Samuel Beckett was born in a suburb of Dublin in 1906. He came from a Protestant, Anglo-Irish background. He went to the Portora Royal School, the same school attended by Oscar Wilde, in Northern Ireland at the age of 14. He studied at Trinity College, where he received his bachelor’s degree and became a teacher for a brief period of time. In his youth he would periodically experience severe depression keeping him in bed until mid-day, and this experience influenced his writing later on.

Oscar Wilde’s fifth play was called A Florentine Tragedy and was published in 1893 but set in the 16th century. It tells the story of a wealthy merchant, Simone, who finds his wife, Bianca, in the arms of the young heir to the throne of Florence, Guido. Guido comes to Simone’s house to claim Bianca as his own and promises a fortune to Simone in exchange for her hand. While Simone is greedy for the money, isn’t swayed easily and strangles Guido instead.

Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright who wrote nine plays between 1879 and 1894. He was born in Dublin and studied at both Trinity College in Dublin as well as Magdalen College in Oxford. He settled in London and became known for his extravagant clothes, long hair, and absurd views on art, literature, and morality. He flaunted his homosexual affairs and was sentenced into prison for ‘gross indecency’, leading to public humiliation, poor health, and bankruptcy. When he was released he left for France and remained there until his death in 1900.

Passion plays are religious dramas that originated in the medieval times. They deal with the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Early plays originated in Europe during the middle ages and were a way to teach people of Christianity. They were originally performed by monks entirely in Latin, but eventually the community members started joining and switched to performing in the common language. By the fifteenth century, passion plays had shifted entirely from church rituals to dramatic performances.

Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. in ancient Greece and was one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Among the many impacts he made on our understanding of human life was his interpretation of theater. Aristotle believed that theatre came from the human desire to imitate situations around us and looked at it as a recreation rather than an invention. He also believed that the purpose of theatre is to arouse feelings of pity and fear in the audience (called catharsis), which results in people becoming stronger emotionally.

William Shakespeare was the third child of John and Mary Shakespeare. He had seven siblings, but only 5 of them survived to become adults. His father was John Shakespeare, a town official of Stratford and a local businessman who made items like gloves and purses. His mother was Mary Arden, who was the youngest in her family and inherited much of her father’s land and farming estate when he passed.

No one knows when Shakespeare was born. We only know that he was baptized on Wednesday, April 26th, 1564. Because of this, his day of birth is considered to be 23rd, three days earlier. Growing up, Shakespeare attended the King’s New grammar School and most likely did not attend a university. He married Anne Hathaway and had three kids, named Susanna, Hamnet, and Judith. Hamnet and Judith were twins. Hamnet was his only son, and he died at age 11. This was around the time that he was writing Romeo and Juliet, his greatest tragedy. His play Hamlet was also likely named after his son. Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet are considered to be the greatest plays that he wrote.

Not everyone knows exactly what Broadway is. Broadway is a 13 mile street in New York City’s Theatre District, and any venue with 500 seats or more is called a Broadway Theatre. Today there are 41 Broadway theatres. The street runs through Manhattan and the Bronx and eventually ends in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Native Americans carved the Wickquasgeck trail through Manhattan Island long before Europeans arrived. The Dutch widened and renamed the road in the 17th century. When the English took over in 1664, they renamed it Broadway for its unusual width.

Medieval theatre became popular in the 1350s and ended around the 16th century with the rise of Shakespeare and acting troupes. Productions were not held in theaters, they were often performed outside of churches, on top of pageant wagons, or in the middle of towns, taverns, houses, or halls. Women were not often allowed to act in plays in most counties except for France. As time progressed, medieval theatres became more and more secular. But the real factor that led to a boom in medieval theatre was the emergence of guilds.

The medieval times, or the middle ages, lasted between the 5th and 15th centuries. It was divided into three periods: the early middle ages, the high middle ages, and the late middle ages. Medieval theatre didn’t begin until the 1200s, which takes us back the the high middle ages.