can any1 send me a note on:why ppl like Shakes peare n whts d speciality of his writings.....r features?

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare, 1564–1616, English dramatist and poet, b. Stratford-on-Avon. He is widely considered the greatest playwright who ever lived.

Life

His father, John Shakespeare, was successful in the leather business during Shakespeare's early childhood but later met with financial difficulties. During his prosperous years his father was also involved in municipal affairs, holding the offices of alderman and bailiff during the 1560s. While little is known of Shakespeare's boyhood, he probably attended the grammar school in Stratford, where he would have been educated in the classics, particularly Latin grammar and literature. Whatever the veracity of Ben Jonson's famous comment that Shakespeare had “small Latine, and less Greeke,” much of his work clearly depends on a knowledge of Roman comedy, ancient history, and classical mythology.

In 1582 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior and pregnant at the time of the marriage. They had three children: Susanna, born in 1583, and twins, Hamnet and Judith, born in 1585. Nothing is known of the period between the birth of the twins and Shakespeare's emergence as a playwright in London (c.1592). However, various suggestions have been made regarding this time, including those that he fled Stratford to avoid prosecution for stealing deer, that he joined a group of traveling players, and that he was a country schoolteacher. The last suggestion is given some credence by the academic style of his early plays; The Comedy of Errors, for example, is an adaptation of two plays by Plautus.

In 1594 Shakespeare became an actor and playwright for the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the company that later became the King's Men under James I. Until the end of his London career Shakespeare remained with the company; it is thought that as an actor he played old men's roles, such as the ghost in Hamlet and Old Adam in As You Like It. In 1596 he obtained a coat of arms, and by 1597 he was prosperous enough to buy New Place in Stratford, which later was the home of his retirement years. In 1599 he became a partner in the ownership of the Globe theatre, and in 1608 he was part owner of the Blackfriars theatre. Shakespeare retired and returned to Stratford c.1613. He undoubtedly enjoyed a comfortable living throughout his career and in retirement, although he was never a wealthy man.

The Plays

Chronology of Composition

The chronology of Shakespeare's plays is uncertain, but a reasonable approximation of their order can be inferred from dates of publication, references in contemporary writings, allusions in the plays to contemporary events, thematic relationships, and metrical and stylistic comparisons. His first plays are believed to be the three parts of Henry VI; it is uncertain whether Part I was written before or after Parts II and III. Richard III is related to these plays and is usually grouped with them as the final part of a first tetralogy of historical plays.

After these come The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus (almost a third of which may have been written by George Peele), The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, and Romeo and Juliet. Some of the comedies of this early period are classical imitations with a strong element of farce. The two tragedies, Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet, were both popular in Shakespeare's own lifetime. In Romeo and Juliet the main plot, in which the new love between Romeo and Juliet comes into conflict with the longstanding hatred between their families, is skillfully advanced, while the substantial development of minor characters supports and enriches it.

After these early plays, and before his great tragedies, Shakespeare wrote Richard II, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King John, The Merchant of Venice, Parts I and II of Henry IV, Much Ado about Nothing, Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. The comedies of this period partake less of farce and more of idyllic romance, while the history plays successfully integrate political elements with individual characterization. Taken together, Richard II, each part of Henry IV, and Henry V form a second tetralogy of historical plays, although each can stand alone, and they are usually performed separately. The two parts of Henry IV feature Falstaff, a vividly depicted character who from the beginning has enjoyed immense popularity.

The period of Shakespeare's great tragedies and the “problem plays” begins in 1600 with Hamlet. Following this are The Merry Wives of Windsor (written to meet Queen Elizabeth's request for another play including Falstaff, it is not thematically typical of the period), Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and Timon of Athens (the last may have been partially written by Thomas Middleton).

On familial, state, and cosmic levels, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth present clear oppositions of order and chaos, good and evil, and spirituality and animality. Stylistically the plays of this period become increasingly compressed and symbolic. Through the portrayal of political leaders as tragic heroes, Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra involve the study of politics and social history as well as the psychology of individuals.

