owe to Shakespeare

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Language: 20 Words We Owe to Shakespeare

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21 Words Created by Shakespeare (And 4 That Weren’t)

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The Bard gave us ‘bedazzled’ and so many other words—but there are a few cases where words we thought he created actually originated earlier.

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Language: Slang and Sexual Language in Shakespeare

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Language: Slang and Sexual Language in Shakespeare

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Early editions of Shakespeare's plays sometimes ignored or censored slang and sexual language. But the First Folio reveals a text full of innuendo and rudeness.

Here are some examples of slang or sexual language which were clearly understood by Shakespeare's original audiences, but may be less obvious to audiences today. These examples were put together by Heloise Senechal, from the Complete Works of Shakespeare (2008) published by the RSC and Macmillan.

FROM HENRY IV, PART II, ACT 2, SCENE 1

MISTRESS QUICKLY: Alas the day. Take heed of him: he stabbed me in mine own house, and that most beastly. He cares not what mischief he doth, if his weapon be out. He will foin like any devil. He will spare neither man, woman, nor child.

FANG: If I can close with him, I care not for his thrust.

MISTRESS QUICKLY: No, nor I neither. I'll be at your elbow.

FANG: If I but fist him once, if he come but within my vice -

MISTRESS QUICKLY: I am undone with his going. I warrant he is an infinitive thing upon my score. Good Master Fang, hold him sure: good Master Snare, let him not 'scape. He comes continuantly to Pie-corner - saving your manhoods - to buy a saddle, and he is indited to dinner to the Lubber's-head in Lombard Street, to Master Smooth's the silkman. I pra'ye, since my exion is entered and my case so openly known to the world, let him be brought in to his answer. A hundred mark is a long one for a poor lone woman to bear, and I have borne, and borne, and borne, and have been fubbed off, and fubbed off, from this day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought on. There is no honesty in such dealing, unless a woman should be made an ass and a beast, to bear every knave's wrong.
stabbed going score tavern bill, accounts / vagina manhoods saddle horse's saddle / whore borne dealing behaviour / sexual activity been patient / borne the weight of a man during sex pie porridge cheek French withered pears old fruits / syphilitic vaginas i.e. as a sign of age plays on the sense of 'vagina' plays on the sense of 'vagina' sharp sauce And ... goose? cheverel ell forty-five inches / penis easily stretched leather alludes to the proverb 'sweet meat must have sour sauce', suggesting that the sauce (semen) is being served sexually to the goose (prostitute) queen it play the queen / be a prostitute ('quean') biting riposte / bitter sauce for food honours / penises departure / sexual activity hurt financially / penetrated sexually
Pie-corner area in London famous for cooks' shops, saddlers and prostitution ('pie' and 'corner' were both slang terms for the vagina )

hundred mark £66 / large penis

From All's Well That Ends Well, Act 1, Scene 1

PAROLLES: ... Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek. And your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears: it looks ill, it eats dryly.

From Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 3

MERCUTIO: Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting: it is a most sharp sauce.

ROMEO: And is it not then well served into a sweet goose?

MERCUTIO: O here's a wit of cheverel, that stretches from an inch narrow to an ell broad!

From The Life of King Henry VIII, Act 2, Scene 3

OLD LADY: 'Tis strange: a threepence bowed would hire me,
Old as I am, to queen it: but, I pray you,
What think you of a duchess? Have you limbs
To bear that load of title?

ANNE: No, in truth.

OLD LADY: Then you are weakly made: pluck off a little:
I would not be a young count in your way,
For more than blushing comes to...

bowed bent, worthless / puns on 'bawd '

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Slang and sexual language in Shakespeare | Royal Shakespeare Company

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Early editions of Shakespeare's plays sometimes ignored or censored slang and sexual language. But the First Folio reveals a text full of innuendo and rudeness. Here are some examples of slang or sexual language which were clearly understood by Shakespeare's original audiences, but may be less obvious to audiences today.

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Acting Shakespeare, in many ways, is like acting any other style or genre. However, due to the complexity and intricacy of the text it requires a more eager investigation by the actor. It is almost another language, yet it cannot be performed as such. It must fall onto the ears of the audience with absolute clarity. There is no definitive guide on how to act Shakespeare.

He left us only his plays as a guide and so as you read more about Shakespeare, remember your natural instincts are invaluable. There will be many people who tell you there is a right way, but it just isn't the case. I have laid out a some personal tips and ideas that may help you on your way to better understanding and performing Shakespeare.

- Understand the Words
- Understanding the Verse
- Further Poetic Devices
- The Creative Work

Understand the Words

Understand every word and phrase. When we speak in a contemporary play we understand everything we are saying. Yet for some reason actors often think Shakespeare is too complicated or out of reach and therefore they don't bother to invest the time in understanding the words, delivering the text without clarity or meaning. Here then, I believe, is the greatest rule in how to act Shakespeare: if you don't know what you're saying, the audience doesn't either. If they don't understand what you're saying, they aren't engaged.

How to understand the words?

1. The Dictionary: this is your best friend when working on any Shakespearean text. A great resource is David Crystal's Shakespeare Glossary which is a dictionary specific to Shakespearean language. A normal dictionary will have most definitions.

2. No Fear Shakespeare: this is a great resource that is available for free on-line or alternatively you can buy the books. It is basically Shakespeare's plays translated into modern, easy-to-understand English. They are fantastic! And there is no shame in using these.

Work out the Thoughts

As the words become clear you will start to unlock the meaning of each line, in turn unlocking each thought and eventually the text as a whole will begin to make sense. Simply put, a thought is a new idea. And you must understand every new idea for the text to come alive.

Often the punctuation is a great guide in helping you identify the thought: a full stop indicating the end of a thought. However, punctuation may vary between editions, therefore use your instinct as well as your understanding of the text to help you work out the thoughts.

Tip: each line isn't necessarily a different thought. Thoughts can vary from one to twelve lines.

Tip: there is very little subtext in Shakespeare. What you say is what you mean. So it is vital you understand what you are saying and strive to be as clear as possible.

Paraphrase

Now you understand every unfamiliar word and you have marked out the thought shifts, have a go at paraphrasing the text; put the text into your own words. This is common practice in rehearsals for Shakespeare plays and is great to do with audition monologues or scenes you are working on. If you can't speak the monologue in modern english, you can't truly communicate it in Shakespearean english.

Tell the story

Once you understand your thoughts, move on to the rest of the speech. What is it trying to say? Then look to understand the particular scene you are working on and how that scene fits in with the whole play. In Shakespeare everything builds on what precedes it and so understanding the story helps you tell your part more clearly.

Tip: there will always be people who can't understand you. Shakespeare is a two way street that requires an audience to be fully engaged and listening, but you owe it to those who are truly listening to share the words with clarity and meaning.

Read more Shakespeare

As I mentioned earlier, speaking Shakespearean text is not dissimilar to speaking a foreign language. Many words are unfamiliar and you can read a whole play and not really understand what happened. So read and go see as many Shakespeare plays as you can to help make his words seem natural to you. Every play you read helps make the next play you read clearer and therefore more enjoyable.

Tip: when working on a soliloquy, look for where the character is using compare and contrast, question and answer or disagreement and agreement in the speech. In soliloquies the character is usually debating what course of action he/she should take next, so try to figure out these changes in thought as this is what is interesting for the audience.

