Who Was Shakespeare

                First I went to Google and typed in “who was Shakespeare”.  pbs.org is the first link that showed up.  In this web site it talked about how there is really little we do know about Shakespeare and even points out that his identity has been disputed over multiple times.  It stated that there are general facts that are widely accepted by people such as he was born in 1564.  Shakespeare married at the age of eighteen to Anne Hathaway, they had three children, one who died at age eleven. Around 1588 it is said that he and his family moved to London where his plays began to gain recognition.  Sonnets began to establish his career but it was the 38 plays that he wrote that got him the title as the “greatest dramatist who ever lived” He dies in 1616 and the age of 52.

                I stopped my search here because this web site had a lot of information and most of the others I looked at had repeating information. Also others I tried to look at when I typed in “was Shakespeare a fraud” were blogs of people arguing over who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays.   

                With so little known about his life we are left to wonder about who he was as a person and why he was inspired to write such depressing plays.

                From my experience Shakespeare is perceived by students as the most famous play writer ever and really interesting once you decipher what it is he is saying.  Over the years reading Shakespeare has become easier for the most part for me to interpret.  In Le’Clair’s class when we read Romeo and Juliet he explained to us what everything meant.  This helped me prepare for sophomore year while having to interpret parts of Caesar because we because we were more familiar with the style and language.  This year I am able to understand what Shakespeare wanted his audience to understand much more easily because it is much more familiar.  When there are parts I’m not quite sure about you can pretty much get the gist of it by the lines surrounding it.