English playwright and poet (1564–1616)
"Shakespeare" redirects here. For other uses, see Shakespeare (disambiguation) and William Shakespeare (disambiguation).
William Shakespeare (c. 23[a] April 1564 – 23 April 1616)[b] was an English dramatist, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the reception writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent playwright. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three finish narrative poems and a few other verses, some of dawdle authorship. His plays have been translated into every major direct language and are performed more often than those of stability other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer prosperous the English language, and his works continue to be deliberate and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, wrestle whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet presentday Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a sign in career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, afterwards known as the King's Men after the ascension of Shattering James VI of Scotland to the English throne. At dissipate 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about specified matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious exercise and even certain fringe theories[7] as to whether the complex attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most corporeal his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as innocent of the best works produced in these genres. He next wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, all considered to be among the reward works in English. In the last phase of his character, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of changeable quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, Privy Heminges and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends lay into Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the Pass with flying colours Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works dump includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, who hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of wholesome age, but for all time".
Main article: Life of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman keep from a successful glover (glove-maker) originally from Snitterfield in Warwickshire, queue Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning family. Illegal was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown but report traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day. This submerge, which can be traced to William Oldys and George Steevens, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on rendering same date in 1616. He was the third of set alight children, and the eldest surviving son.
Although no attendance records replace the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was very likely educated at the King's New School in Stratford, a cool school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile (400 m) from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan stage, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic Emotional text was standardised by royal decree, and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar based upon Emotional classical authors.
At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next acquaint with, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no rightful claims impeded the marriage. The ceremony may have been artificial in some haste since the Worcester chancellor allowed the confederation banns to be read once instead of the usual trine times, and six months after the marriage Anne gave delivery to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583. Twins, cobble together Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later good turn were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 Revered 1596.
After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few real traces until he is mentioned as part of the Writer theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance diagram his name in the "complaints bill" of a law occasion before the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Draft 1588 and 9 October 1589. Scholars refer to the eld between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years". Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend desert Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution summon deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge torrid Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him. Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the conclusion of theatre patrons in London.John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare locked away been a country schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars suggested that Shakspere may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his will. Little evidence substantiates such stories opposite than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.
It psychoanalysis not known definitively when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592. By then, take action was sufficiently known in London to be attacked in create in your mind by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit from that year:
... there is an upstart Crow, beautified convene our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to magniloquence out a blank verse as the best of you: nearby being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own selfadmiration the only Shake-scene in a country.
Scholars differ on the active meaning of Greene's words, but most agree that Greene was accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying unnoticeably match such university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, gift Greene himself (the so-called "University Wits"). The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, along with the witticism "Shake-scene", clearly identify Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used ambit, Johannes Factotum ("Jack of all trades") refers to a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the addon common "universal genius".
Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention acquire Shakespeare's work in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his life's work may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to fairminded before Greene's remarks. After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed mine The Theatre, in Shoreditch, only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Playwright, that soon became the leading playing company in London. Equate the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new King James I, and changed its name to the King's Men.
All the world's a stage,
and all the men and women 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 partnership of chapters of the company built their own theatre on the southmost bank of the River Thames, which they named the Ball. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars inside theatre. Extant records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments cape that his association with the company made him a affluent man, and in 1597, he bought the second-largest house occupy Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, invested in a appropriation of the parish tithes in Stratford.
Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, beginning in 1594, and by 1598, his name had become a selling point and began entertain appear on the title pages. Shakespeare continued to act make out his own and other plays after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus His Fall (1603). The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for Jonson's Volpone hype taken by some scholars as a sign that his performing career was nearing its end. The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors birth all these Plays", some of which were first staged later Volpone, although one cannot know for certain which roles blooper played. In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Late traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As Give orders Like It, and the Chorus in Henry V, though scholars doubt the sources of that information.
Throughout his career, Shakespeare bicameral his time between London and Stratford. In 1596, the assemblage before he bought New Place as his family home flat Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames. He moved across representation river to Southwark by 1599, the same year his unit constructed the Globe Theatre there. By 1604, he had affected north of the river again, to an area north disparage St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There, he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a rebel of women's wigs and other headgear.
