The Authorship debate

The Authorship debate 

"Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again."

William Shakespeare 

I've  chosen the quote above because sadly this will be my last Shakespeare post and I have to say there have been times when I haven't wanted to do it, but when I look over it at the end I see that I have learnt so much from writing this blog. It has actually been pretty interesting. If you had asked me at the beginning of this blog if I liked it I would have said it was boring and I don't want to do it etc. But now I quite enjoy weekend blog time and I never thought I would say this but I think I might actually miss it.



So enough about me, its Shakespeare time :) Well the topic was the authorship debate and to be perfectly honest I don't see what people are debating over. I mean its like saying that Isaac Newton didn't really discover gravity. No one questions that, but when it comes to Shakespeare everyone questions it.


OK, so his plays weren't published until after his death but in those days people didn't publish plays. They were written for people to act out on a stage and most plays were only performed once or twice, so there wasn't any reason to publish his plays. Also it was his friends and family that decided that to get his plays published and why would they put a fake name on his plays. And if he didn't write his plays who did ??


I guess people might think he didn't write his plays because he came from lower class family and probably didn't have a very good education so he wouldn't have had the proper grammar or English skills that we have today. No wonder he made up heaps of words.




So I searched the Shakespeare Authorship debate and I have to admit some of the evidence is pretty convincing. Such as most people left school when they were 12 and it's quite possible he was illiterate. But even with all this evidence I still think he wrote his plays. If he didn't I wouldn't be doing this blog right now or I'd be doing it on someone else.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on what they think about history. So what do you think, did Shakespeare write his plays ??
Was it just one big lie ??

Is Shakespeare still relevant today ???

Is Shakespeare still relevant today ???

"Some are born great, Some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them,"
William Shakespeare

Before I start I'm going to be perfectly honest with saying I have no idea how to answer the question 'Is Shakespeare still relevant today?' But since its a homework requirement I will do my best.

So I  was looking at some websites to see what they had to say about this question and nearly all of them said that Shakespeare IS still relevant today. You can see by all the movies made based on his plays, I've listed a few below:

But I couldn't find many reasons saying WHY he's still relevant? All the websites I've looked at say its because of the messages he has in his plays, such as 'Everyone is going to have to experience death,' or the lessons of greed and doing anything to get what you want, like in Macbeth. 

I remember one of my English teach once said that he changed the English language by making all these amazing quotes, and to be honest we use those quotes every day such as 'Fight fire with fire,' and before I searched it I didn't realize how many of these quote Shakespeare came up with. 

Can you imagine that in 500 years there would be teenagers going out of their minds trying to understand your plays?

Its not really reality, is it. And this wasn't reality for Shakespeare either as none of his plays were officially published until after his death. 

Now imagine there people using quotes from your plays and the messages in your plays still being relevant in 500 years? 

It would be awesome. This just goes to show how amazing Shakespeare's plays must have been. I've only read two of them but both of them have the same message of greed. And there is still greed today, therefore Shakespeare must still be relevant. 

This goes for all the messages in his plays, love and death are still in the world today, so his plays should be relevant.

He was just clever enough to put them into words and put a story line to these emotions. 

I hope I answered the question but like I said at the beginning I didn't really know how to answer the question so I've done my best :) 

Dead Famous

Shakespeare is DEAD FAMOUS

"Listen to many, Speak to a few"

William Shakespeare

Before I had to do this blog I didn't realize how many plays Shakespeare wrote. I thought he was just some old guy that our English teachers worship. But I didn't realize his writing inspires some of the modern media. 
Before I start lets rewind to like 400 - 420 years ago. This was when Shakespeare was sitting in a room writing his plays hoping to write the play that would be performed on the globe theatre stage. Like the one below

This would have been the medieval version of 'fame'. However   being a play write wasn't a very good job in those days. It was said to the the 'witches work'. No wonder he had witches in two of his plays (Macbeth being the main one). Also the plague was a rude interruption to his career. But like they say 'Every cloud has a silver lining'. Shakespeare used the plaque to create the story lines of his plays. 

Now you maybe reading this and be like, Why do I need to know this? To be perfectly honest I still don't know why we have to study Shakespeare either or why we have to know about his plays. They're just plain confusing. But I'll try to explain the given topic "Shakespeare in the media," using the media we have today.

If he was alive today he would be on the front of a magazine posing and the caption would say ' How does he do it?' He would get pushed around by paparazzi trying to get a photo. Even though he lived a long time a go and this wasn't his reality he is still in the media.  

He stars in lots of movies and T.V shows. On the picture above he is staring in the Simpsons. 

His plays have also made it to the big screen. His famous Romeo and Juliet has been made into several movies as shown above. 

So even though when your in English class groaning because your English teacher just told you that your going to have to study Shakespeare. Just this he would have to be a pretty incredible guy to still have his plays being made into movies.