what were the opinions of 16th century clergy on theater?
348222
The theater was the work of evil and should be discouraged at all costs. As well as the theater was the place that condoned lewdness. Remember women were not permitted on the stage so that the roles of the women were played by boys. Cross dressing was a serious offense, so the people who solicited the theaters were involved in supporting vice. Yet it is ironic that the royal houses supported the writers of the theaters. The clergy was therefore very careful in their criticisms and relegated them to the actual playhouses.
289899
This may shock you, but what happens on a stage is entertainment, and is not real. The audience knows that they are being entertained and that the magic on stage is not real. \n\nThe Bible is prohibiting the kind of magic that people believed to be real, and that would take people away from Gd. You also have to remember that the magic the Bible speaks of, was to control the gods. If one said the right incantation, it forced the gods or the god to do the will of the person reciting the incantation. The Bible is all about our giving into the will of Gd, letting Gd command us, not us command Gd.
859141
Could you let me know what your question is? I know Shakespeare fairly well.
876586
I think Before it was middle ages and after Renaissance.\nThat means (to me) that people just change from surviving (wars, hunger...) to enjoying (arts).
107481
Here's an analysis of it, and also a modern day English version.  I hope it helps.\n\nI like Shakespeare's work, but I understand how anyone can have difficulty with it.
534226
I had an English teacher pull me and a friend out of her 9th grade English class and tell us that she had heard we were going to try out for a play.  She told us that we should never under any circumstances get involved with the "drama" people because it would corrupt us.  Must of not bee too inspiring because now I teach theatre!!
101715
Works of Shakespeare\n\nPlays\n\nA number of Shakespeare's plays have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature. His plays cover tragedy, history, and comedy and have been translated into every major living language, in addition to being continually performed round the world.\n\nAs was normal in the period, Shakespeare based many of his plays on the work of other playwrights and recycled older stories and historical material. For example, Hamlet (c. 1601) is probably a reworking of an older, lost play (the so-called Ur-Hamlet), and King Lear is an adaptation of an older play, King Leir. For plays on historical subjects, Shakespeare relied heavily on two principal texts. Most of the Roman and Greek plays are based on Plutarch's Parallel Lives (from the 1579 English translation by Sir Thomas North[2]), and the English history plays are indebted to Raphael Holinshed's 1587 Chronicles.\n\nShakespeare's plays tend to be placed into three main stylistic groups: his early comedies and histories (such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and Henry IV, Part 1), his middle period (which includes his most famous tragedies, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear), and his later romances (such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest). The earlier plays tend to be more light-hearted, while the middle-period plays tend to be darker, addressing such issues as betrayal, murder, lust, power, and egotism. By contrast, his late romances feature a redemptive plotline with a happy ending and the use of magic and other fantastical elements. However, the borders between these groups are never clear.\n\nSome of Shakespeare's plays first appeared in print as a series of quartos, but most remained unpublished until 1623 when the posthumous First Folio was published by two actors who had been in Shakespeare's company; John Hemings and William Condell. The traditional division of his plays into tragedies, comedies, and histories follows the logic of the First Folio. However, modern criticism has labelled some of these plays "problem plays" as they elude easy categorisation, or perhaps purposefully break generic conventions, and has introduced the term "romances" for the later comedies.\n\nThere are many controversies about the exact chronology of Shakespeare's plays. In addition, the fact that Shakespeare did not produce an authoritative print version of his plays during his life accounts for part of the textual problem often noted with his plays, which means that for several of the plays there are different textual versions. As a result, the problem of identifying what Shakespeare actually wrote became a major concern for most modern editions. Textual corruptions also stem from printers' errors, compositors' misreadings or wrongly scanned lines from the source material. Additionally, in an age before standardised spelling, Shakespeare often wrote a word several times in a different spelling, contributing further to the transcribers' confusions. Modern scholars also believe Shakespeare revised his plays throughout the years, sometimes leading to two existing versions of one play.\n\nSonnets\n\nShakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 poems that deal with such themes as love, beauty, politics, and mortality. All but two first appeared in the 1609 publication entitled Shakespeare's Sonnets; numbers 138 ("When my love swears that she is made of truth") and 144 ("Two loves have I, of comfort and despair") had previously been published in a 1599 miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrim.\n\nThe conditions under which the sonnets were published is unclear. The 1609 text is dedicated to one "Mr. W. H.", who is described as "the only begetter" of the poems by the publisher Thomas Thorpe. It is not known who this man was although there are many theories. In addition, it is not known whether the publicatio
48892
Francis Bacon - who most believe helped write/wrote many of Shakespere's best works.
1046554
It was probably Christopher Marlowe..just kidding. I have no idea. It is fun to speculate. I'm sure he probably borrowed from other playwrights as was customary in the Elizabethan era. I leave these matters for the Oxford scholars.
212015
Strictly speaking, this does not answer your question, but it might be fun to keep in mind that Shakespeare (whoever he was) basically ripped off the story of Romeo and Juliet from some French novel or something that ripped it off from some other source that was an adaptation of an old Greek story (or something like that).  It might be better to judge Shakespeare by some of his other works, rather than the admitted fluff that is Romeo and Juliet.
90841
1.  Shakespeare wrote plays, not novels, so it is much better to see them performed rather than read them (unless you are talking about sonnets)\n2.  The language is difficult, and most competing forms of entertainment require far less work.\n3.  If you notice how many of the questions here are written, you will notice that the chat room / e-mail / text messaging generation does not seem to relate to the written word in the same way that old folks like me do.\n4.  High school teachers aren't always well equipped to teach Shakespeare.  \n\nAll that aside, I have been amazed at how some adolescents absolutely love Shakespeare, despite all of those disadvantages.
253534
Rehearsing Shakespeare's play, aren't we ?\n- As is, it is very bad to swallow a word, or two, midway. And it is even worse to change the script, as you like it !\nBut then, you are only an amateur actor, young Mahmud, and so you are forgiven this faux pas !
1153660
The play, a three-act farce, amused everyone.\n\nc'mon. i'm a sophmore.
775311
My favorite has always been Shakespeare. There's lots of help on the web for it, and it's just classic. To understand Shakespeare will give you lots of laughs especially with these new teen movies out that rip him off :) Plus it's just cool to read the stories that have inspired people for hundreds of years.
789320
It is possible, and maybe even probable that the play was written by a member or members of that church.  Many such plays are.
373331
*plant derivatives\n*roasted onion on ear\n*blood transfusions (from lambs)\n\nGo to these websites for more information :)\nhttp://www.springfield.k12.il.us/schools/springfield/eliz/Medbelprac.html\nhttp://www.springfield.k12.il.us/schools/springfield/eliz/elizabethanmedicine.html\n\nAlso try going to google or wikipedia and typing in "medical procedures during sixteenth century"
735407
1600's I believe. Like 1620.