"that the claim was ""unwarranted"". The film is ""not constrained by worries about literary or historical accuracy"" and includes anachronisms such as a reference to Virginia tobacco plantations, at a time before the Colony of Virginia existed. A leading character is a member of the House of Wessex, which died out in 1066. Queen Elizabeth I never entered a public theatre, as she does in the film. Between ""Romeo and Juliet"" and ""Twelfth Night"", Shakespeare wrote ten other plays over a period of six years. The biggest historical liberty concerns the central theme of Shakespeare struggling to create the story"
"Curculio (play) Curculio, also called ""The Weevil"", is a Latin comedic play for the early Roman theatre by Titus Maccius Plautus. It is the shortest of Plautus's surviving plays. In ""Curculio"", Phaedromus is in love with Planesium, a slave girl belonging to the pimp Cappadox. Phaedromus sends Curculio (a stock parasite character) to borrow money. Unsuccessful, Curculio happens to run into Therapontigonus, a soldier who intends to purchase Planesium. After Curculio learns of his plans, he steals the soldier's ring and returns to Phaedromus. They fake a letter and seal it using the ring. Curculio takes it to the soldier's"
"with the execution of Christians by damnatio ad bestias. Julius Caesar (play) The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (First Folio title: The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar) is a history play and tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It is one of several plays written by Shakespeare based on true events from Roman history, which also include ""Coriolanus"" and ""Antony and Cleopatra"". Although the play is named ""Julius Caesar"", Brutus speaks more than four times as many lines as the title character; and the central psychological drama of the play focuses on Brutus' struggle between the conflicting"
"Fifty-eight quarto (or ""Q"") editions of Shakespeare's plays and five editions of poetry were published before the First Folio. On 20 of the plays, the author is not credited. On 15 title pages, his name is hyphenated, ""Shakespeare"", 13 of these spellings being on the title pages of just three plays, ""Richard II"" (Q2 1598, Q3 1598, Q4 1608, and Q5 1615), ""Richard III"" (Q2 1598, Q3 1602, Q4 1605, Q5 1612, and Q6 1622), and ""Henry IV, Part 1"" (Q2 1599, Q3 1604, Q4 1608, and Q5 1613). A hyphen is also present in the first quarto of ""Hamlet"""
"on these two points, as well as a number of contemporary allusions, and the belief that the play is similar to ""Hamlet"" in vocabulary, and to ""Henry V"" and ""As You Like It"" in metre, scholars have suggested 1599 as a probable date. The text of ""Julius Caesar"" in the First Folio is the only authoritative text for the play. The Folio text is notable for its quality and consistency; scholars judge it to have been set into type from a theatrical prompt-book. The play contains many anachronistic elements from the Elizabethan era. The characters mention objects such as hats"
"Phormio (play) Phormio is a Latin comic play by the early Roman playwright Terence, based on a play by Apollodorus of Carystus. It was first performed at the Ludi Romani of 161 BC. The play is named after the character Phormio, who is a cunning ""parasite"" (that is, a person who makes a living by performing services for richer people). The plot is set in Athens, and revolves around the love affairs of two young men, Phaedria and Antipho, who are cousins. Phaedria is in love with a harp-player called Pamphila, but doesn't have the money to buy her from"
"in quarto during the seventeenth century bear Shakespeare's name on the title page or in other documents, but do not appear in the First Folio. Some of these plays (such as ""Pericles"") are believed by most scholars of Shakespeare to have been written by him (at least in part). Others, such as ""Thomas Lord Cromwell"" are so atypically written that it is difficult to believe they really are by Shakespeare. Scholars have suggested various reasons for the existence of these plays. In some cases, the title page attributions may be lies told by fraudulent printers trading on Shakespeare's reputation. In"
"Julius Caesar (play) The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (First Folio title: The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar) is a history play and tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It is one of several plays written by Shakespeare based on true events from Roman history, which also include ""Coriolanus"" and ""Antony and Cleopatra"". Although the play is named ""Julius Caesar"", Brutus speaks more than four times as many lines as the title character; and the central psychological drama of the play focuses on Brutus' struggle between the conflicting demands of honour, patriotism, and friendship. ""Triumvirs after Caesar's"
"The Q2 title page repeats the data of Q1, though the Lord Chamberlain's Men are now the King's Men (the name change having occurred in 1603). The ""W. S."" of the quartos was first identified as William Shakespeare when publisher Philip Chetwinde added the play to the second impression of his Shakespeare Third Folio in 1664. Modern scholars reject the Shakespearean attribution; speculation, relying on common initials, has shone on Wentworth Smith and William Sly as possible alternatives. Individual critics have also suggested Thomas Heywood and Michael Drayton as possible authors—suggestions unsupported by firm evidence. Indeed, scholars have disagreed about"
"drawn on an earlier Elizabethan play known today as the ""Ur-Hamlet"", though some scholars believe he himself wrote the ""Ur-Hamlet"", later revising it to create the version of ""Hamlet"" we now have. He almost certainly wrote his version of the title role for his fellow actor, Richard Burbage, the leading tragedian of Shakespeare's time. In the 400 years since its inception, the role has been performed by numerous highly acclaimed actors in each successive century. Three different early versions of the play are extant: the First Quarto (Q1, 1603); the Second Quarto (Q2, 1604); and the First Folio (F1, 1623)."
