Wondering what you should read? No Fear Shakespeare is what you need to look at – to get boredom out of the way!
Hi, the lovers of dark academia and tragedy, here we are going to
discuss unknown facts about some remarkable creations by the epitome
of English Literature, Sir William Shakespeare, who famed the
Elizabethan era by his creations.
SONNETS by William Shakespeare
Among 154 sonnets, the first 126 sonnets are dedicated to his beloved, a young male friend, from Sonnet 127 to Sonnet 152, his sonnets are addressed to a dark lady and the last two sonnets are dedicated to the love-god Cupid.
Sonnet 18
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?
Image source: bl.uk
Sonnet 1 to Sonnet 126 is addressed to a male friend and after a lot of researches; scholars concluded that Sir William Shakespeare was bisexual. In all the sonnets he addresses his male friend as a “fair youth”. The entire first 126 sonnets maintain the theme of love, beauty and vanquish of time.
At first the poet praises the beauty of his beloved and let him know that he is beyond all the delightful things that nature could offer-
‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:’
Then the poet laments about the thought that just like all the natural things die either by accident or due to natural causes, one day his beloved will lose his beauty as well.
‘And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;’
Then the poet makes the time realize that it is not the loss of his beloved’s beauty rather the defeat of time itself because the poet will preserve his beloved’s beauty within his poetry for forever.
‘Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.’
Sonnet 151
No Fear Shakespeare: Love Is Too Young To Know
Image source: thoughtco.com
The sonnets after Sonnet 126 are of a whole different sequence, where Shakespeare expressed his spiritual love for his male friend in all the first 126 sonnets, from 127 to 152, all of them are addressed to a dark lady and they are not spiritual or vegetable love, they are all portrayed in a sexual manner.
A lot of researches have been made to identify the “dark lady” but none had been found. So, these sonnets from 126-152 are concluded as a part of Shakespeare’s way of mocking the general way of describing a false love by elaborating the beautiful features of the lady.
He mocked the convention of making a character, a lady to be precise, “the most beautiful” rather he expressed his point of view to love your beloved for all that she could offer and all that she could not.
Sonnet 151 is entirely about the eroticism of the poet and in every line he expressed how his lust is controlling his mind and body,
‘Love is too young to know what conscience is; Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?’
He is unable to think on a spiritual level, “Her ‘love’ for whose dear love I rise and fall.” Sonnet 151 is the phase before the spiritual love, where the poet and his lover both are discovering themselves and their love for each other. Sonnet151 also shows how love and lust is interlinked with each other.
In Sonnet 153 and 154, Shakespeare praises love-god Cupid and expresses how he fell in love with his beloved due to the influence of Cupid. In this sonnets, Sir William Shakespeare tried to convey his message about spiritual love by the last line of Sonnet 154, ‘Love’s fire heats water; water cools not love.’
He expresses his thoughts that, everything can be controlled but not love. No one can choose to control the amount of love one wants to bestow. Love is of Cupid and he can only control one’s fate about love.
No Fear Shakespeare: HAMLET
All of the Shakespeareans are aware of the story line of ‘Hamlet’. But,
what are the unknown facts of Shakespeare’s longest play?
Image source : thoughtco.com
- After Cinderella, William Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ is the most
filmed story. - ‘The Lion King’ by Disney is an alliteration of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’.
- It is a belief that in the first stage performance of ‘Hamlet’ in The Globe Theatre, William Shakespeare himself played the role of the ghost.
- Richard Burbage was the first actor who played the role of ‘Hamlet’.
- ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ and ‘Hamlet’ are the two plays by William Shakespeare to be translated into Klingon.
- It is a belief that Shakespeare got the inspiration of writing ‘Hamlet’ after the death of his own son, Hamnet, in 1596.
No Fear Shakespeare: MACBETH
We all are aware of Shakespeare’s one of the most significant play
‘Macbeth’, based on a real king of Scotland named Macbeth. What are
we missing out about ‘Macbeth’?
Image source: Wikipedia
- Macbeth became the king of Scotland on August 15, 1040 after his army assassinated King Duncan and he died on August 15, 1057.
- King Macbeth’s real name was Mac Bethad mac Finlaich and Lady Macbeth’s real name was Gruoch.
- In the play, Macbeth’s death happens within a year where in real life, King Macbeth reigned for 17 years.
- Scotland was so peaceful under the rule of Macbeth that he became the first king to make a pilgrimage to Rome.
- The meaning of the name ‘Macbeth’ in Gaelic is ‘son of life’.
- It is the only play by William Shakespeare containing the word ‘rhinoceros’.
- The character Macbeth has only 719 lines which is half of the length of Shakespeare’s another significant play ‘Hamlet’.
No Fear Shakespeare: KING LEAR
Want to know what are you missing out on Shakespeare’s one of the
most tragic play ‘King Lear’?
Image source: Wikipedia
- In real life King Lear had a happy ending.
- The name of the good daughter of King Lear, Cordelia may have been taken from Edmund Spenser’s ‘Faerie Quenne’.
- The play of King Lear was written between the year 1603 to 1606 and later that it had been written a lot of times.
- Irish poet named Nahum Tate thought that the version of William Shakespeare’s King Lear is way too catastrophic so he created his own version with a happy ending.
