Famous people. William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

He was the greatest writer in the English language and is known around the world. But how much do you really know about William Shakespeare and his life?

William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, in England. His father, John, was a glove-maker. His mother, Mary, was a farmer’s daughter.

He had two older sisters, two younger sisters and three younger brothers.

William probably studied Latin, Greek and history, and left school when he was 14 or 15. When William Shakespeare was 18 years old he married Anne Hathaway. They had a daughter called Susanna and twins named Judith and Hamnet.

Sometime before 1590 he left Stratford and went to London, the capital city of England.

London’s first theatre opened in 1576.

Shakespeare worked in London as an actor and then started writing plays too.

In 1593 the plague, a terrible disease, killed thousands of people and theatres were closed.

During this time William started to write poems instead of plays. His short poems of 14 lines are called sonnets.

Sonnet 18 is likely the most famous Shakespeare sonnets of all.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare helped build a new theatre called The Globe. It opened in 1599.

It was round and had space for 3000 people. At The Globe some people stood in front of the stage and others had seats.

The audience shouted, clapped, booed and laughed while they watched plays.

Musicians created special noises to make the plays more exciting and they had a cannon to make big bangs!

No women acted in Shakespeare’s time: men and boys played all the parts.

In 1613 the theatre was destroyed by a fire. However, a modern reconstruction of the theatre was built near the original site in 1997 so even today you can go to the Globe Theatre to see one of Shakespeare's plays.

Shakespeare wrote comedies with happy endings, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

He wrote tragedies which had sad endings, like Romeo and Juliet.

His history plays are about kings and queens, like Henry V.

Shakespeare wrote 38 plays, maybe more, 154 sonnets and some other poems.

He loved language and invented new words and expressions that we still use today.

Let’s look at some of his idioms.

A night owl is a person who stays up late.

Can you translate it in Russian? … Cова, полуночник.

At a snail’s pace means extremely slowly.

Any ideas? … Ползёт как улитка/черепаха.

Send someone packing is to tell somebody to go away.

And in Russian it sounds like …. …. прогнать, выставить за дверь.

Break the ice - do or say something to start a conversation in a social situation, especially meeting strangers.

Can you translate it? … Растопить лёд, расслабиться.

Lie low - hide so that you will not be found

Your ideas … Залечь на дно.

Love is blind! – This one is easy – Любовь слепа!

Off with his head! – Отрубить ему голову!

Fight fire with fire! means use the same methods as your enemy – отплатить той же монетой.

So so is neither good nor bad. - Более или менее; так себе

William became rich and famous.

He had houses in London and in Stratford.

He died when he was 52 on 23 April 1616.

His plays and poetry were very popular 400 years ago and they are still popular today.

People all over the world love his work because he wrote wonderful stories about very interesting people.