Introducing William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare
1564-1616

You have obviously heard of William Shakespeare before.  Why can I assume that?  Because a) your parents aren't uncultured swine, and b) he's generally regarded as the greatest writer in the history of the English language.  In fact, it's thanks to William Shakespeare plus the King James translation of the Bible that English has not morphed into something totally different over the past four hundred years.  

In the centuries before Shakespeare, English changed greatly -- only two hundred years separate Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales from Shakespeare, but can you read and understand this?

At nyght were come into that hostelrye 

Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye 

Of sondry folk, by áventure y-falle 

In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle, 

That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde. 

The chambres and the stables weren wyde, 

And wel we weren esed atte beste.

You can kinda get the gist of it, right?  Sorta?  I mean, Canturbury Tales was written around the year 1400, and that's a long time ago, so it's not weird that our language has changed that much in 600 years, right?

But compare that section to this one from Shakespeare's Julius Caeser, which was written around the year 1600:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; 

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. 

The evil that men do lives after them; 

The good is oft interred with their bones; 

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus 

Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: 

If it were so, it was a grievous fault, 

And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.

Have any trouble deciphering that?  Are those words spelled strangely?  That's from 400 years ago, but because Shakespeare's works have been continuously and widely read, and continuously and widely performed, English has remained basically unchanged since his time.  (And the King James translation of the Bible, which is from right around 1600 too, played an equally big part in that.)  

Anyway, we're beginning our journey through poetry with Shakespeare because we can still understand his writing perfectly well, and because he has influenced our language so profoundly.  And because he wrote wonderful poems.  I'll be sharing some of his sonnets this week, and also some bits of his plays that are written as poetry.

Discussion Questions:

1.  Have you ever read Shakespeare's writing before?  If so, what?

2.  Have you seen any of Shakespeare's plays performed, on a stage or on film?