The last two plays in the Shakespearean corpus, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, may be collaborations with John Fletcher. The remaining four plays—Pericles (two acts of which may have been written by George Wilkins), Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest—are tragicomedies. They feature characters of tragic potential, but resemble comedy in that their conclusions are marked by a harmonious resolution achieved through magic, with all its divine, humanistic, and artistic implications.

Appeal and Influence

Since his death Shakespeare's plays have been almost continually performed, in non-English-speaking nations as well as those where English is the native tongue; they are quoted more than the works of any other single author. The plays have been subject to ongoing examination and evaluation by critics attempting to explain their perennial appeal, which does not appear to derive from any set of profound or explicitly formulated ideas. Indeed, Shakespeare has sometimes been criticized for not consistently holding to any particular philosophy, religion, or ideology; for example, the subplot of A Midsummer Night's Dream includes a burlesque of the kind of tragic love that he idealizes in Romeo and Juliet.

The strength of Shakespeare's plays lies in the absorbing stories they tell, in their wealth of complex characters, and in the eloquent speech—vivid, forceful, and at the same time lyric—that the playwright puts on his characters' lips. It has often been noted that Shakespeare's characters are neither wholly good nor wholly evil, and that it is their flawed, inconsistent nature that makes them memorable. Hamlet fascinates audiences with his ambivalence about revenge and the uncertainty over how much of his madness is feigned and how much genuine. Falstaff would not be beloved if, in addition to being genial, openhearted, and witty, he were not also boisterous, cowardly, and, ultimately, poignant. Finally, the plays are distinguished by an unparalleled use of language. Shakespeare had a tremendous vocabulary and a corresponding sensitivity to nuance, as well as a singular aptitude for coining neologisms and punning.

Editions and Sources

The first collected edition of Shakespeare is the First Folio, published in 1623 and including all the plays except Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen (the latter play also generally not appearing in modern editions). Eighteen of the plays exist in earlier quarto editions, eight of which are extremely corrupt, possibly having been reconstructed from an actor's memory. The first edition of Shakespeare to divide the plays into acts and scenes and to mark exits and entrances is that of Nicholas Rowe in 1709. Other important early editions include those of Alexander Pope (1725), Lewis Theobald (1733), and Samuel Johnson (1765).

Among Shakespeare's most important sources, Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587) is significant for the English history plays, although Shakespeare did not hesitate to transform a character when it suited his dramatic purposes. For his Roman tragedies he used Sir Thomas North's translation (1579) of Plutarch's Lives. Many times he rewrote old plays, and twice he turned English prose romances into drama (As You Like It and The Winter's Tale). He also used the works of contemporary European authors. For further information on Shakespeare's sources, see the table entitled Shakespeare's Play.

The Poetry

Shakespeare's first published works were two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594). In 1599 a volume of poetry entitled The Passionate Pilgrim was published and attributed entirely to Shakespeare. However, only five of the poems are definitely considered his, two appearing in other versions in the Sonnets and three in Love's Labour's Lost. A love elegy, The Phoenix and the Turtle, was published in 1601. In the 1980s and 90s many Elizabethan scholars concluded that a poem published in 1612 entitled A Funeral Elegy and signed “W.S.” exhibits many Shakespearean characteristics; it has not yet been definitely included in the canon.

Shakespeare's sonnets are by far his most important nondramatic poetry. They were first published in 1609, although many of them had certainly been circulated privately before this, and it is generally agreed that the poems were written sometime in the 1590s. Scholars have long debated the order of the poems and the degree of autobiographical content.

The first 126 of the 154 sonnets are addressed to a young man whose identity has long intrigued scholars. The publisher, Thomas Thorpe, wrote a dedication to the first edition in which he claimed that a person with the initials W. H. had inspired the sonnets. Some have thought these letters to be the transposed initials of Henry Wriothesley, 3d earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece; or they are possibly the initials of William Herbert, 3d earl of Pembroke, whose connection with Shakespeare is more tenuous. The identity of the dark lady addressed in sonnets 127–152 has also been the object of much conjecture but no proof. The sonnets are marked by the recurring themes of beauty, youthful beauty ravaged by time, and the ability of love and art to transcend time and even death.

