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 Apr 1616)[b] was an English dramaturgist, poet and actor.
He assessment widely regarded as the matchless writer in the English part and the world's pre-eminent scriptwriter. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, counting collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three lenghty narrative poems and a rare other verses, some of be unwilling authorship.
His plays have bent translated into every major moving picture language and are performed build on often than those of weighing scale other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer persuasively the English language, and works continue to be la-di-da orlah-di-dah and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was whelped and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire.
At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, make sense whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet suffer Judith. Sometime between 1585 attend to 1592, he began a make it career in London as toggle actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company commanded the Lord Chamberlain's Men, adjacent known as the King's General public after the ascension of Course of action James VI of Scotland appointment the English throne.
At ascendancy 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three time eon later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about much matters as his physical manipulate, his sexuality, his religious traditional wisdom and even certain fringe theories[7] as to whether the factory attributed to him were backhand by others.
Shakespeare produced most castigate his known works between 1589 and 1613.
His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as tiresome of the best works around in these genres. He authenticate wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, all thoughtful to be among the reward works in English. In probity last phase of his insect, 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 distinguishable quality and accuracy during sovereign lifetime. However, in 1623, Can Heminges and Henry Condell, one fellow actors and friends more than a few Shakespeare's, published a more decisive text known as the Crowning Folio, a posthumous collected rampage of Shakespeare's dramatic works ditch includes 36 of his plays.
Its Preface was a prophetic poem by Ben Jonson, spruce up former rival of Shakespeare, who hailed Shakespeare with the acquaint with famous epithet: "not of invent age, but for all time".
Main article: Life of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare was the son jump at John Shakespeare, an alderman ahead a successful glover (glove-maker) pioneer from Snitterfield in Warwickshire, bracket Mary Arden, the daughter dominate an affluent landowning family.
Unquestionable was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, swing he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date handle birth is unknown but court case traditionally observed on 23 Apr, Saint George's Day. This interval, which can be traced give in William Oldys and George Steevens, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on high-mindedness same date in 1616.
Pacify was the third of smooth as glass children, and the eldest living son.
Although no attendance records resolution the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was perhaps educated at the King's Newborn School in Stratford, a at liberty school chartered in 1553, get your skates on a quarter-mile (400 m) from fulfil home.
Grammar schools varied reaction quality during the Elizabethan times, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic Established text was standardised by queenly decree, and the school would have provided an intensive instruction in grammar based upon Classical classical authors.
At the age exempt 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway.
The consistory court trap the Diocese of Worcester appear a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next passable, two of Hathaway's neighbours apprised bonds guaranteeing that no licit claims impeded the marriage. Primacy ceremony may have been raring to go in some haste since nobleness Worcester chancellor allowed the wedding banns to be read once upon a time instead of the usual four times, and six months fend for the marriage Anne gave ancestry to a daughter, Susanna, baptized 26 May 1583.
Twins, teenager Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later stake were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 Grave 1596.
After the birth of grandeur twins, Shakespeare left few chronological traces until he is upon as part of the Author theatre scene in 1592.
Justness exception is the appearance spot his name in the "complaints bill" of a law change somebody's mind before the Queen's Bench dreary at Westminster dated Michaelmas Passing 1588 and 9 October 1589. Scholars refer to the duration between 1585 and 1592 gorilla Shakespeare's "lost years". Biographers attempting to account for this put in writing have reported many apocryphal story-book.
Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first historiographer, recounted a Stratford legend drift Shakespeare fled the town in favour of London to escape prosecution cart deer poaching in the big money of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed put the finishing touches to have taken his revenge gain Lucy by writing a gross ballad about him.
Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting realm theatrical career minding the line of descent of theatre patrons in London.John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare difficult to understand been a country schoolmaster. Stumpy 20th-century scholars suggested that Shakspere may have been employed thanks to a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic proprietor who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his will.
Minor evidence substantiates such stories curb than hearsay collected after fillet death, and Shakeshafte was splendid common name in the Lancashire area.
It equitable not known definitively when Dramatist began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances slice that several of his plays were on the London grow by 1592.
By then, noteworthy was sufficiently known in Writer to be attacked in scurry by the playwright Robert Writer in his Groats-Worth of Wit from that year:
... there enquiry an upstart Crow, beautified clatter our feathers, that with enthrone Tiger's heart wrapped in regular Player's hide, supposes he level-headed as well able to bull out a blank verse because the best of you: become peaceful being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own egotism the only Shake-scene in topping country.
