William Shakespeare

SHAKESPEARE AND THE RENAISSANCE:

· The Renaissance /renəsɑːns/: the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries: people became interested in Ancient Greece and Rome, human rather than divine affairs

MAIN FACTS:

· lived in the second half of 16th century and the first third of 17th century (Renaissance and the oncoming Baroque

· very little is known about his life (born in Stratford, baptized in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, married quite young (wife Anne Hathaway /hæθǝwei/, older than him by 8 years, three children)

· spent a substantial part of his life in London, acting and writing plays; got quite rich, returned to Stratford several years before his death

· still considered the best dramatist who has ever lived (nearly 40 plays); also a poet

· wrote comedies, tragedies, history plays and romances (= tragicomedies)

· his characters are complex, many-sided and extremely varied; the best-known are those of Romeo /rəʊmɪəʊ/ and Juliet /dʒuːlɪˈet/, Hamlet, Macbeth /mǝkˈbeθ/, Othello /ǝˈθelǝʊ/, Shylock /ʃʌɪlɒk/ and Lear /lɪə/

· his plays are written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter /ʌnˈrʌɪmd aɪˈæmbɪk penˈtæmɪtə/ = nerýmovaný pětistopý jamb)

· in Britain, his plays are often performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford- upon-Avon and around the country, and at the Globe Theatre in London

HIS PLAYS:

Nearly 40 plays, they are (traditionally) divided into

· history plays (set in English history)

· comedies (a comedy has a happy ending)

· tragedies (a tragedy is a serious and sad play, usually with an unhappy ending)

· romances (a romance is a love story, or an imaginative story, usually with love and adventure)

BEST KNOWN HISTORY PLAYS:

· Richard III - is an early play based on events from British history. It presents King Richard III of England as a cruel and violent man

· Richard II – tells the story of the final years of King Richard´s life

BEST KNOWN COMEDIES:

· Twelfth Night, or What you will (Večer tříkrálový) (written around 16011602) – perhaps Shakespeare´s best comedy. The whole play is full of humour and action

· The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

BEST KNOWN TRAGEDIES:

· Romeo and Juliet – is a story of tragic love set in Italy and tells a deeply moving story of two young people, Romeo (Montague /mɒntǝgju:/ and Juliet (Capulet /kæpjʊlet/), who fall in love although their families are enemies

· Hamlet – /hæmlɪt/, the Prince of Denmark, becomes very sad when his father, the king, dies and his uncle, Claudius, becomes king. His father’s ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius has killed him, and makes Hamlet promise to kill Claudius.

· Othello – /ǝˈθelǝʊ/ is a story about a great man who is destroyed by jealousy

· King Lear – is a family tragedy

ROMANCES:

· The Winter´s Tale, The Tempes

Some plays, such as The Merchant of Venice (Kupec benátský) and Measure for Measure (Něco za něco/Půjčka za oplátku), do not fit easily into any group.

POEMS:

· sonnets = fourteen-line poems in iambic pentameters (there are five syllables in each line). Some of them are addressed to a married woman (the “Dark Lady” sonnets), and some of them to a young man (the “Fair Youth” sonnets). Nobody knows the identity of these two people.

· narrative poems – (Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucretia)

SHAKESPEARE AND CZECH TRANSLATORS

· Josef Václav Sládek

· František Nevrla