Экзамен - Старые темы - 1999 / Shakespeare
.docShakespeare#1
Shakespeare was a famous playwright, poet and actor of the past. He was born on the 23rd of April 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon. At the age of 19 he married Anne Hathaway. When he was 22 Shakespeare left Stratford for London, where he joined a company known as “Chamberlain’s Men” and began to write poems for the company.
But most of his plays were written and staged at the Globe Theatre. It is considered to be the height of his fame. Shakespeare died on the 23rd of April 1616. And it is all we know about Shakespeare’s biography.
There has been a good deal of debate about the level of Shakespeare’s education. Some people considered him to be an illiterate (?) man. But now we know that such reactions are unnecessary. Shakespeare attended Grammar School, where he studied grammar, history and English. It was quiet enough to develop his literary skills.
During his life Shakespeare created 37 plays and poems. Among them comedies (“The Taming of the Shrew”, “Much Ado About Nothing”); tragedies (“Hamlet”, “Romeo and Juliet”, ”King Lear”, “Macbeth”); historical plays (Henry IV, Henry VI, Richard III) and sonnets. All his creative works considered to be masterpieces.
Owing to his observing mind, profound sympathetic understanding of life and acquaintance with all classes of people Shakespeare managed to create such masterpieces. In them he express all the variety of human nature.
Whether Shakespeare was writing poetry, tragedy or a comedy his every word has its own meaning and value.
It was Shakespeare who gave the world poetry of deathless beauty.
Shakespeare#2
William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon. He attended Stratford’s Grammar school, which still stands. The grammar school curriculum at that time was limited to teaching pupils Latin, both spoken and written. The classical writers studied at school influenced Shakespeare’s plays and poetry: some of his ideas for plots and characters came from Ovid’s tales, the plays of Terence and Plautus [‘plotes], and Roman history. We do not know when or why Shakespeare left Stratford for London, or what he was doing before becoming a professional actor and dramatist in the capital. He probably arrived in London in 1586 or 1587.
Shakespeare’s’ reputation was established in London by 1592, when his earliest plays were written: Henry VI, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Titus Adronicus.
In 1594 Shakespeare joined other actors in forming a new theatre company, with Richard Burbage as its leading actor. For almost twenty years Shakespeare was a regular dramatist of this company and wrote on the average two plays a year.
In 1599 the company of actors with which Shakespeare worked built a new theatre, the Globe. It was built on the south bank of the Thames. The Globe theatre is closely associated with Shakespeare’s plays. Two of his plays, Henry V and Julius Caesar, were almost certainly written during the year in which the Globe opened.
Some of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies were written in the early 1600s. They include Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. His late plays, often known as romances, written between 1608 and 1612, include Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest.
Around 1611 Shakespeare left London and returned to Stratford. He died in Stratford at the age of fifty-two on April 23, 1616, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church.
Shakespeare’s greatness lies in his humanism. He created a new epoch in world literature. For nearly four centuries Shakespeare has remained one of the best-known playwrights and poets in the world. Every new generation of people finds in his works something important. As his contemporary Ben Jonson once said, Shakespeare “belongs not to the century, but to all times”.