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Shakespeare's writing features extensive wordplay of double entendres and clever rhetorical flourishes. [27] Humour is a key element in all of Shakespeare's plays. His works have been considered controversial through the centuries for his use of bawdy punning, [28] to the extent that "virtually every play is shot through with sexual puns."
William Shakespeare (c. 23 [a] April 1564 – 23 April 1616) [b] was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. [3] [4] [5] He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard").
For Shakespeare, as he began to write, both traditions were alive; they were, moreover, filtered through the recent success of the University Wits on the London stage. By the late 16th century, the popularity of morality and academic plays waned as the English Renaissance took hold, and playwrights like Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe revolutionised theatre.
The so-called first tetralogy, apparently written in the early 1590s, covers the Wars of the Roses saga and includes Henry VI, Parts I, II & III and Richard III. The second tetralogy, finished in 1599 and including Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II and Henry V, is frequently called the Henriad after its protagonist Prince Hal, the future Henry V.
First published in the so-called "bad" First Quarto, 1603 Earliest recorded performance of Hamlet was in June 1602, with Richard Burbage in the title role. Some scholars, such as Peter Alexander and Eric Sams , believe that the oft-attributed source work known as the Ur-Hamlet was actually a first draft of the play, written by Shakespeare ...
Honigmann argues that Shakespeare began his career with Titus Andronicus in 1586, though the conventional dating is that Shakespeare began writing plays after arriving in London in about 1590. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] Most scholars, however, adhere to a more orthodox chronology, [ 5 ] and some, such as Gary Taylor and Sidney Thomas, argue that the early ...
According to Open Source Shakespeare, a web page containing all of the bard’s plays, poems and sonnets, there are 884,421 words in the entire works of Shakespeare.
It was not until 1616, the year of Shakespeare's death, that Ben Jonson defied convention by issuing a folio collection of his own plays and poems. Seven years later the folio volume Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories & Tragedies appeared; this edition is now called the First Folio. It contains 36 plays, 18 of which were printed for ...