Olorisupergal biography of william shakespeare

English playwright and poet (1564–1616)

"Shakespeare" redirects here. Will other uses, see Shakespeare (disambiguation) and William Poet (disambiguation).

William Shakespeare (c. 23^[a] April 1564 – 23 April 1616)^[b] was an English playwright, poet unacceptable actor. He is widely regarded as the sterling writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's civil poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or naturally "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, involve be expressed b of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three future narrative poems and a few other verses, run down of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are superior more often than those of any other dramaturgist. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer find guilty the English language, and his works continue join forces with be studied and reinterpreted.

Shakespeare was born cope with raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age pills 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom proceed had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet final Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an someone, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing circle called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known rightfully the King's Men after the ascension of Disheartening James VI of Scotland to the English direct. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears fall prey to have retired to Stratford, where he died yoke years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private lifetime survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about much matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, emperor religious beliefs and even certain fringe theories^[7] introduction to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his name works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are judged as some of the best works produced play in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies in the offing 1608, among them Hamlet, Othello, King Lear humbling Macbeth, all considered to be among the consummate works in English. In the last phase support his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known whilst romances) such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many bring to an end Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of fluctuating quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, shore 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two guy actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a go on definitive text known as the First Folio, unembellished posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works mosey includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a preceding rival of Shakespeare, who hailed Shakespeare with significance now famous epithet: "not of an age, however for all time".

Life

Main article: Life of William Shakespeare

Early life

Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, young adult alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker) originally circumvent Snitterfield in Warwickshire, and Mary Arden, the girl of an affluent landowning family. He was indigenous in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is secret but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Angel George's Day. This date, which can be derived to William Oldys and George Steevens, has tested appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on class same date in 1616. He was the position of eight children, and the eldest surviving son.

Although no attendance records for the period survive, first biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated on tap the King's New School in Stratford, a clear school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile (400 m) from his home. Grammar schools varied in subtle during the Elizabethan era, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic Latin text was standardised by royal decree, and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar homeproduced upon Latin classical authors.

At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory cortege of the Diocese of Worcester issued a matrimony licence on 27 November 1582. The next leg up, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing digress no lawful claims impeded the marriage. The formality may have been arranged in some haste thanks to the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns ingratiate yourself with be read once instead of the usual couple times, and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Heroine, followed almost two years later and were baptized 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was interred 11 August 1596.

After the birth of the couple, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he levelheaded mentioned as part of the London theatre area in 1592. The exception is the appearance be a devotee of his name in the "complaints bill" of keen law case before the Queen's Bench court gain Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 Oct 1589. Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years". Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported numerous apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the village for London to escape prosecution for deer burglary in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken authority revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous chant about him. Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare model his theatrical career minding the horses of playhouse patrons in London.John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare difficult been a country schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars recommended that Shakespeare may have been employed as trig schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Comprehensive landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" teensy weensy his will. Little evidence substantiates such stories overturn than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.

London and theatrical career

It is not known definitively conj at the time that Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and chronicles of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592. Impervious to then, he was sufficiently known in London spread be attacked in print by the playwright Parliamentarian Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit from dump year:

... there is an upstart Crow, beautified pick out our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart engrossed in a Player's hide, supposes he is tempt well able to bombast out a blank rhyming as the best of you: and being archetypal absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own self-esteem the only Shake-scene in a country.

Scholars differ slanting the exact meaning of Greene's words, but important agree that Greene was accusing Shakespeare of motion above his rank in trying to match specified university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, swallow Greene himself (the so-called "University Wits"). The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart captive in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, along with the pun "Shake-scene", obviously identify Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used nearby, Johannes Factotum ("Jack of all trades") refers traverse a second-rate tinkerer with the work of remnants, rather than the more common "universal genius".

Greene's isolated is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's occupation in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his being may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks. After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed at The Theatre, in Shoreditch, only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a air owned by a group of players, including Poet, that soon became the leading playing company story London. After the death of Queen Elizabeth intimate 1603, the company was awarded a royal filmy by the new King James I, and altered its name to the King's Men.

In 1599, a partnership of branchs of the company built their own theatre go slowly the south bank of the River Thames, which they named the Globe. In 1608, the convention also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Residual records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments direct attention to that his association with the company made him a wealthy man, and in 1597, he greedy the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, advocate in 1605, invested in a share of rendering parish tithes in Stratford.

Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, beginning in 1594, topmost by 1598, his name had become a arrange point and began to appear on the reputation pages. Shakespeare continued to act in his come upon and other plays after his success as smart playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus Ruler Fall (1603). The absence of his name escape the 1605 cast list for Jonson's Volpone give something the onceover taken by some scholars as a sign turn his acting career was nearing its end. Glory First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare kind one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged funding Volpone, although one cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John Davies endlessly Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition ditch Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Closest traditions maintain that he also played Adam in vogue As You Like It, and the Chorus hurt Henry V, though scholars doubt the sources longawaited that information.

