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| William Shakespeare | |
|---|---|
 The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed (National Portrait Gallery, London). | |
| Born | April 1564 (exact date unknown) Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England |
| Died | 23 April 1616 Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England |
| Occupation | Playwright, poet, actor |
| Literary movement | Renaissance, Elizabethan and Jacobean eras |
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language, and as the world's preeminent dramatist. He wrote approximately 38 plays and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems. Already popular in his own lifetime, Shakespeare became more famous after his death and his work was adulated by many prominent cultural figures through the centuries. He is often considered to be England's national poet and is sometimes referred to as the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard") or the "Swan of Avon".
Orthodox scholars believe Shakespeare produced most of his work between 1586 and 1612, although the exact dates and chronology of the plays attributed to him are under considerable debate. He is counted among the few playwrights who have excelled in both tragedy and comedy; his plays combine popular appeal with complex characterisation, and poetic grandeur with philosophical depth.
Shakespeare's works have been translated into every major living language, and his plays are continually performed all around the world. Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in the literature and history of the English-speaking world, and many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages. Many have speculated about Shakespeare, including his sexuality, religious affiliation, and the authorship of his plays.
Life
Main article: Shakespeare's lifeEarly life
William Shakespeare (also spelled Shakspere, Shaksper, Shaxper, and Shake-speare, as spelling in Elizabethan times was not fixed and absolute) was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, the son of John Shakespeare, a successful glover and alderman from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, a daughter of the gentry. His birth is assumed to have occurred at the family house on Henley Street. The record of Shakespeare's christening dates this to 26 April of that year. As christenings were performed within three days of birth, tradition has settled on 23 April, Saint Georges day, as his birthday. This date has a convenient symmetry, for Shakespeare died on the same day: 23 April, in 1616.
Shakespeare may have attended King Edward VI Grammar School in central Stratford, but no school records of the time survive. As the son of a prominent town official, he was entitled to attend free of charge. The school probably would have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and literature, although Elizabethan-era grammar schools varied in quality.
At the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, aged twenty-six, on 28 November 1582. One document identified her as being "of Temple Grafton," near Stratford, and the marriage may have taken place there. Two neighbours of Hathaway posted bond that there were no impediments to the marriage. There appears to have been some haste in arranging the ceremony, presumably because Anne was three months pregnant. On 26 May 1583, Shakespeare's first child, Susanna, was baptised at Stratford. Twin children, a son, Hamnet, and a daughter, Judith, were baptised on 2 February 1585. Hamnet died in 1596 and was buried on 11 August.
After his marriage Shakespeare left few traces in the historical record until he appeared on the London theatrical scene. Indeed, the period from 1585 (when his twin children were born) until 1592 are known as Shakespeare's "lost years" because no evidence survives to show exactly where he was or why he left Stratford for London. Numerous stories attempt to account for Shakespeare's life during this time, including one that Shakespeare got in trouble for poaching deer, one that he worked as a country school teacher, and one that he minded the horses of theatre patrons in London. However, there is no direct evidence to support these stories and they all appear to have begun circulating after Shakespeare's death.
London and theatrical career
By 1592 Shakespeare was a playwright in London; his reputation was high enough for Robert Greene to denounce him as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey." (The italicised line parodies the phrase, "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" which Shakespeare wrote in Henry VI, part 3.)
By late 1594 Shakespeare was an actor, writer and part-owner of a playing company known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men — like others of the period, the company took its name from its aristocratic sponsor, in this case the Lord Chamberlain. The group became popular enough for the new king James I (1603) to adopt the company himself, after which it became known as the King's Men. Shakespeare's writing shows him indeed to be an actor, with many phrases, words, and references to acting.
By 1596 Shakespeare had moved to the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and by 1598 he appeared at the top of a list of actors in Every Man in His Humour written by Ben Jonson. By 1598, his name also began to appear on the title pages of his plays, presumably as a selling point.
There is a tradition that Shakespeare, in addition to writing many of the plays his company enacted, and being concerned as part-owner of the company with business and financial details, continued to act in various parts, such as the ghost of Hamlet's father, Adam in As You Like It, and the Chorus in Henry V.{fact}
He appears to have moved across the River Thames to Southwark sometime around 1599. By 1604, he had moved north of the river, lodging just north of St Paul's Cathedral with a Huguenot family named Mountjoy. His residence there is worth noting because he helped arrange a marriage between the Mountjoys' daughter and their apprentice Stephen Bellott. Bellott later sued his father-in-law for defaulting on part of the promised dowry, and Shakespeare was called as a witness.
Various documents recording legal affairs and commercial transactions show that Shakespeare grew rich enough during his stay in London to buy a property in Blackfriars, London and own the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place.
