William Shakespeare :: English Literature

William Shakespeare The Globe William Shakespeare was one of the most famous play writers of all time. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in England more than four hundred years ago. At the young age of eighteen Shakespeare wedd a woman by the name of Anne Hathaway whom was eight years older than him. Together they had a daughter called Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Shakespeare decided to start travelling and to go to London. Luckily for Shakespeare just before he went to London, theatres had been opened for travelling actors for they weren’t respected and a man by the name of James Burbage wanted to change that. He did this so that actors could gain more dignity. This led to the first public playhouse being built in England. This playhouse was a great success and was very popular so gradually more and more were built. In a playhouse there were three tiers of galleries which looked down to the yard where most of the audience stood. For it was only a penny to stand in the yard whereas in the gallery benches it was two pence. To sit on cushions in the gentlemen’s rooms it was three pence and for six pence the well-off would sit in the Lords room. The stage came out into the yard and was open to the sky. Over the back of the stage ran an upper stage and beneath the upper stage was what was known as the tiring house. The tiring house was concealed from the audience by a curtain which would be drawn back to reveal an inner stage. There weren’t any large curtains to conceal the whole stage so all scenes on the main stage began with an entrance and ended with an exit so in tragedies the dead must be carried away. The fact that there was no scenery meant that there were no limits to the number of scenes as when a scene came to an end then the characters would just simply leave the scene. The audiences loved Shakespeare’s plays. Hundreds of people would squeeze into the theatre with their food and drink to watch. Sadly a deadly plague interrupted the theatres success and meant that for two years all playhouses were closed. During this time Shakespeare wrote several plays and two long poems. In 1597 the theatre was forced to close after twenty one years for it was on rented land and the agreement with the landowner had ended. The landowner wanted to keep the playhouse to himself and to reuse its valuable oak timber but that wasn’t the plan of the two brothers who