 Queen Elizabeth I - born September 7, 1533 in Greenwich
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Died March 24, 1603 in Richmond, Surrey
 Daughter of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (beheaded by Henry
for not bearing a son)
 Coronated January 15, 1559
 Spoke Greek, French, Italian, Latin, and, of course, English.
 Never married and was nicknamed, "The Virgin Queen.”
 Elizabethan age was height of English Renaissance in music,
literature, military strength
 Also saw the birth and rise of William Shakespeare, the Bard, and
possibly most famous English playwright of all time
 Born in Stratford-upon-Avon,
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Warwickshire
Baptized on 26 April 1564
Married in 1582 to Anne Hathaway
Was working on plays and sonnets
in London by 1592
Died in 1616
36 of his plays published for the
first time in The First Folio in 1623
 Father - John Shakespeare
glovemaker and wool merchant
 Mother - Mary Arden, daughter
of well-to-do local landowner
 Wife - Anne Hathaway was 12
years older and four months
pregnant at the wedding
 Children - Susanna twins Judith
Hamnet (1585 - 1596)
 Family lived in Stratford,
Shakespeare lived in London
except for last five years of his
life when they were together
(1585 - 1662)
FACTS
 He wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets in
London - first
documented play in 1594
 He acted with and wrote for the troupe The
Lord Chamberlain’s Men which changed
names to The King’s Men in 1603 when King
James ascended the throne
 He and members of The Lord
Chamberlain’s Men built the Globe Theater
in 1599, which burnt down in 1613 and was
rebuilt in 1614
Shakespeare wrote:
 Comedies - light and amusing,
usually with a happy ending
 Tragedies –serious dramas with
disastrous endings
 Histories – involve events or persons
from history
 The theatre was an open air theatre with no roof. The sun
provided light.
 Protestant Church, city officials opposed theaters due to
crime, bawdy subject matter, fighting, drinking, and up to 3,000
people in one place to spread Bubonic Plague
 1596 Plague caused London to ban all public plays and
Theatres within the City limits
 The theatre attracted the rowdiest of the culture. People would drink, swear,
gamble, and bear bait outside before a performance. They were an extremely
rowdy audience that needed to be calmed and intrigued by the performance.
 All actors were men because theaters too disreputable for women.
The female parts were played by young boys who had not yet
mastered their acting and whose voices had not changed.
 There was no curtain, no torches, and little to no sets or props.
 Much of the audience watched from the ‘pit’ as groundlings poor workers who went for the entertainment of alcohol, fights,
prostitution, and lewd subject matter of the plays. Often threw
food at the actors onstage.
 Queen Elizabeth was a huge fan of the theatre, which was not
considered proper.
 Over 12,000 words entered English between 1500 
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1650
Shakespeare’s plays show the first recorded use of
2,035 new English words
Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear have one ‘new’
word every 2.5 lines
The English language owes a great debt to
Shakespeare. He invented over 1700 of our common
words by changing nouns into verbs, changing
verbs into adjectives, connecting words never
before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes,
and devising words wholly original.
He created: “antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle,
extract, horrid, vast, hereditary, critical, excellent,
eventful, assassination, lonely, leapfrog,
indistinguishable, well-read, and countless others
(including countless)” (Bryson loc. 1396-1406).
http://shakespeareonline.com/biography/wordsinvented.html
The following phrases were coined by Shakespeare. What do they mean and how do
we use them today.
A laughing stock (The Merry Wives of Windsor)
A sorry sight (Macbeth)
As dead as a doornail (Henry VI)
Eaten out of house and home (Henry V, Part 2)
Fair play (The Tempest)
I will wear my heart upon my sleeve (Othello)
In a pickle (The Tempest)
In stitches (Twelfth Night)
In the twinkling of an eye (The Merchant Of Venice)
Mum's the word (Henry VI, Part 2)
Neither here nor there (Othello)
Send him packing (Henry IV)
Set your teeth on edge (Henry IV)
There's method in my madness (Hamlet)
Too much of a good thing (As You Like It)
Vanish into thin air (Othello)
 Shakespeare’s use of language is what
makes him unique and considered a
poetic genius. He is studied all over the
world and he is one of a very few writers
that high school classes devote units to
every year. So you don’t stumble when
you first encounter this language, here
are some commonly used words that
you don’t see too often in modern
times.
 Against: for, in preparation for  Whence: where
 Alack: alas (an exclamation for  Wilt: will, will you
 Would: wish
sorrow)
 Withal: in addition, not withstanding
 An: and ; if
 Art: are
 Anon: soon
 Fie: expression of anger (Fie! I forget
 Aye: yes
my homework)
 Prithee: please
 But: only, except
 Hath: has
 E’en: even
 Tis: it is
 E’er: ever
 Thee/thou: you
 Fair: beautiful
 Thy: your
 Haply: perhaps, by chance
 Happy: fortunate
 **add -eth to verbs with singular
nouns
 Hence: away; from here
 Ex: I wilt walketh thy fair dog.
 Hie: hurry
 ** add -est to verbs with plural nouns.
 Hither: here
 Ex: I will walkest thy fair dogs.
 Marry: yes, indeed
 Iamb - a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed
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syllable followed by a stressed syllable
Iambic – consisting of iambs
Penta – containing five groups
Meter – The measured arrangement of words in
poetry, as by accentual rhythm, syllabic quantity, or
the number of syllables in a line.
Pentameter – a line of verse containing five metrical
feet
Iambic Pentameter: every line has 10 syllables and 5
rising feet (the second syllable is accented)
SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
 Shakespearean Sonnet – a highly structured poem
consisting of 14 lines written in iambic pentameter.
These lines are arranged, by the rhyme scheme abab
cdcd efef gg, into three quatrains and a rhyming
couplet.
Absolute Shakespeare, Shakespeare Timeline. Absoluteshakespeare.com, 2005. Web. 3 January 2010.
BBC. BBC Historic-Figures, William Shakespeare. BBC, MMX, n.d. Web. 3 January 2010.
Bryson, Bill. Shakespeare, The World as Stage (Kindle Edition). Amazon, 2007. Ebook.
The Elizabethan Era. Elizabethan Era, n.d. Web. 3 January 2010
The Folger Shakespeare Library. The Folger Institute, n.d. Web. 3 January, 2010.
Jamieson, Lee. Common Phrases Invented by Shakespeare. About.com Guide, n.d. Web. 3 January 2010.
Plowright, Teresa. Globe Theater. About.com Gude, n.d. Web. 3 January 2010.
Shakespeare for Children. Squidoo, 2010. Web. 3 January 2010.