"Mary Shelley, the two main characters—Dr. Frankenstein and his ""creature""—are both together literary foils, functioning to compare one to the other. In Jane Austen's ""Pride and Prejudice"", Mary's absorption in her studies places her as a foil to her sister Lydia Bennet's lively and distracted nature. Similarly, in Shakespeare's play ""Julius Caesar"", the character Brutus has foils in the two characters, Cassius and Mark Antony. In the play ""Romeo and Juliet"", Romeo and Mercutio serve as character foils for one another, as well as Macbeth and Banquo in his play ""Macbeth"". In William Shakespeare's tragedy ""Hamlet"", a foil is created"
"follows the categories used in the First Folio. However, modern criticism has labelled some of these plays ""problem plays"" that elude easy categorisation, or perhaps purposely break generic conventions, and has introduced the term romances for what scholars believe to be his later comedies. When Shakespeare first arrived in London in the late 1570s or early 1580s, dramatists writing for London's new commercial playhouses (such as The Curtain) were combining two strands of dramatic tradition into a new and distinctively Elizabethan synthesis. Previously, the most common forms of popular English theatre were the Tudor morality plays. These plays, celebrating piety"
"William Kempe, (who played Peter in ""Romeo and Juliet"" and, possibly, Bottom in ""A Midsummer Night's Dream"") and Henry Condell and John Heminges, who are most famous now for collecting and editing the plays of Shakespeare's First Folio (1623). Shakespeare's plays continued to be staged after his death until the Interregnum (1649–1660), when all public stage performances were banned by the Puritan rulers. After the English Restoration, Shakespeare's plays were performed in playhouses with elaborate scenery and staged with music, dancing, thunder, lightning, wave machines, and fireworks. During this time the texts were ""reformed"" and ""improved"" for the stage, an"
"Characters in Hamlet What follows is an overview of the main characters in William Shakespeare's ""Hamlet"", followed by a list and summary of the minor characters from the play. Three different early versions of the play survive: known as the First Quarto (""Q1""), Second Quarto (""Q2""), and First Folio (""F1""), each has lines—and even scenes—missing in the others, and some character names vary. Marcellus, Bernardo (or Barnardo) and Francisco are sentries at Elsinore. Francisco gives up his watch to Bernardo in the opening of the play, and it is Bernardo and Marcellus, who first alert Horatio to the appearance of"
"recognised to be Shakespeare's own. Plays marked with an asterisk (*) are now commonly referred to as the 'romances'. Plays marked with two asterisks (**) are sometimes referred to as the 'problem plays'. Shakespearean comedy In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies, though today many scholars recognize a fourth category, romance, to describe the specific types of comedies that appear as Shakespeare's later works. There are ten plays by Shakespeare which are consistently understood as being comedies by name and genre. More ambiguously, there are 17 of Shakespeare's plays"
"Friar Laurence Friar Laurence is a character in William Shakespeare's play ""Romeo and Juliet"". Friar Laurence is a friar who plays the part of a wise advisor to Romeo and Juliet, along with aiding in major plot developments. Alone, he foreshadows the later, tragic events of the play with his soliloquy about plants and their similarities to humans. When Romeo requests the Friar marry him to Juliet, he is shocked, because only days before, Romeo had been infatuated with Rosaline, a woman who did not return his love. Nevertheless, Friar Laurence decides to marry Romeo and Juliet in the attempt"
"On St. Stephen's Day, 26 December 1622, The King's Men acted another Fletcher/Massinger play, ""The Spanish Curate,"" at Court. 1623: The First Folio gives a list of names of the 26 ""principal actors"" in Shakespeare's plays, providing a fairly comprehensive roster of important members of the Lord Chamberlain's/King's Men through the previous thirty years. In addition to eight men on the original 1603 royal patent (Shakespeare, Burbage, Heminges, Condell, Phillips, Cowley, Sly, and Armin), the list includes William Kempe, Thomas Pope, George Bryan, John Lowin, Samuel Crosse, Alexander Cooke, Samuel Gilburne, William Ostler, Nathan Field, John Underwood, Nicholas Tooley, William"
"as occurs in the plays. It is thought that ""Furor Poeticus"" represents John Marston, and ""Luxurio"" represents Gabriel Harvey. The courtier Gullio is not only a character in the play but is used to satirize Shakespeare's patron the Earl of Southampton, who also attended St. John's. Southampton would not have attended the performance in 1601, he was at the time under sentence of death for his part in the Essex conspiracy. A printer who appears in the third play named Danter, is based on a real printer named John Danter, who is noted for printing the piratical first quarto of"
