Thesis: Shakespeare is a know person known in this world today. Shakespeare had a big impact to artwork and theatre till this day.

Quote #1:

"The Jokes found in Shakespeare's dramas often baffle modern audiences, a sense of humour belongs to its age. As does Shakespeare's sense of geography. From his early dramas to the Last Plays, he seems to be no good with a map. In The Winter's Tale, one of his Last Plays, from 1611, Antigonus and his daughter Perdita land on the non-existent Seacoast of Bohemia. Shakespeare scholars explain these inconsistencies in two ways. One is that he neither knew nor cared, especially in the comedies. The box office demanded Italian settings, the audience knew no better and neither did Shakespeare."(Green 5)

Commentary #1:

Shakespeare like to put modern audiences jokes that fitted that age. Shakespeare in the last play seem to had no good with a map. Shakespeare had scholars incosistences in two way, first was he didn't care about comedies and second was the box office wanted Italian setting.

Quote #2:

While Schlegel and Coleridge were establishing Shakesphere plays as artistic, organic unities, such 19th-century critics as the German Georg Gervinus and the Irishman Edward Dowden were trying to see positive moral tendencies in the plays. The 19th-century English critic William Hazlitt, who continued the development of character analysis begun by Johnson, considered each Shakespearean character to be unique, but found a unity through analogy and gradation of characterization. While A. C. Bradley marks the culmination of romantic 19th-century character study, he also suggested that the plays had unifying magistic atmospheres, an idea that was further developed in the 20th cent.(Green 14)

The tendency in 20th-century criticism was to abandon both the study of character as independent personality and the assumption that moral considerations can be separated from their dramatic and aesthetic context. The plays were increasingly viewed in terms of the unity of image, metaphor, and tone. Caroline Spurgeon began the careful classification of Shakespeare's imagery, and although her attempts were later felt to be somewhat naive and morally biased, her work is a landmark in Shakespearean criticism. Other important trends in 20th-century criticism included the Freudian approach, such as Ernest Jones Oedipal interpretation of Hamlet ; the study of Shakespeare in terms of the Elizabethan world view and Elizabethan stage conventions; and the study of the plays in mythic terms.

Commentary #2:

Shakespeare was a genius in being able to paint a image with his words. He used imagery with all of his plays, sonnets and poems, so that the reader can see what he sees in their mind. Shakespeare use terms of the unity of image, metaphor and tones to make his play even more special.

Quote #3:

A the age of eighteen, he was married to Anne Hathaway, who was eight years older than he was. Sometime after the birth of their second and third children (twins), Shakespeare moved to London, apparently leaving his family in Stratford.(Green 17)

Commentary #3:

Shakespeare was born in 1564 after the Melatesta's retrieval of Plethon's bones. The politically, latin no longer existed. Morea went into eclipse from the European perspective. Shakespeare was a the thrid out of eight in his family

Quote #4:

A the age of eighteen, he was married to Anne Hathaway, who was eight years older than he was. Sometime after the birth of their second and third children (twins), Shakespeare moved to London, apparently leaving his family in Stratford.(Anderson 5)

Commentary #4:

Shakespeare married young and probably wasn't ready to settle down with a family. Shakespeare died in 1616 at age of 52 year old. He made a big presence in the drama/ theatre department.

Quote #5:

The summer of 1596 was a sad one for William Shakespeare. Following the success of Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream the previous year, his only son, Hamnet, died at the age of 11. No letters or documents record how England’s most celebrated dramatist and poet felt at the time, but perhaps some of his grief can be detected in King John (written later in 1596), in the words he gave Lady Constance, a mother frantic at the loss of her son, Arthur:(Anderson 7)

Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form… O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son! My life, my joy, my food, my all the world! My widow-comfort, and my sorrow’s cure!

Commentary #5:

The death of Shakespeare's son was extremely hard on him and his plays were probably an outlet for him to express his grief. Shakespeare was sad that his son past away. Shakespeare son died at age of 11 year old possibly to the Bubonic Plague.

Quote #6:

In 1594 Shakespeare became an actor and playwright for the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the company that later became the King's Men under James I. Until the end of his London career Shakespeare remained with the company; it is thought that as an actor he played old men's roles, such as the ghost in Hamlet and Old Adam in As You Like It. In 1596 he obtained a coat of arms, and by 1597 he was prosperous enough to buy New Place in Stratford, which later was the home of his retirement years. In 1599 he became a partner in the ownership of the Globe theatre, and in 1608 he was part owner of the Blackfriars theatre. Shakespeare retired and returned to Stratford c.1613. He undoubtedly enjoyed a comfortable living throughout his career and in retirement, although he was never a wealthy man.(Anderson 8-9)

Commentary #6:

Shakespeare was content with his lifestyle. Being rich wasn't important to him. Because he enjoy writing plays/skits. He mostly preform was in the Globe Theatre in London. The Globe Theatre was built in 1599.

