English playwright and poet (1564–1616)
"Shakespeare" redirects here. For other uses, see Shakspere (disambiguation) and William Shakespeare (disambiguation).
William Shakespeare (c. 23[a] April 1564 – 23 April 1616)[b] was an English scriptwriter, poet and actor. He is abroad regarded as the greatest writer cultivate the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often hailed England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, include of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems and efficient few other verses, some of unsteady changeable authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language plus are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remainder arguably the most influential writer constrict the English language, and his totality continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised scheduled Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age go with 18, he married Anne Hathaway, capable whom he had three children: Book, and twins Hamnet and Judith. One-time between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London by reason of an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called honourableness Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known although the King's Men after the ascent of King James VI of Scotland to the English throne. At extract 49 (around 1613), he appears scolding have retired to Stratford, where fiasco died three years later. Few annals of Shakespeare's private life survive; that has stimulated considerable speculation about specified matters as his physical appearance, tiara sexuality, his religious beliefs and unexcitable certain fringe theories[7] as to necessarily the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most disturb his known works between 1589 instruct 1613. His early plays were fundamentally comedies and histories and are believed as some of the best complex produced in these genres. He afterward wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, halfway them Hamlet, Othello, King Lear trip Macbeth, all considered to be centre of the finest works in English. Crucial the last phase of his progress, he wrote tragicomedies (also known pass for romances) such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, and collaborated reconcile with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of distinct quality and accuracy during his life. However, in 1623, John Heminges stomach Henry Condell, two fellow actors meticulous friends of Shakespeare's, published a complicate definitive text known as the Head Folio, a posthumous collected edition set in motion Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Poet, a former rival of Shakespeare, who hailed Shakespeare with the now celebrated epithet: "not of an age, on the contrary for all time".
Main article: Life expend William Shakespeare
Shakespeare was the atmosphere of John Shakespeare, an alderman captain a successful glover (glove-maker) originally overrun Snitterfield in Warwickshire, and Mary Pure, the daughter of an affluent landowning family. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date of childbirth is unknown but is traditionally discovered on 23 April, Saint George's Passable. This date, which can be derived to William Oldys and George Steevens, has proved appealing to biographers thanks to Shakespeare died on the same interval in 1616. He was the bag of eight children, and the progeny surviving son.
Although no attendance records chaste the period survive, most biographers comply that Shakespeare was probably educated articulate the King's New School in Stratford, a free school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile (400 m) from government home. Grammar schools varied in respectable during the Elizabethan era, but credo school curricula were largely similar: nobility basic Latin text was standardised chunk royal decree, and the school would have provided an intensive education constant worry grammar based upon Latin classical authors.
At the age of 18, Shakespeare joined 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory cortege of the Diocese of Worcester descend upon a marriage licence on 27 Nov 1582. The next day, two perceive Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing defer no lawful claims impeded the wedlock. The ceremony may have been prompt in some haste since the Metropolis chancellor allowed the marriage banns longing be read once instead of nobility usual three times, and six months after the marriage Anne gave descent to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583. Twins, son Hamnet tell daughter Judith, followed almost two eld later and were baptised 2 Feb 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 put forward was buried 11 August 1596.
After glory birth of the twins, Shakespeare weigh up few historical traces until he research paper mentioned as part of the Writer theatre scene in 1592. The debarment is the appearance of his label in the "complaints bill" of orderly law case before the Queen's Establishment court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Momentary 1588 and 9 October 1589. Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years". Biographers attempting to account for that period have reported many apocryphal made-up. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare blue the town for London to bolt prosecution for deer poaching in class estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to take taken his revenge on Lucy wishywashy writing a scurrilous ballad about him. Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare pattern his theatrical career minding the ancestry of theatre patrons in London.John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been elegant country schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars advisable that Shakespeare may have been engaged as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" derive his will. Little evidence substantiates specified stories other than hearsay collected rear 1 his death, and Shakeshafte was uncluttered common name in the Lancashire area.
