William Shakespeare

April 1564, the early part of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, William Shakespeare was born in Stratford- on-Avon. Oldest son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden At eighteen, William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway and had three children.

Soon after his children were born he left Stratford for London; at this point he was firmly established as an actor and playwright. Shakespeare became a full sharer in the profits known as Lord Chamberlain’s Company.

By the time he was 36, he already had Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and As You Like It in his credentials. In 1599 Lord Chamberlain’s men moved into a theatre, The Globe Theatre.

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar was one of the first plays performed there. When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, Shakespeare’s company received the enthusiastic patronage of her successor, King James I. Thereafter, Lord Chamberlain’s men became the King’s Men.

In his mid-forties, Shakespeare retired from the stage and returned to his home in Stratford-on Avon. He died in Stratford on April 23, 1616.

Shakespeare lived near the end of the historical period called the Renaissance, which lasted from During the Renaissance, Europeans made their first great expeditions to the New World, technology advanced, the arts flourished, and the great classical civilizations of Greece and Rome were rediscovered.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, England developed into one of the great powers of the world. However, most Englishmen had little reliable information about life beyond their own land. Julius Caesar has many details of Elizabethan life mixed with Roman history.

Anachronism, literally meaning out-of- time, can be found in modern plays and movies. Shakespeare’s Romans mention striking clocks, nightcaps, chimneys, hats, and doublets (heavy Elizabethan jackets). None of these existed in ancient Rome.

Shakespeare’s Theatre The Globe Theatre opened only twenty-three years after the first permanent theatre had been built in England. Before that plays had been performed in courtyards of inns and wagons on the street. The spectators paid one penny to stand in the yard around the stage, two pennies to sit in the second or third floor galleries that surround the yard, or three pennies to sit in the first floor galleries.

Those who paid the least and stood in the yard were called groundlings-the noisiest and perhaps most vocally critical members of the audience. The stage of the Globe had no front curtain and no artificial light; performances took place during the day.

To make up for the lack of scenery, Elizabethan costumes were lavish and expensive. Having costumes appropriate to the historical period of the play is also a modern idea. For example, Shakespeare’s Caesar wore an Elizabethan doublet, not a Roman Toga. The actor playing Caesar probably had a pig’s bladder filled with blood hidden in his costume.

The general life of a play was ten performances, although popular plays were generally acted more often. In a given season an actor may have to memorize half a dozen or more parts. About fifteen men played all the roles in Julius Caesar with the woman’s parts taken by boy apprentices.

Since the Puritans of Elizabethan England considered the theatre sinful, an acting company often had to seek the legal protection of a noble patron. Shakespeare’s company was protected by Lord Chamberlain at first, and later by King James I. Because we have seen movies all our lives, we understand that fade out indicates the passage of time. These agreements between the artist and audience are called conventions.

One of these conventions involves the use of verse; the characters express themselves in poetry in Julius Caesar. When a character speaks alone on the stage, we call the speech a soliloquy.

Sometimes the character will make a remark which the audience is meant to hear, but no one onstage is meant to. These remarks are called asides, they are used often for an ironic effect, informing the audience of something that another character is ignorant of.