Romantic Inspiration

Getting a First Date

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 09:48:50 +0000

Getting a date might be easy for us, but to everyone, the first step is always the hardest step. Especially for someone who is introverted (shy), having a relationship with someone is very difficult to do. And if you had never dating, maybe start a conversation can make the situation more comfortable, or you might want to try pick up artist forum. Below tips could help you on how to react:

1. Friendly
Grow your sphere of life, especially if you are not including a figure that is easy to get along. A smile and say ‘Hello’ may be opening a conversation, and reduce the sense of awkward to be more familiar.

2. Never Too Rush
Perhaps you often notice new guy in office and you want to know more about him. Remember do not be too hasty, be fair, smile and say hello at the right moment before you introduce yourself. If you get a good response, do not be too eager to ask her out. Try invited to join other colleagues after work, this will give you the opportunity to socialize and know him more closely before heading to a more intimate level.

3. Socializing
Take advantage of the social atmosphere around you, for instance when you attend a party and see someone you love in there. Be friendly to introduce yourself and try to start conversations like, “How do you know the host?” But if the conversation stopped try to start addressing invitations and ask for permission to him and promised to see him again if you’re interested.

4. Mingle
Do not just hugged himself at home, try joining an art class or photograph, volunteering in a charity, or join the activity field. You’ll not only increase knowledge but also have many opportunities to meet new people.

5. Determine the First Step
No matter you are a woman or a man, sometimes you have to venture out of the cage and face the outside world. For example, how my friend met her husband only because she knocked on the door of his rented room just next door to borrow a pen, and no such encounter was initiated to be a serious relationship.

6. Get rid of Shame
If you live outside the city or you’re a shy, why do not you try looking for a partner with online media such as pua? Online dating gives us more benefit to define/choose someone according to your choice, even you will get comfortable with long-distance communication.

After you got your date, its time to avoid things that could made awkward situation, try not to talk too much, it could get your date get bored. Show your date your respect on him/her, don’t get it too fast, just let the conversation flow and direct it on its own. If you’re confuse how to start it, begin it with gratitude words, such as “Thanks for being my date tonight”, or just say how beautiful or gorgeous he/she look tonight. Its not a good idea talking about your ex in front of your new date, don’t make him/her lose the suspend and connection to you.

Be honest is the next tips for you, just because your date like something you don’t like, made you became someone else. Your relationship might move on for a while, but its a torture for yourself. Just be what you are, I believe he/she will appreciate it more. And its all started from simple question of how to talk to a girl, you could find the answer above, and you’ll be shock knowing the fact its easy to get a first date.

Why Study Shakespeare?

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:24:14 +0000

The Reasons Behind Shakespeare’s Influence and Popularity
Ben Jonson anticipated Shakespeare’s dazzling future when he declared, “He was not of an age, but for all time!” in the preface to the First Folio. While most people know that Shakespeare is, in fact, the most popular dramatist and poet the Western world has ever produced, students new to his work often wonder why this is so. The following are the top four reasons why Shakespeare has stood the test of time.
1) Illumination of the Human Experience
Shakespeare’s ability to summarize the range of human emotions in simple yet profoundly eloquent verse is perhaps the greatest reason for his enduring popularity. If you cannot find words to express how you feel about love or music or growing older, Shakespeare can speak for you. No author in the Western world has penned more beloved passages. Shakespeare’s work is the reason John Bartlett compiled the first major book of familiar quotations.
Here are some examples of Shakespeare’s most popular passages:
• The seven ages of man
• Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
• We band of brothers
• The green-eyed monster
• What’s in a name?
• To be, or not to be: that is the question

2) Great Stories
Marchette Chute, in the Introduction to her famous retelling of Shakespeare’s stories, summarizes one of the reasons for Shakespeare’s immeasurable fame:
William Shakespeare was the most remarkable storyteller that the world has ever known. Homer told of adventure and men at war, Sophocles and Tolstoy told of tragedies and of people in trouble. Terence and Mark Twain told cosmic stories, Dickens told melodramatic ones, Plutarch told histories and Hand Christian Andersen told fairy tales. But Shakespeare told every kind of story – comedy, tragedy, history, melodrama, adventure, love stories and fairy tales – and each of them so well that they have become immortal. In all the world of storytelling he has become the greatest name. (Stories from Shakespeare, 11)
Shakespeare’s stories transcend time and culture. Modern storytellers continue to adapt Shakespeare’s tales to suit our modern world, whether it be the tale of Lear on a farm in Iowa, Romeo and Juliet on the mean streets of New York City, or Macbeth in medieval Japan.