Later years
Shakespeare appears to have retired to Stratford in 1613. He died on 23 April 1616 at the age of 52. Supposedly Shakespeare died on his birthday, if the tradition that he was born on April 23 is correct. He was married to Anne Hathaway until his death and was survived by his two daughters, Susanna and Judith. His son Hamnet had died in 1596. Although Susanna married Dr John Hall, there are no direct descendants of the poet and playwright alive today.
Shakespeare is buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was granted the honour of burial in the chancel, not on account of his literary fame but for purchasing a share of the tithe of the church for £440 (a considerable sum of money at the time). A monument on the wall nearest his grave, probably placed by his family, features a bust showing Shakespeare posed in the act of writing. Each year on his claimed birthday, a new quill pen is placed in the writing hand of the bust. He may have written the epitaph on his tombstone:
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosèd here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.
Works
Plays
Main article: Shakespeare's playsMany of Shakespeare's plays have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature. Shakespeare wrote tragedies, histories, comedies and romances, all of which have been translated into every major living language, and are continually performed all over the world.
As was common in the period, Shakespeare based many of his plays on the works of other playwrights and reworked earlier stories and historical material. For instance, Hamlet (c. 1601) is probably a reworking of an older, lost play (the so-called Ur-Hamlet), and King Lear is an adaptation of an earlier play, also called King Lear. For plays on historical subjects, Shakespeare relied heavily on two principal texts. Most of his Roman and Greek plays are based on Plutarch's Parallel Lives (from the 1579 English translation by Sir Thomas North), and the English history plays on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (which provided material for Macbeth and King Lear). Shakespeare also possibly borrowed stylistic elements from contemporary playwrights like Christopher Marlowe. One of Shakespeare's most original plays--at least in terms of writing, themes, and setting--was The Tempest.
Shakespeare's plays tend to be placed into three main stylistic groups:
- early romantic comedies and histories (such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and Henry IV, Part 1);
- middle period romantic comedies and tragedies (including his most famous tragedies, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear, as well as "problem plays" such as Troilus and Cressida);
- later romances (such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest).
The earlier plays range from broad comedy to historical nostalgia, while the middle-period plays tend have grander themes, addressing such issues as betrayal, murder, lust, power, and ambition. By contrast, his late romances feature redemptive plotlines with ambiguous endings and the use of magic and other fantastical elements. However, the borders between these genres are never clear.
Some of Shakespeare's plays first appeared in print as a series of quartos, but most remained unpublished until 1623 when the posthumous First Folio was published by two actors who had been in Shakespeare's company: John Heminges and Henry Condell. The traditional division of his plays into tragedies, comedies, and histories follows the logic of the First Folio. It is at this point that stage directions, punctuation and act divisions enter his plays, setting the trend for further future editorial decisions. Modern criticism has also labelled some of his plays "problem plays" or tragi-comedies, as they elude easy categorisation, or perhaps purposefully break generic conventions. The term "romances" has also been preferred for the later comedies.
There are many controversies about the exact chronology of Shakespeare's plays. The fact that Shakespeare did not produce an authoritative print version of his plays during his lifetime accounts for part of the textual problem often noted with his plays, which means that for several of the plays there are different textual versions. As a result, the problem of identifying what Shakespeare actually wrote became a major concern for most modern editions. Textual corruptions also stem from printers' errors, compositors' misreadings, or wrongly scanned lines from the source material. Additionally, in an age before standardised spelling, Shakespeare often wrote a word several times in a different spelling, contributing further to the transcribers' confusions. Modern scholars also believe Shakespeare revised his plays throughout the years, sometimes leading to two existing versions of one play.
Sonnets
Main article: Shakespeare's sonnetsShakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 poems that deal with such themes as love, beauty, and mortality. All but two first appeared in the 1609 publication entitled Shakespeare's Sonnets; numbers 138 ("When my love swears that she is made of truth") and 144 ("Two loves have I, of comfort and despair") had previously been published in a 1599 miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrim. The Sonnets were written over a number of years, probably beginning in the early 1590s.
The conditions under which the sonnets were published are unclear. The 1609 text is dedicated to one "Mr. W.H.", who is described as "the only begetter" of the poems in the dedication. It is unknown if the dedication was written by Shakespeare or Thomas Thorpe, the publisher. It is also unknown who this man was, although there are many theories, including those who believe him to be the young man featured in the sonnets. In addition, it is not known whether the publication of the sonnets was even authorised by Shakespeare.
Other poems
In addition to his sonnets, Shakespeare also wrote three known longer poems: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece and A Lover's Complaint. These poems appear to have been written either in an attempt to win the patronage of a rich benefactor (as was common at the time) or as the result of such patronage. For example, The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis were both dedicated to Shakespeare's patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.
