Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: When did Shakespeare write The Merry Wives of Windsor?
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare first published in 1602, though believed to have been written in or before 1597. The Windsor of the play's title is a reference to the town of Windsor, also the location of Windsor Castle, in Berkshire, England. Though nominally set in the reign of Henry IV, the play makes no pretense to exist outside contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life. It features the character Sir John Falstaff, the fat knight who had previously been featured in "Henry IV, Part 1" and "Part 2". It has been adapted for the opera on several occasions. The play is one of Shakespeare's lesser-regarded works among literary critics.
"Romeo and Juliet" belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. The plot is based on an Italian tale translated into verse as "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet" by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in "Palace of Pleasure" by William Painter in 1567. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but expanded the plot by developing a number of supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris. Believed to have been written between 1591 and 1595, the play was first published in a quarto version in 1597. The text of the first quarto version was of poor quality, however, and later editions corrected the text to conform more closely with Shakespeare's original.
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and along with "Hamlet", is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers.
The middle grouping of Shakespeare's plays begins in 1599 with "Julius Caesar." For the next few years, Shakespeare would produce his most famous dramas, including "Macbeth," "Hamlet," and "King Lear." The plays during this period are in many ways the darkest of Shakespeare's career and address issues such as betrayal, murder, lust, power and egoism.
The most notable example of frequent and common instances of courtly love occurs in the writings of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote many sonnets to young men that he admired, praising their beauty, intelligence and virility. He addressed sonnets 1-126 to "Fair Youth"—an individual who is commonly interpreted to be male—and later, in Sonnet 20, refers to the boy as the "master-mistress of [his] passion." Additional examples of Shakespeare writing of same-sex intimacy and courtly love are within his procreation sonnets. In these poems, Shakespeare encourages a young man to marry and have children to preserve his beauty, using loving and occasionally romantic language to communicate his message. Additionally, it is believed by many scholars that Shakespeare's famous Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") is also about a man, as he dedicated his book of sonnets to an unidentified "Mr. W.H."
Shakespeare's sonnets were published in 1609 and were the last of his non-dramatic works to be composed. It is not certain when each of the sonnets were written but there is evidence to suggest that Shakespeare wrote his sonnets on a private scale. William Wordsworth even suggests that the sonnets were how Shakespeare "unlocked his heart". There are only two sonnets that Shakespeare writes that are specifically about music, and those are Sonnet 8 and Sonnet 128. No one is certain if Shakespeare wrote the sonnets in order or if they should form a complete sequence. However it is clear that they offer an insight that "Shakespeare's capacity to represent the imaginative states of other people".
Mary Tudor is a 1935 history play by the British writer Wilfrid Grantham. It portrays the reign of the Tudor Queen Mary I of England during the sixteenth century. It's West End run at the Playhouse Theatre lasted for 143 performances from 12 December 1935 to 18 April 1936. Flora Robson as Mary and Marius Goring as her husband Philip of Spain were particularly praised for their performances. The cast also included Torin Thatcher, Annie Esmond and Joyce Bland.
Shakespeare's sonnets are poems that William Shakespeare wrote on a variety of themes. When discussing or referring to Shakespeare’s sonnets, it is almost always a reference to the 154 sonnets that were first published all together in a quarto in 1609; however there are six additional sonnets that Shakespeare wrote and included in the plays "Romeo and Juliet", "Henry V" and "Love's Labour's Lost".
