1. 1610

1610

The year 1610 is a completely different for Shakespeare than 1590. The reason 1610 is significant is because that is around the time He wrote his last few plays that we will be reviewing in contrast to Henry IV parts 1-3 which are The Tempest, Hamlet, and A Winters Tale. At this time Shakespeare had achieved everything that He ever desired. He enjoyed more wealth and fame than He could dream of and was given the prestigious title of a ‘gentleman” by the King which carried with it the right to carry a gun. He became the most sot after poet and playwright in England. Twenty of His then thirty plays that He wrote had been performed and loved for the most part. With the wealth and fame He had acquired He was able to provide extremely well for His family. He and His family lived in the second largest home in England and He invested his money in purchasing other homes in London too. He enjoyed being a co-owner of a newly built playhouse and had the new Kings royal patent. Shakespeare also continued acting in the plays that he wrote even though He made more than enough from writing plays. Yet He had written less plays that what later prove to be less popular in England the last 4 years. What appealed to His contemporary popular audience had changed once again and He had to change with them as he always did, yet he didn’t have the drive to learn to conform as He did when he was younger. Shakespeare's plays that he wrote earlier were still wildly famous and being preformed in the Kings court and other playhouses throughout England. However His new plays that He wrote were not as well received as His earlier ones when they were written and produced. The university educated rival poets were young and ambitious and had there target on Shakespeare's contemporary audience. Today's contemporary's see Shakespeare's final work as his greatest but Shakespeare's audience  at that time didn't. (Bevington) Only a few years after He wrote His last few plays by himself He retired and moved from London to the city of his home of youth in Stratford. There He could be free from the pressures, politics and pain of the life of a entertainer and why not? He had everything he ever wanted. There in Stratford he would die four years after he moved home in 1616 and be buried there. By the end of his career, virtually every aspect of his early style had been transformed from one of formal and rhetorical regularity to one of vast flexibility and range. (Schoenbaum)