Question 9:

The Renaissance was a time of rebirth with the people, literature, art, religions, theature, and bunch of other things. There were many great philiosophers, artists, and writers that came from the Renaissance, but my idea of an ideal Renaissance man is William Shakespeare. I consider him to be the ideal Renaissance man because he wrote plays and other forms of literature, and he performed those plays on major theaters at the time where many people came to see them. The Renaissance was a time of class, and nothing was classier than going to see a good play at the Globe Theater were Shakespeare performed his works.

I think that his poetry with all of the sonnets he wrote made him a great writer, and the extremely popular plays that he wrote and performed made him an even more all around Renaissance man. He was able to write plays that ended well and were light-hearted, like A MidSummer Night's Dream, which ended with a good happy ending. He was also able to write more serious plays like Romeo and Juliet, where both of the lovers end up dead. This shows that he was a well rounded writer, and literature was a prime component of the Renaissance.

Finally, the way he wrote about love made him a true Renaissance man as well. This time of rebirth and happiness was also a time of love, and writing about love made him a true part of this era. Most of his plays and poems had some sort of love aspect in it, even if it ended in a sad or unexpected way.

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/