Critical Opinion

There has been a great variety of critical approach to Shakespeare's work since his death. During the 17th and 18th cent., Shakespeare was both admired and condemned. Since then, much of the adverse criticism has not been considered relevant, although certain issues have continued to interest critics throughout the years. For instance, charges against his moral propriety were made by Samuel Johnson in the 18th cent. and by George Bernard Shaw in the 20th.

Early criticism was directed primarily at questions of form. Shakespeare was criticized for mixing comedy and tragedy and failing to observe the unities of time and place prescribed by the rules of classical drama. Dryden and Johnson were among the critics claiming that he had corrupted the language with false wit, puns, and ambiguity. While some of his early plays might justly be charged with a frivolous use of such devices, 20th-century criticism has tended to praise their use in later plays as adding depth and resonance of meaning.

Generally critics of the 17th and 18th cent. accused Shakespeare of a want of artistic restraint while praising him for a fecund imagination. Samuel Johnson, while agreeing with many earlier criticisms, defended Shakespeare on the question of classical rules. On the issue of unity of time and place he argued that no one considers the stage play to be real life anyway. Johnson inaugurated the criticism of Shakespeare's characters that reached its culmination in the late 19th cent. with the work of A. C. Bradley. The German critics Gotthold Lessing and Augustus Wilhelm von Schlegel saw Shakespeare as a romantic, different in type from the classical poets, but on equal footing. Schlegel first elucidated the structural unity of Shakespeare's plays, a concept of unity that is developed much more completely by the English poet and critic Samuel Coleridge.

While Schlegel and Coleridge were establishing Shakespeare's plays as artistic, organic unities, such 19th-century critics as the German Georg Gervinus and the Irishman Edward Dowden were trying to see positive moral tendencies in the plays. The 19th-century English critic William Hazlitt, who continued the development of character analysis begun by Johnson, considered each Shakespearean character to be unique, but found a unity through analogy and gradation of characterization. While A. C. Bradley marks the culmination of romantic 19th-century character study, he also suggested that the plays had unifying imagistic atmospheres, an idea that was further developed in the 20th cent.

The tendency in 20th-century criticism was to abandon both the study of character as independent personality and the assumption that moral considerations can be separated from their dramatic and aesthetic context. The plays were increasingly viewed in terms of the unity of image, metaphor, and tone. Caroline Spurgeon began the careful classification of Shakespeare's imagery, and although her attempts were later felt to be somewhat naive and morally biased, her work is a landmark in Shakespearean criticism. Other important trends in 20th-century criticism included the Freudian approach, such as Ernest Jones's Oedipal interpretation of Hamlet; the study of Shakespeare in terms of the Elizabethan world view and Elizabethan stage conventions; and the study of the plays in mythic terms.

Authorship

For about 150 years after his death no one seemed to doubt that Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him. However, in the latter part of the 18th cent. questions began to arise as to whether or not the historical William Shakespeare was indeed the author. Since then the issue has continued to be a subject of often heated debate, albeit mainly in academic circles. Those who doubt that Shakespeare wrote the works (sometimes called “anti-Stratfordians”) generally assert that the actor from Stratford had a limited education; some have even claimed that he was illiterate. Many of the questioners maintain that such a provincial upstart could not have had the wide-ranging worldly and scholarly knowledge, linguistic skills, and fine sensibilities evinced by the author of the Shakespearean canon. Such qualities, they assert, could only have been possessed by a university-educated gentleman, multilingual, well-traveled, and quite possibly titled. Critics further contend that playwriting was a lowly profession at the time and that the “real” author protected his reputation by using Shakespeare's name as a pseudonym. Over the years, many other arguments, some involving secret codes, some even more abstruse, have been offered to cast doubt on Shakespeare's authorship.

