14 Facts About Shakespeare's plays

1.

Shakespeare's plays are a canon of approximately 39 dramatic works written by English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare.

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2.

The exact number of Shakespeare's plays—as well as their classifications as tragedy, history, comedy, or otherwise—is a matter of scholarly debate.

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3.

Shakespeare's plays are widely regarded as being among the greatest in the English language and are continually performed around the world.

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4.

The Shakespeare's plays have been translated into every major living language.

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5.

Many of his Shakespeare's plays appeared in print as a series of quartos, but approximately half of them remained unpublished until 1623, when the posthumous First Folio was published.

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6.

These Shakespeare's plays, generally celebrating piety, use personified moral attributes to urge or instruct the protagonist to choose the virtuous life over Evil.

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7.

At the universities, Shakespeare's plays were staged in a more academic form as Roman closet dramas.

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8.

These Shakespeare's plays, usually performed in Latin, adhered to classical ideas of unity and decorum, but they were more static, valuing lengthy speeches over physical action.

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9.

Shakespeare's plays takes from Aristotle and Horace the notion of decorum; with few exceptions, he focuses on high-born characters and national affairs as the subject of tragedy.

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10.

Shakespeare's plays's style changed not only in accordance with his own tastes and developing mastery, but in accord with the tastes of the audiences for whom he wrote.

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11.

Shakespeare's plays argues that when a person on the stage speaks to himself or herself, they are characters in a fiction speaking in character; this is an occasion of self-address.

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12.

Shakespeare's plays's dependence on earlier sources was a natural consequence of the speed at which playwrights of his era wrote; in addition, plays based on already popular stories appear to have been seen as more likely to draw large crowds.

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13.

Unlike his contemporary Ben Jonson, Shakespeare did not have direct involvement in publishing his Shakespeare's plays and produced no overall authoritative version of his Shakespeare's plays before he died.

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14.

Shakespeare's plays continued to be staged after his death until the Interregnum, when all public stage performances were banned by the Puritan rulers.

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