(upbeat music)
-: Hey everyone, my name is Kim Douthit and today,
we're gonna be talking a little bit about Shakespeare.
Who he was, what he did,
and why we should still care about him today.
Now, you don't need a whole lot of materials for this,
mostly just something you could take some notes,
so writing utensil and some paper or scrap paper
or whatever you have.
Now, what do you think of when I say Shakespeare?
Some people might think of British.
He was British, yes.
You might think of poetry and flowery words.
You might think of corsets and tights.
But what do we actually know about him?
We know he was a playwright.
We know he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon
many, many years ago.
He was born sometime in late April of 1564.
We don't know exactly when he was born.
We know that he died in 1616.
We know that he married a woman named Anne Hathaway,
not that Anne Hathaway.
We know that he had three children.
But one of the most interesting things about Shakespeare.
We don't know a whole lot about him or his life.
There's not a whole lot of records that exist
that tell us any of these things.
A lot of people speculate about his education,
about him, his life.
They even speculate as to whether
or not he wrote the plays that we attribute to him.
But when it comes down to it, there's not records
that tell us a whole lot about him.
Now, we know that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon
and all that means is that the town of Stratford
is located on the River Avon.
It'd be similar to if we called Seattle, Seattle-upon-Puget.
His family lived there, that's where he got married,
that's where his home was
but almost all of his work was done in London.
Now, we know throughout his life he wrote 39 plays.
That number's a little bit debated,
he may have collaborated with a few other playwrights.
It's also possible he didn't write a few of the plays
that we think he wrote.
We know he wrote 154 sonnets and two long verse poems.
Now in Shakespeare's time if you were an artist
you had to make money, right?
You needed somebody to help pay for these things.
And so they used to have what we're called patrons.
Now these patrons were usually wealthy people,
sometimes they were titled
and they would help support artists.
So at one point in time Shakespeare was supported
by a man called the Lord Chamberlain.
So his group of actors were called
the Lord Chamberlain's Men.
Later on in his life, he got to be really big and important.
His group was called the King's Men,
because none other than King James I was his patron.
Now a lot of the local theaters produce Shakespeare's work.
But the theater we think the most about
when we talk about Shakespeare is The Globe Theatre.
The Globe Theatre was open to the public in 1599.
It was shaped, I'm sure this won't surprise anyone to learn,
it was shaped like a globe.
The very center of it was open to the air.
Around the edges, the seating was called The Gallery.
Now, anyone who had the money for a ticket
they could come in and see one of Shakespeare's plays.
But it didn't mean that all seeding was created equal.
If you sat in The Gallery,
that was the more expensive seats,
you were undercover.
You had a roof over your head.
If you were one of the people who sat in the yard,
they were called the groundlings.
Those were the cheap seats.
Remember that open air I talked about.
Yeah, there was no roof over you.
So if you're one of the groundlings
and you're in that yard if it's raining,
you're gonna to get wet.
If it's really cold outside,
I hope you brought a heavy jacket.
I shouldn't say they sat either.
There were no seats in the yard.
You were basically standing.
I suppose unless you just got so tired you just plop down,
but then you're gonna have
other audience members blocking your view.
In Shakespeare's time there weren't fancy lights.
There weren't lights.
They didn't have electricity.
And so all of the actors and the audience,
they had to rely on the daylight.
Depending on the time of year,
you might have to start a play earlier in the day.
They didn't have microphones either.
Actors had to project their voices.
The acoustics in the globe could be a little questionable.
So the ability to project your voice,
that was really, really important.
Now the stage itself, it thrusts out
called shockingly a thrust stage.
This might not be the kind of stage
you are super familiar with.
A lot of our contemporary stages
are what we call proscenium.
Now a proscenium stage, all that means it has a frame.
It might be an arch, it might be more of a square shape,
but the stage itself is framed.
Sometimes you had a little area out in front,
this is called the fore stage,
this might be where you find an orchestra pit.
Now in a proscenium stage,
the actors around stage performing with each other,
they have their three walls around them.
The audience itself is that fourth wall.
Now if I'm an actor on stage,
I don't acknowledge that fourth wall
unless a playwright tells me to.
Sometimes a playwright will have an actor turn
towards the audience and directly address them,
this is called breaking the fourth wall.
You know, who loved to break the fourth wall?
