William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor. He was born in
Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the
English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's
national poet and nicknamed the Bard of Avon. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway at
the age of 18. They had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. His early
plays were mainly comedies and histories. He then wrote mainly tragedies including
Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the
English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and
collaborated with other playwrights. Around 1613, at the age of 49, he retired to
Stratford , where he died three years later.

*The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare.*

Shakespeare's Sonnets is the title of a collection of 154 sonnets accredited to William

Shakespeare which cover themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality.
The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man, often called the "Fair Youth."and the last
28 to a woman, The Dark Lady.

Hamlet

Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to
wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlet's father, King Hamlet. Claudius
had murdered his own brother and seized the throne, also marrying his deceased
brother's widow. Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play, and is ranked among the most
powerful and influential tragedies in English literature. The story of Shakespeare's Hamlet
was derived from the legend of Amleth.

Macbeth

Macbeth is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy, and tells the story of a brave Scottish general
named Macbeth who receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will
become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife,
Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then
wracked with guilt and paranoia, and he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler as he is forced
to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion. The
bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms
of madness, and death. In the backstage world of theatre, some believe that the play is
cursed, and will not mention its title aloud, referring to it instead as "the Scottish play".
Soliloquies* in plays

* a soliloquy is the act of a character speaking their thoughts aloud.

The most famous Shakespeare soliloquies are found in three of his plays – Hamlet ,
Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet . For example, the best known opening line to a
Shakespeare soliloquy is “to be or not to be”, from Hamlet. “Is this a dagger which I see
before me” is a soliloquy from Macbeth, and “What’s in a name?” is from Romeo and
Juliet.

Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe

Thomas Kyd was an English playwright, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of
the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama. It is believed that
by 1589 he had written a lost Hamlet--sometimes referred to as the Ur-Hamlet--which
was probably the model for Shakespeare's tragedy.

Christopher Marlowe was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan
era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced
William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as him and who rose to become
the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's mysterious early death.
Marlowe's plays are known for the use of blank verse and their overreaching
protagonists.