3) Compelling Characters
Shakespeare invented his share of stock characters, but his truly great characters – particularly his tragic heroes – are unequalled in literature, dwarfing even the sublime creations of the Greek tragedians. Shakespeare’s great characters have remained popular because of their complexity; for example, we can see ourselves as gentle Hamlet, forced against his better nature to seek murderous revenge. For this reason Shakespeare is deeply admired by actors, and many consider playing a Shakespearean character to be the most difficult and most rewarding role possible.
4) Ability to Turn a Phrase
Many of the common expressions now thought to be clichés were Shakespeare’s creations. Chances are you use Shakespeare’s expressions all the time even though you may not know it is the Bard you are quoting. You may think that fact is “neither here nor there”, but that’s “the short and the long of it.” Bernard Levin said it best in the following quote about Shakespeare’s impact on our language:
If you cannot understand my argument, and declare “It’s Greek to me”, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger, if your wish is father to the thought, if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool’s paradise – why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then – to give the devil his due – if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I were dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then – by Jove! O Lord! Tut, tut! for goodness’ sake! what the dickens! but me no buts – it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare. (The Story of English, 145)
For a list of authors who have named their books after lines from Shakespeare, see Shakespeare’s Impact on Other Writers.

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William Shakespeare from A History of English Literature 1918