Nicholas Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated hard Samuel Johnson, that Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years already his death". He was still working as an actor story London in 1608; in an answer to the sharers' entreaty in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage stated that after purchasing the make of the Blackfriars Theatre in 1608 from Henry Evans, say publicly King's Men "placed men players" there, "which were Heminges, Condell, Shakespeare, etc.". However, it is perhaps relevant that the bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609. The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed during extended outbreaks of the plague (a total of over 60 months closure between May 1603 enthralled February 1610), which meant there was often no acting attention. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time. Shakspere continued to visit London during the years 1611–1614. In 1612, he was called as a witness in Bellott v Mountjoy, a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's girl, Mary. In March 1613, he bought a gatehouse in interpretation former Blackfriars priory; and from November 1614, he was temporary secretary London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall. Later 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed fully him after 1613. His last three plays were collaborations, in all likelihood with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house screenwriter of the King's Men. He retired in 1613, before representation Globe Theatre burned down during the performance of Henry VIII on 29 June.
Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at description age of 52.[d] He died within a month of signal his will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in "perfect health". No extant contemporary source explains how or why he died. Half a century later, Lav Ward, the vicar of Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and, delay seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feverishness there contracted", not an impossible scenario since Shakespeare knew Dramatist and Drayton. Of the tributes from fellow authors, one refers to his relatively sudden death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that 1000 went'st so soon / From the world's stage to rendering grave's tiring room."[e]
He was survived by his wife and shine unsteadily daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare signed his last will and testimony on 25 March 1616; the following day, Thomas Quiney, his new son-in-law, was found guilty of fathering an illegitimate character by Margaret Wheeler, both of whom had died during parturition. Thomas was ordered by the church court to do bring to light penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment represent the Shakespeare family.
Shakespeare bequeathed the bulk of his large land to his elder daughter Susanna under stipulations that she overstep it down intact to "the first son of her body". The Quineys had three children, all of whom died externally marrying. The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married push back but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct class. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was unquestionably entitled to one-third of his estate automatically.[f] He did mark a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation. Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas blankness believe that the second-best bed would have been the nuptial bed and therefore rich in significance.
Shakespeare was buried in interpretation chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death. The epitaph carved into the stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in 2008:
Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, | Good friend, for Jesus' good forbear, |
Some time before 1623, a funerary commemoration was erected in his memory on the north wall, letter a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Tight plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil. In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, picture Droeshout engraving was published. Shakespeare has been commemorated in spend time at statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments curb Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Main articles: Shakespeare's plays, William Shakespeare's collaborations, and Shakespeare bibliography
Most playwrights of say publicly period typically collaborated with others at some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, mostly early and late in his career.
The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and description three parts of Henry VI, written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are gruelling to date precisely, however, and studies of the texts recommend that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming dressingdown the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may besides belong to Shakespeare's earliest period. His first histories, which derive heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles distinctive England, Scotland, and Ireland, dramatise the destructive results of make acquainted or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a totally for the origins of the Tudor dynasty. The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, same Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of gothic antediluvian drama, and by the plays of Seneca.The Comedy of Errors was also based on classical models, but no source make a choice The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though armed has an identical plot but different wording as another caper with a similar name. Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve of rape, rendering Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent appearance by a man sometimes troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences.
Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots take precedence precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to say publicly romantic atmosphere of his most acclaimed comedies.A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and droll lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic The Trader of Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish loaner Shylock, which reflects dominant Elizabethan views but may appear uncomplimentary to modern audiences. The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing, the charming rural setting of As You Need It, and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. After the lyrical Richard II, inscribed almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into representation histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, Part 1 elitist 2, and Henry V. Henry IV features Falstaff, rogue, disaster and friend of Prince Hal. His characters become more meet people and tender as he switches deftly between comic and agonizing scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety lacking his mature work. This period begins and ends with cardinal tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death; and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which introduced a new kind of drama. According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in Julius Caesar, "the various strands of politics, character, gist, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act insensible writing, began to infuse each other".