Understanding the Verse

If you take the above steps and thoroughly understand the text often the technical elements are taken care of. Shakespeare uses mainly blank verse, which is poetry's closest relative to everyday speech. So if you unlock the meaning and intention of the text it often supports you without you knowing what is happening technically. However, it is important to know the technical elements of speaking Shakespearean language.

Verse and Prose

Shakespeare uses three main types of text: blank verse, rhyming verse and prose. Blank verse is poetic language written in Iambic Pentameter commonly used by high status characters or for intense emotion. Rhyming verse is another form poetic language in which Shakespeare uses rhyme, often in rhyming couplets. And finally prose is every day, ordinary speech; it is typically spoken by lower status or humorous characters.

Examples of different forms of text:

Blank Verse
Hamlet speech
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
Rhyming Verse
End couplet of Sonnet 65

Prose
Benedick (Much ado about Nothing)

This can be no trick: the conference was sadly borne; they have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady: it seems her affections have their full bent.

Iambic Pentameter

Iambic Pentameter is really an exotic way of saying how many beats (feet) there are in a particular line. The easiest way to understand Iambic Pentameter is to break down its elements:

Foot: a poetic unit made up of two syllables one strong and one weak.

Iamb: a specific type of foot in which the stressed syllable comes after the unstressed syllable (da-DUM)

Pent: five

Meter: the particular rhythm of a poetic line.

Therefore Iambic Pentameter means five iambs (da-DUM) in each line of verse.

E.g. Pucks line from A Midsumer Night's Dream

[Da - DUM Da - DUM Da - DUM Da - DUM Da - DUM] [My mistress with a monster is in love.]

Especially in his later plays, Shakespeare often breaks the rules of this verse. If a character is in turmoil or in a heated debate the text will often fragment. So go with your instinct.

Key Words

Even when a line of Shakespeare's is written in perfect iambic pentameter, you can't speak the line in this constant Da-DUM, Da Dum pattern. It would become monotonous and uninteresting to the listener. A useful rule is to highlight or 'hit' the final word of the line and as well as another key word within the line.

Thou nature art my goddess

nature: key word
goddess: end word

This is a line from King Lear, spoken by Edmund. He is talking about being a bastard child, saying that nature, to him, is more important than the rules of marriage. If you stress nature and goddess when speaking the line it helps give it accurate sense. Use the metre to make sure the keyword isn't on the unstressed syllable. Shakespeare wrote to help the actor and his rhythm is a great guide. So use him. Often the nouns or verbs are the sense of a line and thus are the keyword. This rule can sometimes be broken and there may be more than one keyword, but usually only one is needed.

The end word of each line is important because Shakespeare often places a lot of meaning there. Try saying the end word of every line in your monologue and often you can get the sense of it. This shows its importance and it can't be dropped.

Tip: nouns tell the story, verbs give the energy and adjectives give the vision.

Further Poetic Devices

Assonance: this is the recurring use of vowel sounds (often called vowel rhyme) as in: no man knows.

Alliteration: this is the recurring use of consonants in a line or sentence: fancy free Fred.

Onomatopoeia: a word that sounds or feels like the word itself. Expressing through sound the thing it represents: boom.

Puns and sexual jokes: there are a number of puns in Shakespeare's text, many sexual. Shakespeare wrote marvellously for the both upper and lower classes so he used a lot of low brow humour as well as beautiful poetry. Often as you find the meaning of words and thoughts the sexual connotations and puns get revealed.

Antithesis: this is a crucial component of speaking Shakespeare. Antithesis simply means opposition or contrast. Shakespeare uses this device a throughout his plays. He juxtaposes one idea against another. It is used for poetical purposes, yet it also helps characters come to decisions and make strong arguments. It is also important for clarity and storytelling. His most famous line, 'To be, or not to be, that is the question' is in its self an antithetical line. Hamlet debates whether to live or to die, two very different choices.

The Creative Work

Imaging and targeting

You have to have strong, clear images for everything you say. It's very easy with Shakespearean language to just float on it, never understanding what you're actually saying. Every word has weight. Sometimes going through the text word by word playing with volume and range can be great. Other exercises like changing direction on each thought can help keep the text varied.

Acting work

Shakespeare's text might be more complex than contemporary text, yet the acting fundamentals are the same. Firstly don't try to manufacture character. Character comes in what you do, your actions. Oberon (A Midsummer Night's Dream) is a King, but that status comes in how he treats Puck and other characters and how other characters endow him. Not from acting like a King.You can work physically on a role such as Oberon. A King would likely be proud and stand tall; his servant, Puck, perhaps quicker paced and flustered.

Accent

Unless it is has been otherwise specified, use your natural voice and accent. Don't try to mimic RP (posh English) actors thinking it's the correct or better way of speaking Shakespeare. In fact in Shakespeare's time the accent would have been vastly different from RP, the accent we now associate with Shakespeare, and so be proud using your natural voice.

Location

Location is another important factor that influences the scene and although more and more Shakespearean production are taken out of context and modernised be aware of the intended location of the scene. It can often affect the energy and given circumstances of the scene.

Dynamic

Always look to find dynamic in the text. Don't let it become a generalised wash. Where is it high-paced and where does it slow down? Where does your character relish in what he/she is doing and when are they unperturbed? Be a detective. Constantly go back to your text and play with it.

Conclusion

Try to listen to great Shakespearean actors speaking the verse. Read as many plays as you can. All this work will help turn Shakespearean from foreign language to beautiful, wonderful text. If you want to learn more about acting check out our article on How to Act.

About the Author

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Acting Shakespeare, in many ways, is like acting any other style or genre. However, due to the complexity and intricacy of the text it requires a more eager investigation by the actor. It is almost another language, yet it cannot be performed as such. It must fall onto the ears of the audience with absolute clarity.

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Performing Shakespeare generally denotes a level of acting expertise. As in the Bard's time, an understanding of language, rhetoric, diction, and understanding of story is required by the actor to perform the roles well. Unlike Shakespeare's time, however, many players are not equipped with the basic tools to perform the text.

Think of it this way, Shakespeare wrote in the common language of his time, in the language of the people, with a dialect directly suited to his common actors. Transpose that to 2017, in Philadelphia, where film is the predominate medium and pictures are the language of the world and we begin to understand the difficulty of Shakespeare's verse and prose.

Performing in Shakespeare plays introduces you to new skills and allows you to play with language, sounds, and rhetoric in a way unmatched by modern plays (although the American Shakespeare Center is looking to change that).

So what are some of the rules for getting a part in a Shakespeare play? The following list is a number of guidelines our Artistic Director Jared Reed, who has played Macbeth and Hamlet at Hedgerow, uses that you can use to navigate through the Shakespeare's silly syllables and pretty punny prose.

Shakespeare is a celebration of language, he invented half of it for God's shake. Therefore, we do not need those Pinter pauses and Chekovian glances. Use the language in front of you. The challenge is a gift. Speak the speech, I pray you!

Again, the action is in the language. Therefore, verbs are your friend. When performing Shakespeare the characters thoughts, feelings, and turmoils are in the text. Often, they are navigating through their minds like a patient sitting in front of a psychiatrist, only it doesn't cost you $500 an hour to see! Since we are traversing our way through verse, we need to use the action given to use. Verbs give us a sense of movement. The audience creates the action in their head, and uses the metaphors given to us by Shakespeare to see the story in their mind's eye.

