Shakespeare Challenge

William Shakespeare is renowned as a playwright but was also a poet and actor. He is regarded by many people, as the greatest English writer in the English language He was born 444 years ago in Stratford-upon-Avon in England, sometime in April, 1564 while the exact date of his birth is not known he was baptised on the 26th of April and died 52 years later on the 23 of April, 1616. Though he is dead, his famous works including Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew, still live on.

He was most famous for his 38 plays but he wrote sonnets and poems too. One of his sonnets is called Sonnet 18.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Here is a version of Sonnet 18 describing the poem in modern English:

Shall I compare you to a summer's day?

You are more lovely, pleasant and more even tempered,

Rough winds do shake the little buds of May:(Spring in Australia)

Summer doesn't last long,

Sometimes the sun is too hot,

Often it's cloudy,

Everything that is pretty becomes less prettier,

Becomes less prettier by chance or the changing of the seasons,

But you will stay like a summer's day forever,

You won't lose your prettiness,

You won't die,

You will live forever,

As long as people can live and read,

As long as there are people existing they will be able to read this poem which is about you and so you will stay alive.

His plays are categorised in tragedies, comedies and histories. The Taming of the Shrew is known as a comedy. It is about how a rich noblewoman, named Katherine, who is a very bad tempered scold who meets a fortune hunter man named Petruchio. He decides to 'tame' Katherine by embarrassing her in a number of ways and makes her an obedient wife. The story ends happily as Katherine is no longer rude and as always, they lived happily ever after. This is one of the many great stories written by William Shakespeare.

In his plays, Shakespeare has made some famous quotes. Here are a few:

'To be or not to be - that is the question...' Hamlet

'I have done nothing but care for thee,
Of thee, my dear one, thee my daughter...' The Tempest

'A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!' Richard III

'What's done is done' Macbeth

'All the world's a stage' As You Like It

'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?' Romeo and Juliet


Whether it is tomorrow, decades or centuries, William Shakespeare's work will live on forever.





Painting of William Shakespeare from the National Portrait Gallery, London.