i.am.Will Shakespeare

Who was William Shakespeare?

We know he looked something like this, but because he lived

so long ago we don't know a huge amount about his life.

But what we do know is that he is one of the greatest

writers of plays the world has ever known.

Shakespeare wrote plays about almost everything.

He wrote about funny things.

LAUGHTER

He wrote about scary things.

Macbeth. Macbeth. Macbeth.

He wrote about very sad things.

Death that hath sucked the honey of thy breath

Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.

But in everything he wrote, William Shakespeare explored what

it's like to be a human being, what it's like to be alive.

And, even now, when we watch his plays,

we can learn a lot about our world and about ourselves.

William Shakespeare was born in the year 1564

in the town of Stratford upon Avon.

All those years ago it was just a small town

surrounded by countryside.

This is the farm just outside Stratford where William's mother,

Mary Arden, used to live when she was young.

When Mary grew up and married a man called John Shakespeare, they moved

here to this house in Henley Street, where Mary gave birth to William.

His father was bailiff, which is the equivalent of Mayor of Stratford,

which gave the Shakespeares a good social status in the town.

Aged seven, William went to school.

You had to go to school at 6am in the morning

during the summertime, and 7am during wintertime.

And you had two half days off, Thursdays and Saturdays,

and you had hardly any school holidays.

When he was 14 or 15, William Shakespeare left school.

Not long afterwards, he fell in love with Anne Hathaway,

who lived in this cottage.

She became pregnant, and in those days that meant

they had to get married.

Anne was 25 and William was just 18.

They had a first child,

and then a year later they had a set of twins, so Shakespeare

by the time he was 21 years old was the proud father of three children.

With a family to look after,

William needed to find a job so it seems he decided to become a writer.

He would have heard merchants coming back from London

arriving in Stratford

and saying there are amazing entertainments going on in London.

You can see these great stories, because that's at the heart

of Shakespeare's plays are great stories.

So Shakespeare came to London and London was this huge,

bustling place, and it would have been mucky and horrible and smelly.

But also it was the place where the Queen was

so that meant it was the palace and so there would have been

courtiers and soldiers in the street.

Certainly when he first came here, it would have been absolutely

strange and bewildering and amazing.

This was a world in which William Shakespeare could

use his great talents to earn him a living.

He worked as both a writer and a player - in those days actors

were called players and he was good at both of them.

But his plays were what began to set him apart from the crowd

and make him such a success because his plays were massive hits.

Shakespeare wrote the blockbuster films of his day and people

from all walks of life could enjoy them at places like this, the Globe.

But his success made some other writers jealous.

When he started writing some people were a bit

snobbish towards him.

They called him an "upstart crow",

which is quite a funny thing to call someone.

It was as if they were saying, "Who do you think you are writing plays?"

Shakespeare didn't care.

He continued to write brilliant plays like Romeo and Juliet,

plays that were enjoyed by everyone, rich or poor.

You'd only have to pay a penny to stand in the yard around the stage.

And you could fit about 1,500 people in the yard in those days.

Then as you move up, you probably pay a little bit more, and then

you pay another penny to get a cushion so you can sit comfortably.

And then you have these decorated boxes, the gentlemen's boxes.

Only gentry could sit in those boxes.

I see no more!

Audiences flocked to see plays like Macbeth,

the story of an ambitious and ruthless man who commits

ghastly murder so he can become all powerful.

What? There is this sound.

Today, more than 400 years later,

some people say they don't get Shakespeare

because the old words he sometimes uses are hard to understand.

Sometimes you think, "Well, what does that mean?"

But quite a lot of Shakespeare you get almost just from the feel of it.

Just think about Macbeth. He does these horrible things

and he goes, "Tomorrow and..."

.."creeps in this petty pace..."

"..until the last syllable of recorded time."

And you might think, "What's a petty pace?

"And what's the last syllable?"

But we can feel his misery and then maybe some of those difficult

words and phrases like petty pace we can fill in later.

It is a tale told by an idiot...

..full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!

Those words were first spoken on a London stage in the year 1606.

Today, they can still be heard in theatres all over the world.

Shakespeare's plays have proved to be timeless.

William Shakespeare's amazing career came to an end in 1613.

It seems he became poorly, stopped writing and returned to Stratford.

He died in 1616.

He was just 52 years old but by Tudor standards

had lived quite a long life. He left behind 37 plays

and hundreds of poems and he was buried here

at the Church of the Holy Trinity.

Not everyone can be a William Shakespeare,

but everyone can have a go at writing a play.

Why not get together with your friends and give it a go?

It doesn't have to be very long just a few scenes that tell

a story that means something to you.

Remember what Shakespeare once wrote,

"To thine own self be true, and it must follow,

"as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."