- William Shakespeare’s play King Lear is his only play containing more mentions of nature.
No Fear Shakespeare: OTHELLO
Image source: Wikipedia
- We received a few famous phrases from Sir William Shakespeare’s Othello like to define the emotion of envy he used ‘the green-eyed monster’ or to describe physical intimacy with ‘the beast with two backs’.
- Sir William Shakespeare’s Othello was the first play on the English stage to materialize a professional actress who played the role of Othello’s wife, Desdemona.
- The plot was actually inspired by a tale named, Un Capitano Moro.
- The meaning of ‘Othello’ is wealth. According to many scholars, Shakespeare adapted this name from an ancient Roman emperor named, Otho.
- Shakespeare put up the topic of interracial marriage in his play ‘Othello’, which is a common theme of contemporary movies, plays and dramas.
- Shakespeare’s Othello was first performed on November 1, the Hallamas Day at Whitehall Palace in 1604.
No Fear Shakespeare: ROMEO AND JULIET
Aren’t we all aware of the most renowned tragic story written by
William Shakespeare? Isn’t Romeo and Juliet the first name that pops in
your head when you hear Shakespeare? But what are the lesser known
facts about it?
Image source : Wikipedia
- Dante in his epic poem ‘Divine Comedy’ mentioned the family of the Capulets and the Montagues more than 250 years before the birth of the Bard, which proves that Sir William Shakespeare was not the first one to mention the family of The Capulets and The Montagues.
- Sir William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is not an original play rather an alliteration of Arthur Brooke’s poem ‘The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet.
- The real name of the published play is ‘The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet’, which itself portrays it as a tragic play.
- Although after reading the play we can get into a lot of assumption about the exact age of Romeo Montague in the play, Juliet Capulet’s age is only 13.
- Just one word about this romance ‘whirlwind’. Because of the duration from their time to them getting married in less than 24 hours.
- According to Merriam-Webster, the origin of the word balcone didn’t appear until 1618 and Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in the around 20 years before that. So, basically there is no balcony in the play, the entire scene happened in the orchard of Juliet Capulet, when Juliet was in her window.
- The first female actress to play the role of Juliet is Mary Saunderson , in the year 1622.
- In the beginning of the play, Romeo’s love interest was not Juliet but a lady named, Rosaline.
- David Garrick in his 1748 theatre version of Romeo and Juliet cut out the role of Rosaline because he thought that the character of Rosaline made the character of Romeo, “fickle”.
- The character of Romeo has its own meaning as “a male lover” in the modern dictionary.
- Sir William Shakespeare’s lead character Romeo’s close friend, Mercutio is presumably gay in the play.
No Fear Shakespeare: THE TEMPEST
Image source: Wikipedia
- ‘The Tempest’ is considered as Sir William Shakespeare’s last play.
- According to the belief of a few scholars, Shakespeare took motivation from ‘Metamorphoses’ by Ovid, ‘Naufragium’ by Erasmus and ‘De Orbe Novo’ by Peter Martyr.
- The 1948 movie ‘Yellow Sky’ acted by Gregory Peck, Anne Baxter and Richard Widmark is inspired by Sir William Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’.
- Sir William Shakespeare wrote a lot of plays but ‘The Tempest’ is considered to be one of his shortest plays.
- Moons of the Uranus are named after the characters of Sir William Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’.
- Shakespeare followed all the three rules of unity of time, unity of place and unity of action by Aristotle’s Poetics in his play, ‘The Tempest’.
- Although ‘The Tempest’ is considered to be Sir William Shakespeare’s last work but the lovers of the Bard voted ‘The Tempest’ to be in the Time Magazine as one of the Top 10 Shakespeare’s best work.
No Fear Shakespeare: JULIUS CAESAR
Image source : Wikipedia
- Julius Caesar was a Casanova during his time.
- Due to his rumored homosexual relationship with Bithynia’s Nicomedes IV, his enemies used to insult by calling him ‘Queen of Bithynia’.
- Julius Caesar got married thrice in his life.
- Egyptian queen Cleopatra is considered to be Julius Caesar’s real love. They were lovers for 14 years and they also had a son together. Caesar ordered his troop to build a statue of his love Cleopatra in the Temple of Goddess Venus.
- Julius Caesar was a great swimmer.
- He became bald with maturity.
- Caesar’s most famous speech is ‘Veni, vidi, vici’ which is a Latin phrase meaning, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’. I know a lot of you have heard this phrase or perhaps used it as well.
- The month ‘July’ is named after Julius Caesar, which is the seventh month of the year. It happened after the death of Julius. This is the birth month of Julius Caesar, called Quintilis, which is according to the Roman calendar, the fifth month of the year.
This is all about the top novels and great sonnets written by Sir William Shakespeare. These are some of the lesser-known facts about his famous writings. We have all heard that sonnet is a poem of 14 line, we have all heard that Shakespeare was a great sonneteer.
But what made his sonnet great? We have read some of these novels but do we all know that what are the hidden facts about these novels? Were you aware of all the above-mentioned facts? Let us know in the comment section if you know other facts about these
famous creations – No Fear Shakespeare.
Last Updated on by Icy Tales Team