On the other hand, traditionalists (“Stratfordians”) who believe that William Shakespeare was indeed the author of the plays and poems, point out that his probable education at the Stratford grammar school would have provided the required knowledge of the classics and classical civilization as well as of Latin and at least some Greek. They also maintain that what can be assumed to be his broad reading of historical sources along with his daily involvement in the lively worlds of Elizabethan London—artistic and intellectual, ordinary and aristocratic—would, when transmuted by his genius, have provided Shakespeare with the necessary background to create his dramatic and poetic works. Moreover, they say, Shakespeare was known to his contemporaries, as attested to by a number of extant references to him as a writer by other notable men of his time.

Anti-Stratfordians have suggested a number of Elizabethans as candidates for the “real” author of the works. From the late 18th through the 19th cent. the individual most often cited was Francis Bacon, who had the requisite aristocratic background, education, courtly experience, and literary talent. Others claimed that Bacon was one of a group that collectively wrote the Shakespearean oeuvre. In the 20th cent. a new candidate emerged as the authorial front runner—Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford. His proponents, the Oxfordians, cited correspondences between events in his life and those in some of the plays, apparent similarities in the two men's language, and Oxford's proven skills as a dramatist and poet. Prominent among the many reasons to doubt de Vere's authorship is the fact that he died in 1604 and that some of Shakespeare's greatest works were written well after that date.

More than 50 other names have been put forward as the “real” Shakespeare, ranging from the implausible, e.g., Queen Elizabeth I, to the somewhat more possible, e.g., Christopher Marlowe; William Stanley, 6th earl of Derby; and Roger Manners, 5th earl of Rutland. Still others have suggested that the works were the result of a collaboration by two or more Elizabethan writers. In 2005 a new candidate, Sir Henry Neville, a courtier, diplomat, and distant relative of Shakespeare, was proposed. Even as studies and biographies of Shakespeare proliferate, the authorship controversy shows few signs of subsiding, and books, scholarly essays, and, more recently, websites continue to be devoted to the question.

Text of Shakespeare's Plays

01. All's Well That Ends Well
02. Antony and Cleopatra
03. As You Like It
04. The Comedy of Errors
05. Coriolanus
06. Cymbeline
07. Hamlet
08. Henry the Fourth, I
09. Henry the Fourth, II
10. Henry the Fifth
11. Henry the Sixth, I
12. Henry the Sixth, II
13. Henry the Sixth, III
14. Henry the Eighth
15. Julius Caesar
16. King John
17. King Lear
18. Love's Labor's Lost
19. Measure for Measure
20. Macbeth
21. The Merchant of Venice
22. The Merry Wives of Windsor
23. A Midsummer Night's Dream
24. Much Ado about Nothing
25. Othello
26. Pericles, Prince of Tyre
27. Richard the Second
28. Richard the Third
29. Romeo and Juliet
30. The Taming of the Shrew
31. The Tempest
32. Timon of Athens
33. Titus Andronicus
34. Troilus and Cressida
35. Twelfth Night, or What You Will
36. Two Gentlemen of Verona
37. Winter's Tale

Text of Shakespeare's Sonnets

• From fairest creatures we des...

• When forty winters shall besi...

• Look in thy glass and tell th...

• Unthrifty loveliness, why dos...

• Those hours, that with gentle...

• Then let not winter's ragged ...

• Lo! in the orient when the gr...

• Music to hear, why hear'st th...

• Is it for fear to wet a widow...

• For shame! deny that thou bea...

• As fast as thou shalt wane, s...

• When I do count the clock tha...

• O! that you were your self; b...

• Not from the stars do I my ju...

• When I consider every thing t...

• But wherefore do not you a mi...

• Who will believe my verse in ...

• Shall I compare thee to a sum...

• Devouring Time, blunt thou th...

• A woman's face with nature's ...

• So is it not with me as with ...

• My glass shall not persuade m...

• As an unperfect actor on the ...

• Mine eye hath play'd the pain...

• Let those who are in favour w...

• Lord of my love, to whom in v...

