Презентация для урока "Жизнь и творчество Уильяма Шекспира"

William Shakespeare

The last half of the XVI and the beginning of the XVII centuries are known as the golden age of English literature. It was the time of the English Renaissance, and sometimes it is even called “the age of Shakespeare”.

William Shakespeare, the greatest and most famous of English writers, and probably the greatest playwright who has ever lived, was born in Stratford on Avon, on the 23rd of April, 1564.

Though little is known about William’s childhood, there is every reason to believe that he was educated at the local Grammar School, where the course of education was based primarily on classical studies. Shakespeare knew Latin classics, and used repeatedly Latin texts in his plays and poems. In his time Latin texts were memorized and recited by all English schoolboys.

When a little over eighteen he married Anne Hathaway of Shottery, the daughter of a well-to-do farmer. She was seven years his senior. They had three children – Susanna, and the twins, Judith and Hamnet. A few years later after his marriage, about the year 1587, Shakespeare left his native town for London. London was the city of navigators, philosophers and poets. In 1588 colossal Spanish Armada was destroyed. Great English explorers were conquering the world. Shakespeare shared the feelings of enthusiasm and patriotism.

In London Shakespeare got a job at the Blackfriars Theatre, where he prepared old plays for public performances and earned his living as an actor.

His experience as an actor helped him greatly in writing of his plays. His knowledge of the stage and his poetical genius made his plays the most wonderful ones ever written.

During the years 1592-1594, the theatres in London were closed because of the epidemic of the plague. Shakespeare stayed in London where he wrote and published his love poem “Venus and Adonis” in 1593, and the sequence of sonnets which were published in 1609.

William Shakespeare wrote 37 plays His major tragedies are:

“ Romeo and Juliet ”

“ Othello”

“ King Lear”

“ A Midsummer Night's Dream ”

Most of Shakespeare’s plays were not published in his lifetime. Some of them may have been lost in the fire when the “Globe” burned down in 1613 during the performance of “Henry VIII”.

William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. They cover a wide range of subjects: they are poems of love and loss, death, and ruthless age. But there are two major themes: the force of love, and the battle between the power of time and the timelessness of poetry.

In 1612 he returned to Stratford-on-Avon. The last years of his life Shakespeare spent in Stratford as a respectful and wealthy citizen. He died on the 23rd of April 1616.

He is buried in his native town. In 1616 a month before his death he wrote his will.

On his tomb there are four lines which are said to have been written by William Shakespeare:

Good friend for Jesus sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blest be the man that spares thes е stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.

Друг, ради Господа, не рой Останков, взятых сей землёй; Не тронувший блажен в веках, И проклят — тронувший мой прах. (Перевод А. Величанского)

Th е s е lines prevented the removal of his remains to Westminster Abbey; only a monument was erected to his memory in the Poets’ Corner.