I can’t believe it! One minute I’m in a tree outside this college, minding my own business and doing what sparrows do. You know, hopping about, hoppity hop, a little bit of flying, bit of chirping, bit of cheeping.

The next thing I know, some bewildered teacher is asking me questions about Shakespeare. Well, I thought he had to be either mad or desperate to be asking a sparrow- Disney Land?), so I took pity and made a few enquiries. Found out quite a few interesting little facts! But first, let me introduce myself! (I mean, where is he living

I flew down to the ground to see what was going on. The first thing I found out was that it can often come as a rather unpleasant surprise to students of English Language that the study of Shakespeare makes up part of the course. In fact, I saw students running down the steps of the College screaming their heads off.

After all, what on earth has some guy born a million, no make that a zillion, years ago got to do with English as we know it today? Nothing! Besides, his plays are all full of gloom and doom and are really, really difficult to understand.

Well, I found that there are some things about Shakey that are well worth knowing! However, for, those who have only heard his name mentioned and his reputation for being a difficult playwright to understand might be quite right in thinking the above – and more. Yet he is, in this respect, a misunderstood man, rather like Phil Mitchell in Eastenders, but in a different way. Oh yes, we sparrows watch Eastenders. Haven’t you ever heard the expression Cockney Sparrow before?

Think about it, for a while. Why do we watch Eastenders or any soap opera for that matter? They are accessible, entertaining, and tell the stories of ordinary people often caught up in extraordinary events. We enjoy them, go back for more several times a week, and the people who make the shows make money out of us as a consequence.

It’s absolutely the same with Shakespeare. Entertaining people made him a very rich man indeed. Television wasn’t even a glint in its creator’s eye at the time, because the creator of TV itself wouldn’t be a glint in anybody’s eye for another couple of hundred years. But even in those long ago days, people yearned for entertainment, and as television wasn’t an option, people turned to what was available at the time – THEATRE. And it was available in a big way. At its height….

And, once more, back to the bird….

Look, Billy Boy, I don’t know how to put this but YOU’RE DEAD!! Shut up, and put up! However, in a way I suppose you’re right. Let’s see what you got up to back in the times of Good Queen Bess….

Shakespeare – “The Early Years”

OK, Let’s fly back a few hundred years.

Yes, I know! Fly back!! There is no humour like bad humour, and that was “bad”. So bad it was “sick”. Oh dear! Language, language language!

Shakespeare was born in Stratford in 1564 – the exact date isn’t known but a good guess would be 23 April, because records show he was baptised three days later. Baptisms took place very early after a child was born in those days because the rate of infant mortality was enormous.

His father was a farmer, but moved to Stratford and held numerous civil offices in the town. He was, then, quite an important man, but his fortunes had their troughs as well as their peaks. He was forced to sell land to cover debts at one time, and at another was actually deposed from public office. It wasn’t until William became a success that the family fortunes were revived.

Not a lot is known about the early life of young William. He had seven brothers and sisters, two of whom died before he was born, only one outliving him. He went to a local grammar school and there are lots of arguments to suggest that he didn’t finish his education because of his father’s bad financial situation.

How he spent his youth is almost all pure guess work, but what evidence there is suggests he was a bit of a lad. One story has him getting riotously drunk and sleeping it off under a tree. Another has him poaching deer which belonged to the local Lord and having to run away to London to escape justice (and if you think justice can be brutal now, you wouldn’t believe what they used to do to people then!). No one knows for sure if these stories are true.

What we do know is that at nineteen he married an Anne Hathaway at great speed. No surprise then, that six months after the wedding they had a daughter, who they called Susanna. Young people behaving foolishly? Possibly, but Anne Hathaway was eight years older then Shakespeare. Yes, William Shakespeare was a sixteenth century toyboy! Another girl and a boy, twins, would follow several years later, although the boy, Hamnet, died when he was eleven.

Whatever happened, Shakespeare moved to London in 1584. We know nothing more about him until 1592, when he was already a successful actor and playwright. Some have thought he visited Italy in the intervening years, as a lot of his plays are set there, but there is no evidence at all to suggest that. The most likely thing he did in these years was work as an actor, laying the groundwork for his later success as a writer. It’s not surprising that there are no records about his life during these years as who would pay any attention to an obscure young man from the provinces?

By 1599 Shakespeare was a “sharer” in his theatre company, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, (later to be renamed The King’s Men). This meant he received a profit from the takings of the theatre.

The theatre from which the company operated was called The Globe.

It was circular in shape and had no roof over the stage area – people got wet quite often! It has very recently been rebuilt close to its original position – I fly over it most days – well worth a visit!

London Life

London in the 1590s was a vast, splendid city. At least, it was compared to the rest of the country: only a quarter of a million people lived here (compared to around nine million today).

