William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was baptized
on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. From roughly 1594 onward he
was an important member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men company of theatrical
players. Written records give little indication of the way in which
Shakespeare’s professional life molded his artistry. All that can be deduced is
that over the course of 20 years, Shakespeare wrote plays that capture the
complete range of human emotion and conflict.
Known throughout the world, the
works of William Shakespeare have been performed in countless hamlets,
villages, cities and metropolises for more than 400 years. And yet, the
personal history of William Shakespeare is somewhat a mystery. There are two
primary sources that provide historians with a basic outline of his life. One
source is his work—the plays, poems and sonnets—and the other is official
documentation such as church and court records. However, these only provide
brief sketches of specific events in his life and provide little on the person
who experienced those events.
Though no birth records exist,
church records indicate that a William Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity
Church in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564. From this, it is believed he
was born on or near April 23, 1564, and this is the date scholars acknowledge
as William Shakespeare's birthday.
Located 103 miles west of London,
during Shakespeare's time Stratford-upon-Avon was a market town bisected with a
country road and the River Avon. William was the third child of John
Shakespeare, a leather merchant, and Mary Arden, a local landed heiress.
William had two older sisters, Joan and Judith, and three younger brothers,
Gilbert, Richard and Edmund. Before William's birth, his father became a
successful merchant and held official positions as alderman and bailiff, an
office resembling a mayor. However, records indicate John's fortunes declined
sometime in the late 1570s.
Scant records exist of William's
childhood, and virtually none regarding his education. Scholars have surmised
that he most likely attended the King's New School, in Stratford, which taught
reading, writing and the classics. Being a public official's child, William
would have undoubtedly qualified for free tuition. But this uncertainty
regarding his education has led some to raise questions about the authorship of
his work and even about whether or not William Shakespeare ever existed.
William Shakespeare married Anne
Hathaway on November 28, 1582, in Worcester, in Canterbury Province.
Hathaway was from Shottery, a small village a mile west of Stratford. William
was 18 and Anne was 26, and, as it turns out, pregnant. Their first child, a
daughter they named Susanna, was born on May 26, 1583. Two years later, on
February 2, 1585, twins Hamnet and Judith were born. Hamnet later died of
unknown causes at age 11.
After the birth of the twins,
there are seven years of William Shakespeare's life where no records exist.
Scholars call this period the "lost years," and there is wide
speculation on what he was doing during this period. One theory is that he
might have gone into hiding for poaching game from the local landlord, Sir
Thomas Lucy. Another possibility is that he might have been working as an
assistant schoolmaster in Lancashire. It is generally believed he arrived in
London in the mid- to late 1580s and may have found work as a horse attendant
at some of London's finer theaters, a scenario updated centuries later by the
countless aspiring actors and playwrights in Hollywood and Broadway.
Theatrical
Beginnings
By 1592, there is evidence
William Shakespeare earned a living as an actor and a playwright in London and
possibly had several plays produced. The September 20, 1592 edition of the Stationers'
Register (a guild publication) includes an article by London playwright
Robert Greene that takes a few jabs at William Shakespeare: "...There is
an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart
wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank
verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his
own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country," Greene wrote of
Shakespeare.
Scholars differ on the
interpretation of this criticism, but most agree that it was Greene's way of
saying Shakespeare was reaching above his rank, trying to match better known
and educated playwrights like Christopher
Marlowe, Thomas Nashe or Greene himself.
By the early 1590s, documents
show William Shakespeare was a managing partner in the Lord Chamberlain's Men,
an acting company in London. After the crowning of King James I, in 1603, the
company changed its name to the King's Men. From all accounts, the King's Men
company was very popular, and records show that Shakespeare had works published
and sold as popular literature. The theater culture in 16th century England was
not highly admired by people of high rank. However, many of the nobility were
good patrons of the performing arts and friends of the actors. Early in his
career, Shakespeare was able to attract the attention of Henry Wriothesley, the
Earl of Southampton, to whom he dedicated his first- and second-published
poems: "Venus and Adonis" (1593) and "The Rape of Lucrece"
(1594).
By 1597, William Shakespeare had
published 15 of the 37 plays attributed to him. Civil records show that at this
time he purchased the second largest house in Stratford, called New House, for
his family. It was a four-day ride by horse from Stratford to London, so it is
believed that Shakespeare spent most of his time in the city writing and acting
and came home once a year during the 40-day Lenten period, when the theaters
were closed.
By 1599, William Shakespeare and
his business partners built their own theater on the south bank of the Thames
River, which they called the Globe. In 1605, Shakespeare purchased leases of
real estate near Stratford for 440 pounds, which doubled in value and earned
him 60 pounds a year. This made him an entrepreneur as well as an artist, and
scholars believe these investments gave him the time to write his plays
uninterrupted.
William Shakespeare's early plays
were written in the conventional style of the day, with elaborate metaphors and
rhetorical phrases that didn't always align naturally with the story's plot or
characters. However, Shakespeare was very innovative, adapting the traditional
style to his own purposes and creating a freer flow of words. With only small
degrees of variation, Shakespeare primarily used a metrical pattern consisting
of lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse, to compose his plays.