"Valentine's role is based on Romeus'. Thus, when adapting the ""Mercutio—Juliet—Romeus"" constellation from Brooke, by changing Mercutio from an amorous rival into a friend—brother to Romeo and a ""scoffer at love"", Shakespeare also rearranged the relationships into ""Mercutio—Romeo—Juliet"", making Romeo the focus and removing Mercutio as a threat to his courtship of Juliet. Four characters in John Webster's ""The White Devil"", Christophero, Farnese, Guid-Antonio, and Little Jaques the Moor, have sometimes been referred to as ghost characters because they have no lines in the play. George Peele's ""Edward I"" includes four characters mentioned in stage directions but not given any"
"History of Romeus and Juliet"", which Shakespeare later used to create ""Romeo and Juliet"". Brooke's version made Mercutio a rival for Juliet's love. Shakespeare's addition of Valentine as Mercutio's brother diffuses this rivalry. Thus, because the first time we hear of Mercutio he is associated with Valentine, rather than Juliet, he is changed from a rival to a friend and brotherly figure of Romeo. Characters in Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare's play ""Romeo and Juliet"" contains a diverse cast of characters. In addition to the play's eponymous protagonists, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, the play contains roles for members of"
"Juliet, a rhapsody in Mercutio's Queen Mab speech, and an elegy by Paris. Shakespeare saves his prose style most often for the common people in the play, though at times he uses it for other characters, such as Mercutio. Humour, also, is important: scholar Molly Mahood identifies at least 175 puns and wordplays in the text. Many of these jokes are sexual in nature, especially those involving Mercutio and the Nurse. Early psychoanalytic critics saw the problem of ""Romeo and Juliet"" in terms of Romeo's impulsiveness, deriving from ""ill-controlled, partially disguised aggression"", which leads both to Mercutio's death and to"
"with such characters as the literary thief Poet-Ape in Ben Jonson's poem of the same name and the foolish poetry-lover Gullio in the university play ""The Return from Parnassus"" (performed c. 1601). Such characters are taken as broad hints indicating that the London theatrical world knew Shakespeare was a front for an anonymous author. Similarly, praises of ""Shakespeare"" the writer, such as those found in the First Folio, are explained as references to the real author's pen-name, not the man from Stratford. Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 in Stratford, leaving a signed will to direct the disposal of his"
"play is based on various accounts of the semi-legendary Brythonic figure Leir of Britain, whose name has been linked by some scholars to the Brythonic god Lir/Llŷr, though in actuality the names are not etymologically related. Shakespeare's most important source is probably the second edition of ""The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande"" by Raphael Holinshed, published in 1587. Holinshed himself found the story in the earlier ""Historia Regum Britanniae"" by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which was written in the 12th century. Edmund Spenser's ""The Faerie Queene"", published 1590, also contains a character named Cordelia, who also dies from hanging, as"
"thunderbolt. The ghosts fall on their knees."" The actors in Shakespeare's company included the famous Richard Burbage, William Kempe, Henry Condell and John Heminges. Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including ""Richard III"", ""Hamlet"", ""Othello"", and ""King Lear"". The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in ""Romeo and Juliet"" and Dogberry in ""Much Ado About Nothing"", among other characters. He was replaced around 1600 by Robert Armin, who played roles such as Touchstone in ""As You Like It"" and the fool in ""King Lear"". In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton"
"Richard III (play) Richard III is a historical play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written around 1593. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of King Richard III of England. The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified as such. Occasionally, however, as in the quarto edition, it is termed a tragedy. ""Richard III"" concludes Shakespeare's first tetralogy (also containing ""Henry VI"" parts 1–3). It is the second longest play in the canon after ""Hamlet"" and is the longest of the First Folio, whose version of"
