Essay about The Life of William Shakespeare

• A fear of foreigners during Elizabethan times fostered misogynistic and racist values, which is evident in the way Othello’s blackness becomes a symbol of alienation to which all characters in the play must respond.

Cowhig, Ruth. "Blacks in English Renaissance Drama and the Role of Shakespeare's 'Othello'." Shakespeare for Students: Critical Interpretations of Shakespeare's Plays and Poetry, edited by Mark W. Scott, Gale, 1992. Student Resources in Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ2126700032/SUIC?u=dove10524&xid=714df15e. Accessed 21 Mar. 2018.

William Shakespeare was an English poet and a great playwright. He still has a great impact on our history today. Shakespeare has written many plays, including Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet. He had very extant works which people could not understand (6). Romeo and Juliet is considered to be one of his more famous plays. His plays were translated into many different languages and styles (6). William Shakespeare was a very talented man who had a great impact on history, during the Renaissance time and still does today.

William Shakespeare's comedy, the Merchant of Venice, challenges a number of stereotypes, however many argue that eventually he is endorsing the prejudice in his society. Racism, anti-Semitism and gender are three main stereotypes that Shakespeare questions, but in the end he is approving of the injustice happening in his society. Whether it be how someone is treated based on their race, religion or gender, Shakespeare criticizes and supports such stereotypes, as though he is having a debate against himself.

William Shakespeare is a mystery on his own. He's a famous writer that are familiar with some of his famous works such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Although, his personal life is difficult to track, he can only be found by two sources. The first is through his writings of sonnets, poems, and dramas. The second source is data records. Through these sources, the life of Shakespeare can be told about his early life, middle life, and legacy.

Shakespeare was a literary pioneer and was able to inspire conversations about race in a predominantly white European society while living in England through his play Othello which is unique in the sense that it features a non-white hero as the protagonist. Although race is not at the center of Othello, it plays a pivotal role in deciding the course of the play and explains the actions and motives of the characters.

   Just how serious is the problem of racial prejudice in William Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello? Is it pervasive or incidental? This essay intends to answer questions on this subject.

Othello, a play written in the 1600’s by the notorious Shakespeare himself, subconsciously peruses and analyzes the standards that society places on merely the tint of skin an individual possesses or the gender of a said individual. It blatantly favors humans with fair skin. Likewise, they give constant approbation to men, leaving the perfect woman to be described as the one who stays home and clips coupons. Othello gives an insight into the lives of minorities in the Elizabethan time period. Othello was written in the 1600’s but contain messages and themes that are still much prevalent in modern society.

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England on April 23, 1564. As an infant he avoided the Black Plague that took the lives of many people during this time. His father, John Shakespeare, was a prosperous glove maker and wool dealer and was well regarded throughout Stratford, even holding the position of High Bailiff for a time. Young William saw his first play at the age of five from a traveling group of actors. Due to John’s position on the town council, he was responsible for approving the play for public performances. This gave William a chance to meet and get to know the actors who would return a few times each year for another performance.

Shakespeare deliberately puts black man as a protagonist, who is victimised and completely destroyed by an evil white man. The roles that Elizabethan audience would expect are reversed in the play to show how racist ideas are wrong and can put everyone in danger. For the Elizabethan audience back then, they would laugh off at the racist jokes and languages in the play and feel catharsis when Othello kills Desdemona because they would have expected to see the “true nature” of the “moor” which they believed to be “evil”. However, Shakespeare thought ahead of his own time period and wrote Othello to show how racism is wrong and it leads to inevitable

Othello’s race does not prominently impact his demise, although Shakespeare touches upon the issue of race, the reason for Othello’s demise lies somewhere else. However, the allegations of race directly lead to its tragic ending. Feelings of inadequacy and distrust without question aid in the tragedy. The fact that Othello’s skin color is important alters the interpretation of the tragedy within the play. The racism represented in Othello is not just about an instance of prejudices and prejudgments made by a crowd of people against another, but in fact has much more subtle and devastating consequences, specifically, that it is proliferated not only by the discriminatory section of society, but also by the target of this discrimination.

William Shakespeare is one of the most well respected and time honored man of all time. His unique style, mysterious life and amazingly written sonnets make him the most studied and analyzed men to ever walk the planet.

In the play Othello written by Shakespeare, the issue of racism is addressed. Othello, the protagonist of the play, is African American or black. “According to Lois Whitney, many of Othello’s specific attributes probably derive from Shakespeare’s reading of Leo Africanus, whose Geographical Historie of Africa which was translated and published in London in 1600”(Berry, 1990). Many critics have different views on this. “If Shakespeare depended upon Leo Africanus for such details, he must have been much more interested in racial psychology than critics such as Bradley or Heilman suggest”(Berry, 1990). One of the most prominent features of this Shakespeare play is the

Though William Shakespeare is recognized as one of literature's greatest influences, very little is actually known about him. What we do know about his life comes from registrar records, court records, wills, marriage certificates and his tombstone. Anecdotes and criticisms by his rivals also speak of the famous playwright and suggest that he was indeed a playwright, poet and an actor.

Shakespeare was born somewhere between April 23 to April 26, 1564 in a small town in Stratford, England known as Warwickshire, located 103 miles west of London (Spencer, Bevington, & Brown 2017). No record shows the exact date of his birthday; however, it was celebrated on April 23, while April 26 was the day Shakespeare was baptized. He was the third child of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. John Shakespeare, a leather merchant, and Mary Arden,a local landed heiress, had five other children. William Shakespeare had two sisters, Joan and Judith, and three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, and Richard. John encountered financial difficulties which plagued him until his death (Spencer, Bevington, & Brown 2017).