Titus Andronicus

Hey there my Shakespearean Lovers 👋!

I have posted two of the most important plays ever written by Shakespeare. And yes, they are fascinating, but if I had to say which is the most nerve racking play I've ever read, I would have to say it is Titus Andronicus.

Me personally, I love a good bloody mess, so that's why today's post is entirely dedicated to this very detailed piece of art. 

I'm not going to lie, it is a carnage. Nowadays, this play would turn out as normal, as quite a recurrent topic on films, but at that time, it was a huge scandal. 

The characters all end up dead in some way or another. And as most tragedies of the writer, they are triggered by revenge, a very cloudy feeling. But the deaths are not the same as in Hamlet or King Lear, they are more twisted. There are mutilations, tongues and heads are cut, inside parts of the body are being cooked, etc.

The singularity of this work is that there is no morality. Shakespeare created a play where the characters act like animals, without any kind of rationality and it is not until the end where the only one who has remained alive decides to do things the right way because he has realised that freelance does not work.

The funny thing is that everything starts by revenge, and where there is revenge is because there have been feelings, and then comes the pain and grief, but the more the story progresses the colder the characters become, to the point that the main character kills his own daughter without mercy or remorse.

So there you have it! I didn't want to make many spoilers because I believe this is a story worth the read and if I just could recommend one book, it would surely be Titus Andronicus.

As usual, express your opinion if you have read it or any requests in the comments down below. 👇👇

Yours Truly, 

The senior student 💕.

To be or not to be, that is... Hamlet?

Hey there my Shakespearean Lovers 👋!

Hamlet is undoubtedly one of the most impressive works of Shakespeare. Many could say that the main theme is revenge but once you understand the storyline you realize that it is a tragedy that praises death. Hamlet may be seen as a suicide, a pessimist of life who after something bad has happened to him collapses and leaves. It is true that he talks a lot about death and about the meaning of life and it seems that his desire is to leave the world but at no time he does not seem to have any intentions of provoking his own death. It rather seems that he contemplates death and admires it. 

We can begin with the famous scene where Hamlet holds a skull. He makes a great reflection about death where he reaches the conclusion that even the most important of the human beings and the most degrading one end up in the same way. Death is the only thing that makes us all the same and nobody can skip it. 

Moreover, Hamlet does not fear death. He simply does not understand why we live if we die, if there is just suffer.

Hamlet is the most complex character ever created. He is intelligent and knows how to act and when to fake he has lost his mind. He tries to protect Ophelia, saying that he does not love her anymore when she truly is the love of his life. In the end, this does not end well for Hamlet since Ophelia ends up going crazy and suicides by drowning for love. Once again we can see in Ophelia the great extremism that comes from loving someone, as in Romeo and Juliet. But Hamlet pretended his madness not only for Ophelia, but because he must conceal that he was planning to kill his uncle, who knew that he had killed his father to steal the throne. Everything is very twisted but so is Hamlet.

Hamlet is a play where everyone seems to end up receiving some kind of justice. Everyone dies, typical of Shakespeare's tragedies, but most were not intended. In the end, Hamlet gets his revenge and honours his father, but dying does not make him unhappy. We can see that the only thing that matters is that the true story will be explained, so that everyone knows who his father was and what kind of person Claudius was too. 

Destiny is again present on the story because it is what makes Gertrude drink the poison and since then everything goes wrong and they die. To be or not to be, that is the question. Hamlet would not be because he is physically dead, but he is because his story is alive.

Yours Truly, 
The senior student 💕.

Romeo and Juliet, the most famous love story ever told

Hey there my Shakespearean Lovers 👋!

Romeo and Juliet is a play that stands out for the intense love that both characters feel towards each other. It perfectly narrates the story of the first love, a pure teenager love that is lived passionately and at the same time leads to madness and rebellion. 

But, we are talking about Shakespeare, he makes that the powerful love they feel sometimes catapults them against their world or against themselves.

Love is very difficult to express through words but Shakespeare, with Romeo and Juliet, achieved that all the people who read it would be able to feel what the characters felt whether they know or don't about love.

This work narrates all the chaos caused by love and how it influences everything that surrounds it, which leads to a tragic end.

Violence also goes hand in hand with love. Love is so powerful that it can blind the person who feels it as much as hate does, or even more. In addition, it seems that the more they approach the more attractive the idea of suicide is.

