What is comparative politics and it is strategies?Comparative politics is the take a look at and settlement of home Politics throughout Countries.It is particularly Inter Disclipinary.It is a subfield of Politics.It usually goal to Promote assessment in politics entities.It makes a speciality of Internal Structure.(like Parliament and executives),actor(voters,parties,hobby groups),processes(coverage making, communication,political culture).In totality,we are able to say that via way of means of Comparative politics we spotlight the inner Political Structure of every state;Their governing functions,what and the way choices are made and additionally how political areas are made,who have an effect on the political choices,how authorities engage with population.According to John Blondel, Comparative politics is”thee take a look at of styles of country wide governments withinside the cutting-edge world”.Comparative Governments goal is to sell universally legitimate concept.In different words,we are able to say that Comparative politics is the subfield of political technology that compares the pursuit of electricity throughout countries.Need for Comparative politics-1.We want Comparative politics to higher recognize how positive regimes paintings for functions of global members of the family and overseas coverage.2.It permits us to examine from different countries.3.One may have a deeper know-how of Merits and Demerits.4.It permits us to emerge as greater knowledgeable citizens.5.It sharpen our important thinking.Methods of Comparative Politics There are strategies of Comparative politics which are as follows- A.Traditional technique-It is particularly typical earlier than Fifties and conventional technique specially focus on theoretical take a look at of subject.i.e.,numerous kinds of organization or authorities,and their powers.Features of Traditional technique-1.Traditional technique is particularly slender in scope.2.Traditional technique is specially primarily based totally on Formal and legal.3.Traditional technique is procial.4.Tradtional tactics are by and large normative and stresses on cost of politics.5.It made little or no strive to narrate concept and research.There are many kinds of Traditional tactics-1.Philosophical Approach2.Historical Approach3.Institutional Approach4.Legal ApproachB.Modern Method-The political philosophers afterward found out the want to take a look at politics from a brand new viewpoint.These tactics are specially worried with medical take a look at of politics.The first innovation on this regard comes with the appearance of Behavioural Revolution in political technology.Features of Modern Approaches-1.These tactics draw end from empirical data2.These tactics pass past the take a look at of political systems and it is ancient analysis.3.Modern tactics consider in inter-disciplinary take a look at.4.They pressure medical strategies of take a look at and try to draw medical conclusions in Political technology.There are many kinds of Modern approach-1.Political monetary approach2.System approach3.Behavioural approach4.Structural-Functional
Category: Education
Political Parties
Political parties are groups of voluntary or organized individuals who share the same political views, seek political power through constitutional means, and work to promote national interests.
There are four types of political parties in modern democracies:
(i) A conservative political party that believes in the status quo.
(ii) A reactionary party clinging to an old socio-economic and political system.
(iii) The Liberal Party trying to reform the existing system.
(iv) A radical political party that aims to establish a new order by overthrowing existing systems. These parties are called left-wing, centrist, and right-wing parties. For example, in India, CPI and CPM are examples of left-wing parties, and centrist parliament and BJP are examples of right-wing parties.
There are three types of party systems in the world
(i) A one-party system in which there is only one ruling party, such as Eastern European countries and former communist countries such as the Soviet Union, and opposition is not allowed.
(ii) A two-party system with two major political parties, such as the United States and the United Kingdom
India’s party system
Multi-party system Numerous parties due to the continental size of the country, the diverse nature of Indian society, the introduction of a universal adult party system, the unique nature of the political process, and other factors.
Lack of a clear idealism With the exception of BJP and the two Communist Party, all other parties do not have a well-defined idealism. They are idealistically close to each other. Therefore, politics became problem-based rather than idealistic, and pragmatism replaced the attachment to principles.
Panchayati Raj
The term Panchayati system refers to India’s system of local autonomy. It was introduced in all states of India through the legislature law to build grassroots democracy. The Constitution was enacted by the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act of 1992.
In January 1957, the Government of India appointed a committee to investigate the functions of community development programs and national dissemination services and propose measures for their better functions. This committee was chaired by Balwant Rai G Mehta. The community submitted a report in November 1957, encouraging the establishment of a “democratic decentralization” scheme that eventually became known as the “Panchayati system”.
Here are some recommendations from this community-
1. Establishing a three-tiered Panchayati system: village-level Gram Panchayat, block-level Panchayati Samiti,and district-level Zila parishad. These three levels should be organically linked through indirect elections.
