WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Learning more about the Bard
Honors English III
Miss Diorio
ABOUT HIS LIFE
 1564-1616
 Stratford-upon-Avon, England
 Married Anne Hathaway and had 3 Children
• Susanna
• Hamnet and Judith
 Wrote almost 40 plays (comedies, histories, tragedies)
 Over 150 sonnets
 5 epic poems
HIS COMEDIES
 All's Well That Ends Well
 Much Ado about Nothing
 As You Like It
 Taming of the Shrew
 Comedy of Errors
 Tempest
 Love's Labour's Lost
 Twelfth Night
 Measure for Measure
 Two Gentlemen of Verona
 Merchant of Venice
 Winter's Tale
 Merry Wives of Windsor
 Midsummer Night’s Dream
HIS HISTORIES
 Cymbeline
 Henry IV, Part I
 Henry IV, Part II
 Henry V
 Henry VI, Part I
 Henry VI, Part II
 Henry VI, Part III
 Henry VIII
 King John
 Pericles
 Richard II
 Richard III
HIS TRAGEDIES
Antony and Cleopatra
Macbeth
Coriolanus
Othello
Hamlet
Romeo and Juliet
Julius Caesar
Timon of Athens
King Lear
Titus Andronicus
Troilus and Cressida
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Comedy written in 1598
Set in Messina, a port city in Sicily, Italy
• Sicily is ruled by Aragon at the time of the play
No deaths? And a happy ending? What???
Plot centers around two couples
• Benedick and Beatrice
• Claudio and Hero
IAMBIC PENTAMETER
 An iamb is one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (2 syllables total)
• Between
• Instead
 5 iambs=10 syllables=1 line of iambic pentameter
 For the most part, Shakespeare writes completely in iambic pentameter in his works
 Sonnet—14-line poem of iambic pentameter with rhyme scheme ababcdcdefefgg
• "To be, or not to be: that is the question". Hamlet Act III, Scene I
• "To be, or not to be: that is the question". Hamlet Act III, Scene I
• "What's in a name? That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet."
Romeo and Juliet Act II, Scene II
• "What's in a name? That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet."
Romeo and Juliet Act II, Scene II
IAMBIC PENTAMETER AND
RHYME SCHEME PRACTICE
Highlight all stressed syllables in each line.
Hero: If it proves so, then a love goes by haps
Some Cupid kills with arrows, and some with traps
 Beatrice: What fire’s in mine ear? can this be true?
Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much?
Contempt, farewell, and maiden pride, adieu
No glory does live on the back of such.