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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by William Shatner..... er Shakespeare.

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Sorry, it's late here at Shmoop.

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Brought to you by William Shakespeare.

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Not the one you're thinking of—he's this guy we know who has the same name and works at a Cinnabon in Toledo.

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Which of the following does the passage cite as a possible cause of Shakespeare's "tragic period"?

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Somewhere in this passage, Professor Bradley gets all up in Shakespeare's business...

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...and theorizes about how the Bard's personal life might've caused him to write a bunch of tragedies.

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It's our job to figure out just what personal details the Professor is trying to expose.

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Whether it's really any of our business or not.

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Shakespeare did have a son, who died at 11 years old, named Hamnet. Yep... Hamnet. Probably

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a complete coincidence.

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The passage doesn't mention anything about poor little Hamnet, so (A) is incorrect.

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Chances are good that Shakespeare and fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe did know each other.

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It's not like the London theatre scene was all that huge back then.

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However, nobody knows if they were friends per se, and the passage doesn't make any such claim.

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So there's nothing to indicate that Shakespeare gave two hoots when Marlowe died in the bar

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fight, which some say was actually an assassination.

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Who knows? Maybe, Billy himself called the hit...

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Shakespeare wrote tons of comedies that are really deep, so it's doubtful he thought

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the entire genre was "superficial," or shallow. He knew that sometimes comedy can

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really hit us where it counts.

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In lines 39 through 41, Professor Bradley does theorize that perhaps Shakespeare thought

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tragedy was the greatest form of drama, but he doesn't compare it to comedy specifically.

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So, we're totally convinced that we can cross (C) off the list.

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Instead, the passage suggests that Shakespeare gravitated toward tragedies because his view

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of the world had changed as he grew older and more experienced.

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The author figures that the longer one lives, the sadder one feels about everything?

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Well, that's encouraging.?

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