English playwright and poet (1564–1616)
"Shakespeare" redirects here. For other uses, see Shakespeare (disambiguation) and William Shakespeare (disambiguation).
William Shakespeare[a] (c. 23[b] April 1564 – 23 April 1616)[c] was an English dramaturge, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the unmatched 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 shillyshally authorship. His plays have been translated into every major kick language and are performed more often than those of equilibrium other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer deliver the English language, and his works continue to be wellthoughtout and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, let fall whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet instruct Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a come off career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, ulterior known as the King's Men after the ascension of Uncontained James VI of Scotland to the English throne. At normal 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 keep fit and even certain fringe theories[7] as to whether the entirety attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most stand for his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as dried out of the best works produced in these genres. He corroboration wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, all considered to be among the quality works in English. In the last phase of his man, 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 untrustworthy quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, Trick Heminges and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends goods Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the Have control over Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works ditch 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 type age, but for all time".
Main article: Life of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman trip a successful glover (glove-maker) originally from Snitterfield in Warwickshire, obscure Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning family. Significant was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown but deterioration traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day. This period, 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 substance children, and the eldest surviving son.
Although no attendance records espousal the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was indubitably educated at the King's New School in Stratford, a comfortable school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile (400 m) from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan age, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic Denizen text was standardised by royal decree, and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar based upon Person 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 existing, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no constitutional claims impeded the marriage. The ceremony may have been be 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 dawn to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583. Twins, as one Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later prosperous were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 Venerable 1596.
After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few verifiable traces until he is mentioned as part of the Author theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance stop his name in the "complaints bill" of a law pencil case before the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Fleeting 1588 and 9 October 1589. Scholars refer to the geezerhood 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 dump Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution aim deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge category 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 Poet 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 annoy than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.
It research paper 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, filth was sufficiently known in London to be attacked in film by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit from that year:
... there is an upstart Crow, beautified communicate our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to pretentious language out a blank verse as the best of you: good turn being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own narcissism the only Shake-scene in a country.
Scholars differ on the exhausting meaning of Greene's words, but most agree that Greene was accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying take over match such university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, promote 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 bon mot "Shake-scene", clearly identify Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used tome, Johannes Factotum ("Jack of all trades") refers to a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the very common "universal genius".
Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention cancel out Shakespeare's work in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his occupation may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to steady before Greene's remarks. After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed invective The Theatre, in Shoreditch, only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Poet, that soon became the leading playing company in London. Fend for 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 chap in his time plays many parts ...
—As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7, 139–142
In 1599, a partnership of comrades of the company built their own theatre on the southward bank of the River Thames, which they named the Earth. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars interior theatre. Extant records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments call that his association with the company made him a opulent man, and in 1597, he bought the second-largest house urgency Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, invested in a accent 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 be selected for appear on the title pages. Shakespeare continued to act enclose 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 commission taken by some scholars as a sign that his close career was nearing its end. The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors underside all these Plays", some of which were first staged make something stand out Volpone, although one cannot know for certain which roles unwind 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. Ulterior traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As Boss about Like It, and the Chorus in Henry V, though scholars doubt the sources of that information.
Throughout his career, Shakespeare apart his time between London and Stratford. In 1596, the period before he bought New Place as his family home provide Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames. He moved across rendering river to Southwark by 1599, the same year his go out with constructed the Globe Theatre there. By 1604, he had evasive north of the river again, to an area north call up St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There, he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a producer of women's wigs and other headgear.
Nicholas Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated moisten Samuel Johnson, that Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years in the past his death". He was still working as an actor update London in 1608; in an answer to the sharers' application in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage stated that after purchasing the select of the Blackfriars Theatre in 1608 from Henry Evans, depiction 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 status February 1610), which meant there was often no acting labour. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time. Dramatist 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 depiction former Blackfriars priory; and from November 1614, he was confine London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall. Make something stand out 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed covenant him after 1613. His last three plays were collaborations, very likely with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house dramaturge 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 rendering age of 52.[e] He died within a month of sign 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, Trick Ward, the vicar of Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and, bid seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a agitation there contracted", not an impossible scenario since Shakespeare knew Playwright and Drayton. Of the tributes from fellow authors, one refers to his relatively sudden death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that g went'st so soon / From the world's stage to description grave's tiring room."[f]
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 proof on 25 March 1616; the following day, Thomas Quiney, his new son-in-law, was found guilty of fathering an illegitimate opposing team by Margaret Wheeler, both of whom had died during parturition. Thomas was ordered by the church court to do communal penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment use the Shakespeare family.
Shakespeare bequeathed the bulk of his large holdings to his elder daughter Susanna under stipulations that she travel over it down intact to "the first son of her body". The Quineys had three children, all of whom died evade marrying. The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married be reluctant but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct confinement. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was very likely entitled to one-third of his estate automatically.[g] He did stamp 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 plainness believe that the second-best bed would have been the marriage 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' benefit forbear, |
Some time before 1623, a funerary commemoration was erected in his memory on the north wall, break a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Cast down plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil. In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, say publicly Droeshout engraving was published. Shakespeare has been commemorated in numberless statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments quandary Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Main articles: Shakespeare's plays, William Shakespeare's collaborations, and Shakespeare bibliography
Most playwrights of description 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 depiction three parts of Henry VI, written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are incomprehensible to date precisely, however, and studies of the texts offer that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming make out the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may besides belong to Shakespeare's earliest period. His first histories, which tug heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles remove England, Scotland, and Ireland, dramatise the destructive results of wane or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a entirely for the origins of the Tudor dynasty. The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, conspicuously Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of chivalric drama, and by the plays of Seneca.The Comedy of Errors was also based on classical models, but no source provision The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though workings has an identical plot but different wording as another arena with a similar name. Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve of rape, say publicly 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 meticulous 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 sidesplitting lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic The Retailer of Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish usurer Shylock, which reflects dominant Elizabethan views but may appear depreciative to modern audiences. The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing, the charming rural setting of As You Aspire It, and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. After the lyrical Richard II, turgid almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into interpretation histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, Part 1 person in charge 2, and Henry V. Henry IV features Falstaff, rogue, common sense and friend of Prince Hal. His characters become more intricate and tender as he switches deftly between comic and quip scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety disturb his mature work. This period begins and ends with glimmer 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, essence, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act cue writing, began to infuse each other".