2. All planning and development activities should be outsourced to these agencies.
3. The village Panchayat should be formed by directly elected representatives, and the Panchayati Samiti and Zila parishad should be formed by indirectly elected members.
4. The district collector must be the head of zila Parishad.
5. Panchayat Samiti should be the executive body and Zila Parishad should be the advisory, coordinating and supervisory body.
6. These agencies should be given sufficient resources to enable them to carry out their missions and fulfill their responsibilities.
Rajasthan was the first state to establish the Panchayati system. The program was started on October 2, 1959 by the Prime Minister of the Nagpur district. Most states established the Panchayati system by the mid-1960s, but there were variations from state to state in terms of number of levels, relative positions of Samity and Parishad, tenure, function, and finances. For example, Rajasthan adopted a three-layer system and Tamil Nadu adopted a two-layer system.
Many research teams, committees, and working groups have been appointed to investigate various aspects of the Panchayati system.
1. 1960 V.R.-chaired Panchayati Statistics Rationalization Committee
2.S.D. Mishra-chaired 1961 Working Group on Panchayati and Co-operatives.
3. 1962 research team on Nyaya Panchayats chaired by V. Iswaran.
4. A 1963 research team on the position of Gramsabha in the Panchayati movement, chaired by R.R. Diwakar.
5. The 1965 Panchayati Election Commission, chaired by K. Santhanam.
5 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD READ MAHATMA GANDHI’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Autobiography is the story of a person’s life written by that person. We all want to read about successful people and know what they did different or how were they able to achieve so much in life and when it comes to autobiographies the best that I can recall so far is of Mahatma Gandhi ,the FATHER OF OUR NATION.So ,have you ever tried to know more about his life other than what you have studied in books? If no, then today I will be giving you 5 reasons why you should read MAHATMA GANDHI JI’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY titled The story of MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH. So, let’s begin.
- He talks about truth in the most harsh manner possible. He says that ” The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should be so humble that even the dust could crush him . Only then, and not till then will he have a glimpse of truth. He further says ” In judging myself I shall try to be as harsh as truth, as I want others also to be “.
- He talks about one incident from his childhood where some guest had come on a visit of inspection to his school and the guest had asked students to write five words as spelling test. One of the word was ‘Kettle’ and Gandhiji miss spelt it and he says “the teacher tried to prompt me with the point of his boot , but I would not be prompted . It was beyond me to see that he wanted me to copy the spelling from my neighbour’s slate, for I had thought that the teacher was there to supervise us against copying. The result was that all the boys, except myself, were found to have spelt every word correctly. Only I had been stupid. The teacher tried later to bring this stupidity home to me. but without effect. I never could learn the art of ‘copying’.
Yet the incident did not in the least diminish my respect for my teacher. I was by nature blind to the faults of elders. Later I came to know of many other failings of this teacher, but my regard for him remained the same. For I had learnt to carry out the orders of elders, not to scan their actions.” Here , we learn how respectful Gandhi ji was towards his elders and teachers.
3. Gandhi ji also talks about how once he stole a bit of gold from his brother’s armlet when he was about 15 years old. Later on , he was very guilty and decided to write out the confession to his father . He says “
A clean confession, combined with a promise
never to commit the sin again, when offered before the one who has the right to receive it is the purest type of repentance. I know that my confession
made my father feel absolutely safe about me, and increased his affection for me beyond
measure.”
4. And the best thing that he tells is ” Let every youth take a leaf out of my book and make it a point to account for everything that comes into and goes out of his pocket, and like me he is sure to be a gainer in the end”.
5. Last but not the least he says ,” When every hope is gone, WHEN HELPERS FALL AND COMFORTS FLEE, I find that help arrives somehow from I know not where . Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition ; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal.
At the end , I just want to say that these were just the 5 things that i felt important but once you read that book you will realize that it is full of many life lessons and is a must read book.
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights, activist. Maya Angelou, the original name was Marguerite Annie Johnson and she was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Although born in St. Louis, Angelou spent much of her childhood in the care of her paternal grandmother in rural Stamps, Arkansas. When she was not yet eight years old, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend and told of it, after which he was murdered; the traumatic sequence of events left her almost completely mute for several years. This early life is the focus of her first autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) which gained critical acclaim and a National Book Award nomination. Subsequent volumes of autobiography include Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002), and Mom & Me & Mom (2013).