• Weary with toil, I haste me t...

• How can I then return in happ...

• When in disgrace with fortune...

• When to the sessions of sweet...

• Thy bosom is endeared with al...

• If thou survive my well-conte...

• Full many a glorious morning ...

• Why didst thou promise such a...

• No more be griev'd at that wh...

• Let me confess that we two mu...

• As a decrepit father takes de...

• How can my muse want subject ...

• O! how thy worth with manners...

• Take all my loves, my love, y...

• Those pretty wrongs that libe...

• That thou hast her it is not ...

• When most I wink, then do min...

• If the dull substance of my f...

• The other two, slight air, an...

• Mine eye and heart are at a m...

• Betwixt mine eye and heart a ...

• How careful was I when I took...

• Against that time, if ever th...

• How heavy do I journey on the...

• Thus can my love excuse the s...

• So am I as the rich, whose bl...

• What is your substance, where...

• O! how much more doth beauty ...

• Not marble, nor the gilded mo...

• Sweet love, renew thy force; ...

• Being your slave what should ...

• That god forbid, that made me...

• If there be nothing new, but ...

• Like as the waves make toward...

• Is it thy will, thy image sho...

• Sin of self-love possesseth a...

• Against my love shall be as I...

• When I have seen by Time's fe...

• Since brass, nor stone, nor e...

• Tired with all these, for res...

• Ah! wherefore with infection ...

• Thus is his cheek the map of ...

• Those parts of thee that the ...

• That thou art blam'd shall no...

• No longer mourn for me when I...

• O! lest the world should task...

• That time of year thou mayst ...

• But be contented: when that f...

• So are you to my thoughts as ...

• Why is my verse so barren of ...

• Thy glass will show thee how ...

• So oft have I invoked thee fo...

• Whilst I alone did call upon ...

• O! how I faint when I of you ...

• Or I shall live your epitaph ...

• I grant thou wert not married...

• I never saw that you did pain...

• Who is it that says most, whi...

• My tongue-tied Muse in manner...

• Was it the proud full sail of...

• Farewell! thou art too dear f...

• When thou shalt be dispos'd t...

• Say that thou didst forsake m...

• Then hate me when thou wilt; ...

• Some glory in their birth, so...

• But do thy worst to steal thy...

• So shall I live, supposing th...

• They that have power to hurt,...

• How sweet and lovely dost tho...

• Some say thy fault is youth, ...

• How like a winter hath my abs...

• From you have I been absent i...

• The forward violet thus did I...

• Where art thou Muse that thou...

• O truant Muse what shall be t...

• My love is strengthen'd, thou...

• Alack! what poverty my Muse b...

• To me, fair friend, you never...

• Let not my love be call'd ido...

• When in the chronicle of wast...

• Not mine own fears, nor the p...

• What's in the brain, that ink...

• O! never say that I was false...

• Alas! 'tis true, I have gone ...

• O! for my sake do you with Fo...

• Your love and pity doth the i...

• Since I left you, mine eye is...

• Or whether doth my mind, bein...

• Those lines that I before hav...

• Let me not to the marriage of...

• Accuse me thus: that I have s...

• Like as, to make our appetite...

• That you were once unkind bef...

• 'Tis better to be vile than v...

• Thy gift, thy tables, are wit...

• No, Time, thou shalt not boas...

• If my dear love were but the ...

• Were't aught to me I bore the...

• O thou, my lovely boy, who in...

• In the old age black was not ...

• How oft when thou, my music, ...

• The expense of spirit in a wa...

• My mistress' eyes are nothing...

• Thou art as tyrannous, so as ...

• Thine eyes I love, and they, ...

• Beshrew that heart that makes...

• So, now I have confess'd that...

• Whoever hath her wish, thou h...

• If thy soul check thee that I...

• Thou blind fool, Love, what d...

• When my love swears that she ...

• O! call not me to justify the...

• Be wise as thou art cruel; do...

• In faith I do not love thee w...

• Love is my sin, and thy dear ...

• Lo, as a careful housewife ru...