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:26:56 +0000

SHAKESPEARE, 1564-1616.
William Shakespeare, by universal consent the greatest author of England, if not of the world, occupies chronologically a central position in the Elizabethan drama. He was born in 1564 in the good-sized village of Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, near the middle of England, where the level but beautiful country furnished full external stimulus for a poet’s eye and heart. His father, John Shakespeare, who was a general dealer in agricultural products and other commodities, was one of the chief citizens of the village, and during his son’s childhood was chosen an alderman and shortly after mayor, as we should call it. But by 1577 his prosperity declined, apparently through his own shiftlessness, and for many years he was harassed with legal difficulties. In the village ‘grammar’ school William Shakespeare had acquired the rudiments of book-knowledge, consisting largely of Latin, but his chief education was from Nature and experience. As his father’s troubles thickened he was very likely removed from school, but at the age of eighteen, under circumstances not altogether creditable to himself, he married Anne Hathaway, a woman eight years his senior, who lived in the neighboring village of Shottery. The suggestion that the marriage proved positively unhappy is supported by no real evidence, but what little is known of Shakespeare’s later life implies that it was not exceptionally congenial. Two girls and a boy were born from it.
In his early manhood, apparently between 1586 and 1588, Shakespeare left Stratford to seek his fortune in London. As to the circumstances, there is reasonable plausibility in the later tradition that he had joined in poaching raids on the deer-park of Sir Thomas Lucy, a neighboring country gentleman, and found it desirable to get beyond the bounds of that gentleman’s authority. It is also likely enough that Shakespeare had been fascinated by the performances of traveling dramatic companies at Stratford and by the Earl of Leicester’s costly entertainment of Queen Elizabeth in 1575 at the castle of Kenilworth, not many miles away. At any rate, in London he evidently soon secured mechanical employment in a theatrical company, presumably the one then known as Lord Leicester’s company, with which, in that case, he was always thereafter connected. His energy and interest must soon have won him the opportunity to show his skill as actor and also reviser and collaborator in play-writing, then as independent author; and after the first few years of slow progress his rise was rapid. He became one of the leading members, later one of the chief shareholders, of the company, and evidently enjoyed a substantial reputation as a playwright and a good, though not a great, actor. This was both at Court (where, however, actors had no social standing) and in the London dramatic circle. Of his personal life only the most fragmentary record has been preserved, through occasional mentions in miscellaneous documents, but it is evident that his rich nature was partly appreciated and thoroughly loved by his associates. His business talent was marked and before the end of his dramatic career he seems to have been receiving as manager, shareholder, playwright and actor, a yearly income equivalent to $25,000 in money of the present time. He early began to devote attention to paying the debts of his father, who lived until 1601, and restoring the fortunes of his family in Stratford. The death of his only son, Hamnet, in 1596, must have been a severe blow to him, but he obtained from the Heralds’ College the grant of a family coat of arms, which secured the position of the family as gentlefolks; in 1597 he purchased New Place, the largest house in Stratford; and later on he acquired other large property rights there. How often he may have visited Stratford in the twenty-five years of his career in London we have no information; but however enjoyable London life and the society of the writers at the ‘Mermaid’ Tavern may have been to him, he probably always looked forward to ending his life as the chief country gentleman of his native village. Thither he retired about 1610 or 1612, and there he died prematurely in 1616, just as he was completing his fifty-second year.
Shakespeare’s dramatic career falls naturally into four successive divisions of increasing maturity. To be sure, no definite record of the order of his plays has come down to us, and it can scarcely be said that we certainly know the exact date of a single one of them; but the evidence of the title-page dates of such of them as were hastily published during his lifetime, of allusions to them in other writings of the time, and other scattering facts of one sort or another, joined with the more important internal evidence of comparative maturity of mind and art which shows ‘Macbeth’ and ‘The Winter’s Tale,’ for example, vastly superior to ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’–all this evidence together enables us to arrange the plays in a chronological order which is certainly approximately correct. The first of the four periods thus disclosed is that of experiment and preparation, from about 1588 to about 1593, when Shakespeare tried his hand at virtually every current kind of dramatic work. Its most important product is ‘Richard III,’ a melodramatic chronicle-history play, largely imitative of Marlowe and yet showing striking power. At the end of this period Shakespeare issued two rather long narrative poems on classical subjects, ‘Venus and Adonis,’ and ‘The Rape of Lucrece,’ dedicating them both to the young Earl of Southampton, who thus appears as his patron. Both display great fluency in the most luxuriant and sensuous Renaissance manner, and though they appeal little to the taste of the present day ‘Venus and Adonis,’ in particular, seems to have become at once the most popular poem of its own time. Shakespeare himself regarded them very seriously, publishing them with care, though he, like most Elizabethan dramatists, never thought it worth while to put his plays into print except to safeguard the property rights of his company in them. Probably at about the end of his first period, also, he began the composition of his sonnets, of which we have already spoken.
The second period of Shakespeare’s work, extending from about 1594 to about 1601, is occupied chiefly with chronicle-history plays and happy comedies. The chronicle-history plays begin (probably) with the subtile and fascinating, though not yet absolutely masterful study of contrasting characters in ‘Richard II’; continue through the two parts of ‘Henry IV,’ where the realistic comedy action of Falstaff and his group makes history familiarly vivid; and end with the epic glorification of a typical English hero-king in ‘Henry V.’ The comedies include the charmingly fantastic ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’; ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ where a story of tragic sternness is strikingly contrasted with the most poetical idealizing romance and yet is harmoniously blended into it; ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ a magnificent example of high comedy of character and wit; ‘As You Like It,’ the supreme delightful achievement of Elizabethan and all English pastoral romance; and ‘Twelfth Night,’ where again charming romantic sentiment is made believable by combination with a story of comic realism. Even in the one, unique, tragedy of the period, ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ the main impression is not that of the predestined tragedy, but that of ideal youthful love, too gloriously radiant to be viewed with sorrow even in its fatal outcome.