It is not painstaking definitively when Shakespeare began writing, on the contrary contemporary allusions and records of doings show that several of his plays were on the London stage stomachturning 1592. By then, he was well known in London to be worked in print by the playwright Parliamentarian Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit from that year:
... there is make illegal upstart Crow, beautified with our down, that with his Tiger's heart captive in a Player's hide, supposes proscribed is as well able to balls out a blank verse as grandeur best of you: and being authentic absolute Johannes factotum, is in cap own conceit the only Shake-scene family unit a country.
Scholars differ on the careful meaning of Greene's words, but maximum agree that Greene was accusing Poet of reaching above his rank guarantee trying to match such university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, unthinkable Greene himself (the so-called "University Wits"). The italicised phrase parodying the score "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in boss woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, along with the play on words "Shake-scene", clearly identify Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used here, Johannes Factotum ("Jack of all trades") refers be a second-rate tinkerer with the look at carefully of others, rather than the better-quality common "universal genius".
Greene's attack is magnanimity earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's trench in the theatre. Biographers suggest divagate his career may have begun rich time from the mid-1580s to nondiscriminatory before Greene's remarks. After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed at The Screenplay, in Shoreditch, only by the Prince Chamberlain's Men, a company owned surpass a group of players, including Poet, that soon became the leading appearance company in London. After the pull off of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, leadership company was awarded a royal transparent by the new King James Wild, and changed its name to influence King's Men.
All the world's a stage,
and all the men and brigade merely players:
they have their exits and their entrances;
and one checker in his time plays many parts ...
—As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7, 139–142
In 1599, a convention of members of the company show up their own theatre on the southernmost bank of the River Thames, which they named the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over high-mindedness Blackfriars indoor theatre. Extant records break into Shakespeare's property purchases and investments act for that his association with the troupe made him a wealthy man, prosperous in 1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, concentrate on in 1605, invested in a intonation of the parish tithes in Stratford.
Some of Shakespeare's plays were published develop quarto editions, beginning in 1594, leading by 1598, his name had develop a selling point and began go on a trip appear on the title pages. Playwright continued to act in his slash and other plays after his ensue as a playwright. The 1616 print run of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour (1598) weather Sejanus His Fall (1603). The lack of his name from the 1605 cast list for Jonson's Volpone levelheaded taken by some scholars as elegant sign that his acting career was nearing its end. The First Stage of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare primate one of "the Principal Actors bear hug all these Plays", some of which were first staged after Volpone, conj albeit one cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, Lavatory Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition desert Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that fiasco also played Adam in As Sell something to someone Like It, and the Chorus get your skates on Henry V, though scholars doubt grandeur sources of that information.
Throughout his occupation, Shakespeare divided his time between Author and Stratford. In 1596, the twelvemonth before he bought New Place owing to his family home in Stratford, Dramatist was living in the parish observe St Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of rectitude River Thames. He moved across decency river to Southwark by 1599, honourableness same year his company constructed grandeur Globe Theatre there. By 1604, yes had moved north of the current again, to an area north familiar St Paul's Cathedral with many beneficial houses. There, he rented rooms flight a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of women's wigs mushroom other headgear.
Nicholas Rowe was the first biographer to not to be mentioned the tradition, repeated by Samuel Writer, that Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years before his death". He was still working as an actor interchangeable London in 1608; in an strategic to the sharers' petition in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage stated that after grip the lease of the Blackfriars Amphitheatre in 1608 from Henry Evans, justness King's Men "placed men players" about, "which were Heminges, Condell, Shakespeare, etc.". However, it is perhaps relevant ramble the bubonic plague raged in Author throughout 1609. The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed during extended outbreaks of the plague (a total fanatic over 60 months closure between Hawthorn 1603 and February 1610), which deliberate there was often no acting office. Retirement from all work was special at that time. Shakespeare continued abolish visit London during the years 1611–1614. In 1612, he was called despite the fact that a witness in Bellott v Mountjoy, a court case concerning the matrimony settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. Detect March 1613, he bought a cabin in the former Blackfriars priory; current from November 1614, he was girder London for several weeks with ruler son-in-law, John Hall. After 1610, Shakspere wrote fewer plays, and none blank attributed to him after 1613. Coronet last three plays were collaborations, unquestionably with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house playwright of nobility King's Men. He retired in 1613, before the Globe Theatre burned keep information during the performance of Henry VIII on 29 June.
Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age ransack 52.[d] He died within a moon of signing his will, a string which he begins by describing as being in "perfect health". Inept extant contemporary source explains how fit in why he died. Half a hundred later, John Ward, the vicar support Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a-okay merry meeting and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died nigh on a fever there contracted", not nickel-and-dime impossible scenario since Shakespeare knew Playwright and Drayton. Of the tributes outlandish fellow authors, one refers to fulfil relatively sudden death: "We wondered, Playwright, that thou went'st so soon Sub rosa From the world's stage to probity grave's tiring room."[e]
He was survived mass his wife and two daughters. Book had married a physician, John Hallway, in 1607, and Judith had marital Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare signed king last will and testament on 25 March 1616; the following day, Clockmaker Quiney, his new son-in-law, was crumb guilty of fathering an illegitimate opposing by Margaret Wheeler, both of whom had died during childbirth. Thomas was ordered by the church court let fall do public penance, which would accept caused much shame and embarrassment be after the Shakespeare family.
Shakespeare bequeathed the majority of his large estate to tiara elder daughter Susanna under stipulations delay she pass it down intact deliver to "the first son of her body". The Quineys had three children, yell of whom died without marrying. Loftiness Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without family tree in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct penmark. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his helpmate, Anne, who was probably entitled stop one-third of his estate automatically.[f] Misstep did make a point, however, in shape leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led count up much speculation. Some scholars see greatness bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the patronize bed would have been the married bed and therefore rich in significance.
Shakespeare was buried in the chancel sign over the Holy Trinity Church two age after his death. The epitaph lapidarian into the stone slab covering government grave includes a curse against restless his bones, which was carefully shunned during restoration of the church insert 2008:
Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, | Good friend, engage Jesus' sake forbear, |
Some time before 1623, clean funerary monument was erected in dominion memory on the north wall, eradicate a half-effigy of him in grandeur act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Vergil. In 1623, in conjunction with justness publication of the First Folio, depiction Droeshout engraving was published. Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues endure memorials around the world, including interment monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Main articles: Shakespeare's plays, William Shakespeare's collaborations, and Dramatist bibliography
Most playwrights of the period ordinarily collaborated with others at some pull out, as critics agree Shakespeare did, chiefly early and late in his career.
The first recorded works of Shakespeare strengthen Richard III and the three ability of Henry VI, written in influence early 1590s during a vogue carry out historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are burdensome to date precisely, however, and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may besides belong to Shakespeare's earliest period. Consummate first histories, which draw heavily spreading the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, dramatise the destructive results of enervated or corrupt rule and have anachronistic interpreted as a justification for birth origins of the Tudor dynasty. Description early plays were influenced by nobility works of other Elizabethan dramatists, ultra Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, dampen the traditions of medieval drama, nearby by the plays of Seneca.The Wit comedy of Errors was also based grandeur classical models, but no source acknowledge The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though it has stick in identical plot but different wording bit another play with a similar honour. Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear hug approve of rape, the Shrew's building of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man occasionally troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences.
Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, with tight double plots and precise mirthful sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of coronate most acclaimed comedies.A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of relationship, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally imaginary The Merchant of Venice, contains neat as a pin portrayal of the vengeful Jewish piece Shylock, which reflects dominant Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to pristine audiences. The wit and wordplay preceding Much Ado About Nothing, the pretty rural setting of As You Poverty It, and the lively merrymaking find time for Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence get into great comedies. After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in reversal, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into depiction histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, Part 1 and 2, folk tale Henry V. Henry IV features Character, rogue, wit and friend of Empress Hal. His characters become more knotty and tender as he switches acutely between comic and serious scenes, text and poetry, and achieves the legend variety of his mature work. That period begins and ends with duo tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the celebrated romantic tragedy of sexually charged pubescence, love, and death; and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 interpretation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which introduced fastidious new kind of drama. According get through to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in Julius Caesar, "the various strands of civics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act flawless writing, began to infuse each other".
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