【励学个性化教育集团】SAT写作素材：名人简介之莎士比亚 （Shakespeare）

English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, who lived in the late 1500s and early 1600s, is regarded as the greatest dramatist in the history of English literature. His plays include historical works such as Richard II, comedies, including As You Like it, and tragedies, such as Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.

He had a profound understanding of human nature and human behavior, and he was able to communicate this knowledge through the wide variety of characters he created in his plays.

Though recognized in much of the world as the greatest of all dramatists, he surprisingly didn't attend the university after graduated from a grammar school due to taking the responsibility of the eldest son in family and becoming an apprentice to learn the business in his father's shop.

The school's rigorous curriculum was based largely on the study of Latin and the major classical writers, which influenced Shakespeare's writing a lot. But it was the mundane life experience during his apprentice time provided those vivid images in Shakespeare's mind.

In late 1580s, Shakespeare went to London and worked in the theatre as a handy man, who sometimes prompted the stage lines to the actors or played an insignificant role in the play. His talent of drama writing first appeared when he tried to revise the old scripts because the theatre's immediate requirements of different scripts everyday.

During the summer of 1592 to the spring of 1594 because of plague, many theaters were closed, which led to Shakespeare's losing job. He seized the chance to read a large number of books and improved himself, which eventually made him stand out conspicuously after the plague.