Think, "Now is the winter of our discontent" vs heavy long consonants "to be or not to be." Shakespeare uses rhetoric and every classical tool of speech and language at his disposal. He plays with language and meaning the way a Hip Hop artist plays with beat and rhythm. The iambic pentameter is a tool meant to carry the flow of the language. The sounds, therefore, are the tools to carve up that turkey. Use the language to inform your decisions about character, about pace, about intent. Does your character speech in vowels or consonants? Sharp sounds? Or soft?

Our modern ears are not tuned to the musing of Bill's tongue; even so, actor's in Shakespeare's time performed in a completely different fashion, allegedly, than we do today. There was no "Method," no Stella Adler, no Marlon Brando. The important thing for the audience was the language. So, actor's performed much in the same way opera performs, using their body as an instrument. How does this apply to us today? Well, in order to get through large chunks of text, and to keep the audition with you, less is more. If the audience is having to watch you move every beat, or gesture on every line, then you are competing against yourself for attention. Certainly, body language informs us of emotion, however, body language is more than embodying Robin Williams and running off to the races. "Suit the word to the action, the action to the word."

Hold your breath. Make a wish. Count to three. Come with me, and you'll be in a world of pure imagination. Now that we're there, let's talk about breathing. There is a lot of talk today about breath. Take one quick search on youtube and you will find millions of mediation and yoga videos detailing the proper way to breath. Well, we won't go don't that rabbit hole here, but breath control and diaphragmatic breathing are essential to good Shakespearean acting. If you want the simplest explanation, imagine someone sucking air as Hamlet, or losing their voice as Henry V during the Saint Crispen's Day speech. Weak right? Well, if you want to be a baller, then learn to use your breath hommie.

Could you sit through Ben Stein reading King Lear? What about Henry Kissinger speaking Iago's lines? Good speakers understand how to use their instrument. We all can make more sounds than we give ourselves credit for: we have a chest voice, a throat voice, a nasal voice, a silly voice, a pithy voice, a factual voice, a matter of fact voice, a lying voice, a "I'm not lying" lying voice, a serious voice, and on and on and on. Speeches are rarely speeches in Shakespeare's plays. More often than not they are thoughts on page, or moments interrupted by new moments. Therefore, we, as actors, must make it clear what we are saying and what we are thinking. Opinion is character. Use your voice in all its glory.

Remember that whole iambic pentameter thing you learned about when you read Romeo and Juliet as a 15 year-old? Yeah, there's a purpose for that other than a test. The beat of the speech, like a song, informs us of emotion. The tempo puts us in tune with the characters feelings and emotions as he rides the wave of language. Shakespeare understood how to use the syllables of language to create the flow of voice that translates the emotion of the character in the most efficient way. Tune in to the beat of the speech and unlock its tempo to make the emotion clear.

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Top 6 Shakespeare Acting Tips (from Artistic Director Jared Reed)

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Performing Shakespeare generally denotes a level of acting expertise. As in the Bard's time, an understanding of language, rhetoric, diction, and understanding of story is required by the actor to perform the roles well. Unlike Shakespeare's time, however, many players are not equipped with the basic tools to perform the text.

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An interview with Ian McKellen about his Shakespeare performances.

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As first published in Shakespeare Quarterly

Adapted from Interviews conducted by Timothy Hallinan and John F. Andrews

Q: How did your programme "Acting Shakespeare" come about?
A: In 1976 I was working for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I got an invitation to go up to Edinburgh and do a one-man show-mainly because it would be cheap, I suppose, and because it was felt that on the fringes of the great big festival it might be nice to have the sort of thing that actors or musicians might want to do on their own. Of course, there have been one-man shows about Shakespeare before me. Some very distinguished, like Sir John Gielgud's Ages of Man, which he's toured throughout the world and done on television and so on, and put onto record. A very celebrated actor recapping some of his great successes, wearing a tuxedo, and talking, very briefly, about the speeches he was going to do. I didn't want to copy that format. I wanted my programme to reflect my own feelings about Shakespeare, and so I had to start examining what my feelings were about this amazing man who was born four hundred years ago and who was helping me to earn a living at the time. "What is it about this man that makes me respond to him personally, although, of course, I've never met him, don't know what he looked like, am not even sure exactly when he was born, or exactly where he was born?"

So I thought about the plays of his that I had been in and how much I had enjoyed doing them, how my response to him had changed over the years as I had come to discover that I could never get to the bottom of Shakespeare. And I realized that, while putting on a show that would be serious about Shakespeare would take him at his face value and acknowledge that he was not always easy to understand, so that at times I might have to explain to the audience about certain things before I performed them - I also wanted to make a show that was going to be entertaining. And so I thought, "I'll just put on a jacket and a tie and an ordinary pair of trousers and walk out on the stage and start talking and see what happens."

Well, the first time I ever did it at the Edinburgh festival, I scattered my little stage with copies of the plays and bits of paper, and I was forever picking them up and reading them. Compared to the show we've produced for television, it was a rather amateur affair. But over the years since I did it at Edinburgh, encouraged by that first audience's response to it, I've done it in England at other festivals, I've been to Ireland and Northern Ireland, I've taken it to Israel, I've taken it to Scandinavia, and in 1981 when I was appearing on Broadway in Amadeus I had the opportunity to do it for a couple of nights to raise money for charities. And there it was seen by someone who said he'd like to put it on videotape.
Q: Now that it has been videotaped, and thereby frozen in time and content, do you feel satisfied with it?
I make the point during the show that it is with some regret that I have taped it and fixed it. Each time I do the show in a theatre I do like to do it for that specific audience. My timing changes, some things are omitted, maybe other things are adlibbed and put in so that the audience has the real sense that if they weren't there the performance couldn't be taking place. If I'm asked to do the show again in the theatre, I think I would like to. The show in its spirit will remain the same, but it is likely to alter according to circumstances as time passes by. When I do the show in a large theatre for a general audience, for instance, it is likely to be different in its presentation than when I do it, say, in the lecture room of a university or a school.

Q: You said that over your years of working with Shakespeare your attitude toward him had changed. What did you mean?

A: I remember when I was trying to get into the university, someone testing me for my fitness to study English at Cambridge asked me why I liked Shakespeare. Without really thinking, I said "It's because of the characters." The range of Shakespeare's characters is enormous. He could write about the employer and the employee, about the king and the subject, about men and women, about young people and old people, people in love, people who are ready to kill. There is no area of human life that Shakespeare didn't seem to be in total contact with.

But now as an actor, I think that what I admire most is not the characters but the way the characters are presented on the page. I now appreciate Shakespeare more as a writer than as a humanitarian. I appreciate him as a craftsman rather than just a man of the world. It's the man of the theatre that I respond to - the person who puzzled at home and wrote his words down, and yet understood that words themselves are not enough and that you need actors to present them. Shakespeare's awareness of what acting is like, what it can tell us about our own lives, is remarkable. Very often he compares the dilemma that any character finds himself in with something to do with the difficulties of acting.

