Life, World and Works 4: Shakespeare’s Work

William Shakespeare, who lived in England from 1564 to 1616, is one of the world’s most popular and most captivating authors. Even four hundred years after his death, his plays still attract audiences around the globe. Why is that? In this course, you’ll learn who Shakespeare was, what kinds of plays he wrote, and what makes his body of work perhaps the greatest work of art ever created.

Episode Four introduces you to the plays--the kinds of stories that Shakespeare wrote, the way he developed as a dramatist over his two-decade career, and the path his works took over four centuries to find their way into your hands. The next part picks up just at this point: now that you have the plays, what do you do with them?