Finally, suicide seems to be the only way they will continue together for life, and despite their death their love is still alive. The idea of defending their love to such an extreme is what makes Romeo and Juliet a unique love story, where love is so intense that everyone would want to feel a quarter of it at least.

On the other hand, we can also highlight the great hatred that existed between both families, who cannot even see each other and who tried to prevent the love between both characters. It is not until the end, when the main characters die, that they understand the severity of the situation and end their rivalry forever.

Destiny plays a huge role in Shakespeare's dramas and in this case the letter that said that Juliet was not really dead was the key moment of the story where everything could have gone well or could have been terribly awful. But destiny had prepared a tragic end for them.

To end, an interesting fact is that this play is inspired by Pyramus and Thisbe, a work by Ovid that tells a similar story where two lovers who have a forbidden love end up dying.

Yours Truly, 
The senior student 💕.

Behind Shakespeare's life

Hey there my Shakespearean Lovers 👋!

I decided that today I should give some background information about William Shakespeare. He was born in Stratford Upon Avon, Warwickshire on 1564 and died on 1616. He was and still is the most well-known dramatist, poet and actor ever known. He has created an approximate amount of thirty-eight plays, one hundred and fifty four sonnets, a couple of narrative poems and other verses.

Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway

In his lifetime, though Shakespeare was not praised in the way he now is, he was recognised as one of the best writers at that moment along with Geoffrey Chaucer, the writer of The Canterbury Tales.

When it comes to his private life Shakespeare, at the age of eighteen years old, married the twenty-six-year-old Anne Hathaway.

Later on they had two children, Hamnet and Judith. Unfortunately, at the short age of eleven years old Hamnet died. You might find familiar his name, since Shakespeare named one of his most well known masterpieces after his son, Hamlet. The name of the play slightly changes but it is indubitable there's a connection.  

Shakespeare is most often referred to as an Elizabethan playwright. When Elizabeth I became the Queen of England in 1558, she knew the importance of culture to thrive in her reign, so she ordered the constructions of theatres where playwrights could bring to life their works.

Christopher Marlowe

This is an important time because thanks to William Shakespeare and many others writers, they broke free of England's past style of theatre. 

In 1580, writers inspired their works in Christopher Marlowe’s style of writing. But Shakespeare broke with traditional schemes. In his own way, he combined all the features of the Elizabethan drama with the classic sources and added his traits. That made him a writer out of context and it seemed that he didn't belong to that time, especially for his way of writing, how he wrote about all topics and emotions and his contemporary language.

You won't definitely go to sleep without knowing something new today due to all the information that I have just given you. Don't forget to comment down below anything that you think I've missed and should have included. 👇

Yours Truly, 
The senior student 💕.

My Motivation

Hey there my Shakespearean Lovers 👋!

Today I'm bringing you a very special post. The video that I'm going to link down below was the reason why I chose to do a project about Shakespeare and the emotions he portrayed in his works. 

Of course Shakespeare is a very well-known writer and I have always heard of him, but last year I had the opportunity to get to know a little bit more about him and his plays. I was amused by so many of his masterpieces, but Hamlet was the one that captivated me the most. 

I've always been a bookworm, but Shakespeare's works have fascinated me since the beginning like none other and I knew he had to be the topic that I chose for my project. 

I spent quite a lot of time surfing the net in search of inspiration and when I was almost going to give up I came across this really interesting video from The University of Queensland. I would recommend you to watch the whole thing because it gives a lot of useful and interesting information, but for me the most important part goes from 19'05'' to 37'40''. 

➜ Shakespeare and Emotions

That wraps it up for today and if you have any suggestions about other videos I should checkout let me now in the comments down below. 👇👇

Yours Truly, 

The senior student 💕.

Shakespeare and Twitter

Hey there my Shakespearean Lovers 👋!

