Celebrity name: Shakespeare

Birth year: 1564-1616

Celebrity title: The most important writer in Britain and Europe during the Renaissance

Celebrity country: Britain

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William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was the most important writer in Britain and Europe during the Renaissance. He was born into a merchant family in Stratford, central England. As a boy, he received basic education at a local grammar school, studied Latin, philosophy and history, and was exposed to the works of ancient Roman playwrights. Later, due to his family's financial difficulties, he dropped out of school to make a living. When Shakespeare was a child, famous theater troupes often toured the countryside for performances, which cultivated his interest in drama. Around 1585, he left his hometown and went to London. He first worked as an oddball in the theater, and later became an actor, and then adapted and wrote scripts. In addition to participating in performances and screenwriting, Shakespeare also had extensive contact with society, often traveling to the court or the countryside with theater troupes. These experiences expanded his horizons and laid the foundation for his creations. [More information is available at www.365zn.com]

The period from 1590 to 1600 was the early period of Shakespeare's creation, also known as the historical drama and comedy period. During this period, Shakespeare's humanistic thoughts and artistic style gradually took shape. At that time, Britain was in the heyday of Queen Elizabeth's rule, with a stable and unified royal power and a prosperous economy. Shakespeare was full of confidence in realizing humanistic ideals in real society, and his works are full of optimism and clarity. During this period, he wrote 9 historical plays including "Richard III" (1592), "Henry IV" (Part 1 and 2) (1597-1598) and "Henry V" (1599). The basic theme of the script is to support the central royal power, condemn feudal tyrants and praise enlightened monarchs. For example, "Henry IV" shows a turbulent domestic situation. The nobles united to rebel against the king, but the rebellion was eventually put down; the crown prince lived a dissolute life in the early days, but later realized his mistakes and made great achievements in quelling the civil strife. In the play, historical facts and artistic fiction are highly unified. Among the characters, Falstaff is the most vivid. He is selfish, lazy, and timid, but he is also alert, clever, and optimistic, which makes people laugh. [More information on www.365zn.com]

Comedies created during this period include the poetic "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1596), the "Merchant of Venice" (1597), which promotes good and punishes evil. ), "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (1598), which reflects the life and customs of citizens, "Much Ado About Nothing" (1599), which promotes chaste love, and "Twelfth Night" (1600), which praises love and explores human nature. The basic themes of these plays are love, marriage and friendship, with a strong lyrical color, expressing Shakespeare's humanistic ideals of life. At the same time, he also wrote three tragedies including "Romeo and Juliet" (1595). Although the works have a sad side, their basic spirit is the same as that of comedy. Shakespeare also wrote long poems "Venus and Adonis" (1592-1593), "The Humiliation of Lucrece" (1593-1594) and 154 sonnets. [More information is available at www.365zn.com]

At the beginning of the 17th century, the regimes of Queen Elizabeth and James I alternated. Conflicts in British society intensified and social ugliness was increasingly exposed. During this period, Shakespeare's thoughts and art matured, and humanistic ideals collided fiercely with social reality. He felt that his ideals were difficult to realize, and his creations changed from praising humanistic ideals in his early days to exposing and criticizing the darkness of society. The second period of Shakespeare's creation (1601-1607), also known as the tragic period. He wrote famous works such as "Hamlet" (1601), "Othello" (1604), "King Lear" (1606), "Macbeth" (1606) and "Timon of Athens" (1607). tragedy.

In "Othello", Desdemona, who was born into a noble family, despite the opposition of her father and society, privately married the Moor Othello, showing the theme of opposing racial prejudice, and the cause of their tragedy was not only Othello's Jealousy, and the power of evil represented by Iago. Othello's clarity before his death contains the victory of human reason. What is shown in "King Lear" is a disintegrated society. King Lear paid the price with his life because of his own willfulness, and also brought huge disasters to the country and people. The protagonist changes from a feudal monarch with absolute authority to a penniless and homeless old man. The character's destiny and personality undergo a huge change, which is the most distinctive in Shakespeare's works. In "Macbeth", a heroic character becomes a personal careerist and tyrant due to inner ambition and external instigation. The tragic implication is that personal ambition and self-interest can destroy a character who was not originally evil. Generally speaking, these tragedies have made in-depth exposures to the decadence and decline of feudal aristocrats, the appalling egoism, the sins of money relations, and the suffering of the working people; in terms of style, the atmosphere of romance and joy has decreased, and the mood of melancholy and indignation has increased, and the image Fuller and more proficient in language. [More information is available at www.365zn.com]

After 1608, Shakespeare entered the final period of his creation. At this time, Shakespeare had seen that the ideal of humanism could not be realized in the real society, so he turned from writing tragedies to writing legendary plays, and from exposing and criticizing the darkness of real society to writing about the dream world. Therefore, this period is also called Shakespeare's legendary drama period. During this period, his works often used mythical fantasy and supernatural power to resolve the contradiction between ideals and reality; the works are run through the spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation, without the joy in the early stage or the gloom in the middle stage, but full of Beautiful fantasy of life, rich in romance. "The Tempest" (1611) best represents the style of this period and has been called "a testament written in verse". In addition, he also wrote three legendary dramas including "Cymbeline" and "The Winter's Tale" and the historical drama "Henry VIII". [More information is available at www.365zn.com]

Shakespeare’s works are based on the reality of life and profoundly reflect the style of the times and the nature of society. He believes that drama "seems to hold up a mirror to nature: to show virtue its own appearance, to show absurdity its own posture, and to show its own image and imprint on the times and society." Marx and Engels praised Shakespeare as a classic writer of realism and proposed that drama creation should be more "Shakespearean". This is a creative principle proposed in response to the shortcoming of "turning the individual into a mere mouthpiece for the spirit of the times" in drama creation. The so-called "Shakespeareization" requires writers, like Shakespeare, to be good at starting from the reality of life, showing a broad social background, and providing characters and events in the work with a typical environment rich in the characteristics of the times; the plot of the work should be vivid and rich, and the characters should be It must have a distinctive personality and at the same time have typical significance; the realistic depiction and romantic atmosphere in the work must be skillfully combined; the language must be rich and expressive; the writer's tendency must be hidden and naturally revealed in the description of the plot and characters.