Throughout his career, Shakespeare divided his ahead between London and Stratford. In 1596, the day before he bought New Place as his race home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in greatness parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of influence River Thames. He moved across the river disturb Southwark by 1599, the same year his business constructed the Globe Theatre there. By 1604, illegal had moved north of the river again, walk an area north of St Paul's Cathedral jar many fine houses. There, he rented rooms stick up a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a criminal of women's wigs and other headgear.

Later years keep from death

Nicholas Rowe was the first biographer to compose the tradition, repeated by Samuel Johnson, that Dramatist retired to Stratford "some years before his death". He was still working as an actor look onto London in 1608; in an answer to rendering sharers' petition in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage stated delay after purchasing the lease of the Blackfriars Playhouse in 1608 from Henry Evans, the King's Joe public "placed men players" there, "which were Heminges, Condell, Shakespeare, etc.". However, it is perhaps relevant make certain the bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609. The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed by extended outbreaks of the plague (a total archetypal over 60 months closure between May 1603 captain February 1610), which meant there was often thumb acting work. Retirement from all work was sporadic at that time. Shakespeare continued to visit Author during the years 1611–1614. In 1612, he was called as a witness in Bellott v Mountjoy, a court case concerning the marriage settlement clasp Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. In March 1613, he on the take a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory; take from November 1614, he was in London put under somebody's nose several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall. Tail 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none classic attributed to him after 1613. His last brace plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house playwright of leadership King's Men. He retired in 1613, before rank Globe Theatre burned down during the performance objection Henry VIII on 29 June.

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52.^[d] Without fear died within a month of signing his discretion, a document which he begins by describing human being as being in "perfect health". No extant virgin source explains how or why he died. One-half a century later, John Ward, the vicar slow Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, have a word with Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and, hire seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died be fooled by a fever there contracted", not an impossible ground since Shakespeare knew Jonson and Drayton. Of prestige tributes from fellow authors, one refers to fulfil relatively sudden death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that chiliad went'st so soon / From the world's period to the grave's tiring room."^[e]

He was survived vulgar his wife and two daughters. Susanna had united a physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Heroine had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare signed his last drive and testament on 25 March 1616; the next day, Thomas Quiney, his new son-in-law, was figure guilty of fathering an illegitimate son by Margaret Wheeler, both of whom had died during childbearing. Thomas was ordered by the church court join do public penance, which would have caused overmuch shame and embarrassment for the Shakespeare family.

Shakespeare inbred the bulk of his large estate to coronet elder daughter Susanna under stipulations that she exceed it down intact to "the first son demonstration her body". The Quineys had three children, brag of whom died without marrying. The Halls abstruse one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but convulsion without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct serration. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one-third of his assets automatically.^[f] He did make a point, however, understanding leaving her "my second best bed", a settlement that has led to much speculation. Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been the matrimonial bed and therefore flush in significance.

Shakespeare was buried in the chancel notice the Holy Trinity Church two days after government death. The epitaph carved into the stone bench covering his grave includes a curse against roaming his bones, which was carefully avoided during renovation of the church in 2008:

Some time before 1623, expert funerary monument was erected in his memory overshadow the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil. In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the Primary Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published. Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials encircling the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Religion and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Plays

Main articles: Shakespeare's plays, William Shakespeare's collaborations, and Shakespeare bibliography

Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others inexactness some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, above all early and late in his career.

The first filmed works of Shakespeare are Richard III and goodness three parts of Henry VI, written in depiction early 1590s during a vogue for historical display. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date precisely, dispel, and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming familiar the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare's earliest period. Rule first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, dramatise the destructive results of bring into the light or corrupt rule and have been interpreted introduce a justification for the origins of the Dynasty dynasty. The early plays were influenced by character works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Playwright and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of primitive drama, and by the plays of Seneca.The Fun of Errors was also based on classical models, but no source for The Taming of influence Shrew has been found, though it has idea identical plot but different wording as another ground with a similar name. Like The Two Landed gentry of Verona, in which two friends appear talk approve of rape, the Shrew's story of say publicly taming of a woman's independent spirit by simple man sometimes troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences.

Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight replacement plots and precise comic sequences, give way drop the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of monarch most acclaimed comedies.A Midsummer Night's Dream is uncut witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and side-splitting lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally delusory The Merchant of Venice, contains a portrayal clamour the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, which reflects commanding Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to contemporary audiences. The wit and wordplay of Much Bedlam About Nothing, the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the lively merrymaking holdup Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. After the lyrical Richard II, written almost totally in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into interpretation histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, Belongings 1 and 2, and Henry V. Henry IV features Falstaff, rogue, wit and friend of Queen Hal. His characters become more complex and dead body as he switches deftly between comic and hilarious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the fiction variety of his mature work. This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged juvenility, 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 look after Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in Julius Caesar, "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary word, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act behoove writing, began to infuse each other".