Little known facts about William Shakespeare
Top 5 Less Known Facts About William Shakespeare
William Shakespear is one of the greatest personas in English literature. There is hardly anyone who hasn't heard the name of "William Shakespeare". If there were no Shakespeare, English literature would have been different. Little or more we all know about him. But there are some less known facts about William Shakespeare which very few people are aware of. Now we are going to hold up a list of Top 5 Less Known Facts About William Shakespeare.1. ‘William Shakespeare’ means ‘a weakish speller’:
William Shakespeare's name has occupied the first place in our list of Top 5 Less Known Facts About William Shakespeare. It is because of a famous quote, quoted by Shakespeare himself "What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet". One of the most curious facts about Shakespeare is his name "William Shakespeare" can be reshuffled to create the sentence "I am a weakish speller". It was a man named Donald L Holmes who first discovered the anagram. Shakespeare was writing in the era before Samuel Johnson's dictionary –which started the process of standard English spelling – so he was rather relaxed about the spellings. Shakespeare himself could not decide how to spell his own name. Here are some of the spellings which Shakespeare used to spell his own name: Shaksper, Shakespe, Shakespeare, and Shakspeare. And probably this prompted him to make the above-mentioned quote.
2. Married an older woman who was three months pregnant :
William Shakespeare's marriage has taken the second place in our list. It was the month of November 1582, when Shakespeare married an 18-year-old girl named Anne Hathway. She was the daughter of a farmer and was 3 years his senior. But the most striking fact about her is that she was three months pregnant at the time of her marriage with Shakespeare. Six months after their marriage, Shakespeare welcomed a daughter Susanna, and later twins Hamnet And Judith in February 1585. Very little is known about their after marriage, besides that, they often lived apart and Shakespeare always saw her as "second-best bed".
3. The lost years of Shakespeare's life :
The third place in our 'top 5' list is occupied by the fact which has been entitled as "The lost years". The mysterious Shakespeare remained disappeared for around seven years (1585-1592). Historians often refer to this period of his life as "The lost years". There are various stories about the so-called "the lost year". There is no documentary evidence of his life during this period of time. A popular story revolves around Shakespeare's disappearance with regard to Thomas Lucy. By oral tradition, it was reported that Shakespeare poached deer from Sir Thomas Lucy's estate, the nearby Charlecot park. It was said that he fled to London in order to escape punishment.
4. Starlings and Shakespeare :
The fourth place in our 'top 5' list is taken away by the fact about Shakespeare which is related with Starling– a little bird. Starling is one of the many birds, mentioned in Shakespeare's literary work. But one species has been causing a serious issue in America– the European Starling. In 1890, a German-American, Eugene Scheiffelin, who was a big fan of Shakespeare took the extraordinary step of importing 60 Starlings from England to New York. He was such a big fan of Shakespeare that he decided to populate America with as many as Shakespeare,s bird as possible. He did exactly that. These birds are very good at reproducing and it is estimated that there are 200 million European Starling in North America. Now they are causing serious damage to the agricultural industry which costs 1 billion dolors every year.
5. Shakespeare's extramarital affair :
And last but not least. A rumor about Shakespeare's extramarital affair holds the fifth position in our 'top 5' list. William Shakespeare was reportedly involved in a number of scandals and there is a rumor that he had a son, named William Davenant, from an extramarital affair. But as the true biographical documentation of Shakespeare is limited, there is no true factual data that proves that Shakespeare had extramarital affairs.