But one can go on and on about Shakespeare. There never seems to be any end to the breadth of experience he puts into plays. He was utterly unique and utterly amazing - a great man whose imagination was so huge that he didn't have to be a courtier to understand what it was like to be with kings, who didn't have to work in a public house in London to understand what it was like to be a drunkard. He just sort of clicked his imagination and had total sympathy with all of us. And that is why he goes on being relevant, and why he goes on being modern: because his imagination seems to have stretched not just geographically, but right across the expanse of the centuries.

We don't know what kind of man he was, really. We can't guess what his sexual tastes were because the characters in his plays stretch across the full range of sexual activity, of political activity. It's possible that he was a rather conventional, boring man. But his plays are not boring, and therefore I don't worry too much about what Shakespeare himself was like.
Q: In "Acting Shakespeare," you do Hamlet's advice to the players and you take a stab at the idea that the Globe was an environment that might have been conducive to an actor's going over the top once in a while.
A: We don't know what the Globe was like in detail, of course, but we do know that it was an open-air theatre, that the performances therefore had to take place in the afternoon, and that if there was no roof on the building the noise from the streets outside poured in. It's likely, therefore, that the actors would have had to project their voices louder than they would in normal speech. Performances are likely to have been "larger" than our current view of what is permissible on television, or even in the theatre. It's in this sense, then, that Shakespeare might have advised, as Hamlet does to his actors, not to make the performance too big, to try at all times to keep in touch with reality. He didn't want his performers shouting as the town crier might shout in the open air.

I think that the point about that speech is that actors, in whatever century they worked, have tried to make their performances appear to be, for the audiences watching them, real. All the great actors from Richard Burbage through David Garrick and Henry Irving and Laurence Olivier and Al Pacino have tried to make their acting of Shakespeare real for their own generations. And the fact is that just as fashions in clothes change, so do fashions in the style of acting. Richard Burbage's sense of what was real was quite different from Henry Irving's, and both were quite different from my own. Reality - and I'm talking about the reality of human nature - is, for us today, a complicated business. We are post-Freud. We are living in an age in which nothing is as it seems to be. We are aware that a man's face is not necessarily connected to what's happening inside a man's heart or inside his mind. So that when I am being real on stage today I don't always present everything that I feel, because the audience, as in life, expects to have to guess, to have to look behind the words, behind the face, assuming that there is a whole mountain of material that the character himself doesn't fully understand. The amazing thing, I think, is that wherever you do Shakespeare, he can still be real. Whichever century he has been done in, whatever sort of theatre it happens in, whether it happens in front of a camera or a large audience, he still responds to changing notions, changing fashions of what is real. It is almost as if Shakespeare had written Freud before Freud was born.
Q: Would it interest you as an actor to try to recapture the reality of some of the earlier approaches to Shakespeare?
A: I don't think it's ever possible to recreate the past by putting on a production in the way it was first produced. To begin with, you would have to decide what each theatre was like, and we don't always know. Then you would have to suggest a style of acting that now seems woefully old-fashioned. And then the audience would have to make an imaginative leap that would be almost impossible, to understand what it was like to be living in sixteenth or seventeenth-century London. We would all have to be historians, both in the audience and on the stage. And then at the end, I think we might say of the performance, "Well, that was very interesting, but so what?"

I think the challenge that is much more invigorating, much more rewarding, is for us to say, not "How can we imagine what these plays were like when they were first done," but "Can we imagine how they should be done today?" I don't think that theatre should ever be a museum piece. I like performances to belong to now, to be for this evening, this afternoon, today. And let the performance for tomorrow be something different, not just for the sake of being different, but because the actors must always be aware of the audience that they are speaking directly to, because once that audience has gone home the actors have gone home too. The strutting and fretting is finished.

So no, I don't want to spend my time recreating what Shakespeare was like in the past. I always want to think that my duty, if I am going to serve him at all, is to bring Shakespeare into the present. I think that we should only look at the past to see how it can enlighten the present. And when an actor steps onto a stage to speak Shakespeare, it's not to take the audience back in time but to bring Shakespeare forward.
Q: You mention in "Acting Shakespeare" that it is difficult to do Richard III in the shadow of Olivier's interpretation, which has been preserved on film. To what extent can an actor avoid the impact of a very recent and very resonant interpretation of a part when he is given the same role to play in front of the same critics and audiences?
A: When I'm doing Shakespeare or any play I assume that the audience watching it has never seen the play before. I try to play Hamlet or Richard II or Macbeth with the same commitment and freshness as if those plays had been written only months before and the audience has no idea of what is going to happen. Even at Stratford-upon-Avon, where some members of the audience come and see the plays every year, know them backwards - know them, at times, better than the actors themselves - there will still be a larger percentage of people in the theatre who don't know the story of the play, and it is to them that I primarily play. I don't play to the critics who are coming to see their tenth Hamlet this season and who are likely to be interested in what I do that's different, something that may illuminate a corner of the play they haven't noticed before. No, my commitment is to the audience who don't know anything about Hamlet at all.

If we know too much about the play because we have seen it before, we are not likely to respond to the telling of the story in the way that Shakespeare wants us to. So at times in our productions of Shakespeare, even for an audience that hasn't seen the play before, we are likely to want to stress certain things so that everyone's eyes will be directed toward it. So in case people expect Lady Macbeth to come onto the stage as the dyed-in-the-wool villain, which I don't think she is at the beginning of the play, then the actress playing that part may slightly overstress the character's charm, her voice and costume implying that she is an ordinary, gentle person until she calls up the spirits of evil to change her.

I try to wipe from my own mind the strong impressions that great performances of the parts have given me in the past, whether on film or on television or in the theatre, and I try to go back to the words on the page. And with the encouragement of the director and the other actors and the designer, who may all have enormous experience with other productions of the play, I prefer that we say to ourselves, "This production of this play belongs to us and to the audience we are going to give it to. We are going to assume that they know nothing about the play and that anything that we want to tell them we must make them see through our words and . our actions on stage. There must be no sly references, there must be no hidden assumptions, so that the story can come through clearly and strongly. Once the story has been told well, it's then that we can talk about the complications, the subtleties, and the difficulties we want to illuminate as well.
Q: Ever since John Russell Brown's call to "free Shakespeare," there has been debate about the role of the director. How do you feel about the relationship between the director and the rest of the company?
A: A play is very difficult to organize, and it's just as well that there's someone there in a position of authority, whether it's an actor-manager or a director. But if you can get a director who understands that everyone can contribute - and I firmly believe in that - that can be a good thing, and the result is a genuinely collective enterprise. In England, as distinguished from America, where the producer is god, the actors sometimes get together, if a play is going badly in rehearsal, and mutiny. A few years ago that actually happened to a young director who was doing his first production at Stratford; fortunately, he refused to leave until he had another production to direct, and he went on to become one of the most important directors the RSC has ever had. It is also not unusual in England for actors to form a company and themselves hire a director to work with them; that can often be a very satisfactory arrangement.

