English: William Shakespeare Quiz

The Globe Theater

All of Shakespeare's plays were performed in the Globe Theater, one of the three largest in London. Shakespeare partially owned the Globe Theater, which became his source of income. The Globe Theater was closed twice during Shakespeare's life due to the Black Plague, which was very unknown at the time. During these closings, Shakespeare wrote many of his best plays and sonnets but also lost much income. In 1613, the original Globe Theater burned down. Since, a replica has been built. The Globe was a circular theater, with the rich who payed lots of money to enter the plays sitting in the rafters and the poor, called Groundlings, standing in an area called the pit. The Globe could fit up to 3,000 people. The Globe was an open air theater as there was no electricity at the time. Plays in Shakespeare's time had no intermission, and there was little control over the Groundlings, who would throw food or stones at the actors whenever they disliked a portion of the play. When this occurred, the actors would recite their lines faster in order to avoid being hit. Strategically, after a very dramatic scene, Shakespeare would place a less thought provoking scene to calm the audience down. In Shakespeare's time acting companies like his traveled together to perform all of their plays. They also had no women because women on stage were considered bad luck. Instead, young boys played the roles of women in Shakespeare's plays. The Globe theater stage contained two doors, a trap door for quick exits, and an upper stage when characters needed to be at different altitudes as in the famous balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet.

Elizabethan and Jacobean Eras

During the Elizabethan and Jacobean Eras, in which Shakespeare lived, London was the center of commerce, culture, and art with a population of 200,000. The Elizabethan Era was the first protestant era in England because the father of Queen Elizabeth, King Henry VIII, wanted to divorce his first wife Catherine of Aragon, sister to the queen of Spain. When the Pope did not allow him to do this, King Henry VIII created the Church of England, or Anglican Church. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, people were encouraged to break away from the ties that had held them to the church during the dark ages. This era of increased scientific discovery eventually became known as the English Renaissance. After the death of Queen Elizabeth I, King James I of Scotland became King of England and Scotland and the Jacobean Period began. Shakespeare performed for both Queen Elizabeth and King James. Macbeth was actually written for King James, which is why it occurred in Scotland, and contained witches as King James was fond of witchcraft and sorcery. The fashion during the Elizabethan and Jacobean Eras was an exaggerated collar, although by law, the ruler had to wear the largest collar. In Elizabethan and Jacobean Times, there were two distinct classes, the aristocracy and the peasants. There was no middle class until the Industrial Revolution. The Aristocrats didn't have to do much manual labor because they inherited wealth and power from their ancestors who were also noblemen. While peasants could not ascend to the level of Aristocrats, Aristocrats could fall to the level of peasants. Aristocrats wanted the aristocracy to be a rather exclusive club, so they made all artisans starts as apprentices, leaving the best ones, like to lawyers and doctors, to the sons of Aristocrats. Aristocrat men wore undershirts, and shirts that exaggerated the size of their shoulders, so they could seem stronger. The only part of their bodies that were exposed were their lower legs, so if women thought that a man's lower legs looked strong, the rest of him would also be strong. Women wore incredibly tight clothing, which maids had to dress them in. This tight clothing showed their class and that they had maids to help them. They wore the royal colors, which were considered very fashionable at the time, and put white powder on their faces to give the appearance that they had never done manual labor before. Buttons and expensive fabrics like silk and lace also showed wealth. Portrait artists at the time were forced to embellish to get paid, but also had to keep their work somewhat realistic. Women were essentially slaves to their husbands and it was seen that their job was in the house. The only way a woman could inherit property was if her parents bore no male children, as in the case of Queen Elizabeth I, whose younger brother died before her father. Actors in the time of Shakespeare were considered to be one social class above prostitutes, but Shakespeare, through his money and intelligence became somewhat of a low level aristocrat. How he became intelligent is a mystery as the lower class were not allowed an education. Actors could wear the clothing of the rich in their plays to make things more realistic, but other than that they had little privileges. In England, country houses were common in the Elizabethan Era. They generally had three chimneys and were long but not wide. This was similar to the house Shakespeare was born in, but houses in London did not look like this. In London, there was no sewage system, so people disposed of waste in chamber pots, which they threw out the window, disregarding pedestrians. Men would stand further from walls of houses while women would stand closer so that chamber pots would pass over the women but hit the men. Crime was high due to a flawed police force and justice system that relied to heavily on torture. Communicable diseases spread rapidly due to a lack of understanding about germs.

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, England and died April 23, 1616 in London, England. He was nicknamed the Bard because of the lyrical quality in his plays and sonnets. Shakespeare was one of the few people to move from the lower to the upper class in his time period, and he did so mainly through money he earned through his plays. Shakespeare wrote 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and used 17,000 word, 3,000 of which he coined himself, including "Champion". The 17,000 words was about 4 times what a well-educated person knew at the time, so it was suspected by some that a countryman like Shakespeare could not have written all that he did. His plays included comedies, in which the characters go from ignorance about a subject to understanding, tragedies, in which the main characters die at the end, and histories, written about historical figures. Some tragedies can also have historical figures if the figures die at the end. Shakespeare invented his own type of sonnet, the Shakespearean Sonnet while other sonnets were invented in Italy and called Plutarchian Sonnets. Half of Shakespeare's Sonnets were written towards women while others were written towards men causing some to wonder if he was bisexual. It is considered that the second half of his plays and sonnets was better than the first. Shakespeare did not create his own plots. Instead, he used older plots and improved them to what their most well-known forms. Some modern day works, like the Lion King, which was based on Hamlet, are based off of the plots of Shakespeare plays. Shakespeare entered the acting company "Lord Chamberlain's Men" in 1594 and acted as well as wrote many plays. The techniques used by Shakespeare in his plays include, allusion, or literary reference to a person, place, or other literary work, symbolism, in which an object represents an idea, dramatic irony, in which the audience knows something that the characters do not, and puns, or plays on words. Because there was no standardized spelling until Merriam-Webster wrote his dictionary, words were spelled phonetically and Shakespeare spelled his name 15 different ways.