At the same time, there are passages in all the plays that deviate from this
and use forms of poetry or simple prose.
With the exception of Romeo
and Juliet, William Shakespeare's first plays were mostly histories written
in the early 1590s. Richard II, Henry VI (parts 1, 2 and 3) and Henry
V dramatize the destructive results of weak or corrupt rulers, and have
been interpreted by drama historians as Shakespeare's way of justifying the
origins of the Tudor Dynasty.
Shakespeare also wrote several
comedies during his early period: the witty romance A Midsummer Night's
Dream, the romantic Merchant of Venice, the wit and wordplay of Much
Ado About Nothing, the charming As You Like It and Twelfth Night.
Other plays, possibly written before 1600, include Titus Andronicus, The
Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew and The Two Gentlemen
of Verona.
It was in William Shakespeare's
later period, after 1600, that he wrote the tragedies Hamlet, King
Lear, Othello and Macbeth. In these, Shakespeare's characters
present vivid impressions of human temperament that are timeless and universal.
Possibly the best known of these plays is Hamlet, which explores
betrayal, retribution, incest and moral failure. These moral failures often
drive the twists and turns of Shakespeare's plots, destroying the hero and
those he loves.
In William Shakespeare's final
period, he wrote several tragicomedies. Among these are Cymbeline, The
Winter's Tale and The Tempest. Though graver in tone than the
comedies, they are not the dark tragedies of King Lear or Macbeth
because they end with reconciliation and forgiveness.
Tradition has it that William
Shakespeare died on his birthday, April 23, 1616, though many scholars believe
this is a myth. Church records show he was interred at Trinity Church on April
5, 1616.
In his will, he left the bulk of
his possessions to his eldest daughter, Susanna. Though entitled to a third of
his estate, little seems to have gone to his wife, Anne, whom he bequeathed his
"second-best bed." This has drawn speculation that she had fallen out
of favor, or that the couple was not close. However, there is very little
evidence the two had a difficult marriage. Other scholars note that the term
"second-best bed" often refers to the bed belonging to the
household's master and mistres—the marital bed—and the "first-best
bed" was reserved for guests.
About 150 years after his death,
questions arose about the authorship of William Shakespeare's plays. Scholars
and literary critics began to float names like Christopher
Marlowe, Edward de
Vere
and Francis
Bacon—men of more known backgrounds, literary accreditation, or
inspiration—as the true authors of the plays. Much of this stemmed from the
sketchy details of Shakespeare's life and the dearth of contemporary primary
sources. Official records from the Holy Trinity Church and the Stratford
government record the existence of a William Shakespeare, but none of these
attest to him being an actor or playwright.
Skeptics also questioned how
anyone of such modest education could write with the intellectual
perceptiveness and poetic power that is displayed in Shakespeare's works. Over
the centuries, several groups have emerged that question the authorship of
Shakespeare's plays.
The most serious and intense
skepticism began in the 19th century when adoration for Shakespeare was at its
highest. The detractors believed that the only hard evidence surrounding
William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon described a man from modest
beginnings who married young and became successful in real estate. Members of
the Shakespeare Oxford Society (founded in 1957) put forth arguments that
English aristocrat Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author
of the poems and plays of "William Shakespeare." The Oxfordians cite
de Vere's extensive knowledge of aristocratic society, his education, and the
structural similarities between his poetry and that found in the works
attributed to Shakespeare. They contend that William Shakespeare had neither
the education nor the literary training to write such eloquent prose and create
such rich characters.
However, the vast majority of
Shakespearean scholars contend that William Shakespeare wrote all his own
plays. They point out that other playwrights of the time also had sketchy
histories and came from modest backgrounds. They contend that Stratford's New
Grammar School curriculum of Latin and the classics could have provided a good
foundation for literary writers. Supporters of Shakespeare's authorship argue
that the lack of evidence about Shakespeare's life doesn't mean his life didn't
exist. They point to evidence that displays his name on the title pages of
published poems and plays. Examples exist of authors and critics of the time
acknowledging William Shakespeare as author of plays such as The Two
Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors and King John.
Royal records from 1601 show that William Shakespeare was recognized as a
member of the King's Men theater company (formally known as the Chamberlain's
Men) and a Groom of the Chamber by the court of King James I, where the company
performed seven of Shakespeare's plays. There is also strong circumstantial
evidence of personal relationships by contemporaries who interacted with
Shakespeare as an actor and a playwright. What seems to be true is that William
Shakespeare was a respected man of the dramatic arts who wrote plays and acted
in some in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. But his reputation as a
dramatic genius wasn't recognized until the 19th century. Beginning with the
Romantic period of the early 1800s and continuing through the Victorian period,
acclaim and reverence for William Shakespeare and his work reached its height.
In the 20th century, new
movements in scholarship and performance have rediscovered and adopted his
works.
Today, his plays are highly
popular and constantly studied and reinterpreted in performances with diverse
cultural and political contexts. The genius of Shakespeare's characters and
plots are that they present real human beings in a wide range of emotions and
conflicts that transcend their origins in Elizabethan England.
Source: http://www.biography.com
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