Fun facts about William Shakespeare’s timeless love story, Romeo and Juliet 1. Shakespeare makes Juliet a thirteen-year-old girl when she goes to be with Romeo. We know that Romeo and Juliet is about young love – the ‘pair of star-cross’d lovers’, who belong to rival families in Verona – but what is […]
The life of actor David Garrick (1717-1779), told through five pieces of interesting trivia 1. He helped to bring a new degree of realism to acting. In his An Essay on Acting (1744), Garrick offered a new take on the art of stage-acting. Of Macbeth’s movement after the murder of Duncan, […]
A short introduction to the Shakespeare play Hamlet, in the form of five interesting facts 1. In the first printed copy, the play’s most famous line was somewhat different. Most editions of Hamlet which we read nowadays are slightly different from each other: there is no definitive text of Hamlet. This is because we […]
One of the most celebrated tragedies of ancient Greece was Oedipus Rex, Sophocles’ play about the Theban king who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. In order to become King of Thebes, Oedipus had had to solve a famous riddle – or should that be riddles? Oedipus was born […]
Everyone knows Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Richard III (or knows of them at least). Even Richard II, As You Like It, and Antony and Cleopatra can be said to be well-known William Shakespeare plays. But what about the others? He wrote or collaborated on nearly forty, after all. Here are ten of the […]