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42 unusual facts about William Shakespeare


Ashorne

Some of the older thatched buildings in the village originate before the birth of William Shakespeare and one is of Medieval origin.

Ayodele Awojobi

It was during this period that he earned the nickname, "Macbeth": William Shakespeare’s famous play, Macbeth, was to be staged in the school.

Bea Miles

She was also regularly seen standing on street corners with a sign offering to quote verses from Shakespeare for between sixpence and three shillings.

Described as Sydney's "iconic eccentric", she was known for her contentious relationships with the city's taxi drivers and for her ability to quote any passage from Shakespeare for money.

Bear Lane

The poet and playwright William Davenant, a student of Lincoln College, was born here and William Shakespeare, Davenant's godfather, visited here.

Bidford-on-Avon

William Shakespeare is said to have joined a party of Stratford folk which set itself to outdrink a drinking club at Bidford-on-Avon, and as a result of his labours in that regard to have fallen asleep under the crab tree of which a descendant is still called Shakespeares tree.

Billesley, Warwickshire

Like many of the local churches, it is rumoured that William Shakespeare was a regular visitor, at least to the tiny churchyard that predates the later church.

Blackfriars Massacre

The Irish themed pub was named after Blackfriars which was mentioned in William Shakespeare's play Henry VIII.

Brothel

By the 16th century, the area was also home to many theaters, (including the Globe Theatre, associated with William Shakespeare), but brothels continued to thrive.

Eau Claire, Calgary

North of Eau Claire is Prince's Island Park, a large urban park on an island in the Bow River and the site of many summer festivals, including the Calgary Folk Music Festival, Carifest, Shakespeare in the Park and various busking happenings.

Enslavement of Beauty

Lyrically, Enslavement of Beauty is highly influenced by the works of William Shakespeare and Marquis De Sade.

Film studies

In 1965, film critic Robin Wood, in his writings on Alfred Hitchcock, declared that Hitchcock's films contained the same complexities of Shakespeare's plays.

Fort William College

Yet through the text books he produced, the pamphlets he wrote and retelling of Kalidas’s Shakuntala and Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors he set the norm of standard Bengali prose.

Galina Jovovich

Her most notable works were such roles as Beatrice in Mnogo shuma iz nichego (1973), a film adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, and as Molly in criminal drama Milliony Ferfaksa (1980).

Grammatical conjugation

Some historic verb forms are used by Shakespeare as slightly archaic or more formal variants (I do, thou dost, she doth, typically used by nobility) of the modern forms.

Henrik Schück

He also wrote a series of biographies of historic figures including Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson, Olaus Petri, King Gustav III as well as William Shakespeare.

High Cross, Truro

There are two busts above the first floor windows, one of the actor and theatrical producer David Garrick, and the other of William Shakespeare.

I am Going to the Lordy

Sondheim has said that the use of the poem in the song was one of two times he has borrowed from another writer in his work, the other being lines from William Shakespeare's "Fear No More" in Cymbeline.

Impossible Things

The stories Ado and Winter's Tale both refer to William Shakespeare, while Time Out, like her time travel novels, explores the nature of time.

Khalil Mutran

In 1912 he translated Shakespeare’s drama Othello into Arabic as Utayl, which is the most celebrated and best-known translation of the drama into Arabic.

Liane de Pougy

She preferred café-concerts and popular songs to William Shakespeare or Richard Wagner, and made minor appearances in the chorus of Folies-Bergere in Paris in St. Petersburg and cabaret clubs in Rome and the French Riviera.

Luther Luckett Correctional Complex

The documentary Shakespeare Behind Bars, depicting a production of William Shakespeare's The Tempest by prison inmates, was filmed at Luther Luckett.

Mademoiselle Juliette

Lyrically, the song "Mademoiselle Juliette" portray Juliet Capulet from Romeo and Juliet, the drama by William Shakespeare, as a girl who would rather party than worry about the Montague-Capulet dispute.

Merv Pumpkinhead

While his appearance can vary based on who is viewing him (for example, William Shakespeare saw a turnip-headed version of Merv in Sandman #75 (March 1996)), Merv is generally portrayed as having a pumpkin for a head.

Michał Elwiro Andriolli

Between 1883 and 1886, he lived in Paris, where he worked on illustrating the French language editions of works by William Shakespeare and James Fenimore Cooper.

Miranda, New South Wales

James Murphy, the manager of the Holt estate named the area after Miranda, a character in the William Shakespeare play The Tempest.

Ninjō

The correspondence to William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet or the Aeneid would be made by Japanese and non-Japanese alike.

Orlando Reeves

An alternative explanation for the name is that one of the founders of the city was enamoured with Shakespeare, and named the city for the hero of As You Like It.

Pebworth

William Shakespeare is said to have joined a party of Stratford folk which set itself to outdrink a drinking club at Bidford­-on-Avon, and as a result of his labours in that regard to have fallen asleep under the crab tree of which a descendant is still called Shakespeare's Tree.