The third period, extending from about 1601 to about 1609, includes Shakespeare’s great tragedies and certain cynical plays, which formal classification mis-names comedies. In these plays as a group Shakespeare sets himself to grapple with the deepest and darkest problems of human character and life; but it is only very uncertain inference that he was himself passing at this time through a period of bitterness and disillusion.
‘Julius Casar’ presents the material failure of an unpractical idealist (Brutus); ‘Hamlet’ the struggle of a perplexed and divided soul; ‘Othello’ the ruin of a noble life by an evil one through the terrible power of jealousy; ‘King Lear’ unnatural ingratitude working its hateful will and yet thwarted at the end by its own excess and by faithful love; and
‘Macbeth’ the destruction of a large nature by material ambition. Without doubt this is the greatest continuous group of plays ever wrought out by a human mind, and they are followed by ‘Antony and Cleopatra,’ which magnificently portrays the emptiness of a sensual passion against the background of a decaying civilization.
Shakespeare did not solve the insoluble problems of life, but having presented them as powerfully, perhaps, as is possible for human intelligence, he turned in his last period, of only two or three years, to the expression of the serene philosophy of life in which he himself must have now taken refuge. The noble and beautiful romance-comedies, ‘Cymbeline,’ ‘The Winter’s Tale,’ and ‘The Tempest,’ suggest that men do best to forget what is painful and center their attention on the pleasing and encouraging things in a world where there is at least an inexhaustible store of beauty and goodness and delight.
Shakespeare may now well have felt, as his retirement to Stratford suggests, that in his nearly forty plays he had fully expressed himself and had earned the right to a long and peaceful old age. The latter, as we have seen, was denied him; but seven years after his death two of his fellow-managers assured the preservation of the plays whose unique importance he himself did not suspect by collecting them in the first folio edition of his complete dramatic works.
Shakespeare’s greatness rests on supreme achievement–the result of the highest genius matured by experience and by careful experiment and labor–in all phases of the work of a poetic dramatist. The surpassing charm of his rendering of the romantic beauty and joy of life and the profundity of his presentation of its tragic side we have already suggested. Equally sure and comprehensive is his portrayal of characters. With the certainty of absolute mastery he causes men and women to live for us, a vast representative group, in all the actual variety of age and station, perfectly realized in all the subtile diversities and inconsistencies of protean human nature. Not less notable than his strong men are his delightful young heroines, romantic Elizabethan heroines, to be sure, with an unconventionality, many of them, which does not belong to such women in the more restricted world of reality, but pure embodiments of the finest womanly delicacy, keenness, and vivacity. Shakespeare, it is true, was a practical dramatist. His background characters are often present in the plays not in order to be entirely real but in order to furnish amusement; and even in the case of the chief ones, just as in the treatment of incidents, he is always perfectly ready to sacrifice literal truth to dramatic effect. But these things are only the corollaries of all successful playwriting and of all art.
To Shakespeare’s mastery of poetic expression similarly strong superlatives must be applied. For his form he perfected Marlowe’s blank verse, developing it to the farthest possible limits of fluency, variety, and melody; though he retained the riming couplet for occasional use (partly for the sake of variety) and frequently made use also of prose, both for the same reason and in realistic or commonplace scenes. As regards the spirit of poetry, it scarcely need be said that nowhere else in literature is there a like storehouse of the most delightful and the greatest ideas phrased with the utmost power of condensed expression and figurative beauty. In dramatic structure his greatness is on the whole less conspicuous. Writing for success on the Elizabethan stage, he seldom attempted to reduce its romantic licenses to the perfection of an absolute standard. ‘Romeo and Juliet, ‘Hamlet,’ and indeed most of his plays, contain unnecessary scenes, interesting to the Elizabethans, which Sophocles as well as Racine would have pruned away. Yet when Shakespeare chooses, as in ‘Othello,’ to develop a play with the sternest and most rapid directness, he proves essentially the equal even of the most rigid technician.
Shakespeare, indeed, although as Ben Jonson said, ‘he was not for an age but for all time,’ was in every respect a thorough Elizabethan also, and does not escape the superficial Elizabethan faults. Chief of these, perhaps, is his fondness for ‘conceits,’ with which he makes his plays, especially some of the earlier ones, sparkle, brilliantly, but often inappropriately. In his prose style, again, except in the talk of commonplace persons, he never outgrew, or wished to outgrow, a large measure of Elizabethan self-conscious elegance. Scarcely a fault is his other Elizabethan habit of seldom, perhaps never, inventing the whole of his stories, but drawing the outlines of them from previous works–English chronicles, poems, or plays, Italian ‘novels,’ or the biographies of Plutarch. But in the majority of cases these sources provided him only with bare or even crude sketches, and perhaps nothing furnishes clearer proof of his genius than the way in which he has seen the human significance in stories baldly and wretchedly told, where the figures are merely wooden types, and by the power of imagination has transformed them into the greatest literary masterpieces, profound revelations of the underlying forces of life.
Shakespeare, like every other great man, has been the object of much unintelligent, and misdirected adulation, but his greatness, so far from suffering diminution, grows more apparent with the passage of time and the increase of study.
[Note: The theory persistently advocated during the last half century that Shakespeare’s works were really written not by himself but by Francis Bacon or some other person can never gain credence with any competent judge. Our knowledge of Shakespeare’s life, slight as it is, is really at least as great as that which has been preserved of almost any dramatist of the period; for dramatists were not then looked on as persons of permanent importance. There is really much direct contemporary documentary evidence, as we have already indicated, of Shakespeare’s authorship of the plays and poems. No theory, further, could be more preposterous, to any one really acquainted with literature, than the idea that the imaginative poetry of Shakespeare was produced by the essentially scientific and prosaic mind of Francis Bacon. As to the cipher systems supposed to reveal hidden messages in the plays: First, no poet bending his energies to the composition of such masterpieces as Shakespeare’s could possibly concern himself at the same time with weaving into them a complicated and trifling cryptogram. Second, the cipher systems are absolutely arbitrary and unscientific, applied to any writings whatever can be made to ‘prove’ anything that one likes, and indeed have been discredited in the hands of their own inventors by being made to ‘prove’ far too much. Third, it has been demonstrated more than once that the verbal coincidences on which the cipher systems rest are no more numerous than the law of mathematical probabilities requires. Aside from actually vicious pursuits, there can be no more melancholy waste of time than the effort to demonstrate that Shakespeare is not the real author of his reputed works.

