How Shakespeare and His Works Have Changed Theater Forever

Shakespeare and his works have changed theater forever. Being one of the most well-known playwriters for a reason Shakespeare influenced many with his works. With even his first plays impacting the masses, Shakespeare almost immediately solidified his role as one of the most well-known playwriters in the world. From basing plays on all audiences to inventing entirely new genres Shakespeare will always be credited as one of the most influential playwriters in theater history.

Shakespeare’s impact on theater and playwrite has changed the world for the better.

Shakespeare’s influence was greatly impactful even during his own time. He changed many things such as the audience of the plays. Up until Shakespeare’s time, plays were only for the wealthy and educated, with Shakespeare’s writing he appealed to all. This included jokes that both rich and poor would understand. Shakespeare’s plays even had the audience engaging with the play and even on particular occasions participating audience members would get on the stage with the performers.

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Shakespeare’s plays also featured how character’s choices in the play drive the plot forward, resulting in his characters’ journeys and quests being way more interesting and dramatic for the audience. Throughout Shakespeare’s plays, you can see characters undergoing a change. This clashes with typical playwriting at that time where characters would mostly have the same or slightly varying motives towards something. In addition, Shakespeare was credited with creating entirely new genres mixing both tragedy and comedy. This is called tragicomedy.

In tragicomedies, there is often a series of unfortunate events that eventually has a happy ending. Throughout the unfortunate events leading up to the happy ending, there are jokes that are thrown in to lighten up the tone. To this day this is a big part of playwrite and even incorporated in movies.

There are so many ways Shakespeare changed the world of theater. He impacted the English language. There are so many sayings that we say not knowing they were his such as: “Dead as a doornail” or “a fool’s paradise” and many more. He even invented over 1700 words that we still use today such as “bedroom”, “shipwrecked”, “Shooting star” and many more. Imagine the English language without these words. These are all words that we use today. When there weren’t words that he wanted to say he just made up new ones. Shakespeare also had such a profound knowledge and understanding of humans, How and what we think, feel and why we act. The language in the plays may be hard to comprehend but the themes are not such as love, jealousy, greed, etc. Also, Shakspeare has even impacted famous people today such as Nelson Mandela. Mandela, while a prisoner on Robben Island, smuggled a book into his cell. A certain quote he said inspired him from the book of “Julius Ceaser” goes: “Cowards die many times before there death, the valiant never taste of death but once”.

In conclusion, Shakespeare is one of the most important and influential writers of all time. From making over 1700 words to creating entirly new genres it would be an understatement to say Shakespeare only impacted the theater. He impacted the world and the English language itself.