Someone once said that there have been more words written about Shakespeare than about any other figure in history. Certainly, his appeal has endured, and shows no sign of diminishing, throughout the world for almost four hundred years. Many scholars have argued over who actually wrote Shakespeare’s plays – seemingly unwilling to believe that an ordinary actor, from yeoman stock, was able to write with such insight and such flair. Many persist in believing that his plays must have been written by an aristocrat or someone who received a far superior education than humble Will Shakespeare from a small town in the middle of England.

The plays of Shakespeare and those of his contemporaries, like Marlowe, took the art of drama to new heights during the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean era. Previously, the theatre had been constrained by the power of the Church. Plays were about Biblical stories – like the Mystery plays regularly performed in villages and towns throughout the country. The Reformation changed all of that and, under the patronage of Elizabeth 1st, probably the first monarch of England to be a true intellectual, playwrights found themselves turning to moral, political and human themes in their plays. Good and evil were present but no longer in their pure form of angel and devil. Shakespeare’s villains, for example, were multi-faceted. For the first time it was possible to see the motivations of characters and to feel some sympathy, perhaps, for a murderer, when it was understood what had driven him to murder. The plays had plots and sub-plots. Shakespeare, in particular, was noted for his comic sub-plots, which provided a little light relief in the midst of what was otherwise a tragedy.

Above all, Elizabethan playwrights became dramatists. They understood how to stimulate and keep an audience’s interest – a difficult task when the theatres were filled with large numbers of people who were standing around the stage, often moving and talking during the action.

It is true that Shakespeare borrowed stories from other people. The play Othello, for example, was probably sourced from an Italian story by Giambattista Giraldi (Cinthio) It was published in a book called Hecatommithi, published in 1565. Once again, for his play Measure for Measure, he used Cinthio’s book. Other plays had their sources in ancient literature – such as Plautus and Boccaccio. But many of his other plays were original stories.

Whether the basic plots and characters were borrowed or not, Shakespeare took his plays way beyond mere adaptations. The complexity of the characters and the beauty of the language are all down to Shakespeare’s own genius and this is why the plays have continued to be performed all over the world.

This style of drama flourished briefly during the late 16th and early 17th century before declining into the late Jacobean theatrical style, which became ever-more horrific – the public taste demanding more and more violent deaths, blood and gore. Similar to the 21st century film industry, the Jacobean theatre was overtaken by special effects, to the detriment of plots and characterisations.

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