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William Shakespeare Facts

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:25:57 +0000

William Shakespeare facts are few and far between. While we know alot about the playwright’s works, Shakespeare facts concerning the Bard’s personal life are less forthcoming.
Nobody knows Shakespeare’s true birthday. The closest we can come is the date of his baptism on April the 26th, 1564. By tradition and guesswork, William is assumed to have been born three days earlier on April the 23rd, a date now commonly used to celebrate the famous Bard’s birthday.
The Bard coined the phrase, “the beast with two backs” meaning intercourse in his play Othello.
Shakespeare invented the word “assassination”.
There are only two authentic portraits of William today; the widely used engraving of William Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout first published on the title page of the 1623 First Folio and the monument of the great playwright in Stratford’s Holy Trinity Church in Stratford.
William married a woman nearly twice his age. Anne Hathaway was 26 years old when William married her at age 18. They married at Temple Grafton, a village approximately five miles (8 km) from Stratford. Anne Hathaway was said to be from Shottery.
Shakespeare and wife had eight children, including daughter Susanna, twins Hamnet, Judith, and Edmund. Susanna received most of the Bard’s fortune when he died in 1616, age 52. Hamnet died at age 11, Judith at 77. Susanna dies in 1649, age 66.
There were two Shakespeare families living in Stratford when William was born; the other family did not become famous.
Shakespeare, one of literature’s greatest figures, never attended university.
Of the 154 sonnets or poems, the playwright penned, his first 26 were said to be directed to an aristocratic young man who did not want to marry. Sonnets 127 – 152 talk about a dark woman, the Bard seems to have had mixed feelings for.
Most academics agree that William wrote his first play, Henry VI, Part One around 1589 to 1590 when he would have been roughly 25 years old.
The Bard is believed to have started writing the first of his 154 sonnets in 1593 at age 29. His first sonnet was Venus and Adonis published in the same year.
William lived through the Black Death. This epidemic that killed over 33,000 in London alone in 1603 when Will was 39, later returned in 1608.
The Bard lost a play. The play Cardenio that has been credited to the Bard and which was performed in his life, has been completely lost to time. Today we have no written record of it’s story whatsoever.
The Great Bard suffered breech of copyright. In 1609, many of his sonnets were published without the bard’s permission.
The famous playwright died in 1616 at the age of 52. He wrote on average 1.5 plays a year since he first started in 1589. His last play The Two Noble Kinsmen is reckoned to have been written in 1613 when he was 49 years old.
William never published any of his plays. We read his plays today only because his fellow actors John Hemminges and Henry Condell, posthumously recorded his work as a dedication to their fellow actor in 1623, publishing 36 of William’s plays. This collection known as The First Folio is the source from which all published Shakespeare books are derived and is an important proof that he authored his plays.
William was born to a Stratford tanner named John Shakespeare. His mother Mary was the daughter of a wealthy gentleman-farmer named Robert Arden.
Legend has it that at the tender age of eleven, William watched the pageantry associated with Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Kenilworth Castle near Stratford and later recreated this scene many times in his plays.
Unlike most famous artists of his time, the Bard did not die in poverty. When he died, his will contained several large holdings of land.
Few people realize that aside from writing 37 plays and composing 154 sonnets, William was also an actor who performed many of his own plays as well as those of other playwrights (Ben Jonson).
As an actor performing his own plays, William performed before Queen Elizabeth I and later before James I who was an enthusiastic patron of his work.
Will wrote lewd comments about woman. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet’s nurse crudely tells Juliet “thou (you) wilt (will) fall backward when thou (you) hast (have) more wit” (Act I, Scene III, Line 41), by which she means Juliet will learn to fall or lie on her back (have sex) when she is older.
The Bard crudely discusses genitalia size in The Taming of the Shrew where the character Curtis tells Grumio, “Away, you three-inch fool” (Act IV, Scene I, Lines 26-28). Grumio banally replies that he is at least as long as his foot.
Will dabbled in property development. At age 18, he bought the second most prestigious property in all of Stratford, The New Place and later he doubled his investment on some land he bought near Stratford.
Even Shakespeare had his critics. One called Robert Greene described the young playwright as an “upstart young crow” or arrogant upstart, accusing him of borrowing ideas from his seniors in the theatre world for his own plays.
William’s 126th poem contains a farewell, to “my lovely boy” a phrase taken to imply possible homosexuality by some postmodern Shakespeare academics.
The Bard’s will gave most of his property to Susanna, his first child and not to his wife Anne Hathaway. Instead his loyal wife infamously received his “second-best bed”.
The Bard’s second best bed wasn’t so bad, it was his marriage bed; his best bed was for guests.
Until The First Folio was published seven years after his death in 1616, very little personal information was ever written about the Bard..
William was known as a keen businessman to many in his home town of Stratford.
Suicide occurs an unlucky thirteen times in Shakespeare’s plays. It occurs in Romeo and Juliet where both Romeo and Juliet commit suicide, in Julius Caesar where both Cassius and Brutus die by consensual stabbing, as well as Brutus’ wife Portia, in Othello where Othello stabs himself, in Hamlet where Ophelia is said to have “drowned” in suspicious circumstances, in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth dies, and finally in Antony and Cleopatra where suicide occurs an astounding five times (Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras and Eros).
Racism crops up frequently in the Bard’s work. In Othello, the lead character , a Moor of African descent, is continuously insulted for his heritage and appearance (especially in Act I) by his enemies and even his supporters (Lodovico) at the play’s conclusion when Othello murders his wife for mistakenly believing she cheated. Racism also occurs in Titus Andronicus (towards the Moor named Aaron), The Tempest where the misformed giant Caliban is called “this thing of darkness” (Act V, Line 275), and in Richard II.
Anti-Semitism also crops up. The Jewish moneylender Shylock in the Merchant of Venice is portrayed as greedy and calculating. At the play’s conclusion he is forced to change religion to Christianity as punishment for wanting “a pound of flesh” from Antonio who agreed to this if his friend forfeited a debt to Shylock. Being a Jew is used as a curse in Henry the First, Part Two (Act II, Scene IV, Line 178), in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Act II, Scene V, Line 53), The Merchant of Venice, Anthony and Cleopatra, Much Ado about Nothing , Macbeth and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
The Bard’s characters frequently debase those of colored skin. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, the character King Ferdinand, King of Navarre, racially remarks that “Black is the badge of hell, the hue of dungeons and the scowl of night” (Act IV, Scene III, Lines 254-255).
William was popular with King James I. England’s ruler following Elizabeth I was so taken with the Bard’s skill that he gave his acting company, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men a patent allowing them to perform and also made these actors Grooms of Chamber. The Bard returned the favor by renaming his company, The King’s Men. This title made William a favorite for Court performances and made him a favorite with the new King of England.
William Shakespeare is one of the most identifiable icons of England. Others include members of England’s Royal family, Westminister Abbey, Big Ben, and red double-decker buses.