Today I was going through my Twitter and I realised that this network is really useful if you want to get more information or facts about Shakespeare. So that's why in today's post I'm going to be introducing you some Twitter accounts you could be interested in:

https://twitter.com/ShakespeareBT 
This account shares the love of his works, life and times from Startford-upon-Avon.
This is one of my favourite tweets from the account, because they link a video in which you can find a lot of facts about Shakespeare's life and works: https://twitter.com/ShakespeareBT/status/814453422619590656 

https://twitter.com/TheRSC, https://twitter.com/The_Globe and https://twitter.com/ShakespeareinDC 
These accounts are the twitters of some of the most important theatres where Shakespeare's plays are represented.
These are some useful accounts to follow because they give updated information about them in case you're interested.

https://twitter.com/DailyShakes and https://twitter.com/SaidShakespeare *

On Twitter you can also check out different accounts where they tweet famous quotes that Shakespeare created.

https://twitter.com/IAM_SHAKESPEARE

And last but not least, for those of you who have time, patience and a big passion for Shakespeare, this last account will be your favourite. If you scroll down, you will be able to read his complete works line by line. 

So that's it for today's post, if you have any suggestions let me now in the comments down below.

Yours Truly, 

The senior student 💕.

*This Twitter account posts quotes in its original language, which is a quite old English, and might be a little bit more difficult to understand. 

Inspiration...

Hey there my Shakespearean Lovers 👋!

Nowadays, everyone knows who Shakespeare was and how amazing his works are. That's why it is no surprise that many films have been inspired by some of his plays. 

Now I'm going to tell you which films follow the plot of a Shakespearean play:

- The Lion King (1994): This film was inspired by Hamlet. The story explains how the little lion named Simba tries to get his revenge on Scar, his uncle, who killed his father, named Mufasa, to get the throne.

- Ten things I hate about you (1999): This film is inspired by The Taming of the Shrew. The story is about two sisters, one of them is very popular and wants to have a boyfriend, but his father won't let her till her other sister gets one first. The problem is that the other sister is quite asocial. To solve this, the first sister pays a pretty mysterious boy to date her, but in the end he also falls in love with her and he has to decide whether he should accept the money or cancel the deal. 

Other movies based on The Taming of the Shrew are: Deliver us from Eva (2003) and Kiss me Kate (1953).

- She's the man (2006): This film was inspired by Twelfth Night. It explains how a teenage girl named Viola pretends to be a boy to play in a soccer team. Through out the story, she (while everyone thinks she's a boy) falls in love with a boy, who's actually in love with her female version but he doesn't know they are the same person. Meanwhile, Viola's brother is in love with another woman and this girl loves the male version of Viola.

- West Side Story (1961): This film was inspired by Romeo and Juliet. Of course I couldn't finish without naming the all time famous drama of Romeo and Juliet. This film is about two rival gangs and Tony and Maria, who obviously belongs to different gangs, fall in love at a dance. 

Another film based on this beautiful drama is Romeo must die (2000). 

So this is it for today's post. Now every time you watch any of these films you'll remember why they're so amazing, they were inspired by the great Shakespeare.

Remember to comment down below which of these films is your favourite.👇👇

Yours Truly, 

The senior student 💕.

That's what he said...

Hey there my Shakespearean Lovers👋!

I decided to launch this blog with some expressions you need to know Shakespeare created and we still use in the English language. Some of them shocked me that were created by him, which quotes surprised you the most? Tell me in the comments down below 👇 

“Break the ice” - from The Taming of the Shrew.

“For goodness’ sake” - from Henry VIII.

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be” - from Hamlet.

“Love is blind” - from The Merchant of Venice.

“Devil incarnate” - from Titus Andronicus and Henry V.

“Crack of doom” - from Macbeth

“Faint hearted” - from Henry VI Part 1 

Hope you learnt something new today.

Yours Truly, 

The senior student 💕.

PD: If you haven't had enough, checkout more expressions and words in the following website: http://www.pathguy.com/shakeswo.htm

Hello & Welcome!

Hey there my Shakespearean Lovers 👋!

I'm a senior student that appreciates Shakespeare and his works. This is the first post on my blog and I just wanted to create it to explain everything you'll find in it. 

I want to keep my posts breve and clear so that you get useful information about Shakespeare without getting bored. 

And if you're wondering what will I post, the answer is quite wide... I'll try to post about different topics, but keeping it related to the writer. You'll find quotes, facts, information about him and his plays, some analysis I have made myself, etc.

So there you have it! If you think you'll find interesting anything I will post, remember to subscribe introducing your mail in the box on the right. That way, a notification will be sent to your mail every time a new post is created. 

Yours Truly, 

The senior student 💕.

Credits to: http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/quotes/