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William Shakespeare during Elizabethan Era2
People have paid homage to this great English poet by building statues and memorials. Somewhere around 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory. There was no evidence to show how exactly Shakespeare looked and thus the monuments are the only source of knowing somewhat about his features.
In 1623 John Hemings and Henry Condell, his friends from the King's Men company published the First Folio which is a collection of Shakespeare's plays consisting of 36 texts.
Ben Jonson in the First Folio had called Shakespeare " the Soul of the age, the appplause, delight, the wonder of our stage". There was a time during 1660 and the fag end of 17th Century where Shakespeare was rated below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson by the critics as classical ideas were in vogue.
His plays were produced by the Victorians on a large scale. Shakespeare is therefore regarded as the greatest English writer ever known. Shakespeare dealt with many aspects like comedy, histories, tragedy, poems. The following are some examples of these categories-
1) Comedy- As You Like It, All's Well That Ends Well, The Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, Twelveth Night, The Winter's Tale etc.
2)Tragedies- Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Titus Andronicus, Macbeth, etc.
3) Histories- King John, Henry IV- Part I & II, Henry V and VIII, Henry VI-Part I,II,III, Richard II, III
4)Poems- Shakespeare's Sonnets, Venus and Adonis, A Lover's Complaint,etc.
5) Lost Plays- Love's Labour's Won, Cardenio
6)Apocrypha- The Birth of Merlin, Arden of Faversham, Locrine, The London Prodigal, The Puritan, A yorkshire Tragedy, etc.
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