Can anyone help me find a good website which explains the actual historical event that each play was based on? The only one I’ve read the background about, was MacBeth, and that play wasn’t really as great as I expected it to be.
Or if you know of any juicy little facts about his plays, post in this thread. I’m obsessed with the behind the scenes details, rather than the actual plays and how they are performed.
Shakespeare’s plays were comedies until Hamnet, his son, died, when he started writing tragedies, starting with <i>Hamlet</i>.
All Shakespearian plays are five acts long. They would usually form a pyramid with Acts I and II being the introduction and development, Act III being the climax, and Acts IV and V being the denouement and conclusion.
A rhyming couplet at the end of an actor’s lines would indicate to the audience that the scene (or at least the speech) had finished.
What about Titus Andronicus? For some reason, I can’t help but think it was written before Hamlet and possibly some of the comedies. Although, I guess you could consider it so laughably bad that it’s a comedy.
It was one of his first plays, according to my teacher. But her information is often times false, so I wouldn’t trust that…
Only thing I know about Macbeth is that the real guy was not anywhere near as bad as the play. Only thing he did was kill of Lady Macbeth’s first husband so he could marry her or something like that.