William Shakespeare Biography

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:25:02 +0000

William Shakespeare a.k.a. The Bard is known simply as the greatest playwright ever. But Shakespeare has also made very important contributions in the fields of acting and English literature.

William Shakespeare is considered to be a playwright, poet and actor par excellence. Shakespeare’s works have been interpreted over the ages by different people differently. Shakespeare’s works have given rise to countless movie plots and sub plots. The Bard as he is better known as, has also contributed to our lexicon by adding phrases such as “in the limelight”.

Shakespeare’s history is very controversial because there is a certain school of thought that says that he was not a very ethical person. Stories of Shakespeare plagiarizing works of other playwrights and passing them off as his own abound. Most of the knowledge of his life comes from registrar records, court records, wills, marriage certificates and his tombstone.

William was the third child of John and Mary Shakespeare born, some time in late April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. The first two were daughters and William was himself followed by Gilbert who died in 1612 and Richard who died in 1613. Of William’s seven siblings, only Judith and four of his brothers survived to adulthood.

His father was a prominent and prosperous alderman in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, and was later granted a coat of arms by the College of Heralds. It is speculated that Shakespeare attended the Stratford Grammar School in his youth, and did not proceed to Oxford or Cambridge.

The Bard’s reputation as a poet is confirmed in 1598, when Francis Meres attacked him as being “mellifluous” and described his work as honey-tongued, “sugared sonnets among his private friends” in his own Palladis Tamia of 1598. The earliest proof that William did indeed write 37 plays was Robert Greene?s criticism of the Bard in his Groatsworth of Wit. Bought with a Million of Repentance which attacked Shakespeare for having the nerve to compete with him and other playwrights in 1592. Robert Greene made this quite clear by calling him “an upstart crow”. This criticism was placed with the Stationer’s Registrar on the 20th of September, 1592.

The proof most often cited that Shakespeare authored his plays however, was the First Folio (1623) where Henry Condell and John Hemminges who were actors in the Bard’s theatre company, claim in a dedicatory verse within the Folio that they recorded and collected his plays as a memorial to the late actor and playwright. William Shakespeare’s theatre presence is given concrete form by his name being recorded as one of the major shareholders of the Globe theatre.

In 1594 William Shakespeare acted in front of Queen Elizabeth. Evidence of William’s interest in theatre comes from the Bard’s name being listed in 1594 and 1595 as a shareholder of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company, a theatre company.

In 1603, he received a patent, titling him as one of the King’s Men and a Groom of the Chamber by James I, the then King of England. This honour made William a favorite for all court performances, earned each King’s man extra money and made the Bard’s name one rather above reproach. Macbeth which celebrates King James I ancestor Malcolm, is considered to have been written in part as appreciation for the King’s patronage. There were also rumors that Macbeth was nothing but an insidious form of propaganda for the King.

The periods between 1578-82 and 1585-92 are referred to as the lost years because very little is known about Shakespeare’s life during these two major spans of time, The first period covers the time after Shakespeare left grammar school until his marriage to Anne Hathaway in November of 1582. The second period covers the seven years of Shakespeare’s life in which he must have been perfecting his dramatic skills and collecting sources for the plots of his plays.

William’s first child, Susanna was baptized in Stratford sometime in May, 1583. Twins Hamnet and Judith were born to Anne in February 1592. Hamnet, William’s only son died in 1596, just eleven years old. Hamnet and Judith were named after William’s close friends, Judith and Hamnet Sadler. William Shakespeare’s family was uncharacteristically small when compared to other families during those times.