• Two loves I have of comfort a...

• Those lips that Love's own ha...

• Poor soul, the centre of my s...

• My love is as a fever longing...

• O me! what eyes hath Love put...

• Canst thou, O cruel! say I lo...

• O! from what power hast thou ...

• Love is too young to know wha...

• In loving thee thou know'st I...

• Cupid laid by his brand and f...

• The little Love-god lying onc...

Writing of William Shakespeare

Shakespeare didn't write his plays in a particular way to make it difficult or to be clever. Like every writer, he writes so that people can enjoy his stories. He created a particular style to try to make his stories more enjoyable. This is the same as a lot of modern day TV programmes and Films.

For instance, Quentin Tarantino makes his films in a stylised way. Some people don't like his films because they are not used to his style: others call him a genius. The same is true of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare started to write at the back end of a revolution. The revolution was not one of fighting, but one of thinking. The revolution was The Renaissance (French for re-birth). For the first time we started to have a better idea of the Human Condition.

Shakespeare used his writing to explore these ideas. He didn't write about Janet and John from down the road, or a couple of gangs who have a fight. He wrote about a love that is worth dying for and some of the greatest battles in history.

He did all this with no special effects. With no change in location. With no set to speak of. He developed his style, like all creative people (painters, writers, builders), because he had to!

So what is Shakespeare's style? It can be broken down into three basic sections; Structure, Language and Imagery. No fuss, no magic. It's not rocket science. Once you understand these stylistic devices you've cracked it.

Structure

The structure that Shakespeare used is the foundation of his writing. He came up with an idea of having two writing styles.

The first style would be for all the important characters. They would speak in verse. This would make the heroes more heroic, the baddies more evil and royalty more regal. He didn't have close-ups, or cool music. He used verse!

The second style would be for everyone else, particularly if they are funny. This would be prose. It is easier to be funnier in prose than in verse. This is not to say that all the rich characters speak in verse and all the poor people speak in prose. That is not always true.

The two styles have different effects. Since he didn't leave a note explaining why he used verse sometimes and prose other times, we have to decide for ourselves.

Language

Shakespeare's plays are written in verse. This is poetry. Most of it doesn't rhyme. But why bother? If you are dealing with massive events or serious emotions, you need a structure that allows you to sound serious. For instance, in the film 'Gladiator', at the beginning they are preparing for a massive battle. The hero is talking to his soldiers and says:

"What you do in life echoes through eternity!"

That is inspirational, heroic and poetic. If he had said ...

"Okay, lads I want you to be very brave and fight well, because then you'll be famous heroes one day!"

... it doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Not inspirational, not heroic and definitely not poetic. Shakespeare uses poetry to inspire us, not put us off, and to make his characters almost larger than life. Bigger heroes, greater lovers, yet still human.

So, how does it work? Usually it obeys the basic rules of poetry. Look at the first line of a Limerick as an example:

There was an old woman from Rhyl

We all know Limericks and that is a standard first line. On the other hand, if you wrote

There was an old woman from a small town in Outer Mongolia
This is not a good first line because it doesn't fit. It ruins the rhythm of a standard Limerick. The rhythm is ruined because there are too many syllables in the line.


There was an old woman from Rhyl

This line has eight syllables; the alternative line has sixteen!

Shakespeare decided to keep his lines to a nice, round ten syllables. In poetry they have given technical names to the lines with different numbers of syllables. To make life easier for themselves, they pair the syllables.

So Shakespeare wrote lines with five pairs of syllables. They call this PENTAMETER. 'Pent' means five - as in pentagon, pentagram, pentacle - which are all shapes with five sides or points. The 'meter' part of the word is the rhythm.

Now there is a big problem with writing poetry. Nobody really talks like that. You couldn't imagine a whole play written as a Limerick; that would be silly. Nobody really talks like that, it would be a nightmare for actors.