Quote #7:

In 1576, outside of London, an actor-manager named James Burbage built the first permanent theater in England. He called it the Theatre. Up to that time, touring acting companies had played wherever they could rent space. Usually this would be in the courtyards of inns. There the actors would erect a temporary platform stage at one end of the yard and play to an audience that stood around the stage or sat in the tiers of the balconies that surrounded the courtyard. (Normally these balconies were used as passageways to the various rooms of the inn.) (Green 19)

In 1599, Burbage's theater was torn down and it's timbers were used by Shakespeare and his company to build the Globe Theatre. This was the theater for which Shakespeare wrote most of his plays.

Commentary #7:

The Burbage theater was a ground breaking building for actors to perform and was very special to Shakespeare to where he used the wood from the building to build the Globe Theatre.

Quote #8:

The strength of Shakespeare's plays lies in the absorbing stories they tell, in their wealth of complex characters, and in the eloquent speech—vivid, forceful, and at the same time lyric—that the playwright puts on his characters' lips. It has often been noted that Shakespeare's characters are neither wholly good nor wholly evil, and that it is their flawed, inconsistent nature that makes them memorable. Hamlet fascinates audiences with his ambivalence about revenge and the uncertainty over how much of his madness is feigned (No Name Author 15)

Commentary #8:

Shakespeare's plays are as mysterious and complex as he was. There seems to be many features of his characters from his plays, that resemble pieces of him.

Quote #9:

Shakespeare's first published works were two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594). In 1599 a volume of poetry entitled The Passionate Pilgrim was published and attributed entirely to Shakespeare. However, only five of the poems are definitely considered his, two appearing in other versions in the Sonnets and three in Love's Labour's Lost. A love elegy, The Phoenix and the Turtle, was published in 1601. Shakespeare sonnets are by far his most important nondramatic poetry. They were first published in 1609, although many of them had certainly been circulated privately before this, and it is generally agreed that the poems were written sometime in the 1590s. Scholars have long debated the order of the poems and the degree of autobiographical content.

The first 126 of the 154 sonnets are addressed to a young man whose identity has long intrigued scholars. The publisher, Thomas Thorpe, wrote a dedication to the first edition in which he claimed that a person with the initials W. H. had inspired the sonnets. Some have thought these letters to be the transposed initials of Henry Wriothesley, 3d earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece ; or they are possibly the initials of William Herbert, 3d earl of Pembroke, whose connection with Shakespeare is more tenuous. The identity of the dark lady addressed in sonnets 127–152 has also been the object of much conjecture but no proof. The sonnets are marked by the recurring themes of beauty, youthful beauty ravaged by time, and the ability of love and art to transcend time and even death.(No Name Author 5-7)

Commentary #9:

It appears Shakespeare had a passion for beauty and art. He found beauty in life from youth to death. Most likely he wasn't afraid of death, but admired it from an artistic view. Shakespeare

Quote #10:

Wood isn’t so sure that Shakespeare could have left his London life behind so easily, but agrees that the Bard probably did live at New Place for some long stretches, perhaps for a specific purpose. “He may well have retreated there to avoid some of the worst outbreaks of the plague during the early seventeenth century,” he says. Also, his creation of the long gallery overthrows the idea of his grief over Hamnet leading to a retreat from public life. “This room speaks of a man who was gregarious and sociable,” says Colls. Furthermore, it was a status symbol—a place for feasting, admiring and exhibiting artworks, and promenading. From both archaeological work and historical documents, a picture emerges of a man who wanted to exude wealth and prominence in the community. Shakespeare had recently gained gentleman status—a huge leap from his family’s farm-labor heritage—and this house was the perfect way to show off his success. “Social class was very important in Shakespeare’s life, and this house represented a way of establishing himself,” says Wood.(Anderson 11)

Commentary #10:

Shakespeare invested so much of himself into building a great home for his family with contributing detains of his late son. This home was very personal to Shakespeare as a reminder of his life and family.

Sources

"Green, Dominic. 'THE BARD Beyond Borders.' History Today 66.4 (2016): 40-47. History Reference Center. Web. 5 Dec. 2016." Green, Dominic. "THE BARD Beyond Borders." History Today 66.4 (2016): 40-47. History Reference Center. Web. 5 Dec. 2016