Life Of William Shakespeare :: essays research papers

Life of William ShakespeareAround 1568, a group of actors visited Stratford and put on a play before theentire town, with permission from John Shakespeare, the mayor of the town. Thepeople loved the play, especially the small children. All of them looked up tothe actors, as they returned apiece year to perform different plays. They haddreams of one day becoming actors, but only one of these children fulfilled thisdream. This child was the mayors son, William Shakespeare.At this time, actors in England usually exhausted their careers traveling to newtowns, performing plays at city buildings or local inns. However, with the helpof James Burbage, this all changed. James Burbage designed and built the first field of honor in England. The actors could then settle down in one place and performin a place built for plays. The theatre was a considerable victory, and many more beganpopping up over England, but this theatre built by James Burbage was foreverknown as The Theatre.The layout of the stage consisted of pentad levels. The lowest level was for trapdoors built into the stage. The next level was the main stage, where the actorsdid most of their performing. Above this was the balcony level, which could beused to represent anything from a city protect to a mountain. The next levelcontained pulleys which could raise or lower anything from above. The top levelwas used for creating sounds of rain or thunder, or dropping important objectsfrom the sky.William Shakespeare get hitched with Anne Hathaway at age 18. In two years, they hadthree children, a daughter named Susanna, and twins, Hamnet and Judith. Hedidnt stay in Stratford long after this though. He left his family to attend acareer as an actor in London.Shakespeare wrote his first play in 1592. It was a historical play called HenryVI, which was one of the biggest successes of the year. Some scholarscriticized him because he did not have a university education like mostplaywrites, but probably the only re ason he was criticized for this was becausehis play was so popular.After the success of his historical play, he wrote a tragedy called TitusAndronicus, and then The Comedy of Errors, a humorous comedy. Not manyplaywrites wrote so many different types of plays in so short a time, butShakespeare was certainly not like any other English playwrite.Very early in Shakespeares career, however, many theatres closed receivable to theplague in England, and playwrites were not in high demand. Shakespeare thenturned to another type of writing and wrote a narrative poem entitled genus Venus and