He's showing off now.

To help us learn more about William Shakespeare and his plays

we need to go back in time to more than four centuries ago.

Shakespeare was born, grew up and started working

when Elizabeth I was Queen of England.

Elizabeth was the last monarch of the period of history

we call the Tudor age.

The Tudor Age was a great voyage of discovery.

There was new discoveries of new lands

and therefore new wealth pouring into the country.

Shakespeare would have been aware of these new discoveries.

This is a pocket atlas printed in 1603.

It's the sort of book William would have had access to every day.

You can almost imagine him

flicking through the pages, deciding where to set his next play.

Perhaps he would choose somewhere like Verona or Sicily.

It must have been very exciting times.

They were exciting times but dangerous, too,

because people argued violently about religious beliefs.

England had stopped being a Roman Catholic country

and become a Protestant one.

Everybody had to go to church on a Sunday.

If you didn't you were fined

because if you didn't, it was thought you were a Roman Catholic,

and if you were a Roman Catholic in Shakespeare's time, there was

a possibility that you were an enemy of the state.

But even though people were told what religion to believe in,

that didn't mean Elizabethans gave up old ideas and superstitions.

People talk about good luck and bad luck.

In Shakespeare's time, people would have really believed

that you could have bad luck and you would have bad luck

because you had done something that offended the spirits.

The most famous of those spirits was a naughty hobgoblin called

Robin Goodfellow, also known as Puck.

He messes things up in A Midsummer Night's Dream

and is told off by Oberon, king of the fairies.

I go. I go.

What happens to Romeo and Juliet tells us

something else about the beliefs shared by Tudor people.

Romeo and Juliet were the star-crossed lovers

and the story of their short lives was written across the night sky.

In plenty of Shakespeare's plays you have the idea that what's

going on has been scripted before, that's to say that the

people are doing things because something else is in charge.

We might call that destiny, we might call it fate.

And never from this palace of dim night...

So in Romeo and Juliet, yes, it is their fate to die

and you have a sense it is their destiny, that it is going to happen.

Here will I set up my everlasting rest

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world wearied flesh.

Eyes look your last...

Most people probably believed in ghosts of some sort or another.

Whether they believed that you could actually see the ghost or

the ghost was present, that's quite an interesting debate,

it happens in quite a few of Shakespeare's plays.

Macbeth kills King Duncan

and then pays murderers to kill his friend Banquo.

Afterwards he is haunted by Banquo's ghost and driven almost mad.

You cannot say I did it!

-Never shake they gory locks at me!

-Gentlemen rise.

His Highness is not well.

Not only does Macbeth kill a king he also comes face to face

with witches.

They seem to predict that Macbeth is destined for greatness,

which encourages him to commit dreadful murders

but the predictions are not quite what they seem.

The clever trickery of the witches leads him to his own death

when Macduff fights him and cuts his head off.

Hail, King of Scotland!

Did people believe in witches?

Well, yes, they were persecuting witches in Shakespeare's time

because they believed that the woman

at the end of the street because she was a bit old or because she had

said something the wrong way, was a witch and she had power over you.

Hubble bubble, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble...

Shakespeare enjoyed exploring old ideas and new ideas -

and his genius weaved them into something very special.

He was a fantastic story teller.

He knew how to make people gasp, he knew how to make people laugh

and cry,

just by standing and sitting in a theatre like this. So you would sit

here or stand over there, look at the play and go, "That's a ghost!"

What? There is this sound!

Or someone would come on and do some mucking around of some sort...

INDISTINCT

LAUGHTER

..and you would laugh, you would weep with laughter.

HE SHOUTS

LAUGHTER

Then other times, say in a play like Romeo and Juliet,

you would be crying, you would be desperate.

And let me die.

Ugh!

In Shakespeare's plays all these ideas are there.

You've got witches and fairies and ghosts and people

cursing each other and a new kind of theatre is being invented.

Eye of newt and toe of frog

Wool of bat and tongue of dog...

Suppose you are living in Shakespeare's time

and writing about witches.

Could you come up with a spell like that one?

What would you put in your cauldron?

Could you list all the things just as Shakespeare did

and write them down in a poem?

And if you have a vision of the future in which Ricky becomes

a powerful king.

Don't bother telling me because I like my head.

I'm rather attached to it.

What was it like going to the theatre

when William Shakespeare was writing plays?

And so everyone according to his cue.

We can take a pretty good guess because, here in London,

is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, the theatre

Shakespeare himself helped to pay for when it was built in 1599.

In Shakespeare's time more than 200,000 people

lived in London.

20,000 of them would go to the theatre every week,

despite the weather, which gives you an idea of how popular it was.