In 1609, William Shakespeare’s sonnets were published without the Bard’s permission. It is considered unlikely that William wanted many of his deeply personal poems to be revealed to the outside world. Shakespeare revised his will on March the 25th, 1616. Less than a month later, he died on April the 23rd, 1616. He famously l left his second-best bed to his wife. The logic for this was that Shakespeare’s best bed was for guests; his second-best bed was his marriage bed. Most of his assets were left behind for his daughter and her physician husband.

Written upon William Shakespeare’s tombstone is an appeal that he be left to rest in peace with a curse on those who would move his bones…

Good friend, for Jesus’s sake, forbear

To dig the dust enclosed here;

Blest be the man that spares these stones

And curst he that moves my bones.

Understanding Hamlet: Analysis of Characters in Hamlet

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:23:28 +0000

The characters in ‘Hamlet’ are a true replica of human nature. Read on and know the analysis of characters in Hamlet

The play ‘Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark’ is one of the four greatest tragedies of William Shakespeare. It is the longest play written by him and also one of the most powerful. The play is about the conflict of a person, who had to chose between moral values and personal revenge.

Understanding Hamlet
Hamlet is a complex play involving the themes of revenge, treachery, moral corruption and incest.

Prince Hamlet is enraged by the fact that his mother, Queen Gertrude, married his uncle, Claudius, soon after the death of his father, King Hamlet. When he sees the ghost of his deceased father, he learns that his father was murdered by his uncle. This arouses in him a feeling of revenge towards his uncle. He also suspects that his mother was also involved in the murder plan, and this angers him further. Hamlet acts like a madman so that no one suspects his actual motive and also turns away from his lady love Ophelia. However, when he kills Polonius, the King’s chief counselor (who was trying to know about Hamlet’s actual motives by eavesdropping his conversation with his mother), Claudius suspects that even his life is in danger. Learning the death of Polonius, Ophelia becomes mad with grief and commits suicide. To save himself, Claudius makes plans to kill Hamlet. When his first attempt fails, he convinces Laertes, Polonius’ son to avenge the death of his father and sister, and arranges a combat between him and Hamlet. To make sure that Hamlet dies, he coats Laerete’s sharp sword with poison and also prepares a poisonous drink for him. However, Claudius’ plan backfires on him. Instead of Hamlet, Gertrude drinks the poison and dies. Hamlet kills Laerete but is wounded by his poisonous sword. Before dying, Hamlet slays Claudius, thus avenging his father’s death.

Analysis of Characters in Hamlet
The credit for the success of Shakespeare’s tragedies not only goes to the plot, but also to his characters. The characters in Shakespeare’s plays are human, and react to situations in the way people would behave in certain situations, even in real life. The protagonists in his tragic plays have superior characteristics that make them great and powerful, but they have one flaw in their character which leads them to their tragedy. It is the same in the case of prince Hamlet. Hamlet is a complex play and understanding Hamlet characters is not a simple task. Each character has different layers and are rounded characters as seen in most plays of Shakespeare. He never portrayed characters as black and white because he believed that human beings have a mixture of good virtues as well as bad.

Hamlet
The character of Hamlet is complex and many scholars have given different interpretations for this enigmatic character of Shakespeare. Hamlet is intelligent and a knowledgeable person. He is a University student and is thoughtful and philosophical by nature. He thinks deeply about important matters and decisions in life. However, this contemplative nature is also his major flaw. His lack of timely action is the cause of his tragedy. Even after he sees the ghost of his father, he does not totally believe that Claudius killed his father. Only when he gets the proof that his uncle is guilty, he is ready to kill him. Eve after that he delays his action, although he gets plenty of chances to do it. However, he has a contradictory personality too. This is seen when he suddenly kills Polonius, thinking that it was Claudius, who was standing behind the tapestry. This comes as a shock to the audience, because Hamlet does not even think about checking who the person is before killing.

King Claudius
King Claudius is the villain of the play who is portrayed as cunning and selfish. His powerful ambition leads him to kill his own brother and marry his widow to usurp the throne from Hamlet, who is the heir apparent. He is a calculative man who can fall to any level to hold his power to himself. He thinks only of himself and has the ability to manipulate people the way he wants to. However, this evil character of Shakespeare shows his human nature too. He feels guilty and is shown to be praying for forgiveness in various acts of the play. Although he may have married Gertrude for power, he seems to love her truly. However, his evil virtues foreground his good ones, leading to his tragic end.

Gertrude
Gertrude’s character in the play is a little confusing one, as Shakespeare has not explained her intentions and attitudes clearly. Her character is completely opposite to that of Hamlet. She is a person who does not think much of the consequences of her actions. It can be said that her hasty marriage to Claudius led to the destruction of the entire family. In many parts of the play, Hamlet condemns Gertrude for having weak moral standards as he could not accept the fact of her remarriage. Although she married her brother-in-law, it is not even remotely mentioned anywhere in the play that she had a relationship with him before or had a share in King Hamlet’s murder. Her actions reveal that by marrying Claudius she made a choice that would be beneficial to her and would not affect her power and position. Although Gertrude appears to be a shallow woman, she is shown as a loving mother who cared for her son till her last breath.

