Professional Documents
Culture Documents
23 Things You Never Knew
23 Things You Never Knew
Though rumors (and conspiracy theories!) abound, not too many concrete facts are known about Shakespeare. We have a page on Shakespeare facts, detailing the bog standard Shakespeare info, but on this page weve tried to pull together 23 interesting Shakespeare pieces of Shakespeare information that youve probably not come across before the quirkier side of the Bard of Avon:
1. Quotable Shakespeare
According to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Shakespeare wrote close to a tenth of the most quoted lines ever written or spoken in English. Whats more, according to the Literature Encyclopedia, Shakespeare is the second most quoted English writer after the writers of the Bible.
2. Copyright Issues
Copyright didnt exist in Shakespeares time, as a result of which there was a thriving trade in copied plays. To help counter this, actors got their lines only once the play was in progress, often in the form of cue acting where someone backstage whispered them to the person shortly before he was supposed to deliver them.
3. Acting
Few people realise that aside from writing 37 plays and composing 154 sonnets, Shakespeare was also an established actor who performed in many of his own plays as well as those of his contemporaries, such as Ben Jonson.
4. Early Wedding
William Shakespeare would have been considered a very controversial figure when he married a much older woman who was pregnant with their child. Anne Hathaway was 26 years old when William married her at the age of 18. She duly gave birth to Susannah six months after the wedding .
Uranus' moons