Prime Time 7, Coursebook plus Semester Self-checks

10 Read and remember: Extracting information a) Read the texts below and try to remember as much as you can. Do not use pen and paper. What we know about William Shakespeare 3  Although William Shakespeare was quite a famous person in his day, few facts about his life and personality are available. We know that he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, and that he married Anne Hathaway in 1582. Six months later their first child Susanna was born, followed by the twins Judith and Hamnet in 1585. It cannot be said for sure what he did to earn a living for his small family. He may have worked in his father’s business: John Shakespeare was a glover, and some lines in Shakespeare’s plays reveal that he was well acquainted with a glover’s work. Some biographers suggest that William was employed as a tutor in the household of Alexander Houghton, or that he joined one of the theatre groups that visited Stratford in the 1580s (the Queen’s Men, for instance, were in Stratford in 1587 and had fallen a man short) and went to London with them. We know for sure that he must have been in London well before 1592, since in that year he was first mentioned as a playwright in London. Some of his early plays were presented in London’s most popular theatre, The Rose. Shakespeare was also certainly an actor. In 1594, he joined the newly founded Lord Chamberlain’s Men as a shareholder, too. They frequently performed before Queen Elizabeth and were renamed The King’s Men after James I succeeded Elizabeth in 1603. In 1596 – the year his only son Hamnet died – he bought a grand house in Stratford, and in 1599 his company opened The Globe, soon to be considered London’s best playhouse with a capacity of 3,000 spectators. Shakespeare was rather wealthy by this time. Over the following ten years, almost all of his new plays were performed there. In 1612 Shakespeare returned to Stratford, where he bought some land and was involved in a few lawsuits. However, he frequently returned to London, where he purchased the gatehouse of the former Blackfriar’s monastery, the centre of London’s underground Catholic movement. By 1614 he had returned to Stratford, where he died on 23 April 1616. 5 10 15 20 25 30 5 10 35 40 45 50 55 60 15 20 As there is little known about Shakespeare’s life, a lot of theories have sprung up, attributing his works to a number of his contemporaries. At the root of the authorship debate lies the assumption that a simple man from a village in Warwickshire with no university training could never have written such refined poetry, let alone plays filled with so many stories from foreign countries and history. Various contemporaries of Shakespeare have been suspected of being the true author of the plays, among them Christopher Marlowe, a young and highly talented poet and Cambridge graduate; Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, a man of great learning and wealth; and even Queen Elizabeth herself. Those who believe that Shakespeare did not really write the plays argue that Marlowe, a troublesome youth, spy, and atheist, had to flee to Italy and continued to write his plays from there (hence the frequent choice of Italian settings in Shakespeare’s plays), using Shakespeare’s name as a cover for his own work. However, it is rather certain that he was killed in a tavern brawl in 1593, well before Shakespeare wrote some of his greatest masterpieces. The mystery man who wrote the plays 140 Shakespeare live Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv