BILL SHAKESPEARE: MAN OF THE HOUR THE WORLD

Just a titch about how his life….

Everybody’s heard of Shakespeare, most have read Shakespeare and some love him so much they call themselves “Hamletologists” after his most famous play. I certainly can’t be alone in thinking this is the greatest individual EVER.

This amazing man was probably born on April 23 1564- there’s no way to know for sure. Mystery? Check! He’s not even a day old and he has the most obvious quality necessary for a fantastic individual. Then, when he was around 3 months old, the Bubonic Plague ran through his neighborhood. HE SURVIVED. This is a truly superior man.His parents were illiterate an he still went on to be an internationally famous writer. Struggle and hardship? Check! His success in becoming a writer despite his parents’ illiteracy proves he had enormous drive to accomplish what he wanted.

He was dangerous, too. He married at 18 to Anne Hathaway- she was 26 and 3 months pregnant! Ahhhh! SHOTGUN! He had two other children with his wife, then he left. Just ran off to London, some say to pursue his career as an actor (or player as they were called). Others say he was running from the law… oohh criminal!Once he gave up acting he took on writing full time. When he was at his best, he was making close to £200 a year. Every once in a while he’d appear in his own plays (double threat).

Throughout his writing career, my mans Bill wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets. These sonnet do-hickies were of the English variety- 3 four-line stanzas and one couplet at the end. All 14 lines are in iambic pentameter. As a testament to his greatness the world now calls this a Shakespearean sonnet. Yep. They named a type of poem after him.

This man and his work are truly pervasive.

Take a look at this handy list I made:

• Four-hundred years later there are still hundreds of Shakespeare companies that perform only Shakespeare’s plays. This video is from the Reduced Shakespeare Company. They take all of his plays and squish them down to a time reasonable for most people’s attention spans.

• There is a whole section of out local Borders store that stock only books on and by Shakespeare.
  
  
• There is a whole series of Cliffs notes for Shakespeare’s works. Not only do they have the summaries and explanations…they have the complete plays too. That’s how important the world thinks his work is.
• Barron’s has books devoted to making Bill’s plays easy to read for the more….dense individuals.
  
  
• There is “Shakespeare for Dummies” and “The Idiot’s Guide to Shakespeare”
  
  
• Shakespeare is the only mandatory author on the English A-Levels in Britain. (;] Mr. Smart)
• Historians and Shakespeare entusists have labeled a part of Bill’s life his “lost years.” Only the most significant people (like Picasso, Jesus and Merlin….the company you keep…)
• When you search for “Shakespeare” on Google about 65,000,000 hits come up. That’s 65 million. OH WOW.
• YouTube comes up with about 24,000.
• There is a Shakespeare County in Wickshire, England. How many important people actually have counties named after them??
  
  
• Every year “Shakespeare in Central Park” is held in New York City.
• Hamlet was banned by Stalin because Hamlet was just too indecisive and depressed.
• Hamlet has been made into a movie at least 45 times, inspired 26 ballets, 6 operas, and countless musicals
• “We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.”Robert Wilensky, speech at a 1996 conference
• “To be or not to be” and “Although the last, not least” are from Shakespeare’s plays. Sound familiar?
• The beloved President who is accredited with the abolishment of slavery, carried a copy of Macbeth in his saddlebag and copies of many of Shakespeare’s plays on his desk next to the Bible and US Statues.
• Lincoln was assassinated by a Shakespearean actor. Ironic?
• “The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.” Robert Graves (1895 – 1985)
• There are SEVERAL fansites for Señor Shakespeare online :: wshakespeare.com, a shakespeare fan blog, shakespeare-online.com,
• OH WOW! SHakespeare even has his own page on IMDb on which he is credited as a writer in 707 films.
• “Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), ‘Twelfth Night’
• A fictional tale of Bill’s life was turned into a 1999 movie called Shakespeare in Love. It’s awesome.

Shakespeare practically invented modern theater. Audiences overlooked major grammatical errors in his plays for the sake of poetry and the rhythm of the words- the beginnings of poetic license. Without Shakespeare’s work, our version of theater and even television and film would be drastically different. We are lucky to have his work in the public domain and consciousness.