Carmen María's English Blog

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This year´s four hundredth anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) is an opportunity to commemorate one of the greatest playwrights of all time, whose works have been translated into over 100 languages and studied by half the world’s schoolchildren.

William Shakespeare was born on the 23rd of April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, in England. His father was a glove maker, and they were not poor. William was the eldest boy in the family, so he had to help his father.

One day, he went to a market with his younger brother, Edmund. Edmund slipped because it was muddy, and a young woman helped him to stand up. Her name was Anne Hathaway. After this meeting at the market, William and Anne fell in love, and they married in 1582. Anne gave birth to their first child, Susanna, in 1583. At first, William and Anne lived with William’s parents, but they moved to another house in 1584. Their son Hamnet, was born in 1585, but sadly he died when he was only eleven. In 1587 William moved to London. He asked his brother to look after his wife and children, and he sent money home to Stratford and visited when he could.

During his career, he worked as an actor, and he also wrote thirty seven plays: seventeen comedies, ten histories and ten tragedies, as well as poems. Shakespeare became rich and famous, and he had enough money to buy an expensive house in Stratford, called ‘New Place’. His company of actors had enough money for a new theatre, The Globe, built in 1599. During a play in 1613, a fire started and The Globe burnt down. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but Shakespeare seems to have written less in the years after the accident. William only came back to Stratford for the last five years of his life. He died on his birthday, aged 52, in 1616, and was buried in a church in Stratford.

The Globe

Three thousand new words and phrases all first appeared in print in Shakespeare’s plays. Words like “addiction,” “motionless,” “leapfrog” – and phrases like “once more unto the breach,” and “heart of gold” – have all passed into our language today.Shakespeare also pioneered innovative use of grammatical form and structure

I know that Shakespeare is not easy to read. What about starting with a sonnet?
This is sonnet 116, it tells you about the strength of true love. In case you find it too difficult...read the Spanish translation below.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Déjame que el enlace de dos almas fieles

No admita impedimentos. No es amor el amor

Que cambia cuando un cambio encuentra,

O que se adapta con el distanciamiento a distanciarse.

¡Oh, no!, es un faro eternamente fijo

que desafía a las tempestades sin nunca estremecerse;

es la estrella para todo barco sin rumbo,

cuya valía se desconoce, aun tomando su altura.

No es amor bufón del Tiempo, aunque los rosados labios

Y mejillas corva guadaña sigan:

El amor no varía con sus breves horas y semanas,

Sino que se afianza incluso hasta en el borde del abismo.

Si esto es erróneo y se me puede probar,

Yo nunca nada escribí, ni nadie nunca amó.

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