Shakespeare Quiz

In our time, Shakespeare is a magic word, a revered and legendary figure, the world's most honored writer. But in his own day, Shakespeare was simply a popular actor and playwright. He was not even considered an artist, for plays were not thought of as literature. Critics scorned Shakespeare's plays especially, just because they were so popular with the public. People went to see them as today they go to a movie or a football game. By the time Shakespeare became famous, all the men who had known him were dead, and the stories about his life were full of rumor and legend.

The historical William Shakespeare is a rather shadowy figure, but we can fill in the outline from what we know of his world.

Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon, sometime in April

1564. Stratford in those days was a tightly knit medieval town.

The magistrates kept close watch on everyone's business. They fixed the price and quality of foodstuffs. They made sure people went to church on Sunday. And they levied fines for playing cards or letting a dog go unmuzzled. Shakespeare's father, John, was one of these magistrates. A glover by trade, he married a wife who brought him land, and gradually climbed the social ladder until he was mayor of Stratford, entitled to wear robes of scarlet and fur, and to style himself John Shakespeare, gentleman.

As a young man, William Shakespeare must have disappointed his father. We do not know when Shakespeare first began to dream of the stage, but acting was not considered a respectable profession, and the mayor of Stratford would not have approved. Nor would he have been pleased with his son's marriage. In 1582, when he was 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, a girl of good family but six years his senior. Shakespeare was a minor and in no position to support a family. Nevertheless, a daughter, Susanna, was born sir months later, and the twins, Hamnet and Judith, in 1583. The marriage must have been unhappy, for William and Anne Shakespeare lived apart most of their lives.

Sometime in his early twenties, Shakespeare began to feel that Stratford was too small for him. He took the obvious step for an ambitious young man. He went to London. In the 1590's London was an exciting city. Its population had doubled in a decade, and the city was bursting at the seams. Intellectually, it was far more stimulating than Stratford. As a major port, London drew adventurers with their tales of deep-sea monsters and the wonder of

the New World. As a publishing center, it attracted a group of

would-be poets, the "university wits." These wild, fast-living young men wrote for the stage to pay their drinking debts and incidentally created a new drama. But, most important of all, London was the home of the first English plathouse built by James Burbage in 1576 and called simply The Theatre, and of its glorious successor, The Globe.

Burbage's playhouse became the model for Elizabethan theatres.

He might have built a small, enclosed theater, exclusively for the upper class. But instead, he built a large open-air theatre that could accommodate the penny public. The theatre had two stories, with an upper stage that could serve as a balcony or castle rampart.

Backstage was a "tiring room," for the actors to change their clothes, and with a roof to protect their expensive costumes. In front of the stage was an open area for the standers or groundlings.

In time, Shakespeare's fortunes were linked to Burbage's theatre.

When it was torn down and replaced by the Globe, Shakespeare helped to finance the new building, along with Burbage's son, Richard.

Shakespeare and Richard Burbage were actors, members of the Lord Chamberlain's men. In those days, actors did not work alone; they joined a company under the patronage of a nobleman. It was demanding work. An actor had to be an expert fencer in order to stage a realistic duel, and an acrobat in order to swing from level to level of a two-storied stage. He also had to be a professional singer and dancer, for the comedies were full of music and all ended with a dance. The pronoun "he" is correct, by the way, for all the actors were male. The female roles were played by the boy apprentices.

The fact that Shakespeare was an actor all his working life is essential to the understanding of his plays. He lived in a practical atmosphere, free from abstract theeries about what a play should be. He had a working rapport with his audience. He knew they loved bloody murders and bawdy jokes, so he put them in his plays.

As a shareholder in the Globe, his job was to fill the theatre, and he became the best-loved playwright in London.

In the main, Shakespeare wrote for the "penny knaves":

London's tradesmen, apprentices, fish-wives. But he had tinore a

elegant audience at Court. Queen Elizabeth loved plays. And the Lord Chamberlain's men were often called to perform at her palace at Whitehall. The queen's favor accounts for the theatre's survival in the l6th century. For the stage had its enemies. The City Fathers of London frowned on the crowded theatres as invitations to theft and sedition. The Puritans denounced them as "chapels of Satan."

", "Horrible enormities and swelling sins," they claimed, were

shown on stage. A third, unwitting enemy of the stage was the Black Death. The plague closed the theatre twice during Elizabeth's reign and again at the coronation of her successor, James I.

Shakespeare spent twenty years on the London stage, and then returned home. He was now rich and therefore, respectable. At the peal of his career, he began to invest a Stratford property. He bought the second largest house in town, and over 100 acres of nearby farmland. In his father's name, he applied for and received a coat-of-arms. The quasi-respectable actor had entered the landed gentry•

Shakespeare died in 1616. He was buried in an ornate marble monument under a bit of doggerel verse that he wrote himself:

Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be the man that moves my bones.

His friends and fellow actors, Heminges and Condell, left a more fitting monument. They collected Sharespeare's plays in the First Folio and passed them on to future generations.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, into a family of local magistrates. He married Anne Hathaway in 1582, and they had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. In his early twenties, Shakespeare moved to London, where he became a popular actor and playwright. He wrote many plays that appealed to a wide audience, including the common people as well as the nobility. Shakespeare was a shareholder in the Globe Theatre, which contributed to his wealth and status. He spent twenty years in London before returning to Stratford, where he invested in property and was recognized as part of the landed gentry. Shakespeare died in 1616 and is buried in Stratford, with a lasting legacy supported by the First Folio collection of his works.