William Shakespeare is a name that we know since our school life. Even many used to think at that time that English is all about Shakespeare. It is also said that if you want to prepare for a test you have to read Shakespeare thoroughly.
Although many people know or have thoroughly read about William Shakespeare’s works. However here we are going to share with you some interesting facts (truth or rumour) that were quite surprising for us and that we come to know about recently.
1) William Shakespeare has borrowed many works from other writers:
Yes, you heard correctly. There are almost 6 or 7 works of William Shakespeare that he produced by doing minor changes and there are a few that he wrote with the collaboration of other writers.
When William Shakespeare first went to London, The University Wits (which contained six writers) were very famous. One of them was John Lyly. The works that Shakespeare borrowed from or are inspired by John Lyly’s work are mentioned below:
- Love’s Labour’s Lost
- The Two gentlemen of Verona
- The Comedy of Errors
- A Midsummer night’s dream
All the above-mentioned works are inspired by John Lyly as when Shakespeare went to London, Lyly was a well-known writer of that time. There is also a famous work of Shakespeare The winter’s Tale that is also inspired by John Lyly’s work Old Wives Tales.
Apart from it, there are some other works of Shakespeare that are inspired by some other writers’ work. Such as Shakespeare’s work As You Like It is also inspired by Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacy. It is believed that Shakespeare took this work and after doing some changes in it, he wrote As You Like It. https://books.google.com.pk/books/about/Lodge_s_Rosalynde.html?id=Z0BVrgEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
Apart from the borrowed or copied works, Henry (vi) which is also the work of Shakespeare, wrote it with the collaboration of Thomas Lodge, who is also known as a university wit. Besides Henry (vi) Thomas Nashe helped Shakespeare to write Henry (iv) part 1.
The works that Shakespeare borrowed were from his early phase of writing. After that, there is more originality in his work.
2) Shakespeare did not write anything:
There is also an interesting rumour about Shakespeare that he did not write any work himself. This rumour is due to his six signatures that are found and minutely observed by experts. In every signature of it, he wrote his name differently as the spellings are different in every signature. This is quite strange for such a famous and well-known writer. Truth or fabrication, however, is quite an interesting claim by some people.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare_signatures_labelled.png
3) For Shakespeare, writings was not a passion but an earning profession:
This fact is also quite surprising for us in the sense that we did not think that a world acclaimed writer would be interested in money more rather than passion. I am not blaming him if a writer will not earn then how will he survive.
As we mentioned earlier that Shakespeare married in his early twenties and had three children. It was difficult for him to survive financially, so he made writing his business. He invested in two theatres in Elizabethan times. He made theatre his business and took a huge interest in a growing business.
He also used to allow those people that could not afford theatre tickets full price. He allowed them to sit on the ground at a low price. One reason for this was the more the people in the theatre, the more it was used to be considered popular and gained more attention. The second reason was all the action scenes were mostly more appreciated by these kinds of audiences.
This are the information that we have gone through recently and it was quite a surprise for us especially the fact that he not only borrowed one or two works but at least five or six. Moreover, these all cannot ignore the fact that the world knows Shakespeare more than hundreds of other writers.