During Shakespeare's time was a time of new inventions and challenges to existing beliefs. It was a time of questioning and experimentation. Poetry and plays were very popular forms of entertainment in his time. People that watched Shakespeare's plays varied from the poor peasants to the richest of the rich. Some of the royals or rich people would pay to have a seat on the actual stage. Shakespeare had to make sure his plays appealed to the whole audience: They would have complex poetry and ideas which the nobles and middle classes would appreciate, but also plenty of humour, slapstick action, plain talk and dirty jokes to please the groundlings [the working people]. The plays were performed in specially built theatres, but also in the open air, palaces and ballrooms.
Elizabeth I was Queen for the whole of Shakespeare's life until he was 39 years old. So she was the monarch for most of the period in which Shakespeare was writing. Many of Shakespeare's earlier plays, especially the 'historical plays', were written about the ancestors of Queen Elizabeth I and showed them in a good light. Some of Shakespeare's later plays, notably Macbeth, were written to please the new King, James I.
