6 Shakespeare Facts You Didn’t Know

Many of you may remember ploughing through the seemingly impenetrable prose of William Shakespeare at school, and some of us may even have been lucky enough to have had an English teacher who not only made some sense of the words but a teacher who could also make those words exciting to read as well. Whatever your personal experience of reading Shakespeare may have been; for many people, it is literature that is never revisited again after that first, rather daunting, exposure at school.

Despite that, William Shakespeare remains the most performed playwrights of all time, he is regarded by many as the greatest writer of the English language that there has ever been, and many of the words and phrases that came from the pen of the Bard of Avon are now in everyday use. Even so, much of the life of the Elizabethan poet is still shrouded in mystery. Hard, concrete, facts about Shakespeare are few and far between. So, to reignite your interest in the wonderful author, here are six facts about William Shakespeare that you may not have known.

He wasn’t an Elizabethan playwright
Shakespeare is usually referred to as an Elizabethan playwright but this is, in fact, inaccurate. Most of Shakespeare’s plays were written after the death of Queen Elizabeth I, in the reign of King James, so, it would be more accurate to call Shakespeare a Jacobean playwright rather than an Elizabethan.

His words were not all his own
There is a school of thought that claims that Shakespeare didn’t write any of his own work at all. The theory is that a person of Shakespeare’s social standing couldn’t possibly know the inner workings of the royal court of England in as much detail as the writer of Shakespearian plays appears to have done. That Shakespeare fact is a debatable one, as many are, but one Shakespeare fact that is known for sure is that writers of that time did employ the services of other writers to help them out from time to time. So, it is very likely that Shakespeare did indeed ‘sub-contract’ some of his writing out to other people.

He had no intention of his work being read hundreds of years later
It is believed that Shakespeare didn’t set out to write work that would be revered and studied hundreds of years later as it is today; he was more of a popular writer of his time, aiming to write scripts for plays that would entertain and draw in the paying masses. The poet’s work was not even published in written form during his lifetime; it was only pulled together and published, after his death, by two actors who had played parts in some of Shakespeare’s plays.

The critics hated his plays
One thing that is a documented fact about Shakespeare is that, while his work may have been extremely popular with commoners and royalty alike, the critics hated his writing. He was seen by some as being little more than a jumped actor trying his best to become a writer. One of Shakespeare’s critics wrote that the playwright was an “upstart crow, beautified with our feathers”.

Women were not allowed to perform in Shakespeare’s plays
When Shakespeare’s plays were first performed on stage, it was illegal for women to appear in public performances, so all the female parts were played by young boys. It wasn’t until after the English Reformation, and William Shakespeare’s death, that a woman appeared in any of his plays.

He was the only member of his family who could read.
Shakespeare was the one and only member of his family who had a proper education. His father left his mark, rather than a signature, and it is believed that Shakespeare’s own children were illiterate too. It’s a rather odd fact about William Shakespeare that he didn’t find the time to teach his own kids how to write while he could write words that still resonate with us today.

If you want to know more about William Shakespeare, check out Facts about Shakespeare for some more info on the Bard of Avon.