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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").
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" is a popular adage from William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet seems to argue that it does not matter that Romeo is from her family's rival house of Montague. The reference is used to state that the names of things do not affect what they really are.
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 comparison of the world to a stage and people to actors long predated Shakespeare. Richard Edwards' play Damon and Pythias, written in the year Shakespeare was born, contains the lines, "Pythagoras said that this world was like a stage / Whereon many play their parts; the lookers-on, the sage". [2]
"To be, or not to be" is a speech given by Prince Hamlet in the so-called "nunnery scene" of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1). The speech is named for the opening phrase, itself among the most widely known and quoted lines in modern English literature, and has been referenced in many works of theatre, literature and music.
It is mentioned by the character Costard in Act V, Scene I of William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. As it appears only once in Shakespeare's works, it is a hapax legomenon in the Shakespeare canon. At 27 letters, it is the longest word in the English language to strictly alternate between consonants and vowels. [1]
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 11 December 2024. The Chandos portrait, believed to be Shakespeare, held in the National Portrait Gallery, London William Shakespeare was an actor, playwright, poet, and theatre entrepreneur in London during the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. He was baptised on 26 April 1564 [a] in Stratford ...
A Midsummer Night's Dream serves as an exploration of the green world through the fairies' interference in the romantic entanglement of the Athenian lovers. The majority of the play's action takes place in the woods outside of Theseus' Athens, with Shakespeare primarily using Athens to frame the narrative in civilization. [3]