"movements such as structuralism, feminism, New Historicism, African-American studies, and queer studies. In a comprehensive reading of Shakespeare's works and comparing Shakespeare literary accomplishments to accomplishments among leading figures in philosophy and theology as well, Harold Bloom has commented that ""Shakespeare was larger than Plato and than St. Augustine. He ""encloses"" us because we ""see"" with his fundamental perceptions."" Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed according to their folio classification as comedies, histories, and tragedies. Two plays not included in the First Folio, ""The Two Noble Kinsmen"" and ""Pericles, Prince of Tyre"","
"toward senior roles. The clown Hilario, played by John Shank, is a thin-man character; the thin man was apparently a standard feature of the King's Men's dramaturgy — in the previous generation of Shakespeare and Burbage, hired man John Sinklo had filled thin-man clown roles like Pinch in ""The Comedy of Errors"" and Shadow in ""Henry IV, Part 2."" And the female character of Queen Honoria is written for a supremely beautiful woman; she is more than once described as a ""Juno"" — which raises questions as to how the boy player Thompson managed the role. An adaptation of ""The"
"Juliet"". Obviously Shakespeare's source for ""Romeo and Juliet"", it features a character called Friar Laurence, as does ""Two Gentlemen"", and a scene where a young man attempts to outwit his lover's father by means of a corded ladder (as Valentine does in ""Two Gentlemen""). Philip Sidney's ""The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia"" may also have influenced Shakespeare insofar as it contains a character who follows her betrothed, dressed as his page, and later on, one of the main characters becomes captain of a group of Helots. The exact date of composition of ""The Two Gentlemen of Verona"" is unknown, but it"
"much, but think the more"" (4.1.85) and ""Not I, my thoughts aim at a further matter:/I stay not for love of Edward but the crown"" (141.124–125); Warwick's ""O unbid spite, is sportful Edward come"" (5.1.18); the entirety of Richard's soliloquy in Act 5, Scene 6, after killing Henry (ll.61–93) and Richard's ""To say the truth, so Judas kissed his master/And cried 'All hail', whenas he meant all harm"" (5.7.33–34). The play also featured in ITV's ""Will Shakespeare"", a 1978 six-part (heavily fictionalised) biopic of Shakespeare (Tim Curry), written by John Mortimer. Episode one, ""Dead Shepherd"", focuses on Shakespeare's apprenticeship to"
"appeared in 1611, 1619, 1630, and 1635; it was one of Shakespeare's most popular plays in his own historical era. The play was not included in the First Folio in 1623; it was one of seven plays added to the original Folio thirty-six in the second impression of the Third Folio in 1664. [See: Folios and Quartos (Shakespeare).] William Jaggard included ""Pericles"" in his 1619 False Folio. The editors of the Oxford and Arden editions of ""Pericles"" accept Wilkins as Shakespeare's collaborator, citing stylistic links between the play and Wilkins's style that are found nowhere else in Shakespeare. The Cambridge"
"Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in ""Julius Caesar,"" ""the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to infuse each other"". In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called ""problem plays"" ""Measure for Measure"", ""Troilus and Cressida"", and ""All's Well That Ends Well"" and a number of his best known tragedies. Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, ""Hamlet"", has probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which"
"Shakespeare's Romeo to an enthralled audience. Master Tilney arrives to arrest everyone for indecency due to Viola's presence, but the Queen reveals herself having been in attendance and restrains Tilney, instead asserting that Kent's resemblance to a woman is, indeed, remarkable. However, even a queen is powerless to end a lawful marriage, and she orders Kent to ""fetch"" Viola because she must sail with Wessex to the Colony of Virginia. The Queen also tells Wessex, who followed Viola to the theatre, that ""Romeo and Juliet"" has won the bet for Shakespeare, and has Kent deliver his £50 with instructions to"
"providing opportunities for comic consternation on Vincentio's part and landing Lucio in trouble when it is revealed that the duke and the friar are one and the same. Lucio's punishment is to be forced into marrying Kate Keepdown, a prostitute whom he had impregnated and abandoned. The play draws on two distinct sources. The original is ""The Story of Epitia"", a story from Cinthio's ""Hecatommithi"", first published in 1565. Shakespeare was familiar with this book as it contains the original source for Shakespeare's ""Othello"". Cinthio also published the same story in a play version with some small differences, of which"