While her husband, William, was working hard in London to support the family, Mrs Shakespeare was working hard, too, in the home in Stratford. In the early days of their marriage it would have been very tiring but, as time went by and the family became more prosperous it would have become easier for her. [...]
We’ve been busy here at NoSweatShakespeare over the bank holiday weekend! The past few days we’ve been beavering away to translate many of Shakespeare’s soliloquies into modern English, and have now launched a new soliloquys section of the website to accommodate them. (This is of course a supplement to the ever growing Shakespeare quotes section!) [...]
At a time when all of Shakespeare’s plays are being staged in different places on different kinds of stage in thirty-seven different languages I’m thinking about how different the staging of Shakespeare’s plays are from when Shakespeare wrote them to be staged in his own Globe Theatre. Very often, these days, when you attend the [...]
Last week I was approached by Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s “Happy Birthday Shakespeare” project to write a blog piece on what Shakespeare means to me. The goal of their project is to gather bloggers from all around the world to share how Shakespeare has influenced/touched their life, to help celebrate his birthday on April 23rd. So, here’s my bash [...]
“Infographics” have been all the rage online for some time, so we thought we’d put together a Shakespeare infographic detailing lots of juicy Shakespeare statistics and information. And without further ado, here’s our shameless bandwagon-jumping “Shakespeare in statistics” infographic: If you want to embed the above Shakespeare infographic to your website simply copy and paste [...]
Shakespeare would have enjoyed the explosion that the English language has experienced with the invention of the Internet because he was fascinated with language. His own influence on the English language cannot be over-estimated, with his invention of new words, new ways of using words and his metaphorical phrases that have become part of normal [...]
We recently stumbled across the rather amusing “Epic Rap Battles of History”. In at number 12 was the Shakespeare vs Dr Seuss battle. For those who aren’t acquanted with battle rapping, it’s a freestyle rapping competition between two or more rappers in front of an audience, with the aim of insulting the other rappers in [...]
It’s endlessly fascinating to read Elizabethan practices and customs in the plays of the time. If one shuts one’s eyes to the plots, action and characters of Shakespeare’s plays and looks for other things one can build an understanding of many aspects of Elizabethan life. The conventions of warfare, court life, relationships between the sexes, [...]
There’s nothing wrong with starting on Shakespeare young… but reciting a Shakespeare sonnet word-for-word at the age of two? Check out this little guy reciting Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet – number 18, “Shall I Compare Thee To Summer’s Day?”. Pretty incredible stuff! What’s the best thing you could recite when you were two years [...]
Did you know that Shakespeare had his own coat of arms? Sometime after William Shakespeare’s father John Shakespeare applied unsuccessfully to become a gentleman William took his father to the College of Arms to secure their own family coat of arms. The application cost 30 guineas and was granted from the Garter King of Arms [...]