God, I Hate Shakespeare.

**Disclaimer: that title is a song title from the musical 'Something Rotten.' If I actually hated Shakespeare, I wouldn't have done the Shakespeare festival for 5 years in a row.

    So. William Shakespeare. What a man. The name is infamous within highschool students because it's shoved down their throats every other year. Despite that, what do we actually know about the bard? 

    Well, born in 1564, he spent most of his life in the Elizabethan era, before dying in 1616. Over the course of his life, he wrote *at least* 37 plays and 154 sonnets. 37 is the most common number I could find but it's not a solid number as many could have not been published, under his name, or he merely collaborated on. 

    Fun fact: He has no known middle name. I don't think most people did but you know. Interesting.

    It's actually an ongoing theory that Shakespeare didn't write all of his published pieces himself, and had his own ghostwriter. I'm not sure what proof there is of this but I would not be surprised. He seems like a prick.

    Looking over these plays, there are some very particular things you notice within each of them. For example, costuming and speech are two of the most obvious things to me. The costuming, due to being in the Elizabethan Era, is all quite structured. With rolls of fabric to create bum bumps, complete modesty, and frills galore.

    Shakespeare's plays are written to mostly be spoken in iambic pentameter, which means in 5 sets of 2 words, the second words have the stress. A 'di dum, di dum, di dum, di dum, di dum,' kind of this. On the other hand, Shakespeare almost made an entire language for himself. I don't typically hear people say 'talketh.' So.

    Another fun fact, my personality mostly coaligns with Ophelia, according to Magiquiz.com :)