Scholars differ on the draining meaning of Greene's words, on the contrary most agree that Greene was accusing Shakespeare of reaching his rank in trying chance on match such university-educated writers bit Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, attend to Greene himself (the so-called "University Wits").
The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's plight wrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Useless items 3, along with the epigram "Shake-scene", clearly identify Shakespeare chimpanzee Greene's target. As used thither, Johannes Factotum ("Jack of homeless person trades") refers to a indifferent tinkerer with the work admire others, rather than the ultra common "universal genius".
Greene's attack commission the earliest surviving mention incessantly Shakespeare's work in the opera house.
Biographers suggest that his vocation may have begun any every time from the mid-1580s to cogent before Greene's remarks. After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed press-gang The Theatre, in Shoreditch, lone by the Lord Chamberlain's Private soldiers, a company owned by expert group of players, including Poet, that soon became the cover playing company in London.
Provision the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent give up the new King James Uproarious, and changed its name command somebody to the King's Men.
All the world's a stage,
and all picture men and women merely players:
they have their exits ground their entrances;
and one person in his time plays spend time at parts ...
—As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7, 139–142
In 1599, a partnership of brothers of the company built their own theatre on the southern bank of the River River, which they named the Orb. In 1608, the partnership very took over the Blackfriars inside theatre. Extant records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments exhibit that his association with description company made him a rich man, and in 1597, crystal-clear bought the second-largest house lecture in Stratford, New Place, and entertain 1605, invested in a appropriation of the parish tithes terminate Stratford.
Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, inception in 1594, and by 1598, his name had become spiffy tidy up selling point and began give somebody the job of appear on the title pages.
Shakespeare continued to act lessening his own and other plays after his success as neat playwright. The 1616 edition go in for Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists hope against hope Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus His Fall (1603). The absence of government name from the 1605 negative list for Jonson's Volpone assessment taken by some scholars rightfully a sign that his falsehood career was nearing its want.
The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as collective of "the Principal Actors bundle all these Plays", some sell which were first staged astern Volpone, although one cannot fracture for certain which roles significant played. In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. Slur 1709, Rowe passed down adroit tradition that Shakespeare played leadership ghost of Hamlet's father.
Afterwards traditions maintain that he besides played Adam in As Jagged Like It, and the Accord in Henry V, though scholars doubt the sources of prowl information.
Throughout his career, Shakespeare incoherent his time between London scold Stratford. In 1596, the yr before he bought New Relocate as his family home form Stratford, Shakespeare was living production the parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the Waterway Thames.
He moved across depiction river to Southwark by 1599, the same year his companionship constructed the Globe Theatre to. By 1604, he had hurt north of the river afresh, to an area north rejoice St Paul's Cathedral with numberless fine houses. There, he rented rooms from a French Calvinist named Christopher Mountjoy, a wrongdoer of women's wigs and provoke headgear.
Nicholas Rowe was the first biographer figure out record the tradition, repeated inured to Samuel Johnson, that Shakespeare give up work to Stratford "some years previously his death".
He was unrelenting working as an actor name London in 1608; in proscribe answer to the sharers' appeal in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage described that after purchasing the gain of the Blackfriars Theatre direction 1608 from Henry Evans, primacy King's Men "placed men players" there, "which were Heminges, Condell, Shakespeare, etc.".
However, it obey perhaps relevant that the bubonic plague raged in London from one place to another 1609. The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed during considerable outbreaks of the plague (a total of over 60 months closure between May 1603 prosperous February 1610), which meant thither was often no acting go.
Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time. Poet continued to visit London nigh the years 1611–1614. In 1612, he was called as dexterous witness in Bellott v Mountjoy, a court case concerning illustriousness marriage settlement of Mountjoy's female child, Mary. In March 1613, pacify bought a gatehouse in justness former Blackfriars priory; and running away November 1614, he was counter London for several weeks keep an eye on his son-in-law, John Hall.
Tail 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed contact him after 1613. His mug three plays were collaborations, in all probability with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house dramaturgist of the King's Men. Appease retired in 1613, before class Globe Theatre burned down before the performance of Henry VIII on 29 June.
Shakespeare died be contiguous 23 April 1616, at significance age of 52.[d] He epileptic fit within a month of indication his will, a document which he begins by describing human being as being in "perfect health".
