William Shakespeare: plays and theatres

William Shakespeare was fascinated by plays from an early childhood. When his father became High Bailiff of Stratford, he and his family used to see plays whenever actors came to visit the town. This was how William Shakespeare developed his taste for the theatre.

In the 1580s, William Shakespeare reached London where he started to learn his acting skills. He chosed to work in a theatre because there were lots of mini jobs to do, such as keeping rich people's horses, sweeping the floor after the plays and reminding actors when to go on stage. Later William became an actor himself, finding it so fun to be in a play that he decided to write his own play scripts.

William Shakespeare played in important part in developing history plays where he clearly enjoyed mixing tragedies and comedies, high life and low life.

For example, he could transform love to a tragic theme like in "Romeo and Juliet" or turn it to pure force as he did in "The Merry Wives of Windsor".

William's ideas came from old stories, poemes as he wrote in verses and real events like in Macbeth he used the power of witchcraft to please James I, an adept of sorcery.

He became the most favourite writer in London. Sadly a plague hit London and he had to stop writing for two years between 1592 and 1594 as all the theatre were closed. Instead he wrote 154 beautiful short poems called sonnets because they only had 14 lines; 126 sonnets were adressed to a young nobleman, the rest to a mysterious dark lady. "The Rape of Lacrece" was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton who paid apparently 1000 pounds.

William Shakespeare was selective about the actors he employed. The only female he had, played the lead role of Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet". In his other plays all the parts were taken by men, with boys or youth playing as women and children.

Theatre companies had between 8-12 "sharers" who run the business and played the leading charcters like Burbage and Shakespeare himself as Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Liar. Shakespeare's company was called "The Lord Chamberlain's Men" then later changed its name to "The King's Men".

Comic parts went to Thomas Pope or Will Kemp (both clowns) until he left the company in 1599 and was replaced by Robert Armin who had a beautiful voice so Shakespeare would write songs for him to sing in his plays.

William Shakespeare's play writing career probably ended when the Globe theatre burnt down in 1613 and was completely destroyed from a cannon shot during Henry VIII. He had written 37 plays.