In the 1950s, Angelou found encouragement for her literary talents at the Harlem Writers’ Guild. About the same time, Angelou landed a featured role in a State Department-sponsored production of George Gershwin’s folk opera Porgy and Bess; with this troupe, she toured 22 countries in Europe and Africa. She also studied dance with Martha Graham and Pearl Primus. In 1961 she performed in Jean Genet’s play The Blacks. That same year she was persuaded by a South African dissident to whom she was briefly married to move to Cairo, where she worked for the Arab Observer. She later moved to Ghana and worked on The African Review.
Angelou returned to California in 1966 and wrote Black, Blues, Black (aired 1968), a 10-part television series about the role of African culture in American life. She was the first black woman director in Hollywood, and she wrote, produced, directed, and starred in productions for stage, film, and television. As the writer of the movie drama Georgia, Georgia (1972), she became one of the first African American women to have a screenplay produced as a feature film. She also acted in such movies as Poetic Justice (1993) and How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and appeared in several television productions, including the miniseries Roots (1977). Angelou received a Tony Award nomination for her performance in Look Away (1973), even though the play closed on Broadway after only one performance. In 1998 she made her directorial debut with Down in the Delta (1998). The documentary Maya Angelou and Still I Rise (2016) depicts her life through interviews with Angelou and her intimates and admirers.

Angelou’s poetry, collected in such volumes as Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie (1971), And Still, I Rise (1978), Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987), and I Shall Not Be Moved (1990), drew heavily on her personal history but employed the points of view of various personae. She also wrote a book of meditations, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993), and children’s books that include My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken and Me (1994), Life Doesn’t Frighten Me (1998), and the Maya’s World series, which was published in 2004–05 and featured stories of children from various parts of the world. Angelou dispensed anecdote-laden advice to women in Letter to My Daughter (2008); her only biological child was male.
Angelou died on May 28, 2014, when she was 86, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she had served as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University since 1982.
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT
WHAT DO YOU UNDERSTAND BY WOMEN EMPOWERMENT?
Everyone has their own definition of it nowadays , for some it means equal rights in educational field ,for some it might be equal say in decision making process, for some it might be something else. But if you ask me , i would say women empowerment is protecting women’s sense of SELF WORTH,SELF PERSPECTIVE, their ability to voice their opinions, taking a stand for what they believe in.
IF YOU EDUCATE A MAN ,YOU EDUCATE AN INDIVIDUAL.BUT IF YOU EDUCATE A WOMAN, YOU EDUCATE A GENERATION. But even today, girls are not allowed to pursue higher education as they are married off early. And the million little hopes that bride has , a vision of what her life should be like, her own thoughts on the kind of life she wants to live are killed there only and actually celeberated.
PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH WOMEN
There are many but to begin with lets talk about the most difficult one. Every time we see a news regarding domestic violence, rape cases, physical or mental harassment or abuse ,we feel bad ,then news channels cover it for a week or month depending on whether people still want to watch it or not basically depending on their TRP rate. Instagram , Facebook, Whatsapp are flooded with messages of women empowerment ,education and respect. People in thousands come on streets and protest with catchy slogans and demand for justice. AND IN THE MIDST OF FORGETTING THAT ONE INCIDENT ANOTHER INCIDENT COMES IN THE LIMELIGHT THAT SHAKES THE SOUL OF EVERY LITTLE GIRL ON THIS EARTH.
GROWING UP AS BOYS AND GIRLS
Society makes clear differences between boys and girls. And if we think about it ,this difference is created in the smallest and most everyday things. How girls must behave, what games they should play or how they should talk gently or how boys need to be tough and then there are things like boys don’t cry . All these are ways of telling boys that the opposite gender is different, is weak and will need their support to survive. There are still places in INDIA and across the world where the birth of a boy is greeted with great joy while the birth of a girl is seen as something to be sorry about.
STATISTICS AND DATA
TIMES USE SURVEY 2019 revealed that 92% Indian women take part in unpaid domestic work; only 27% men do so. On the other hand , only 22% of women participated in employment and related activities compared to 71% of men.
83.6% of working women in INDIA are engaged in agricultural work. Their work includes planting, weeding, harvesting and threshing. Yet, when we think of a farmer we only think of a man.——-NSS 61ST ROUND (2004-05).