Even in the wind and the rain, it didn't matter

if you were rich or poor - everybody wanted to go to the theatre

because it was the most exciting entertainment of its day.

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.

Ow!

That I were a glove upon that hand that I might touch that cheek.

Theatres were open to the elements

but even if it snowed, plays made fantastic things seem real.

Londoners couldn't get enough of it.

-So here we are.

-It's magnificent.

-This is The Globe.

-It's amazing.

-Bigger than you thought?

-It is.

-Amazing, isn't it?

In Shakespeare's day it may have held up to 3,000 people.

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.

And therefore is winged cupid painted blind.

We have 600, 700 people standing in this yard, there's

a fantastic atmosphere, because when you stand you have all this energy.

That's why children sit at desks at school, to stop them having energy,

so when you stand you've got quite an uncontrollable energy, so people

didn't stand like this as if they were at church, they moved around.

And they allowed their emotions to go.

Just like the modern theatre, how comfortable you were and what sort

of view you had depended on how much money you could afford to spend.

Who would be down here?

Shakespeare called them the groundlings and they paid

a penny and they stood on the ground they were ground-ling.

That was the cheapest place,

probably the equivalent of £6 or £7 today, so even cheaper

than going to the cinema, so this was real popular entertainment.

It was like a game. It was a play house, it was a house for play.

So it was quite cool

Sometimes in theatres you see classes of children

and they're thinking, "How can I get out without my teacher noticing?"

In Shakespeare's day it was,

"How can I get IN without my teacher noticing?"

Who else would be filling the seats in the theatre?

As you went higher up you paid more money.

At the top you were actually removed from the smelly yard.

Sometimes the groundlings were called penny stinkards,

so the higher you went, the higher you were in society.

But the most expensive seats were up there,

what we call the lords' rooms.

The audience were allowed to sit behind the stage?

Wouldn't they just get the view of an actor's head?

They might do but the point is they could be seen.

-They were showing off!

-There was a bit of showing off.

All the actors who worked at the Globe

were known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men when Elizabeth I was alive.

When she died and James VI of Scotland became James I of England,

they changed their name to the King's Men.

And that's the thing - they were just men, all of them.

Women didn't act in Shakespeare's day - it was thought to be

unladylike and just not done.

But that meant all the women's parts were played by men.

So how did the men play women's parts?

Well, I'm about to find out.

We need to sit you down first of all.

The stockings will fall down if we don't add something to them.

They've got no elastic.

A cross-garter. Under your knee, over the knee

and then ties on.

-A pair of shoes.

-Yeah.

These are deerskin with a pattern on them.

One of the shape-changers.

It actually gives you a false figure.

It's not very feminine.

-This is bizarre!

-Hips and bum.

-Hips and bum.

OK, give me my bum.

-This will make a conical shape.

-OK.

We've got a petticoat going on.

This is called a partlet.

Partlet. OK.

It's got a bit of lace trimming on it.

Waistcoat. Sounds manly.

Oh, my goodness!

You've been working out, haven't you?

You can get away with using this.

I think it will create the look.

Ricky...

There you go.

I'm dying to see how I look.

HE LAUGHS

It's not a perfect fit.

It's not. I'm not sure about the hat.

I think I'd prefer a wig.

Just like today when we watch TV and movies,

Shakespeare's audiences wanted to see amazing things happen.

For I must now to Oberon.

CYMBAL REVERBERATES

LAUGHTER

If you're sitting somewhere like where we are now, you can't

really see that there's a trap door in the ceiling.

When shall we three meet again?

You can't really see that there's a trap door in the floor.

So if some devils emerge from the hell area underneath the stage,

they'd emerge with a puff of smoke and loud banging noises.

Or you might see a god being lowered from the stage canopy and that

would be quite spectacular as well, with fantastic costumes and make-up.

Shakespeare's plays at the Globe were as much about showmanship

and excitement as they were about beautiful writing and great stories.

The amazing thing about Shakespeare is we've got these great big books

full of plays and I sometimes think it's like you've got a special

magnifying glass where you can look into this time in the past and see

how people thought and behaved. You can come to a place like this

and see it acted out in front of you.

Hail, King of Scotland!

-ALL:

-Hail, King of Scotland!

I think it's pure magic.

Suppose you were creating a theatre in Shakespeare's time.

What would it look like? How would the actors appear and disappear?

What other special effects would you have?

Why not give it a go?

Grab some paper and a pencil and, just like Shakespeare,

let your imagination rip.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Shakespeare wrote the play Romeo and Juliet early in his career.

It was one of his most popular plays throughout his lifetime.

First performed in London in the winter of 1594,

it's the story of young lovers who are doomed to die.

My true love is grown to such excess I cannot sum up half my worth...