My main point is that normally an actor doesn't work on his own. He is almost always part of a team, and that team, these days, is likely to be led by a director. I am very happy to work within a group - and, of course, very happy to play the leading part. But I am aware that you cannot lead unless there are other people supporting you. When those two men climbed Everest, they were just at the tip of the iceberg. There was a huge production team behind them, and many supporters to raise money and provide techniques and materials for those two men who eventually stood on the top of the mountain. In a good Shakespeare production, we collectively influence each other. So that the that we presented, first on the stage at The Other Place in 1976 and then eventually on television, belonged not just to me and Judi Dench, but to a group of people who allowed us to do it that way.
Q: Do you prefer working in small theatres such as The Other Place or the Warehouse?
A: Well, yes and no. I like playing before a large audience. But you can do so much more, and more effectively, in a small house. I suppose that the optimum size is a theatre seating about 400 people-assuming that you're not in a commercial house where you need to earn enough money to pay for the thing. There's a sense of occasion, a social gathering, yet not so large a volume that the effects are dissipated. I think that Shakespeare should, on the whole, be aural primarily rather than visual. If you don't get the language, then you've lost the heart of the matter. Doing Shakespeare in a setting like The Other Place is difficult. It's purist. It can be wonderful. But I certainly wouldn't want to see Shakespeare done only under those sorts of studio conditions. It would get very tiring.
Q: Most directors and actors are opposed to "museum Shakespeare"-and justifiably so. And yet, many of us have attended a production and found ourselves distressed by errors of a sort that might have been prevented if the director or his cast had done a bit more homework. We've left the theatre feeling that something that was good might have been even better if it had been better informed. Is it possible-indeed, is it desirable, in your opinion-to have more frequent interchange between theatre professionals and scholars?
A: It's probably just an attitude, isn't it, which could perhaps be encouraged by someone who straddles both disciplines, like John Barton. I don't think it's much use trying to put on a play and have a token academic in the corner during rehearsals. It might work; it would depend on people's willingness for it to work, I suppose. Some actors are just not interested in going beyond what they see in a play, and that's a pity. But it seems to me that in the last few decades, at least in England, there has been a concern to understand Shakespeare from his own point of view. I think that Shakespeare is getting a better deal at present than at many times in the past.

Q: People who saw your performances as Romeo and Macbeth in 1976 came away feeling that both productions were vibrant in twentieth-century terms, and yet that what you accomplished was a way of reading out of the lines what was in them, rather than imposing something from above. Is that a distinction that makes sense to you?

A: Yes, I think that Trevor Nunn, who directed both productions, is absolutely remarkable, and his method is always to make the imagery come alive, saying to his actors that they must know exactly what the words mean in order to inform their emotions. Otherwise the play gets lost in a wash of language that doesn't mean anything. I remember Trevor saying to Francesca Annis, about the lines "It was the nightingale and not the lark / That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear," that that piece of beautiful poetry is actually concrete information for the actor and the actress. How do you know that an ear is hollow? How close do you need to be to tell that? Very close indeed. Your eye has to be right against the ear. In other words, at the moment he hears the lark, Romeo has to be right next to or on top of Juliet. They are in the middle of making love.

I'm persuaded that in order to act Shakespeare well, you have to understand the words, absorb the meaning in all your being, and then rattle the lines out the way John Gielgud does.
Q: Do you think that Shakespeare will last?
A: It depends on the actors, doesn't it? If they give boring performances, then he won't. He'll just go on living in the Folger Library and in a few museums. Generations have been put off, first by being taught Shakespeare, then by seeing terrible performances. So when we go out there, we have a responsibility to make the plays as available and as exciting as possible. The trend in many places these days is to do full versions of the plays, as if the uncut script were sacrosanct. That's ridiculous. The plays were always cut. One should always be at the service of keeping the audience's attention - which is what Trevor Nunn did with Macbeth, a production that was severely cut, particularly in the second half. You need people - actors and directors - who are really dedicated to doing Shakespeare and are expert at it. Hence the importance of a company such as the RSC, which is continually doing the plays. There are lots of people in that organization who are real showbiz people, which is very good. John Barton, for example, is often thought of as the great academic director. He's not like that at all. If a play is having a bit of a problem, he shoves some music in. I'm all for that.

But back to your question, I think that it is as likely that Shakespeare will stop interesting people as that flowers will stop interesting people. And even if all other plays become old-fashioned, even if the theatres are burnt down, there will still be people who are talking about, writing about, wanting to do Shakespeare. There are actors all over the world who earn a living out of doing Shakespeare, and there are still audiences who are willing to pay good money to see him. We can't all be wasting our time. We can't, over the four centuries since Shakespeare was born, have all been fooling ourselves.

From the PBS show Ian McKellen Acting Shakespeare, Photo: Stone Associates

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Ian McKellen | Writings | Theatre | On Acting Shakespeare

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Q: How did your programme "Acting Shakespeare" come about? A: In 1976 I was working for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I got an invitation to go up to Edinburgh and do a one-man show-mainly because it would be cheap, I suppose, and because it was felt that on the fringes of the great big festival it might be nice to have the sort of thing that actors or musicians might want to do on their own.

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William Shakespeare's has been screened numerous times, featuring many of the biggest names from stage, film, and television.

Macbeth (US, 1948)

Hallmark Hall of Fame Macbeth (TV, US, 1954, IMDB)

Hallmark Hall of Fame Macbeth (1960, IMDB) - Emmy Award-winning remake, featuring an all-British supporting cast, and filmed on location in England and Scotland.

Maurice Evans as Macbeth

Judith Anderson as Lady Macbeth

Macbeth (UK, 1981)

BBC Television Shakespeare Macbeth (TV, UK, 1983) - released in the US as part of the Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare series.

Shakespeare: The Animated Tales Macbeth (TV, Russia and UK, 1992)

Macbeth (UK, 1997)

Macbeth (TV, UK, 1998)

Macbeth (Video, UK, 2001) - film of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Swan production.

Throne of Blood (a.k.a. Cobweb Castle or Kumonosu-jo) (Japan, 1957) is an adaptation of the Macbeth story to a Japanese setting.

The first series of The Black Adder (TV, UK, 1983), written by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson, is a parody of Shakespeare's plays, particularly Macbeth, Richard III and .

Scotland, PA (US, 2001) is set in and around a fast food restaurant in the 1970s.

(India, 2004) is a Macbeth adaptation set in the Mumbai underworld.

ShakespeaRe-Told Macbeth (UK, TV, 2005) is a modern adaptation by Peter Moffat, set in a Glasgow restaurant.

Teenage Gang Debs (US, 1966), setting the theme around a teenage girl who joins a street gang.

Sande N. Johnsen, director

Diane Conti as Terry (the Lady Macbeth character)

Another way in which filmmakers use Shakespearean texts is to feature characters who are actors performing those texts, within a wider non-Shakespearean story. In , the 1987 Italian giallo horror film written and directed by Dario Argento and starring Cristina Marsillach, Urbano Barberini, and Ian Charleson; young opera singer Betty (Marsillach) is reluctantly thrust into the lead role in Verdi's Macbeth. During her first performance, a murder takes place in one of the opera boxes. Mysterious murders continue throughout the film as Betty is stalked and those around her meet their unfortunate end. During the final performance of the opera, the killer is revealed, and Betty must confront her past in a terrifying climax.

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William Shakespeare's has been screened numerous times, featuring many of the biggest names from stage, film, and television. Macbeth (US, 1948) Hallmark Hall of Fame Macbeth (TV, US, 1954, IMDB) Hallmark Hall of Fame Macbeth (1960, IMDB) - Emmy Award-winning remake, featuring an all-British supporting cast, and filmed on location in England and Scotland.