So Shakespeare listened to how people really spoke and incorporated this into his poetry. The way we speak has a particular rhythm. This is all down to how we stress words. For example:

GARAGE

When you break this word up into its two syllables and say it, the stress is on the first syllable:



GA-RAGE (sounding: GA-ridge)

In America they have the opposite stress to us. They would say

GA-RAGE (sounding: G'RARDGE)


Look at the first line of our Limerick again



There was an old woman from Rhyl

This is the way we would naturally stress the words. As you can see a regular rhythm has one un-stressed followed by a stressed syllable. That is the way we speak. That is called IAMBIC - another technical term!

Shakespeare adopted this, to make life easier for all concerned. He used IAMBIC PENTAMETER. Here is a regular example of this. It's the first line of Henry V.



"Oh for a muse of fire that would ascend"

It is quite difficult to write each line so it contains ten syllables. That is why Shakespeare would cheat. There are times when a line may have more or less syllables than he wanted. If the line had more syllables he would trim words to fit. For example, an imaginary line:

"Is it possible?"

would become:

"Is't possible?"

So instead of having two syllables is it you have one syllable is't. A complete cheat! But it sounds quite good and it fits. If the line didn't have enough syllables? Simple - he would add an extra one:

"He jumped out of the window."



Normally, the way you would say "jumped" is you ignore the "e", so it sounds "jump'd". Not if Shakespeare needed an extra syllable. Then the word would be "jump-ed".

It sounds a bit like French, adds a certain je ne sais quoi! But it can become quite confusing if some lines have a word like "jumped" that don't need an extra syllable. That is why in some copies of the plays they put a French accent over the é when you sound it fully, and no accent when it is normal.

In others they write "jump'd" when it is to be said normally, and "jumped" when he needs an extra syllable.

So that is the basic rule. It sounds good, and it is easy to speak. But it can be quite restrictive. If you have a scene where there is an argument and people are getting really angry, or if someone has died and a relative is very sad, these characters would not speak in this even, regular way. So, Shakespeare had a cunning plan: he broke his own rule!

At times throughout his plays there are irregular lines. Lines with eleven or more syllables, or stresses the wrong way round. This usually means the character is emotional in one way or another. For example, the most famous line from Shakespeare:


"To be or not to be, that is the question"


This has eleven syllables. Here is a man wondering whether to live or die. He's not asking if anyone would like a cup of tea. He is going through hell. He is not feeling regular, so his line is not regular.

This style is very important for actors. Remember that this is a play to be performed. He gives the actor these clues to help them deliver the lines, and to establish the emotional state of the character.

There are some lines that do rhyme. Prospero in The Tempest rhymes quite a lot. This is to add a magical quality to what he is saying. The same is true for other characters. It adds a specific quality that is right for that person speaking. Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream rhymes, particularly at the end of the play:

"If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding, but a dream"


This is right at the end of the play (Act 5 Scene 1) and rounds it off really well.

Most commonly the rhyming comes at the end of a scene. Normally it is two lines that rhyme, called a rhyming couplet. In MacBeth

"The bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell"


This ends the scene, and MacBeth goes off and murders the king. It's very dramatic, and the rhyming couplet emphasises the drama. It also serves a functional purpose. In the theatre there wasn't a curtain. There was no way the audience would know that the scene had ended, and the actor would just walk off. If you end the scene with an ordinary line:

"Now I shall go and kill King Duncan!"

Even if the actor said it really seriously, which would be difficult, and then walked off; it is more funny than dramatic. Whereas if you say:

"The bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell!"


the actor can probably leave the stage almost unnoticed because of the dramatic impact the rhyming couplet has.

The effect of the verse is to help create drama and deal with fundamental, big issues. Like anything else, if you are going to play around with the form of the work (change the rhythm or add rhymes) you have to be very skilful or it won't work. Shakespeare knew when and how to bend the rules.

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this is just the whole storyy of his life span..........i want the answer dat which features of his style make him popular..........sir anyway jazakalah for dat.....if u hav any info abt dat do send me

can u send me the history of lit in just 200-300 words....so dat it will be clear to me ...n tell me how to get into a group membership