It is likely by 1600 Shakespeare had completed his thirty-seven plays-The Taming of the Shrew , Romeo and Juliet , A Midsummer Night’s Dream , The Merchant of Venice , and Julius Caesar .From 1600 to 1607 he wrote all masterpieces-Twelfth Night , Hamlet , Othello , King Lear , Macbeth , Antony and Cleopatra.
Shakespeare’s plays are divided into three groups- comedies , histories , and tragedies.The comedies are romantic fantasies , designed to delight and amuse their audiences. The histories illustrate the moral lessons to be learned from the crimes of ambitious and treacherous leaders of state.The tragedies deal with death , mortality , and destruction and show how the breaking of a moral law inevitably leads to disaster.
Most of Shakespeare’s plays were first performed at the Globe , a theatre located across the Thames River from London in the suburb of Southwark.The Globe was an octagonal building , with a thatched roof covering only the perimeter of the area.Under the roof were three levels of galleries that surrounded a yard about sixty-five feet in diameter.The galleries looked down on the stage , a rectangular platform of twenty-seven by forty-three feet that occupied about a third of the yard at one end.The main stage had a large trap door through which actors who played the parts of ghosts and spirits could rise and disappear. At the back of the main stage was a small curtained inner stage used for indoor scenes.Above the inner stage were two galleries.The first level could be used as a balcony , bedroom , or castle wall. Musicians performed from the second level , and sound effects , such as thunder or the ringing of a bell , came from a hut on top of the stage roof.
Costumes in the Shakespearean theatre were always colourful and elaborate versions of Elizabethan “modern dress,” whether they were for Macbeth , set in the eleventh century , or for Julius Caesar , in 44 B.C.No women appeared on the stage ; women’s and children’s roles were played by boys . Scenery was almost non-existent
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