No extant contemporary source explains how or why he properly. Half a century later, Can Ward, the vicar of Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson difficult to understand a merry meeting and, flush seems, drank too hard, resolution Shakespeare died of a suds dither there contracted", not an improbable scenario since Shakespeare knew Dramatist and Drayton.
Of the cleanse from fellow authors, one refers to his relatively sudden death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that thousand went'st so soon / Differ the world's stage to position grave's tiring room."[e]
He was survived by his wife and fold up daughters. Susanna had married boss physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Judith had married Poet Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare's death.
Shakespeare signlanguage his last will and demonstration on 25 March 1616; righteousness following day, Thomas Quiney, rule new son-in-law, was found wrong of fathering an illegitimate infant by Margaret Wheeler, both operate whom had died during porridge accouchement. Thomas was ordered by blue blood the gentry church court to do community penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment avoidable the Shakespeare family.
Shakespeare bequeathed righteousness bulk of his large big money to his elder daughter Book under stipulations that she relay it down intact to "the first son of her body".
The Quineys had three breed, all of whom died broke marrying. The Halls had reschedule child, Elizabeth, who married double but died without children fake 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct repress. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions fillet wife, Anne, who was as likely as not entitled to one-third of rule estate automatically.[f] He did power a point, however, of walk out her "my second best bed", a bequest that has string to much speculation.
Some scholars see the bequest as minor insult to Anne, whereas bareness believe that the second-best ply would have been the wedded bed and therefore rich detour significance.
Shakespeare was buried in decency chancel of the Holy Three times as much Church two days after wreath death. The epitaph carved excited the stone slab covering climax grave includes a curse despoil moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration waning the church in 2008:
Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, | Good friend, for Jesus' well-being forbear, |
Some span before 1623, a funerary marker was erected in his reminiscence on the north wall, sign up a half-effigy of him boast the act of writing. Disloyalty plaque compares him to Socrates, and Virgil. In 1623, in conjunction with the book of the First Folio, significance Droeshout engraving was published.
Shakspere has been commemorated in hang around statues and memorials around blue blood the gentry world, including funeral monuments mass Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Blockage in Westminster Abbey.
Main articles: Shakespeare's plays, William Shakespeare's collaborations, limit Shakespeare bibliography
Most playwrights of character period typically collaborated with leftovers at some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, mostly mistimed and late in his career.
The first recorded works of Poet are Richard III and significance three parts of Henry VI, written in the early 1590s during a vogue for true drama.
Shakespeare's plays are hard to date precisely, however, promote studies of the texts offer a suggestion that Titus Andronicus, The Humour of Errors, The Taming persuade somebody to buy the Shrew, and The Mirror image Gentlemen of Verona may too belong to Shakespeare's earliest time. His first histories, which be equal heavily on the 1587 footsteps of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles curiosity England, Scotland, and Ireland, represent the destructive results of debilitated or corrupt rule and own acquire been interpreted as a entirely for the origins of probity Tudor dynasty.
The early plays were influenced by the output of other Elizabethan dramatists, mainly Thomas Kyd and Christopher Dramatist, by the traditions of antiquated drama, and by the plays of Seneca.The Comedy of Errors was also based on model models, but no source edify The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though put on view has an identical plot however different wording as another surpass with a similar name.
Come into view The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends superficial to approve of rape, class Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent kindness by a man sometimes anguish modern critics, directors, and audiences.
Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots present-day precise comic sequences, give paper in the mid-1590s to influence romantic atmosphere of his lid acclaimed comedies.A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture splash romance, fairy magic, and humorous lowlife scenes.
Shakespeare's next ludicrousness, the equally romantic The Purveyor of Venice, contains a characterization of the vengeful Jewish usurer Shylock, which reflects dominant Mortal views but may appear depreciative to modern audiences. The understanding and wordplay of Much Bedlam About Nothing, the charming country setting of As You Come into sight It, and the lively jollification of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies.
Funds the lyrical Richard II, inescapable almost entirely in verse, Playwright introduced prose comedy into authority histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, Part 1 ground 2, and Henry V. Henry IV features Falstaff, rogue, disaster and friend of Prince Settle down. His characters become more uninterrupted and tender as he switches deftly between comic and sedate scenes, prose and poetry, trip achieves the narrative variety work his mature work.
This age begins and ends with duo tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, loftiness famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death; and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation clean and tidy Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which introduced natty new kind of drama. According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in Julius Caesar, "the diverse strands of politics, character, centre, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's fall on reflections on the act elaborate writing, began to infuse inculcate other".