Range war

King of Texas is a 2002 American television movie transposing the plot of William Shakespeare's King Lear into the 19th-century American West.

Salford Priors

The village is eight miles from the popular tourist town of Stratford upon Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare and the River Avon runs near to it.

Shakespeare My Butt

British author John Donoghue's 2004 book Shakespeare My Butt!, a humorous travel memoir of quirky destinations in Great Britain, also took its name from the album; Donoghue acknowledges the band's influence in the book, and the cover features a blindfolded image of William Shakespeare in homage to the blindfolded band photo on the album cover.

Somers Isles Company

Those aboard the two ships included Sir Thomas Gates, the military commander and future governor of Jamestown, William Strachey, whose account of the wrecking may later have inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest, and John Rolfe, who would found Virginia's tobacco industry, and who left a wife and child buried in Bermuda.

Stewarton

The most famous of these non-historical references concerns the legend of Máel Coluim III the son of Donnchad I of Scotland who appears as a character in William Shakespeare's play Macbeth.

The Hobart Shakespeareans

The pinnacle of student achievement each year is the performance of a play by William Shakespeare; in the year of filming, that play was Hamlet.

Thomas Joynt

It is said that he had an excellent command of the English language, and he drew heavily on the bible, Shakespeare, and other poets.

USS Ariel

Five ships of the United States Navy have been named Ariel, after the sprite Ariel in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.

Wilbur Lucius Cross

Along with Tucker Brooke, Cross was the editor of the Yale Shakespeare; he also edited the Yale Review for almost 30 years.

William Morrison, 1st Viscount Dunrossil

In Parliament he acquired the nickname "Shakes", from his habit of quoting from the works of William Shakespeare.

Williamsville East High School

One such example is "Shakespeariment," a club dedicated to performing the works of William Shakespeare.

Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls' School

In 2008 it emerged that nine pupils had refused to sit a Key Stage 3 Shakespeare test on The Merchant of Venice because they felt the character of Shylock was antisemitic.

Zounds

The name of the band is derived from the old English minced oath coined by William Shakespeare: "zounds", which is a contraction of "God's wounds", referring to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ, formerly used as a mildly blasphemous oath.


20th Century Man

As the song progresses he criticizes modern art claiming he prefers time-honored masters such as William Shakespeare, Rembrandt van Rijn, Titian, Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Gainsborough ("You keep all your smart modern painters, I'll take Rembrandt, Titian, Da Vinci and Gainsborough").

A Witch's Tangled Hare

The cartoon makes many references to various plays by William Shakespeare (Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and As You Like It).

Anthony Jenkinson

There exists speculation that Jenkinson had an illegitimate daughter, Anne Beck or Whateley, who was at one point engaged to be married to William Shakespeare.

Burton Taylor Studio

Recent notable productions have included a staging of the play The Second Maiden's Tragedy, which Charles Hamilton claimed to be Cardenio, a lost play attributed to William Shakespeare and John Fletcher.

Cakes and Ale

Maugham drew his title from the remark of Sir Toby Belch to Malvolio in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Cakes and ale are the emblems of the good life in the tagline to the fable attributed to Aesop, "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse": "Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear".

Charles Cowden Clarke

Charles Cowden Clarke (15 December 1787 – 13 March 1877), English author and Shakespearian scholar, was born in Enfield, Middlesex.

Charles Southwell

After a lecture tour and a spell as a well-reviewed Shakespearean actor, Southwell launched the Lancashire Beacon in 1849, which also failed to last a full year.

Cuthbert Burbage

Cuthbert and his brother had financed the new venue by making five actors (William Shakespeare, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, and William Kempe) as a group, half-sharers in the profits of the house: this arrangement seems to have solidified the structure of the group, helping cement the position of the Chamberlain's Men as the preeminent troupe in London.

Dean Cochran

Cochran has performed the lead roles in a number of plays written by William Shakespeare, including Macbeth, Henry V, Hamlet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, as well as A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Burn This.

Drayton, Norfolk

Between 1432 and 1459 the village was in the possession of Sir John Fastolf, a prominent soldier in the Hundred Years' War who gave his name to Shakespeare's character Sir John Falstaff.

Eeva-Liisa Manner

She translated widely contemporary and classic literature, including names like William Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Hermann Hesse, and Franz Kafka.

Elena-Cristina Marchisano

Elena-Cristina Marchisano has performed in plays by Anton Chekhov, William Shakespeare, Maxim Gorky, Molière, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, among others.

Globe of the Great Southwest

Located in Odessa, Texas, the Globe of the Great Southwest is a replica of William Shakespeare's original Globe Theatre.

Iphis

The 17th-century publisher Humphrey Moseley once claimed to possess a manuscript of a play based on the Iphis and Ianthe story, by William Shakespeare.