Sonnet 109 was originally published in 1609 with the rest of Shakespeare's sonnets as a collection dedicated to "Mr. W.H." and now referred to as the 1609 Quarto or Quarto 1. Sonnet 109 belongs to the group of sonnets (1-126) that are commonly categorized as "sonnets to a fair youth." This group of sonnets, according to Arthur F. Marotti, "consists of poems written to a younger man who is clearly treated as a patron". The identity of this young patron, who is likely the "Mr. W.H." to whom Shakespeare dedicated the sonnets, is considered by many historians and Shakespearean analysts to be Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. Martin Green supports this hypothesis with the evidence that Shakespeare never wrote dedications in of his works to any person besides Wriothesley. Shakespeare's relationship with this young man as interpreted from this group of sonnets is not entirely clear; his words of love and affection could be a bid for more favor, or as Judith Kegan Gardiner maintains, a true love that surprised and startled Shakespeare. Even if Shakespeare's sonnets are accepted as an expression of genuine love, there is still no consensus in academia whether this love was sexual in nature. Many critics argue that Shakespeare was homosexual, while others maintain that he was heterosexual, including the noteworthy Shakespeare analyst A. L. Rowse, who has claimed "Shakespeare is the bawdiest of the Elizabethan dramatists, with the natural bawdy of the highly sexed normal heterosexual".
Besides the subplot involving the Earl of Gloucester and his sons, the principal innovation Shakespeare made to this story was the death of Cordelia and Lear at the end; in the account by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Cordelia restores Lear to the throne, and succeeds him as ruler after his death. During the 17th century, Shakespeare's tragic ending was much criticised and alternative versions were written by Nahum Tate, in which the leading characters survived and Edgar and Cordelia were married (despite the fact that Cordelia was previously betrothed to the King of France). As Harold Bloom states: "Tate's version held the stage for almost 150 years, until Edmund Kean reinstated the play's tragic ending in 1823."
The poems "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece", first published in 1593 and 1594 under the name "William Shakespeare", proved highly popular for several decades – with "Venus and Adonis" published six more times before 1616, while "Lucrece" required four additional printings during this same period. By 1598, they were so famous, London poet and sonneteer Richard Barnefield wrote:
Sonnet 102 is one of the 154 sonnets written by English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is one of the Fair Youth sonnets, in which Shakespeare writes of an unnamed youth with whom the poet is enamored. Sonnet 102 is among a series of seemingly connected sonnets, from Sonnet 100 to Sonnet 103, in which the poet speaks of a silence between his Muse and himself. The exact date of writing is unknown, and there is contention among scholars about when they were written. Paul Hammond among other scholars believes that sonnets 61-103 were written primarily during the early 1590s, and then being edited or added to later, during the early 1600s (decade). Regardless of date of writing, it was published later along with the rest of the sonnets of the 1609 Quarto.
The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet ultimately sprang from Ovid's story. Here the star-crossed lovers cannot be together because Juliet has been engaged by her parents to another man and the two families hold an ancient grudge. As in Pyramus and Thisbe, the mistaken belief in one lover's death leads to consecutive suicides. The earliest version of Romeo and Juliet was published in 1476 by Masuccio Salernitano, while it mostly obtained its present form when written down in 1524 by Luigi da Porto. Salernitano and Da Porto both are thought to have been inspired by Ovid and Boccaccio's writing. Shakespeare's most famous 1590s adaptation is a dramatization of Arthur Brooke's 1562 poem "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet", itself a translation of a French translation of Da Porto's novella.
"Romeo and Juliet" had a profound influence on subsequent literature. Before then, romance had not even been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy. In Harold Bloom's words, Shakespeare "invented the formula that the sexual becomes the erotic when crossed by the shadow of death". Of Shakespeare's works, "Romeo and Juliet" has generated the most—and the most varied—adaptations, including prose and verse narratives, drama, opera, orchestral and choral music, ballet, film, television, and painting. The word "Romeo" has even become synonymous with "male lover" in English.
In Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro", which premiered in 1786 with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, the comic plot revolves around the successful efforts of the young bride and groom, Figaro and Susanna, to block the efforts of the unfaithful Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna. To achieve his aim, the frustrated Count threatens to reinstitute "droit du seigneur". It was based on a play by Pierre Beaumarchais.
In 1786, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed an opera, "Le Nozze di Figaro", based on "The Marriage of Figaro", with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte based on the play. Several composers including Paisiello in 1782 wrote operas based on "The Barber of Seville". Rossini's 1816 version is his most successful work and still often performed. In 1966, Darius Milhaud composed an opera, "La mère coupable", based on "The Guilty Mother".
