1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Consider the following questions :
Would you let your parents choose your friends?
Would you marry someone to make your parents happy?
Should you marry for love or money?
If your friend told you in confidence that they were planning to run away would you tell or keep it a secret?
Should girls be able to ask boys out?
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2. Parker Presents
William Shakespeare

3. Life of William Shakespeare
A. Family
Born around April 23, 1564 in Stratford–on–Avon
3rd of 8 children
Family was well off
Most quoted, other than the Bible

4. Life of William Shakespeare
B. The Dirt !
Teenage father
Married Anne Hathaway at 18 - she was 26!
Absentee father

5. Stratford-on-Avon

6. Stratford-on-Avon

7. Life of William Shakespeare
C. Schooling
Attended grammar school, where he studied . . .
Latin grammar and literature
Use of language
No further formal education!

8. London During Shakespeare’s Days
A. The City
Thames River polluted with raw sewage
No running water or electricity
Poverty

9. London During Shakespeare’s Days
B. Hygiene? (Part One)
Bathing considered dangerous
Body odor strong
Childhood diseases
Children often died young
Small Pox
Bubonic Plague

10. London During Shakespeare’s Days
B. Hygiene? (Part Two)
No running water
Chamber Pots
Open Sewers
Crowded

11. London During Shakespeare’s Days
C. Clothes
One set used all year long, rarely washed
Underclothing slept in, rarely changed
Clothes handed down from rich to poor

12. Theater in London A. The Theater First public theater
Demolished in 1599

13. Theater in London

14. Theater in London

15. Theater in London B. The Globe
Shakespeare and his acting company used materials salvaged from The Theater to build the Globe Theater in 1599
Penny admission
Hard to believe? Think
about admission to the
movie theater in the ‘50s

16. Theater in London

17. Actors All men Female parts played by young boys
No actual kissing or hugging on stage

18. Audience 2000-3000 people from all walks of life
Rich audience sat in covered galleries around stage
Most stood in yard around platform stage – “groundlings”

19. The groundling Poor audience member Stood around stage in “the pit”
Threw rotten vegetables at bad performances

20. The Plays
Tragedy
Ends in the death of one or more of the main characters
Most of Shakespeare’s tragedies involved historical individuals or events.
Shakespeare sometimes altered what he found in the history books to suit his own dramatic purposes and make the plays more exciting… Can you think of a time when alterations are made to history/events to merely entertain audiences?

21. Tragic Endings
Although most tragic heroes are partly to blame for their own fates, death can be a very high price to pay for what may have seemed initially like a small failing.
But in most tragedies, there is also a feeling that some good may have come out of the terrible suffering.

22. Tragic Heroes All of Shakespeare’s tragedies have a tragic hero.
What is the name of the main character in a story?
What is the name of the character in opposition to the main character?
The hero is often a man of high rank, such as a king or prince.

23. Julius Caesar, II. i. 35 Line References
Plays are divided into sections called acts and scenes. When quotations from Shakespeare’s plays are used, line references like this show which section they come from in the play.
The scene is in small Roman numerals
The play’s title is written in italics
Julius Caesar, II. i. 35
The act is written in
capital Roman numerals
The line number is written as a normal number

24. New Words In Shakespeare’s time, there were no dictionaries.
People could spell words however they wanted and sometimes they even made up new words.
Over 2,000 of the words Shakespeare used had not been recorded before.

25. Submerged Lonely Leapfrog Countless Dwindle Fretful
Shakespeare’s Words
Submerged
Lonely
Leapfrog
First used by
Shakespeare and
still used today!!!
Countless
Dwindle
Fretful