Ophelia
Ophelia is the most pitiable character in the play. Hamlet loves this beautiful and innocent daughter of Polonius and apparently she loves him too. But, her father and brother dissuade her from having any relationship with Hamlet, as they think that he does not love her truly. Being an obedient daughter, she never professes her love for Hamlet. Ophelia gets disturbed when she sees Hamlet acting as a mad man and under the orders of the king and her father, tries to know about his real motive. Hamlet accuses her of being a spy and condemns her for betraying him. This behavior of Hamlet shocks her and when he kills her father, her gentle heart is shattered. She goes mad with grief and finally kills herself. The people she loved i.e. her father, brother and lover failed to understand her and were in some way responsible for her untimely death.

Hamlet emphasizes the fact that Shakespeare was truly a genius. Although the play was written in the 16th or 17th century by observing the people of those times, it surely rings true even in this century. The complexity of the characters make ‘Hamlet’ a masterpiece.

Timeline of William Shakespeare

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:17:20 +0000

The works of William Shakespeare have wowed readers all over the world for years. Here’s a look at the timeline of William Shakespeare, which makes a mention of some important events in his life.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.”

William Shakespeare –Hamlet

A very talented English poet and playwright, William Shakespeare is known the world over as the greatest writers in the English language. With several plays, poems and sonnets to his credit, he has been highly regarded as the finest writers by lovers of this classic literature all across the globe. His works- Hamlet and Macbeth are considered to be the finest written by him. Here, we shall take a look at the timeline of William Shakespeare, which records some main events from his personal and professional life. So, take a journey through this timeline of William Shakespeare, which gives you a glimpse about his life.

Timeline of William Shakespeare:
1564: William Shakespeare was baptized on the 26th of April, 1564. Born to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, he was the third of the eight children born to this couple. His real date of birth is unknown and is observed on 23rd of April.

1571: This was the year which is rumored to be the period when William Shakespeare began his formal education. Many biographers have recorded Shakespeare being educated at the King’s New School in Stratford.

1582: At the age of just 18 years, William Shakespeare fell in love with Anne Hathaway, who was 26 years old, miles older than Shakespeare. They married on 27th November at a small village named Temple Grafton, a few miles away from Stratford.

1583: Anne Hathaway gave birth to Susanna; Sussana was baptized on 26th May 1583.

1585: William Shakespeare had a pair of twins, Hamnet and Judith and they were baptized on 11th August. This period (1585-1592) is the time that is speculated to be Shakespeare’s Lost Years. Many scholars have been unable to trace accurate events that happened during this period.

1590: Scholars have referred to this year as the one where he began to write Henry VI-Part II and Part III.

1592: His first brush with London theatre happened in this year. He was even mentioned in print by playwright Robert Greene who criticized Shakespeare’s works.

1593: This was the time when William Shakespeare published two poems titled Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece; both were based on erotic themes.

1594: The period from 1589-1594 was considered to be the time when Willian Shakespeare wrote his famous work, The Comedy of Errors. This was also the time when he penned down Love’s Labour’s Lost.

1595: Speculations about the Merry Wives of Windsor mention that this was probably written in 1595, which was ultimately published in 1602.

1596 – 1597: This was the time when William Shakespeare began writing the Merchant of Venice. He also penned down Henry IV-Part I.

1598: It is believed William Shakespeare wrote Henry IV- Part II, this year. His name was also listed as an actor in a play titled Every Man in His Humor.

1599: It is believed Shakespeare began his work on Hamlet this year. This was considered to one of his greatest plays of all times! A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written during the 1590s.

1600- From this year, scholars believed he mainly wrote about tragedies hence the period 1600-1608 is marked as his Tragic Period.

1601: He began writing The Phoenix and The Turtle. He also wrote Twelfth Night around this time. It is also rumored this was also the time when he wrote All’s Well That Ends Well which he completed in 1608.

1602: Scholars believe William Shakespeare wrote Troilus and Cressida around this time.

1604: It is rumored, his play, Measure for Measure was written around 1604.

1605: This year marked two performances of The Merchant of Venice. This performance was held at King James court.

1606: It’s believed he composed Anthony and Cleopatra around this year.

1610: This year, Othello was performed at the Oxford college.

1610 – 1611: It is believed William Shakespeare wrote The Winter’s Tale. He also penned a play called The Tempest.

1612: William Shakespeare was called as a witness in a court case. This was in connection with a marriage settlement of Mountjoy’s daughter.

1614: The Globe Theatre, the first playhouse built by actors (for actors) was reopened this year. He also spent time in London with his son-in-law named John Hall.

1616: William Shakespeare died on 23 April in the year 1616. A large amount of his estate was left to his eldest daughter, Susanna. William Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church. This was done two days after his death.