I find sometimes when I watch Romeo and Juliet I feel so sad.

For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet

and her Romeo.

Because I think at the heart of it is a girl who is brave

and courageous...

Romeo, Romeo.

And she's prepared to do things even though everybody has told her

that she mustn't because she loves somebody.

LAUGHTER

The saints do not move though grant for prayer's sake.

Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.

AUDIENCE: Oooh!

LAUGHTER

They are from opposing families in Verona,

the Montagues and the Capulets are at daggers drawn.

The Montagues...

Start!

And Romeo and his friends gatecrash a Capulet party.

What lady's that which did enrich the hand of yonder knight?

Where he sees Juliet and falls in love at first sight.

Ah, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

Romeo's a bit older and they decide secretly to get married.

Come, come with me

and we will make short work for by your leaves you shall not

stay alone...

LAUGHTER

..till holy church incorporates two in one.

Romeo fights with Juliet's cousin, Tybalt, and he's banished,

but not before he manages to spend his wedding night with Juliet

and leaves in the early hours of the morning.

She's forced into another marriage to a man she doesn't

want to marry by her father.

And she agrees to do this but manages to escape

through taking a potion, which makes it look like she's died.

She's buried in the family vault.

Romeo, in his banishment, hears that she's died,

comes back, intends to kill himself, sees his dead Juliet.

He thinks she's dead, kills himself.

She wakes up, finds Romeo dead, and kills herself.

The families come back together again

because they are so devastated at the waste of young life.

I will raise her statue in pure gold that

while Verona is by that name known, there shall no figure at such

rate be set as that of true and faithful Juliet.

So this is a play about what should young people be allowed to do.

Tell me, daughter, Juliet.

So part of it is to say, it's the older people,

the mums and dads in the play, who are wrong

because they try to control the feelings of their children.

Therefore stay yet.

Here's a challenge for you.

Suppose you're a 21st-century news reporter

in the time of Romeo and Juliet.

How would you tell their story?

Pretend you're writing it for the Newsround website.

You'll need to get all the background of the Montagues

not getting on with the Capulets

and explain how it ends in the terrible deaths of the young lovers.

Come up with a grabby headline - something like...

Or maybe love story ends in teen tragedy?

Or that. Have fun.

-It's really good.

-It's very important how you deliver...

A Midsummer Night's Dream was much loved by Tudor audiences

and it was a massive hit.

It was fast and funny and a brilliant example of what

we would call today a romantic comedy or a romcom.

It also took place in a world which lots of Tudor people really

believed in, a world of sprites and fairies,

some of whom loved nothing more than playing practical jokes on humans.

THEY SING

In A Midsummer Night's Dream there are four lovers.

But it's all a bit confusing.

Demetrius loves Hermia but Hermia loves Lysander.

Hermia's dad wants her to marry Demetrius

but Hermia has other ideas.

This makes Hermia's dad really cross

and he goes to complain to the Duke about Lysander.

Lysander does not want to know and comes up with his own solution.

Then there's Helena.

Helena was engaged to Demetrius but Demetrius dumped her.

But unfortunately Helena is still madly in love with Demetrius

and Lysander knows this.

Hermia and Lysander decide to make a break for it

so they run off into the woods together.

Anyway, before all of this happened, Oberon, king of the fairies

and his wife, Titania, have an enormous row and Oberon

decides to play a trick on Titania.

He orders his hobgoblin Puck to prepare for some magic.

Fetch me that flower.

I'll put a girdle round about the earth in 40 minutes!

Now it gets even more complicated

because there are some other people in the woods.

This is a group of working men who are planning to put on a play

and deciding who will play all the parts.

One of these men is called...

Nick Bottom, the weaver.

Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.

You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.

SHOUTING

What is Pyramus?

LAUGHTER

Oberon overhears Helena saying how sad she is that Demetrius

doesn't love her and he decides to help her out.

With the magic potion made from the special flower

he can help Demetrius change his mind.

Unfortunately, Puck makes a right mess of it and puts

the potion on Lysander's eyes who then falls in love with Helena.

Oberon puts the potion on Demetrius' eyes and he realises he is madly

in love with Helena - so now she's got both of them chasing her.

Have you not set Lysander to follow me and praise my eyes and face?

And made your other love, Demetrius...

LAUGHTER

And then, to keep Oberon happy,

Puck gives Nick Bottom a donkey's head.

Then Oberon puts some of the love potion on Titania's eyes

so when she wakes up

and sees Nick Bottom with a donkey's head, she falls in love with him.

It is a complete mess but Oberon

starts to feel sorry for Titania so he breaks the spell

that he put on her to make her

fall in love with Bottom, and he orders Puck to make everything right.

Oh, and by the way, Nick Bottom is turned back into a man again.