WAY FORWARD
The social system that existed in INDIA always attributed a secondary and sub ordinate position to women. With the continued efforts of feminist activism after independance, the government has come up with a lot of laws that protect women but there is still a lot to be done .The department of women and child development( DWCD) has taken up various projects directed towards advancement of women.
Women’s education at the university and college levels have been diversified and reoriented in tune with the changing requirements of society , industry and trade. Women’s empowerment has become a significant topic of discussion in development and economics .
So, slowly and gradually things are changing and we hope for better things to come up in the future .
World War II
The instability caused in Europe by World War I (1914-18) is the stage of World War II, another international conflict that will break out 20 years later and become even more devastating. Was set. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler takes power in economically and politically unstable Germany, a strategic treaty between Italy and Japan to rebuild the country and promote ambitions for world domination. Signed. With Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, Britain and France declared a war with Germany, and World War II began. Over the next six years, conflict will take more lives around the world and destroy more land and property than any previous war. An estimated 4.56 billion people were killed in 6 million Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler’s demonic “final solution,” now known as the Holocaust. Pre-WWII The devastation of World War I (then known as World War I) made Europe terribly unstable, and World War II was settled by its early conflicts. It arose in many ways from problems that weren’t done. In particular, the continued resentment of Germany’s political and economic instability and the harsh conditions of the Versailles Treaty has spurred the rise of power between Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. After becoming Prime Minister of the Empire in 1933, Hitler quickly solidified his power and anointed Fuller in 1934. Hitler was obsessed with the idea of the dominance of the “pure” German race, which he called the “Aryan”, and this war is the only way to gain the “lebensraum” needed for the spread of the German race. I believed. In the mid-1930s, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, he secretly began a re-arming declaration in Germany. After signing an alliance between Italy and Japan against the Soviet Union, Hitler sent troops to occupy Austria in 1938 and annexed Czechoslovakia the following year. Hitler’s open aggression was at the time because the United States and the Soviet Union focused on domestic politics, and neither France nor Britain (the other two most devastated countries of World War I) sought conflict. It wasn’t suppressed. Outbreak of World War II (1939) In late August 1939, Hitler and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin signed a non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union. This raised enthusiastic concerns in London and Paris. Hitler had long planned an invasion of Poland. Poland is a country that has promised military assistance in the event that Britain and France are attacked by Germany. The agreement with Stalin meant that after the invasion of Poland, Hitler would not see a two-front war, but would receive Soviet support by conquering and dividing the country itself.
On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland from the west. Two days later, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany and began World War II. Western World War II (194041) On April 9, 1940, Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and occupied Denmark, and the war began in earnest. On May 10, German troops wiped out Belgium and the Netherlands in a so-called “blitzkrieg”. Three days later, Hitler’s army crossed the Moose River in a sedan at the northern end of the Magino Line, a chain of elaborate fortresses built after World War I that was considered an inaccessible defensive barrier. Was defeated. In fact, the Germans broke through the tank and plane lines and took over to the rear, making them useless. The British Overseas Dispatch Army (BEF) evacuated from Dunkirk to the sea in late May, but South French troops showed fateful resistance. As France is on the verge of collapse, Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini has formed an alliance with Hitler, the Pact of Steel, and Italy declared a war between France and Britain on June 10.
On June 14, German troops entered Paris. The new government, formed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, the hero of World War I in France, demanded a truce two nights later. France was then divided into two zones, one under German occupation and the other under the Petan government in Vichy France. Hitler has now turned his attention to Britain, which had the defensive advantage of being separated from the continent by the English Channel. German aircraft bombed Britain extensively from September 1940 to May 1941 to pave the way for an amphibious aggression (called Operation Sea Lion). The Royal Air Force (RAF) eventually defeated the Luftwaffe at the Battle of Britain, and Hitler postponed his invasion plan. When Britain’s defense resources reached its limits, Prime Minister Winston Churchill received significant support from the United States under the Lend-Lease Act passed by Parliament in early 1941.
Hitler vs Stalin: Operation Barbarossa (1941-42) By early 1941, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria had joined Axis, and by April German troops had taken control of Yugoslavia and Greece. Hitler’s conquest of the Balkans heralded his ultimate goal of invading the Soviet Union. The vast territory of the Soviet Union was intended to provide the “living space” needed by the German master race. The other half of Hitler’s strategy was the extinction of Jews throughout Europe under German occupation. The “final solution” plan was implemented around the time of the Soviet attack, with more than 4 million Jews dying in extermination camps in occupied Poland over the next three years.
