Download our fun word search and scavenger hunt all about Shakespeare!

Here at Agecroft Hall we look forward every year to a day of festivities honoring the world’s greatest poet and playwright. Today we will look at Shakespeare’s life through the lens of the era that defined him.

If you were a director and were staging Shakespeare's The Tepest, how would you create the sounds of a thunder storm and a ship being torn apart?

When you want to read something funny you may go online or even to a newspaper or comic book to find a comic strip or story. A comic strip is a form of storytelling-“a sequence of images with a small amount of text in each box...normally inside balloons or written as captions”.

What we know about Shakespeare and his life is an incomplete picture. We know more about his plays than we do about his personal and home life.

What we know about Shakespeare’s life comes from his works and various legal and church documents. Through these we know when and where he was born and baptized, where he lived and grew up, who his business partners were, and the terms of his will.

For the past four centuries, artists, writers and actors have been inspired by Shakespeare to create their own works of art. There have been films, sculptures, songs, t-shirts and jewelry all inspired by Shakespeare and his work.

Shakespeare was born into a middle-class family that had money and aspirations. His father, John, was a glover (maker of gloves) by trade and also active in local government.

The large size of the Globe allowed the companies to pack in the ticket buying public, but bad weather could create problems for the audience and actors. In 1596, James Burbage purchased property in a London neighborhood called Blackfriars, which was the site of an old monastery.

Since Shakespeare’s death over 400 years ago, his works have transcended the Globe for, well, the globe.

Young William would have been taught by his mother at home until the age of 5, then gone on to a local woman teaching “petty school” until he was 6 or 7 years old.

Most people who are familiar with Shakespeare know a little bit about the theaters where his plays were performed: The Globe and the Blackfriars.

Though William Shakespeare wrote his works during a time period known as the English Renaissance, which lasted from the early 1500s to the early 1600s, that would not be the last Renaissance they were associated with.

Reconstructing just what a play would have looked like in Shakespeare’s time has been a tantalizing question for historians for the centuries after his death.

William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, from Shottery, in 1582. She was the eldest of eight and living one mile from Stratford. William was 18, and Anne was 26. Anne was also pregnant.

While many things about theaters and plays have changed since the late 1500s and early 1600s, from stages, to who could be an actor, to even pronunciation itself, at least when we go see a Shakespeare play today we can be confident that one thing is virtually unchanged: The story.

Shakespeare retired from writing around 1613. He moved back to New Place to take care of his business concerns and his family. On April 23, 1616, at the age of 52, Shakespeare died after what is believed to be a brief illness.

During this past year, the crisis around Covid 19 has had a huge effect on live theater performances. Broadway is still closed, and theater companies are just beginning to open again with safety measures in place.

Shakespeare’s London was a vibrant city full of many entertainments. The growing merchant and trade class had disposable income that they were eager to spend around town. This in turn created new opportunities for the arts.

Let’s talk about the actors that would have been in Shakespeare’s play during his lifetime. We are lucky enough to have records from the time that give us some idea about what would have been required of stage actors.