The primary source of Shakespeare’s sonnets is a quarto published in 1609 titled "Shakespeare’s Sonnets." It contains 154 sonnets, which are followed by the long poem "A Lover's Complaint". Thirteen copies of the quarto have survived in fairly good shape from the 1609 edition, which is the only edition; there were no other printings. There is evidence in a note on the title page of one of the extant copies that the great Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn bought a copy in June 1609 for one shilling.
Sonnet 18 is one of the best-known of the 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
The Marriage of Figaro (, ), K. 492, is an opera buffa (comic opera) in four acts composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786. The opera's libretto is based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, "La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro" ("The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro"), which was first performed in 1784. It tells how the servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married, foiling the efforts of their philandering employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity.
Malwa was the centre of Sanskrit literature during and after the Gupta period. The region's most famous playwright, Kalidasa, is considered to be the greatest Indian writer ever. His first surviving play is "Malavikagnimitra" (Malavika and Agnimitra). Kalidasa's second play, his masterpiece, is the Abhijñānaśākuntalam, which tells the story of king Dushyanta, who falls in love with a girl of lowly birth, the lovely Shakuntala. The last of Kalidasa's surviving plays is "Vikramuurvashiiya" ("Urvashi conquered by valour"). Kalidasa also wrote the epic poems "Raghuvamsha" ("Dynasty of Raghu"), "Ritusamhāra" and "Kumarasambhava" ("Birth of the war god"), as well as the lyric "Meghaduuta" ("The cloud messenger").
Like all Shakespeare's works, "Shakespeare's Sonnets" have been reprinted many times. Prominent editions include:
There are sonnets written by Shakespeare that occur in his plays. They differ from the 154 sonnets published in the 1609, because they may lack the deep introspection, for example, and they are written to serve the needs of a performance, exposition or narrative.
In Elizabethan England, Sir John Falstaff is embroiled in attempting to have a love affair with several women, which soon turns into a humorous adventure.The film is an adaptation of the 1849 opera "The Merry Wives of Windsor" composed by Otto Nicolai with a libretto by Salomon Hermann Mosenthal which was based on William Shakespeare's play of the same title. It was made by the state-owned DEFA studio on a large budget.
Support for the Garter theory is divided. If it is correct, it would probably mean that Shakespeare wrote "The Merry Wives of Windsor" between "Henry IV, Part 1" and "Part 2". Critics have trouble believing this for several reasons. One is that Pistol and Shallow are introduced as new characters in "Henry IV, Part 2", but in "The Merry Wives" their connection to Falstaff is taken for granted. Also, there are no references to any of the major events from Falstaff's 15th-century exploits from the history plays, such as the rebellion ("Henry IV, Part 1" & "2"), in "Merry Wives". T.W. Craik suggests that Shakespeare was forced to interrupt work on "Henry IV, Part 2", having written most of it, because "The Merry Wives" had to be completed quickly. Another possible explanation comes from the epilogue to "Henry IV, Part 2", which promises to "continue the story, with Sir John in it". Sir John does not appear in "Henry V", so "Merry Wives" could have been written to make good on the pledge.
The Merry Wives of Windsor is an English play by William Shakespeare which was first published in 1602.
Unlike later such theorists, Hart did not suggest that there was a conspiracy to hide the identity of the true authors, merely that evidence of their identities had been lost by the time the plays were published. Hart asserts that Shakespeare had been "dead for one hundred years and utterly forgotten" when in 1709 old playscripts were discovered and published under his name by Nicholas Rowe and Thomas Betterton. The error occurred because Shakespeare, as a shareholder in The King's Men, owned the manuscripts used by the theater. He speculates that only "The Merry Wives of Windsor" was Shakespeare's own work and suggests that Ben Jonson wrote most of "Hamlet", Shakespeare himself contributing only the grave-digging scene.