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Synopsis

Macbeth took the throne after killing his cousin, King Duncan I, in battle in 1040. In 1046, Siward, earl of Northumbria, unsuccessfully attempted to dethrone Macbeth in favor of Malcolm. In 1054, Macbeth was apparently forced by Siward to yield part of southern Scotland to Malcolm. Three years later, Macbeth was killed in battle by Malcolm, with assistance from the English.

Early Life

Considered to be one of the last Gaelic kings, the real Macbeth MacFindlaech was not the murderous, terrible character of William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth. Macbeth was born in Alba in central Scotland around 1005-the same year that his grandfather became king. His father, Findlaech MacRuaridh, was mormaer (an earl) of Moray, a province in northern Scotland. His mother, Doada, was the second daughter of Malcolm II. Historians describe the young Macbeth as tall, fair haired and handsome, with a ruddy complexion.

Earl of Moray

At the age of 7, Macbeth was sent to a Christian monastery to be educated by monks-a requirement for all important chieftains' sons. At age 15, Macbeth's cousins, Malcolm and Gillecomgain, killed his father, possibly for being too close to Malcolm II, king of Scotland. After his tutelage, Macbeth reappeared around 1032 when his cousin, Gillecomgain, was killed by order of Malcolm II for his killing of Findlaech. Macbeth was then elected mormaer of Moray, and soon married Gillecomgain's widow, Grouch, and adopted her son, Lulach. The marriage strengthened his claim to the throne.

On November 24, 1034, Malcolm II died of natural causes. One month later, his son, Duncan MacCrinan, was elected king. For six uneasy years, Duncan ruled Scotland with a thirst for power countermanded by his incompetence on the battlefield. In 1038, Ealdred, earl of Northumbria, attacked southern Scotland, but the effort was repelled and Duncan's chiefs encouraged him to lead a counterattack. Duncan also wanted to invade the Orkneys Islands to the north. Over the objections of all of his advisers, he chose to do both.

King of Scotland

In 1040, Duncan opened up two fronts. The attack on the Orkneys was led by his nephew, Moddan, and Duncan led a force toward Northumbria. Both armies were soon routed and reformed only to be pursued by Thorfinn, mormaer of Orkney. Macbeth joined Thorfinn and, together, they were victorious, killing Moddan. On August 14, 1040, Macbeth defeated Duncan's army, killing him in the process. Later that month, Macbeth led his forces to Scone, the Scottish capital, and, at age 35, he was crowned king of Scotland.

For 17 years, life was peaceful and prosperous as Macbeth ruled with an even hand and encouraged the spread of Christianity. He enacted several good laws, among them one that enforced Celtic tradition requiring officers of the court to defend women and orphans anywhere in the kingdom. Another allowed daughters the same rights of inheritance as sons. The only domestic disruption was in 1045, a rebellion by Duncan I's supporters that was soon suppressed. In 1046, Siward, earl of Northumbria, unsuccessfully attempted to dethrone Macbeth.

In 1050, Macbeth and his wife traveled to Rome for a papal jubilee, giving alms to the poor and donating to the Church. However, upon his return, Macbeth faced political turmoil brewing outside his realm. In 1052, Normans living in England fled the chaotic situation into Scotland. Celtic custom held that all travelers were welcome in Macbeth's court. However, this act of kindness didn't set too well with English lords. Around the same time, Duncan's 21-year-old son, Malcolm MacDuncan, was lobbying English lords that he was best-suited to serve as king of Scotland.

Military Defeat and Death

In time, Malcolm's efforts led to action. In 1054, Siward, earl of Northumbria, accompanied by Malcolm, led an army north into Scotland. Meeting little resistance from the southern provinces, they continued north. On July 27, 1054, Macbeth's forces met the invaders in Dunsinnan, close to the capital in Scone. By the end of the battle, 3,000 of Macbeth's forces had fallen. The invaders only lost 1,500, but the outcome was indecisive. Macbeth retrenched his army near Scone and Malcolm moved south to control Cumbria, the southernmost province of Scotland.

Over the next three years, Macbeth and his army were under constant assault by Malcolm, but he was able to stave him off. In 1057, Macbeth lost the support of two key allies, Pope Leo IX and the bishop of St. Andrew, Maelduin MacGille-Ordain, both of whom could have put pressure on England to not support Malcolm. Macbeth also lost his chief general, Thorfinn, ruler of the Orkneys, who had recently died.

On August 15, 1057, Macbeth was killed at the Battle of Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire by Malcolm's men as he tried to return to Moray. His body was buried in the holy isle of Iona, where many other Scottish kings were buried. A few days after his death, his stepson, Lulach, was elected high king. Lulach ruled for seven months before being killed by Malcolm's agents. Finally, on April 25, 1058, Malcolm MacDuncan became high king of Scotland.

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Macbeth took the throne after killing his cousin, King Duncan I, in battle in 1040. In 1046, Siward, earl of Northumbria, unsuccessfully attempted to dethrone Macbeth in favor of Malcolm. In 1054, Macbeth was apparently forced by Siward to yield part of southern Scotland to Malcolm.

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It is estimated there were between four and six thousand witchcraft trials in Scotland, most of which were in the lowland areas of the country, especially Aberdeenshire. This number is extremely high for such a small nation; with less than a quarter of England's population at this time, Scotland had three times the number of trials. As was the case in other places where such trials existed, the reasons behind them were complicated but often had a root in the suppression of women at the time. This was certainly true in Scotland, as King James the Sixth (who later became King James the First of England) began to believe he was the victim of witchcraft after having seen witch-hunts on a visit to Denmark.

Upon returning to Scotland, James attended witch trials and even wrote a book on the subject. After Daemonologie was published it sparked what became known as The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597. Sadly this was the second national witch hunt in Scotland, with a further three to follow, the last in 1661. In each of these hunts, many hundreds of people, mostly - but not exclusively - older women, were accused of witchcraft and of talking to the devil. Often the charges against them were, by today's standards, shocking - such as a woman healing someone when they were sick, the accusers assuming if she could heal she could also harm. The details of these trials, and the words of Daemonologie itself, led to the most famous example of Scottish witches in fiction - the three witches in Macbeth, by William Shakespeare.

The islands of Orkney provide a good example of the dual nature of the public at the time - on the one hand several supposed witches were tried and executed here and, on the other, sailors were known to visit wise-women, or spae-wives, as they were known, in order to buy favourable winds for their sea voyages. The spae-wife was a valued member of the community, someone who was known to heal and assist in childbirth, for example, yet as the religious fervour behind witch hunts grew several spae-wives were burnt at the stake, such as Bessie Skebister and Alison Balfour (in the case of Janet Forsyth, who was tried and sentenced to death for saving a ship from being wrecked, legend has it that she disappeared the night before her execution). In Orkney, the place of execution was known as Gallows Ha' and it still remains a grassy area in the city of Kirkwall, unbuilt upon due to its macabre history.

The last witch to be tried and executed in Scotland was Janet Horne, in 1727 and a small stone marks the spot in the Sutherland town of Dornoch where she was tarred, placed in a barrel, and burnt. As The Scottish Enlightenment advanced, extensive philosophical discussion about the supernatural and witchcraft meant that the topic was no longer viewed as serious and public interest in witch trials waned rapidly. By this point in history, however, the damage had been done - not just to the unfortunate women and men who had been falsely accused of witchcraft, but also to many ancient traditions. These included the pre-Christian Celtic tradition of leaving offerings and hoping for healing at Clootie Wells, places which were especially visited during Beltane, the festival of Spring (also banned by Parliament and the Church).

