- "Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire."
The study and performance of plays written by William Shakespeare, including language, themes, and historical context.
Life and Times of William Shakespeare: An overview of Shakespeare's personal life, including his education, family, and career as a playwright and actor during the Renaissance era.
The Globe Theater: A history of the construction and design of The Globe Theater, where many of Shakespeare's plays were first performed, as well as its audience, stage, and atmosphere.
Shakespearean Plays: An introduction to the characteristics of Shakespeare's plays, including his use of language, themes, and characters, as well as the different genres of his works (e.g. tragedies, comedies, histories).
Shakespearean Characters: An in-depth analysis of the different types of characters that appear in Shakespeare's plays, including heroes, villains, fools, and women, as well as their roles in the story and their relationships with one another.
Conventions of Shakespearean Theater: An exploration of the various conventions that were typical of Shakespearean theater, such as the use of iambic pentameter, soliloquies, aside, and dramatic irony, as well as the role of music, costume, and stage direction.
Shakespearean Language: A study of the language and diction used by Shakespeare, including his use of metaphor, symbolism, and word play, as well as his influence on the English language and literature.
Modern Interpretations of Shakespearean Theater: An examination of how Shakespeare's plays have been adapted and reinterpreted in modern times, including the use of modern settings, diverse castings, and visual effects, as well as the relevance of his themes to contemporary issues.
Shakespearean Criticism: An overview of the different critical approaches to interpreting Shakespeare's plays, including historical, textual, formalist, feminist, and postcolonial studies, as well as the controversies surrounding the authorship debate and the canonization of his works.
Shakespearean Textual Studies: This subfield revolves around analyzing Shakespeare's works, including their composition history, textual variant, sources used and their cultural context.
Performance History and Cultural Reception: This subfield focuses on the ways Shakespearean plays have been received over time and their impact on the theater industry.
Shakespearean Criticism: This subfield examines the literary and ethical qualities of Shakespeare's works, including their themes, language, motifs, and historical contexts.
Shakespearean Adaptation and Translation: This subfield deals with the various ways Shakespeare's plays have been adapted into modern language, and how different cultures interpret and adapt them.
Shakespearean Performance Studies: This subfield focuses on the practical aspects of Shakespearean theater, including acting, directing, design, and audience reception.
Literary Theory and Shakespearean Theater: This subfield investigates the theoretical approaches and applications of literary theory to Shakespeare's works, including Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial approaches.
Shakespeare and Film: This subfield examines the ways Shakespeare's plays are adapted for film, and how the visual medium impacts the interpretation of the plays.
Shakespeare and Music: This subfield examines the musical aspects of Shakespearean theater, including the use of music in the plays and their adaptations.
Shakespeare and Gender: This subfield examines the ways Shakespeare deals with gender, sex, and the body in his works, including his portrayal of female characters.
Shakespeare and Theater: This subfield examines the development of Elizabethan and Jacobean theater, the performance practices, and the social context in which the plays were produced.
Shakespeare and Politics: This subfield examines the political themes in Shakespeare's plays, including his depictions of power, governance, and rebellion.
Shakespeare and Philosophy: This subfield examines the philosophical themes in Shakespeare's plays, including ethics, metaphysics, and existentialism.
Shakespeare and Religion: This subfield examines the religious and spiritual themes in Shakespeare's works, including his depictions of Christianity and paganism.
Shakespeare and the Environment: This subfield examines Shakespeare's representation of the natural world, including his use of landscape and the influence of the environment on the characters' lives.
Shakespeare and Digital Humanities: This subfield examines the application of digital technologies to the study and interpretation of Shakespeare's works, including digital archives and computational analysis.
- "He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist."
- "He is often called England's national poet and the 'Bard of Avon' (or simply 'the Bard')."
- "His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays."
- "His extant works, including collaborations, consist of... 154 sonnets."
- "His extant works, including collaborations, consist of... three long narrative poems."
- "His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright."
- "At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith."
- "He began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men."
- "At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later."
- "His early plays were primarily comedies and histories."
- "...among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language."
- "John Heminges and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio."
- "Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson... that includes 36 of his plays."
- "Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: 'not of an age, but for all time'."
- "Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London..."
- "Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others."
- "Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language..."
- "He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608... and collaborated with other playwrights."
- "Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime."