13) What three types of plays did Shakespeare write? Give examples

Shakespeare wrote tragedies from the beginning of his career. One of his earliest plays was the Roman tragedy Titus Andronicus, which he followed a few years later with Romeo and Juliet. However, his most admired tragedies were written in a seven-year period between 1601 and 1608. These include his four major tragedies Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, along with Antony & Cleopatra, Coriolanus and the lesser-known Timon of Athens and Troilus and Cressida.

List of comedies by William Shakespeare: The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew

All's Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, The Two Noble Kinsmen.

Several of Shakespeare's comedies, such as Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well, have an unusual tone with a difficult mix of humor and tragedy which has led them to be classified as problem plays. It is not clear whether the uneven nature of these dramas is due to an imperfect understanding of Elizabethan humor and society, a fault on Shakespeare's part, or a deliberate attempt by him to blend styles and subvert the audience's expectations. By the end of Shakespeare's life, he had written seventeen comedies.

Shakespeare's one Scottish history, Macbeth, set in the mid-11th century during the reigns of Duncan I of Scotland and Edward the Confessor, pre-dates the English histories: King John, Edward III (attributed), Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, Henry V, Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2, Henry VI, Part 3, Richard III, Henry VIII.

Later critics have called some of the plays "Tragicomedies", "Romances" or "Problem Plays" because they do not readily fit into the original three categories. In this context "Romance" is not the same as "Love Story."

14) What is the meter and rhyme used in most Shakespeare plays?

While many passages in Shakespeare's plays are written in prose, he almost always wrote a large proportion of his plays and poems in iambic pentameter.

Iambic pentameter is meter that Shakespeare nearly always used when writing in verse. Most of his plays were written in iambic pentameter, except for lower-class characters who speak in prose.

Iambic Pentameter has: Ten syllables in each line

Five pairs of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables

Each pair of syllables is called an iambus. You’ll notice that each iambus is made up of one unstressed and one stressed beat (ba-BUM).

Rhythmic Variations

In his plays, Shakespeare didn’t always stick to ten syllables. He often played around with iambic pentameter to give color and feeling to his character’s speeches. This is the key to understanding Shakespeare's language.

15) What Shakespeare play is this quote from? What does it mean? “Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.”

Caesar's wife, Calpurnia, has had dreams in which her husband was murdered. At Caesar's request, the priests have sacrificed an animal which, upon being cut open, was discovered to have no heart. And so they sent word to Caesar that he should stay home on this fateful day, the ides of March, which the Soothsayer had already warned him about earlier in the play. Caesar muses, ""What can be avoided /Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?" In other words, if the gods are predicting that he is going to die, then how will he get around it? He goes on to encourage his wife with the now-famous lines, finding it strange that men fear death so much, when death is inevitable in every man's life. He has been a strong and brave man, and has not wasted precious hours of his life anticipating tragedy.

Cowards have weak natures, they are not brave. They live in fear and are afraid of risk, so every move or decision they make is full of danger to them and they agonize over the possibility of harm coming to them...that is the meaning of many deaths. But the valiant are brave in nature and possess and display courage; they are able to deal with danger and fear rationally without flinching. Therefore they do not expect or fear death in any situation although they may well know it is a possibility.

16) What Shakespeare play is this quote from? What does it mean? “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool”

This comes from Shakespeare's comedy “As You Like It” and means that a fool is foolish because he doesn't know about what he is ignorant of whereas the wise man, however knowledgeable, is well aware of the far greater expanse of knowledge about which he is ignorant.

17) What Shakespeare play is this quote from? What does it mean? “"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

The meaning of this quote is that often when things seem wrong, confusing or unjust that there is more to a system than meets the eye, levels of truth, meaning and complexity not visible to the casual observer. In the specific case, Horatio who was part of the unfolding plot was unable to see the rationale for the ghosts’ behavior, which was part of the larger plot.

18)What happened during the Civil War and the Protectorate in England? How did it affect literature?

19) What is the Restoration? Who is the famous writer from this time?

The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The term Restoration may apply both to the actual event by which the monarchy was restored, and to the period immediately following the event. A famous writer of the Restoration times is John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674), who was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth (republic) of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost.