Shakespeare

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Nobody knows

Shakespeare's true birthday.


The closest we can come is the date of his
baptism on April the 26th, 1564. By tradition
and guesswork, William is assumed to have
been born three days earlier on April the 23rd, a
date now commonly used to celebrate the
famous Bard's birthday.
His name is spelled in more than 80 ways that vary
from  ” Shaxberd” to “Shappere”.
He has never spelled his name as we do now,
he made many variations and abbreviations like
“Willm Shakp” or “Willm Shakspere”.
No portrait of Shakespeare was every painted while he was alive.
Even though there are literally thousands of pictures of William
Shakespeare in the world today, nobody really knows what he looked like.
It’s likely that Shakespeare wore a gold hoop earring
in his left ear, a creative, bohemian look
in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras.
The first purchase by the National Portrait
Gallery was a Shakespeare portrait
The National Portrait
Gallery in London’s first
acquisition in 1856 was
the ‘Chandos’ portrait of
Shakespeare, attributed
to the artist John Taylor.
It’s now considered the
only representation of
the writer that has any
real claim to having been
painted from life.
William Shakespeare had three children:
Susanna and the twins
Judith (died in 1649) and Hamnet ( died in 1596).
Shakespeare’s granddaughter Elizabeth, daughter of Susanna,
died childless in 1670, ending the William Shakespeare line.
Therefore there are no descendants of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare had his own family coat of arms
Sometime after his
unsuccessful application to
become a gentleman,
William Shakespeare took his
father to the College of Arms
to secure their own
Shakespeare family crest.
The crest was a yellow spear
on a yellow shield, with the
Latin inscription “Non Sans
Droict”, or “Not without
Right”.
The longest word in Shakespeare is
“Honorificabilitudintatibus”

He used the longest word


in his play Love’s Labour’s Lost.
The Comedy of Errors
is Shakespeare's shortest play
at just 1,770 lines long.
Nobody knows what Shakespeare did
between 1585 and 1592.
Historians have
speculated that he
worked as a
schoolteacher,
studied law,
traveled across
continental Europe
or joined an acting
troupe that was
passing through
Stratford.
Shakespeare introduced almost 3,000 words
to the English.

Eyeball (n) milk with its cream removed


Lonely  (adj) not heard; unable to be heard
Gossip  (adj) uttering sharp, high-pitched cries
Inaudible (v) to talk casually, usually about others
Manager (adj) having no value or merit; contemptible
Skim milk (n) the round part of the eye; organ for vision

Yelping (adj) feeling sad due to lack of companionship


(n) one who controls or administers; person in charge
Worthless
Match each idiom to the correct sentence!
 cold comfort = a small piece
 1. Gemmy is a _____________!
of good news which doesn't make
She's jealous of everyone!
much difference to a bad
situation.  2. I've been a real ______ since
I started university. It's normal
 one fell swoop = something for me to stay awake until 3 in
happens suddenly and quickly, or the morning.
event with many results, “all at  3. Unfortunately earthquake and
once”
tsunami hit the country in
 green-eyed monster = ___________. They have
jealousy many problems to cope with
 night owl = a person who now.
stays up and is active late into the  4. She knows there are others
night. worse off than her, but that's
_______________.
Queen Elizabeth I was a big fan of
Shakespeare’s plays. She would often hire
his company to perform at the royal court.
The American President Abraham Lincoln was
a big fan of Shakespeare’s plays and frequently
recited from them to his friends. 
In the popular play, Romeo and Juliet,
the world “love” appears 150 times.
The Lost Play
A play called
Cardenio, which was
credited to Shakespeare
and performed in his
lifetime, has been
completely lost. Today
there is no known
record of its story
anywhere.
At the time, Macbeth was unpopular due to its
reference to witches which created fear during the
middle ages. There is still a long superstition in
theatre of saying the name “Macbeth” aloud.
Shakespeare never published any of his plays
and they only came to light after his death on
23rd April 1616. His first work was published
in 1623 as “First Folio”.
Shakespeare's skull
probably stolen by grave robbers.
A story often dismissed as wild fiction,
that 18th-century grave robbers stole
Shakespeare's skull, appears to be true.
The first archaeological investigation of
Shakespeare's grave at Holy Trinity
church in Stratford-on-Avon has been
carried out for a documentary in 2016.
The most striking conclusion is that
Shakespeare's head appears to be
missing and that the skull was probably
stolen from what is a shallow grave by
trophy hunters.
Grave-robbing
was a big thing in
the 17th and 18th
century. People
wanted the skull
of famous people
so they could
potentially
analyse it and see
what made them
a genius. It is no
surprise that
Shakespeare's
remains were a
target.

Archaeologists Survey Shakespeare's Grave


Shakespeare penned a curse for his grave,
daring anyone to move his body
His epitaph was:
Good friend for
Jesus' sake
forbear,
To dig the dust
enclosed here:
And curst be he
that moves my
bones.
Did you know…
‘William Shakespeare’ is an anagram of
‘I am a weakish speller’.

W i ll i a m S hake spe are


Ironically, the moons
of Uranus were
named after
characters in
Shakespeare’s plays,
but not even a star
has been named after
the writer himself.
The International
Astronomy Union
had developed a
convention to name
all 27 moons of
Uranus
after characters in
Shakespeare’s.
Shakespeare is bested
only by the Bible for quotes
According to the 
Oxford Dictionary of Quotatio
ns
, William Shakespeare wrote
close to a tenth of the most
quoted lines ever written or
spoken in English. What’s
more, according to the
Literature Encyclopaedia,
Shakespeare is the second
most quoted English writer
after the writers of the Bible.
and RELAX

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