Shakespeare.
Now the thrust stage, that's a little bit different.
In a thrust stage you have audience all around.
You have the gallery all around.
That meant no matter how much an actor might try,
at any point in time
part of them is gonna be showing their back
to part of the audience.
That made it even more important
for actors to be projecting their voices.
If they don't project their voice
someone may not hear part of the play.
This idea of going to see a play,
it's a really modern concept.
Back in Shakespeare's time
you wouldn't say you were going to see a play,
you would say you were going to hear a play
because that's where everything was,
that was what was important
and that's where all of the action was given to the actor.
Shakespeare wasn't really about writing stage directions.
Stage directions, they generally inform an actor
when are they entering, when are they exiting,
are they in the middle of a fight, are they cooking,
are they dancing the macarena,
it tells them what they need to know.
Shakespeare kept those pretty brief,
you found out all the action in the text.
In fact one of the most distinct and longest pieces
of stage direction Shakespeare ever wrote
was the line, this is from winter's tale,
exit pursued by a bear, it's one of my personal favorites.
Now in 1613, The Globe Theatre burnt down.
It was during a production of Henry VIII,
a canon on stage misfired.
The heavens above,
the ceiling above the theater caught fire.
It's made of straw, straw tends to burn fairly quickly.
And since the rest of the theater was built of wood,
it all burned down very fast.
They rebuilt it the following year
and they plugged along until the 1640s.
In the 1640s the Puritans took over control.
Puritans weren't really about theater.
In fact, they closed all the theaters,
they tore The Globe Theatre down.
In 1997, it was reconstructed.
They rebuilt it about 750 feet away from the original site
and they reconstructed it,
really to replicate what was done with the original globe.
They did the very best they could
to keep it as similar as possible.
Now, I know what you're thinking.
That's cool, Kim.
But why should we care about some guy
who wrote plays 400 years ago?
Here's the thing.
Shakespeare wrote for the time.
He wrote for the problems of the time,
he wrote for the people of the time.
But his stories are universal.
He dealt with themes of love and loss
and family and hatred
and jealousy, power, corruption, war, politics.
I think one or two of those things we can still apply today.
His characters were complex and interesting.
The language he used was rich.
A lot of contemporary artists and writers and poets,
they take their inspiration from Shakespeare.
In fact, I bet you've seen some movies based on
or inspired by Shakespeare's work
and you didn't even realize it.
The movie "10 Things I Hate About You"
the movie "Deliver Us from Eva",
"Kiss Me, Kate", which is also a Broadway play.
All of those are the taming of the shrew
and they deal with issues of gender and marriage
and dating and family.
"West Side Story", "Gnomeo & Juliet", "Romeo Must Die".
All of those based on, I'm sure you can guess this one,
"Romeo and Juliet".
They deal with themes of forbidden love,
feuding families, age, gender, and identity.
"The Lion King"?
It's basically "Hamlet" with jungle animals.
Although Disney ends its movie
a little bit more happily than Shakespeare did.
You have issues of revenge, family, and corruption.
"She's the Man", it's basically "Twelfth Night".
Gender identity, sexual identity, loved, deception, class.
Even "Mean Girls" has themes
from "Julius Caesar" and "Macbeth".
I think we should all just stab Caesar.
So whether or not your character's are teenagers,
gnomes, cartoon lions, there's something
that can be found in Shakespeare.
These themes are universal and they endure.
You can even find inspiration
from Shakespeare in modern music,
particularly if you look at rap and hip-hop.
They both shape words and rhythm.
They share a story in an impactful way.
They draw upon creating images with their words
to express emotions and tell a story.
A lot of our words and phrases that we use today
we did not have until Shakespeare.
He wrote his works to be lived,
to be acted out and performed.
So if you have the opportunity
to pick up some of Shakespeare's work,
don't just sit down and read it.
Stand up, say it out loud.
Grab a friend, grab your dog.
Say it to a wall, live it.
I want you to think about these themes
when you are listening to your favorite music,
reading your books, watching movies, and television
because I bet you're gonna find
that these works are more inspired by Shakespeare
than you ever realized.
Thank you all so much
for letting me talk a little bit about Shakespeare with you.
It's a subject I really love to talk about.
My name is Kim Douthit and I hope you have a wonderful day.
(upbeat music)