Johann Joachim Eschenburg

He published a series of German translations of the principal English writers on aesthetics, such as Charles Burney, Joseph Priestley and Richard Hurd; and also produced the first complete translation in German prose of Shakespeare's plays (William Shakespear's Schauspiele, 13 vols., Zürich, 1775–1782).

Los Tarantos

The film is based on the play La historia de los Tarantos written by Alfredo Mañas, and inspired by Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.

Love Hunters

Milan Mumin wrote soundtracks for two theater plays: August Strindberg's Miss Julie and William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, performed in Novi Sad.

Luan Qerimi

He is known for his work in theater, and has performed in plays by William Shakespeare (Othello, Hamlet) and Bertold Brecht (The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui) in addition to works by Albanian dramatists such as Kolë Jakova and Ekrem Kryeziu.

Mark LaMura

He has made credentials in theatrical productions, such as Shakespeare plays and The Rise Of Dorothy Hale.

Milwaukee Youth Arts Center

The nine smaller classrooms/studio spaces and two additional rehearsal/practice rooms are named after prominent figures in theater and music: Duke Ellington, Lorraine Hansberry, Gustav Mahler, Martha Graham, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, William Shakespeare, Dmitri Shostakovich, Stephen Sondheim, Konstantin Stanislavski, Arthur Miller, and "B-3 or B-cubed," which stands for Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven.

Old Men Forget

The title is taken from a famous speech by the King in William Shakespeare's Henry V: "Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot/But he'll remember with advantages/What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,/Familiar in his mouth as household words,/Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,/Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,/Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd."

On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth

On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth is an essay in Shakespearean criticism by the English author Thomas De Quincey, first published in the October 1823 edition of The London Magazine.

Paul Morgan Donald

His musicals include Kink! a musical about 1950's pin-up icon Bettie Page,The Adventures of Wanda & Jack, an alt-country meditation on life on the road, written with partner Michele Brown, and Songs for a Dark Lady, re-assembling the words of William Shakespeare into a one-man musical about Shakespeare's tortured relationship with his muse, the Dark Lady of the Sonnets.

Rachel Carter

She played Calpurnia in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at the Oklahoma City Theatre Company on 10 November 2006.

Ryan Max Riley

According to his Yale biography, Riley has a pet polish dwarf rabbit named Thibault after a character (Tybalt) in William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet and the pet lobster of the French poet Gérard de Nerval, a pet lobster that Nerval used to walk around Paris with a blue ribbon.

Sampieru Corsu

A modern legend holds this to have been partial inspiration for William Shakespeare's Othello.

Shottery

Shottery was the childhood home of Anne Hathaway, William Shakespeare's wife, and is the location of the building known as Anne Hathaway's Cottage which is a very popular tourist destination.

Siege of Harfleur

As it forms a crucial episode in William Shakespeare's play, Henry V, the siege is portrayed in all cinematic adaptations, including the 1989 movie starring Kenneth Branagh as King Henry V. It is also fictionally portrayed in the historical novel Azincourt (2008) as well as the children's novel My Story: A Hail of Arrows: Jenkin Lloyd, Agincourt, France 1415.

The City of the Saved

Historical characters whose afterlives have been explored include the Pharaoh Akhenaten, Socrates, the Emperor Claudius, Jesus of Nazareth, Vlad the Impaler, Richard III, William Shakespeare, Adolf Hitler, Philip K Dick and Kurt Cobain.

The Empire of Glass

The Doctor, Steven, and Vicki travel to what seems to be Venice in 1609, where they meet a host of historical characters including Galileo Galilei and William Shakespeare.

The Filth and the Fury

The title of The Daily Mirror article was itself inspired by William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury which was in turn taken from a line in Shakespeare's Macbeth

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today

Twain and Warner got the name from Shakespeare's King John (1595): "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... is wasteful and ridiculous excess." Gilding gold, which is already beautiful and not in need of further adornment, is excessive and wasteful, characteristics of the age Twain and Warner wrote about in their novel.

The Passionate Pilgrim

The Passionate Pilgrim (1599) is an anthology of 20 poems collected and published by William Jaggard that were attributed to "W. Shakespeare" on the title page, only five of which are considered authentically Shakespearean.

The Wallet of Time

Its title is taken from the words of William Shakespeare: "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,..." American stage actors and actresses, most of whom had been born in Europe, of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century are the subjects covered in the publication.

Theatre Royal, Brighton

In 1806 the Prince of Wales gave Royal Assent for the theatre to be built and it opened on 27 June 1807, with a performance of William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Thomas Otway

The History and Fall of Caius Marius, produced in the same year, and printed in 1692, is a curious grafting of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet on the story of Marius as related in Plutarch's Lives.

Trip Shakespeare

Matt Wilson originally proposed that the band be named Kirk Shakespeare, after two of his heroes: James T. Kirk and William Shakespeare.

Verse drama and dramatic verse

Greek tragedy and Racine's plays are written in verse, as is almost all of Shakespeare's drama, Ben Jonson, Fletcher and others like Goethe's Faust.