On June 22, 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union called Operation Barbarossa. Soviet tanks and planes far outnumbered Germans, but Russian aviation technology is largely outdated, and due to the effects of a sudden invasion, Germans will reach within 200 miles of Moscow by mid-July. I was able to. The controversy between Hitler and his commander delayed the next German army’s advance until October, when it was stalled by the Soviet counterattack and the beginning of severe winter weather. Pacific World War II . Britain confronted Germany in Europe, and only the United States could fight Japan.
Who is William Butler Yeats?
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish literary establishment who helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. William Butler Yeats was born on June 13, 1865, in Dublin, Ireland. He was the oldest of four children of John Butler Yeats, a portrait artist. He was educated in London but returned to Ireland in 1880 and soon afterward embarked on a literary career. In 1890, Yeats began writing plays, and as a strong adherent of the Irish National Movement, he did much to assist in the creation of national theatre. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

His poetry
Yeats was acutely conscious of the spiritual barrenness of his age, and his whole artistic career is best seen as an attempt, at first to escape from the sordid materialism which he found on every hand, and later to formulate a new positive ideal that would supply his spiritual needs. His narrative poem The Wanderings of Oisin (1889), which first established his reputation, Poems (1895), The Wind Among the Reeds (1889), and The Shadowy Waters (1900); and it was in these early days that he wrote many of the lyrics. Probably the best known of them is The Lake Isle of Innisfree (1893). The increasing realism of this period is seen in The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) and Responsibilities (1914), which strike a more personal note. The peak of his achievements is reached in The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), in which he handles philosophical themes with a compact precision of style and a great mastery of rhythm and language.
His Drama
William Butler Yeats was also a prolific playwright, with no less than twenty-four dramas, two adaptations from Sophocles, and several unpublished juvenile efforts to his credit. The virtues of his plays are in their poetry. For him, his themes were always of primary importance, and there is a close parallel between the subjects of his lyrics and those of his plays. His characters, too, were drawn from Irish legend and from among those simple types to be found in so many of his poems. His plays include Countess Cathleen (1892), The Land of Heart’s Desire (1894), The Shadowy Waters (1900), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), On Baile’s Strand (1904), The king’s Threshold (1904), The Hour-glass (1904), Deirdre (1907), The Resurrection (1913), At the Hawk’s Well (1917), The Only Jealousy of Emer (1919) Calvary (1921), and The Cat and The Moon (1926).

His Death
Yeats died in January 1939 while abroad. Final arrangements for his burial in Ireland could not be made, so he was buried at Roquebrune, France. The intention of having his body buried in Sligo was thwarted when World War II began in the autumn of 1939. In 1948 his body was finally taken back to Sligo and buried in a little Protestant churchyard at Drumcliffe.
The Stone Age
Earth`s beginnings may be traced returned 4.5 billion years, however human evolution handiest counts for a tiny speck of its history. The Prehistoric Period—or while there has been human lifestyles earlier than statistics documented human activity—kind of dates from 2.5 million years in the past to 1200 B.C. It is normally classified in 3 archaeological periods: the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. From the discovery of gear made for searching to advances in meals manufacturing and agriculture to early examples of artwork and religion, this great time span—finishing kind of 3,2 hundred years in the past (dates range upon region)—became a duration of fantastic transformation.
The Stone Age
Early human ancestors portray a bison inner a cave in the course of the Paleolithic Age. Divided into 3 periods: Paleolithic (or Old Stone Age), Mesolithic (or Middle Stone Age), and Neolithic (or New Stone Age), this period is marked via way of means of the usage of gear via way of means of our early human ancestors (who advanced round 300,000 B.C.) and the eventual transformation from a tradition of searching and collecting to farming and meals manufacturing. During this period, early people shared the planet with some of now-extinct hominin relatives, consisting of Neanderthals and Denisovans.