In recent years, interest in pagan ritual, ancient traditions, natural healing and spiritual connection to nature has re-emerged in Scotland, with examples including the resurgence of the use of the few remaining Clootie Wells, foraging classes and Edinburgh's well-attended festivals led by The Beltane Fire Society. It was not that long ago in history that these things would not only have been frowned upon, but potentially still illegal, with The Witchcraft Act of 1735 still being on the statute books until the second half of the 20th century.

Without the extensive record keeping that had developed at the time of the witchcraft trials in Scotland (an obsession that carried over to the contemporary illustrations - the woodcut image above depicts a meeting of witches with a clerk to record the proceedings), and the work of modern scholars and researchers, it is likely that women such as Bessie Skebister and Janet Horne would long have been forgotten, lost in time. As it is, these names should be remembered, as a reminder of a dark period of history when suppression of women reached terrible heights and, with the phrase 'witch hunt' still used extensively today, this is something we should not forget.

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Everything You Need to Know About Scotland's Historic Witch Hunts

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It is estimated there were between four and six thousand witchcraft trials in Scotland, most of which were in the lowland areas of the country, especially Aberdeenshire. This number is extremely high for such a small nation; with less than a quarter of England's population at this time, Scotland had three times the number of trials.

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"To be or not to be," said Hamlet, prince of Denmark, "that is the question." Yesterday, Hamlet's creator was; today, he is not. Of that there is no question.

Poet, playwright, actor and theatrical-company shareholder, William Shakespeare (sometimes spelled Shakspeare, or Shagspere, or Shaxpere, or Shaxberd, ¹ or any number of blessed ways) died today, April 23, 1616, at his home in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was, more or less, 52. His passing was confirmed by his daughter Judith. ²

Over the course of three decades, Mr. Shakespeare rose from working-class obscurity in Warwickshire to become one of England's foremost playwrights and poets ³ - acclaimed for his penetrating insights into the human character, his eloquent, flexible and infinitely expressive verse; and his readiness to burst the bounds of the English language (drawing on a vocabulary of more than 25,000 words).

Thanes, Romans, Countrymen

Among the deeply flawed characters who have strutted and fretted their hour on Mr. Shakespeare's stage, perhaps the foremost is Hamlet, who must decide whether or not to kill the uncle who murdered his father and married his mother. It takes him as much as five hours to decide, depending on the performance, and by then, a good portion of Denmark is dead.

Had Hamlet never existed, playgoers would still speak of Macbeth, an upwardly mobile and downwardly moral Scottish thane who, with the steady prodding of his wife, who may be mad, lets nothing stand between him and the throne and is defeated only by a combination of a C-section baby ⁴ and traveling trees.

Other immortal creations: Julius Caesar, a great Roman leader who gets a whole play named after him but dies in Act III; Romeo and Juliet, two young Veronians from warring families who fall in love the only way teenagers can - for keeps; King Lear, a senescent king who disinherits the one daughter who actually likes him; Othello, a brave Moorish soldier who becomes, after a few well-timed prods and a suspicious handkerchief, ⁵ the kind of fellow who requires a restraining order.

Yet, as indelible as Mr. Shakespeare's tragic creations are, his comedies have proved every bit as enduring. In "The Taming of the Shrew," a husband uses a variety of psychological torture devices to make his strong-minded wife compliant. (He thinks.) ⁶

In "Much Ado About Nothing," Benedick, a confirmed bachelor, meets Beatrice, a confirmed bachelorette, and together they create the world's first rom-com. In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," scheming fairies make sport with moonstruck lovers, and a queen becomes enamored of an ass, which is not the first time that ever happened.

Mr. Shakespeare devoted nearly a quarter of his dramaturgical output to chronicling his native country's brawling, bloody past. Though not factual in the most scrupulous sense, his history plays bring to roaring life the full panoply of England's dynasts and claimants and insurgents, all doing whatever it takes to get or keep a crown.

Who could forget the deposed Richard II? ("For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground/And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings.") Who could forget the malevolent Richard III? ("Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York.") Who could forget that great rabble-rouser, Henry V? ("Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;/Or close the wall up with our English dead!")

Who could forget Henry VI? Well, we have forgotten him, just a little. Those were early plays.

Imaginative breadth, rapier wit, profound psychological depth, the commercial instincts of a bear-baiter - all these qualities descended, Muselike, upon a glover's son.

Glover's Son and Plot Thief

William Shakespeare was born on April 23rd-ish, 1564. His mother was Mary Arden. ⁷ His father was John Shakespeare, an aspirational sort who worked his way up the social ladder from glovering and whittawering to constabling, burgessing, chamberlaining and, finally, high bailiffing. (Mayoring, if you like.) Sadly, Shakespeare père was prosecuted four times for wool trading and usury, which may explain why he retired from public life when Will was just 12.

Of William Shakespeare's four sisters, only one survived to adulthood. ⁸ Of his three brothers, Mr. Shakespeare was the only one who married. In an age that puts little store in records, this is practically all we know about his brothers and sisters.

Mr. Shakespeare almost certainly received a fine classical education at Stratford's local grammar school and may have, at some point, acquired French and Italian. His grasp of both geography and history was finite. (No one seems to have informed him that Milan and Verona are not seaports. With all due respect to "Julius Caesar," the ancient Romans didn't own clocks, and "Antony and Cleopatra," the ancient Egyptians didn't play billiards. Cato was born roughly three centuries later than "Coriolanus" suggests. Et cetera.)

At the age of 18, Mr. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, ⁹ who gets a nod in one of his later sonnets ("'I hate' from hate away she threw/And saved my life, saying 'not you'") but about whom precious little is known except that she was eight years older. The record notes, sans judgment, that she was also several months pregnant when they married. Did she entrap him? Did he climb into the trap and calmly fasten its sweet, warm metal jaws around him? The world will never know.

Nor is anyone entirely sure what Mr. Shakespeare was doing from 1585 to 1592, other than, at some point, making his way to London, where his vaulting ambition manifested itself through acting in and writing plays.

By 1592, he was enough of a colossus in the theatrical establishment that a dying malcontent named Robert Greene felt the need to drag him to earth, comparing him to "an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers" and "is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." (Mr. Greene's editor later apologized, which is what powerful friends can do for you.)

According to the images that survive of him, Mr. Shakespeare was on the balding side and looked surprisingly good with an earring.

For most of his career, he wrote for a theater company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, founded in 1594. As a shareholder, Mr. Shakespeare benefited both from the troupe's financial successes and from its ability to survive the winds of Elizabethan political change. (The company's association with the Earl of Essex became briefly problematic when Essex mounted the world's most ineffectual revolt against the queen.) With the accession of James I, the players changed their name to the King's Men and performed before His Majesty on 187 occasions, more than all rival companies put together. The king loved his men. ¹⁰

Before he died, Mr. Shakespeare saw his plays performed at Blackfriars Theater, at the Globe (which burned down during a performance of "Henry VIII," an event perhaps more exciting than anything that happens during "Henry VIII"), at the Inns of Court and at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. His audience extended beyond the bounds of Albion. In 1607, it is reported, the English crew of the Red Dragon merchant ship performed "Hamlet" for local leaders in Sierra Leone. To no small amount of bafflement, one might wager.