It was an exciting time in which to live – the potential of the New World (part of it is now known as the United States of America) was beginning to be realised with the introduction of incredibly exotic items such as the potato and tobacco. An explosion in the Arts and Sciences (know as the Renaissance, literally translated – a rebirth) had increased the outlook of people considerably, much as the Information Communications Technology revolution is doing today.

Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne, much less a symbol that our own Betty Britain (aka Queen Elizabeth II), but a powerful, despotic monarch with enormous power over her people. The picture here is quite flattering – Elizabeth’s teeth were so rotten they were black – and personal hygiene wasn’t exactly up to our standards either, I can tell you!

Although it was an exciting time in which to live, with many possibilities for the individual, it was also an incredibly scary and violent time. War was always on the horizon (usually with Spain, who we now invade in our millions every year around August as payback!). Civil disorder was rife – the population would riot almost spontaneously over any issue they felt strongly about and there was no real police force as such.

Life for an actor or playwright wasn’t often very comfortable either – they were considered the lowest of the low, and portrayed as people determined to lower the moral tone of the nation and to corrupt its population to decadence and sexual deviance. Mary Whitehouse is not a modern phenomenon, then, after all!

Plus, to cap it all, there was the Plague. Otherwise known as the Black Death, it reared its head every now and again and would quite regularly effectively close London down.

Imagine having the flu really badly, but with lesions on the skin and enormously swollen glands with very little hope of recovery, and you have a good idea what it was like. The nursery rhyme “Ring a roses” refers to the Plague. No wonder people considered the over forties long lived.

It was during this period of great advances and equally great upheavals that Shakespeare wrote his plays and poems. They can be roughly split into three groups:

Tragedies: Such as Macbeth and Hamlet, which usually involve a high ranking man with a fatal flaw which brings about his downfall.

Comedies and Romances: Such as As You Like It or Much Ado About Nothing, comedy with fairly complicated plots often centred around a love against the odds scenario.

Histories: Such as Richard II and Henry IV, stories of the Kings of England showing their triumphs and/or defeats (dependant on which royal dynasty they belonged to!)

It is important to remember here that Shakespeare worked on his plays with an eye to making a living. Anything too dry and dusty or difficult to understand would have been rejected by an audience.

Where there is no doubt about the beauty of his work, there should also be no doubt that he wrote his plays for the entertainment of the citizens of (primarily) London. Theatre audiences of the day did not stand on ceremony – they were more like the football crowds of our era – not hesitating to interrupt the players, invade parts of the stage and weep openly at the sad parts.

Studying Shakespeare should not be approached with trepidation – the plays were written to be enjoyed! Although it cannot be denied that English has changed over the last four hundred years, careful study of the text (and some patience!) inevitably reveals its meaning. The plays are stories about people, the human condition with all the love, hate, and other passions which go with it, and while the language may have changed, people certainly haven’t!

The stories Shakespeare told are in fact so universal that they are often updated. The musical West Side Story is an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. King Lear has been adapted into a television play called Lear, about a West Indian immigrant and his three daughters set in contemporary England. Elements of Macbeth can be found in House of Cards, the story of a politician with too great a political ambition. The Science Fiction classic Forbidden Planet is based on The Tempest. Many of Shakespeare’s lines are in common currency in everyday English.

Anyway, back to the story

Okay, Okay, so I’m beginning to see the point. You don’t seem to be such a pain in the neck. I’m even starting to think it might be a nice idea to, you know, go see one of your plays.

Queen Elizabeth eventually died and was succeeded by James I in 1604. King James loved the theatre, but in his first year on the throne the plague was so bad that all the theatres were closed. During this time, Shakespeare’s acting company, The King’s Men, toured the provinces where the effects of the plague weren’t so bad.

By this time Shakespeare was well established as a sharer in the company itself, and had given up acting. Now, however, he made money not only out of writing the plays (which didn’t amount to much as playwrights were more often than not given a one-off fee for their efforts) but took a percentage of the takings as well. This made him rich.

The Final Years

In 1610 Shakespeare moved back to Stratford but kept up his London contacts for a few years. It was as a respected citizen and a wealthy landowner that he retired. The story (and again, it’s just a story, no offence Shakey ol’ mate) around his death is that he went out one April evening in 1616, drank too much, caught a fever and died as a result. He has no direct descendants – his direct line became extinct when his only granddaughter, Elizabeth, died childless in 1670.

Now how about you go and study one of his plays? What fun, what larks, what excitement!!

From me, it’s a bye for now, must fly!!

What was that?

Excuse me?!?

Say that again!

How do I fancy hanging around and joining the English class at your College? Not on your life matey, I’m leaving the building – there’s a branch there with my name on it!