William Shakespeare: Playwright & Poet

      For ELA, we have been doing a project based on someone, and I picked William Shakespeare. I picked him since it fascinated me how he made so many poems and plays. It must have been a lot of dedication, and I wanted to find out how his life was.

       The book I picked was William Shakespeare: Playwright and Poet by Pamela Holl Nettleton. This book explained his early life and his success. Something that surprised me when I read this is that he left school because his father did not have enough money. In the book, it says, "By the time William was about 13, his father was struggling to make enough money for his family." This shows how even though life was hard, he was still dedicated to his work. This surprised me since I thought you needed a good education to be good at writing, but it showed me that as long as you are dedicated, you can succeed. 

     I also wanted to know what inspired him to write. On page 30, it says, "They read the great literary classics and studied Aesop's Fables. As an older student, William probably read classical writers such as Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid. William's love of these classics shows up years later in many of the plots of plays he wrote as an adult." This shows how he built interest in school. I liked learning about who inspired him, and I'd like to know why these writers attracted him since he wrote similar plots about them.