In all, Mr. Shakespeare wrote between 37 and 40 plays, depending on whom you ask. Some he wrote in collaboration. "Pericles, Prince of Tyre," for instance, does not make sense as the work of a single playwright; in fact, it makes little sense at all. Only 18 of Mr. Shakespeare's plays were published over the course of his life - in flimsy little quartos that practically dissolve if they're looked at too closely. "Macbeth" and "Julius Caesar" are still waiting, but sources say that seven years hence, two of Shakespeare's acting colleagues will reassemble almost all of the plays into a quasi-definitive First Folio. (We are prescient that way.)

Mr. Shakespeare didn't hesitate to steal plots - from Seneca and Plutarch and Ovid, from Spenser and Chaucer and Holinshed's Chronicles. Nor did he hesitate to alter those plots. (According to Holinshed, Macbeth's witches were originally nymphs.) ¹¹ Nor did he hesitate to coin new words. More than 2,000 received their first recorded use in his work, including barefaced, assassination, excellent, frugal, eyeball, auspicious, swagger, zany, summit, moonbeam, obscene, cold-blooded, hot-blooded, epileptic, fashionable, gossip, lonely, grovel, torture, manager, well-read, buzzer and rant.

It should be added that Mr. Shakespeare was equally, if not more, revered in his lifetime for his nontheatrical poetry. His "Rape of Lucrece" (not as graphic as it sounds) went into multiple reprints, and "Venus and Adonis" - dedicated to the 3rd Earl of Southampton ¹² -was the greatest publishing coup of his career, far outselling any editions of his plays.

Lovers of verse particularly revere Mr. Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, ¹³ which include these fragrant lines: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"; "Love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds"; "When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,/I all alone beweep my outcast state"; "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun."

Mr. Shakespeare never subscribed to the penniless-artist school and hoarded his coins as assiduously as Shylock, twice defaulting on fairly measly tax payments. By the time he reached the age of "the lean and slippered pantaloon," he had purchased high-end real estate in both London and Stratford, as well as a coat of arms. An aspirer just like his father.

Through it all, he continued, rather surprisingly, to act in plays - including his own and those of his friendly rival Ben Jonson. ¹⁴ Reached today for comment, Mr. Jonson said Mr. Shakespeare was "a monument without a tomb" and "not of an age but for all time." After a couple of ales, Mr. Jonson added that his old friend knew "small Latin and less Greek" and, when it was remarked that Mr. Shakespeare never had to blot a paper with edits, Mr. Jonson snapped, "Would he had blotted a thousand!" (Mr. Shakespeare's other chief rival, Christopher Marlowe, ¹⁵ was unavailable for comment, having been dead 23 years.)

At some point between 1610 and 1613, Mr. Shakespeare seems to have retired from the stage. He still got down to London but may have spent increasing amounts of time in Stratford, where he concerned himself with such weighty spiritual affairs as road repairs and land enclosures. It is possible he gardened. It is possible he bored friends and family with hoary stage anecdotes.

He is survived by his wife, Anne, who was bequeathed his second-best bed; his aforementioned daughter, Judith; another daughter, Susanna; and a granddaughter, Elizabeth. He is preceded in death by his son Hamnet and by Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, who shuffled off this mortal coil well before some of Mr. Shakespeare's most famous plays were even written. Or did he? ¹⁶

Mr. Shakespeare will also be survived by: Bardolaters, conspiracy theorists, Freudian theorists, postcolonial theorists, Shakespeare-studies minors, readers in at least 80 languages (including Krio, spoken by freed slaves in Sierra Leone), Stratford-upon-Avon tourists in open-top double-decker buses ("Mind the branches"), "West Side Story," T-shirts, coffee mugs, key rings, mints, board games, action figures, college-dorm posters, Christmas tree ornaments, bookmarks, temporary tattoos, magnetic poetry kits, shower curtains, onesies, twosies, inspirational memes and Harold Bloom. ¹⁷

In addition, Mr. Shakespeare will be survived by Mr. Shakespeare.

As long as we speak of "star-crossed lovers" or "cold comfort" or "a pound of flesh" or "a laughingstock" or "a wild-goose chase"; as long as we call imps "puckish" and morbidly obese people "Falstaffian" ¹⁸ and refer to jealousy as "the green-eyed monster"; ¹⁹ as long as we use phrases like "It's Greek to me" or "To thine own self be true" or "Clothes make the man" or "The lady doth protest too much" or "Give the Devil his due," Mr. Shakespeare will be shaping our everyday speech.

And as long as we wrestle with what it means to be human, Mr. Shakespeare will be our companion and our lodestar. The words of Hamlet serve as fitting epitaph for his creator: "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!"

Correction: April 23, 2016 Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the number of plays William Shakespeare is believed to have written. It is 37 to 40 plays, not 38 to 40. Also because of an editing error, the article misstated the name of one of the lovers in "Much Ado About Nothing." It is Benedick, not Benedeck.

Sources: Folger Shakespeare Library; The Oxford Companion to William Shakespeare, edited by Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Shakespeare Documented; "The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works" by William Shakespeare, edited by Ann Thompson, David Scott Kastan, Richard Proudfoot; "Shakespeare: The World as Stage" (Eminent Lives) by Bill Bryson; "Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare" by Jonathan Bate; "Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare" by Stephen Greenblatt.

Design and production by Grant Gold

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William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52

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On this date - April 23, 1616 - the creator of "Hamlet," "Macbeth" and "Romeo and Juliet" left the beauty of this world. To us, he bequeathed his tragedies and comedies, his sonnets and verse, which would survive 400 years.

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William Shakespeare Shakespeare is renowned as the English playwright and poet whose body of works is considered the greatest in history of English literature.

Shakespeare PlaysAll the plays from 'All's Well That Ends Well' to 'Twelfth Night' in the complete original texts with summaries. Divided into comedies, histories and tragedies.

Sonnets All of the Bard's 154 sonnets including the much acclaimed sonnet 18: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day..."

Pictures Engraving of paintings of William Shakespeare and those inspired by his famous plays. Indexed by play and accompanied by the text inspiring the painting.

Bard Facts Trivia about the world's most famous bard from words coined by the bard to his marriage.

BiographyEverything you would ever want to know about the immortal Bard's life and more.

Authorship Debate The controversial debate on who really wrote the complete works continues to rages unabated to this very day.

Quiz Test your knowledge of the bard by taking our gruelling quiz, answers included.

Summaries Shakespeare summaries provide a quick and easy guide to Shakespeare's most famous plays. Divided by act, the summaries make an ideal introduction.

Poems The complete collection of the Bard's poetry in the original text including A lover's complaint and Venus and Adonis.

Quotes Over 130 of the most famous quotes from the Bard's complete works indexed by play.

Globe Theatre The story of how the Bard created one of the greatest theatres of all time, the playhouse is also where he first performed many of his greatest plays.

Films The ultimate list of all film adaptations of the complete works, there are well over 250 movies to date.

Bibliography The complete list of the plays, poems and sonnets attributed as written by the Bard.

Timeline Describes the many chapters in the immortal Bard's colorful life from birth, his disappearance, marriage, his death and ending in the printing of the First Folio in 1623.

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