Ministry of Higher and Secondary Special Education of the Republic of Uzbekistan Jizzakh state pedagogical institute English Faculty

Troilus and Cressida
1602 – Troilus and Cressida was written in this year.
1604 – First performance of the play on 7th February. However, Troilus and Cressida has never been a popular play, and has rarely been performed and almost no stage performances are recorded.
1609 – The year in which it is thought that this particular Shakespeare play was first published.
Othello
1602/04 – The period in which Shakespeare is believed to have written Othello.
1 – The date, in November 1604, Othello was first performed by Shakespeare’s company The King’s Men at the court of King James I.
1622 – First publication.
60 – In this year the actress Margaret Hughes plays the role of Desdemona in Othello. This was a very important performance as it marked the first accepted appearance by a woman on an English stage.
1833 – In this year during his Covent Garden performance Edmund Kean, a famous 19th century actor, collapsed on stage in the arms of his son who was playing Lago. He died a few weeks later.
20 – The number of time Othello has been adapted for film.
5 – The number of T.V adaptations of the play to date.
King Lear
1604/06 – King Lear is written.
1606 – The first year a performance of King Lear is recorded. This took place on 26th December.
1608 – The year that the play is made available in print.
The inspiration for this play would appear to be a folk tale written in the 12th century, which was based on stories handed down from much earlier in the middle ages.
1811/20 – A period in which King Lear became politically controversial owing to the so-called ‘madness of King George III’. As a result, it was performed in either of the professional theatres of London from. But became major productions at both within months of his death.
19 – The century in which the original version of Shakespeare’s King Lear began to be regarded as one of his greatest achievements, more specifically the mid 19 C.
1892 – In this year a version of King Lear by Henry Irving offered a spectacular scene of King Lear’s death beneath a cliff at Dover, his face lit by the red glow of the sun as it set. However this was achieved at the expense of cutting 46% of the plays text.
King Lear contains more references to animals and the natural world than any other of his plays. Also, King Lear contains one of only two football references Shakespeare ever used. ‘Thou base football player.’, the other can be found in The Comedy of Errors.
23 – The age of the youngest actor to ever take the role of King Lear. This was Nonso Anozie, who played the role of King Lear in the RSCs 2002 production. In contrast, the oldest was Alvin Epstein who was 81 when he played King Lear for the Boston Actors’ Theatre in 2006.
Macbeth
1606 – The year Shakespeare wrote Macbeth. This date has been suggested owing to the possible allusions to the Gunpowder Plot, and the subsequent trials.
1587 – The year Holinshed’s Cronicles are published containing an account of the Scottish King Macbeth upon which Shakespeare is thought to have drawn. However, the tale Shakespeare tells bears no resemblance to the real events in Scottish history. The real Macbeth was considered an able monarch, and was much admired by his people.
1606/1611 – First performance of the play.
It is thought this was written during the reign of King James I who had an interest in witchcraft and demonology. He was also originally King James VI of Scotland.
1623 – First publication of Shakespeare’s shortest and bloodiest tragedy play.
Owing to the rather superstitious belief that Shakespeare used ‘real’ spells by ‘real’ witches within the plays text, even today Macbeth is still said to be a cursed play because the angered witches placed a curse upon it. Accordingly, it is considered extremely bad luck to say its name backstage in a theatre, and doing so will doom the production to fail or for a member of the cast to suffer an injury.