Raphael Holinshed (died c. 1580) is one of the mysterious souls from the English Renaissance who left a lasting mark but almost no other trace of himself. He published in 1577 the Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a massive compilation of history and myth ...
Geoffrey of Monmouth Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100—c. 1155), an English bishop and scholar, wrote what he called a translation of an ancient history of English kings which told largely legendary stories of English kings from the original Brutus, held to be a descendant of ...
Shakespeare borrowed plots and ideas from other material for the bulk of his writing. His two long poems tell old tales, and only four of the commonly recognized 38 plays have no known single-organizing precedent (Love’s Labor Lost, Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Winter’s Tale, Tempest). ...
Shakespeare’s Sources As was his general habit, Shakespeare borrowed his two plots from previous sources. Holinshed reported in his Chronicles (1577) a story that dates back as far as Geoffrey of Monmouth (1136) in which a supposedly real King Leir who ruled England around 800 ...
A Door Into the World of King Lear. Are we inside or out? (from Iyart.com) Shakespeare Shakespeare was born around 23 April 1564 at Stratford-on-Avon. He moved a hundred miles away to London in his early twenties, where he wrote 37 or 38 extant plays ...
