A. Introduction: Welcome to Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born around 1564 and died April 1616. He was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. (Greenblatt) His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.  "He gave England a new sense of identity and characters that everyone has loved ever sense (and hated). He is one of the most famous writers of all time yet a lot of mystery shrouds his life". (Woods) The mix of popularity and mystery has caused a hailstorm of writings about the Bard that can cause more misunderstanding than education and edification. Michael Blair, the educational Director for the Shakespearean festival explains why the hailstorm of writing causes a problem in the example below.

“process (that) has led people to prove he was a number of contradictions: a diplomat, a spy, a noble, a homosexual,  a lady's man, a noble duke and even a woman, just to name a few. None of these I believe, but there is plenty of "textual research" in the plays to prove it. It is difficult to historically and textually prove such premises. Actual facts about the man Shakespeare are so nebulous that this type of speculation abounds. “

So much is written about Shakespeare but we have very little primary information about him to disprove wrong speculations. The “hailstorm” of misguided information is easy to identify. At the birth of my Shakespeare understanding, I Google searched Shakespeare and wrote my findings in my blog.

“As have been researching Shakespeare one thing I think anyone that researches Shakespeare notices is that there is a lot of information about him. When you start to look up anything on Shakespeare it takes little time to notice massive amount of writing that has been done about him and his work. The word “Shakespeare” brings up 32,700,000 results. As I have been sifting through all the writings and YouTube videos I can’t help but wonder why he is read so much.”

The dilemma is easy to see but difficult to fix. In the documentary Woods says “that we must understand the man to silence all the radicals”. The PBS documentary by Micheal Woods goes to England and researches facts about Shakespeare, with the help of locals. This paper plans to do the same but instead of going to England we will go to His art work, and instead of locals we will use respected biographies, to establish the facts to disprove radicals. We will take what we know about His life and compare it to His writings to determine that Shakespeare put more of Himself and His character in His later plays than He did His first ones, thus showing the reader how to see the Bard.  Because of the lack of primary research and specialization the best way to come to know Shakespeare's personality and character is to identify them from His plays. Just as a diamond displayed on black velvet appears more brilliant, so does the personality and character of Shakespeare shine in his later plays when his early life and rhetorical devices in His plays are compared to his last plays and later life. And we can answer the popular question as to why we read Shakespeare. 
        Understanding Shakespeare's biography is a matter of necessity for many reasons. Shakespeare is a major part of popular culture. As we come to know Shakespeare we come to know more about who we are as a society. Yet as more and more false information is written about Shakespeare, society digress because people become increasing hesitant to trust any thing but primary sources on Him, when many of Shakespeare's best biographies are based on psychoanalytical research. Learning how to learn who Shakespeare is increasingly becoming more important. Shakespeare is big business because He is so much a part of are culture.  
        As mentioned before the word Shakespeare in a Google search brings up thousands of web sites to choose from thus showing His popularity, Shakespeare is in all forms of media. Typing in the words "Business and Shakespeare" also brings up hundreds of websites and information. Just from movies alone we can see the big business. There has been 420 feature length films versions of Shakespeare's plays according to Wikipedia. And this summer the are coming out with another Shakespeare film that is projected to sell millions of movie tickets. Knowing Shakespeare is necessary to yield those large dividend hence the stress on the importance of coming to know the mind of the man that is a cattiest to this major market, William Shakespeare. Thus only by coming to know the mind of the Bard can we hope to capitalize on the huge market. This Blog explains clearly how because to come to know Shakespeare you cant just go to Wikipedia as most novices do and the reason will be explained throughout this blog.