In the Paleolithic duration (kind of 2.5 million years in the past to 10,000 B.C.), early people lived in caves or easy huts or tepees and have been hunters and gatherers. They used fundamental stone and bone gear, in addition to crude stone axes, for searching birds and wild animals. They cooked their prey, consisting of woolly mammoths, deer and bison, the usage of managed fire. They additionally fished and accumulated berries, fruit and nuts. Ancient people withinside the Paleolithic duration have been additionally the primary to go away in the back of artwork. They used combos of minerals, ochres, burnt bone meal and charcoal combined into water, blood, animal fat and tree saps to etch people, animals and signs. They additionally carved small collectible figurines from stones, clay, bones and antlers. The quit of this era marked the quit of the remaining Ice Age, which resulted withinside the extinction of many massive mammals and growing sea stages and weather alternate that subsequently precipitated guy to migrate. The Shell Mound People, or Kitchen-Middeners, have been hunter-gatherers of the past due Mesolithic and early Neolithic duration. They get their call from the exclusive mounds (middens) of shells and different kitchen particles they left in the back of.
During the Mesolithic duration (approximately 10,000 B.C. to 8,000 B.C.), people used small stone gear, now additionally polished and once in a while crafted with factors and connected to antlers, bone or timber to function spears and arrows. They frequently lived nomadically in camps close to rivers and different our bodies of water. Agriculture became added in the course of this time, which brought about greater everlasting settlements in villages.
Finally, in the course of the Neolithic duration (kind of 8,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C.), historical people switched from hunter/gatherer mode to agriculture and meals manufacturing. They domesticated animals and cultivated cereal grains. They used polished hand axes, adzes for ploughing and tilling the land and began out to settle withinside the plains. Advancements have been made now no longer handiest in gear however additionally in farming, domestic creation and artwork, consisting of pottery, stitching and weaving.
Who was William Shakespeare and why is he famous?
His Life
William Shakespeare was a renowned English poet, playwright, and actor born in 1564 in Stratford upon Avon. His birthday is most commonly celebrated on 23rd April, which is also believed to be the date he died in 1616. His father, John Shakespeare, was a burgess of the town and seems to have followed the occupations of a butcher, a glover, and a farmer. Shakespeare attended the grammar school of the town, though Ben Jonson, himself a competent scholar, affirmed that Shakespeare knew “small Latin and less Greek.” In 1584, Shakespeare left his native town. Why he did so is not known. The most popular explanation, which appeared after his death, is that he was convicted of poaching on the estate of a local magnate, Sir Thomas Lucy and that he fled to escape the consequences. Then, until 1592, when he appears as a rising actor, Shakespeare disappears from view.

His Works
Altogether Shakespeare’s works include 37 plays, 2 narrative poems, 154 sonnets, and a variety of other poems. No original manuscripts of Shakespeare’s plays are known to exist today. His plays are wonderfully and poetically written, often in blank verse. Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594) are the only works that Shakespeare seems to have shepherded through the printing process. Both owe a good deal to Ovid, the Classical poet whose writings Shakespeare encountered repeatedly in school. These two poems are the only works for which he wrote dedicatory prefaces. Shakespeare may also have written at least some of his sonnets to Southampton, beginning in these same years (1593–94) and continuing through the decade and later. As a narrative, the sonnet sequence tells of strong attachment, of jealousy, of grief at separation, of joy at being together and sharing beautiful experiences.
In the second half of the 1590s, Shakespeare brought to perfection the genre of romantic comedy that he had helped to invent. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595), one of the most successful of all his plays, displays the kind of multiple plotting he had practiced in The Taming of the Shrew and other earlier comedies. The Merchant of Venice (1596) uses a double plot structure to contrast a tale of romantic wooing with one that comes close to tragedy.
Concurrent with his writing of these fine romantic comedies, Shakespeare also brought to completion, his project of writing 15th-century English history. After having finished in 1589–94 the tetralogy about Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III, bringing the story down to 1485, and then circa 1594–96 a play about John that deals with a chronological period that sets it quite apart from his other history plays, Shakespeare turned to the late 14th and early 15th centuries and to the chronicle of Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry’s legendary son Henry V. Thus, in his plays of the 1590s, the young Shakespeare concentrated a remarkable extent on romantic comedies and English history plays. The two genres are nicely complementary: the one deals with courtship and marriage, while the other examines the career of a young man growing up to be a worthy king.

His Death
On April 23, 1616, William Shakespeare died in his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon at the age of fifty-two. In truth, the exact date of Shakespeare’s death is not known but assumed from a record of his burial two days later, 25 April 1616, at Holy Trinity Church. Stratford upon Avon, where his grave remains. While no one knows what Shakespeare died of exactly, he was sick before his death. A month before his death, he signed a will leaving almost everything to his daughter Susanna.