In addition, Shakespeare wrote the short poem The Phoenix and the Turtle. The anthology The Passionate Pilgrim was attributed to him upon its first publication in 1599, but in fact only five of its poems are by Shakespeare and the attribution was withdrawn in the second edition.
Style
Shakespeare's works have been a major influence on subsequent theatre. Not only did Shakespeare create some of the most admired plays in Western literature, he also transformed English theatre by expanding expectations about what could be accomplished through characterisation, plot, action, language, and genre. His poetic artistry helped raise the status of popular theatre, permitting it to be admired by intellectuals as well as by those seeking pure entertainment.
Theatre was changing when Shakespeare first arrived in London in the late 1580s or early 1590s. Previously, the most common forms of popular English theatre were the Tudor morality plays. These plays, which blend piety with farce and slapstick, were allegories in which the characters are personified moral attributes who validate the virtues of Godly life by prompting the protagonist to choose such a life over evil. The characters and plot situations are symbolic rather than realistic. As a child, Shakespeare would likely have been exposed to this type of play (along with mystery plays and miracle plays). Meanwhile, at the universities, academic plays were being staged based on Roman closet dramas. These plays, often performed in Latin, used a more exact and academically respectable poetic style than the morality plays, but they were also more static, valuing lengthy speeches over physical action.
By the late 16th century, the popularity of morality and academic plays waned as the English Renaissance took hold, and playwrights like Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe began to revolutionise theatre. Their plays blended the old morality drama with academic theatre to produce a new secular form. The new drama had the poetic grandeur and philosophical depth of the academic play and the bawdy populism of the moralities. However, it was more ambiguous and complex in its meanings, and less concerned with simple moral allegories. Inspired by this new style, Shakespeare took these changes to a new level, creating plays that not only resonated on an emotional level with audiences but also explored and debated the basic elements of what it means to be human.
Shakespeare wrote a large proportion of his plays and poems with a rhythm known as iambic pentameter, in which each line has ten syllables, alternating unstressed with stressed syllables.
Reputation
Main article: Shakespeare's reputationShakespeare's reputation has grown considerably since his own time. During his lifetime and shortly after his death, Shakespeare was well-regarded but not considered the supreme poet of his age. He was included in some contemporary lists of leading poets, but he lacked the stature of Edmund Spenser or Philip Sidney. After the Interregnum stage ban of 1642–1660, the new Restoration theatre companies had the previous generation of playwrights as the mainstay of their repertory, most of all the phenomenally popular Beaumont and Fletcher team, but also Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. As with other older playwrights, Shakespeare's plays were mercilessly adapted by later dramatists for the Restoration stage with little of the reverence that would later develop.
Beginning in the late 17th century, Shakespeare began to be considered the supreme English-language playwright (and, to a lesser extent, poet). Initially this reputation focused on Shakespeare as a dramatic poet, to be studied on the printed page rather than in the theatre. By the early 19th century, though, Shakespeare began hitting peaks of fame and popularity. During this time, theatrical productions of Shakespeare provided spectacle and melodrama for the masses and were extremely popular. Romantic critics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge then raised admiration for Shakespeare to adulation or bardolatry (from bard + idolatry), in line with the Romantic reverence for the poet as prophet and genius. In the middle to late 19th century, Shakespeare also became an emblem of English pride and a "rallying-sign", as Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1841, for the whole British Empire.
This reverence has provoked an unforeseen negative reaction in the youth. In the 21st century most people in the English-speaking world encounter Shakespeare at school at a young age, and there is an association by some students of his work with boredom beyond comprehension and of "high art" not easily appreciated by popular culture; an ironic fate considering the social mix of Shakespeare's audience. Nonetheless, Shakespeare's plays remain more frequently staged than the works of any other playwright and are frequently adapted into film—including Hollywood movies specifically marketed to broad teenage audiences, though many simply take credit for his plots rather than his narrative. Famously, Shakespeare's plays are often transferred to a different environment even when retaining his dialogue.
On another level, many modern English words and phrases that are taken for granted were introduced by Shakespeare.
See also: Timeline of Shakespeare criticismSpeculations about Shakespeare
Authorship
Main article: Shakespearean authorship questionAround one hundred and fifty years after Shakespeare's death in 1616, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship of the plays and poetry attributed to him. Researchers who believe the works to have been written by another playwright, or group of playwrights, have since then proposed many candidates for alternative authorship, including Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. While it is generally accepted in academic circles that Shakespeare's plays were written by Shakespeare of Stratford and not another author, popular interest in the subject has continued into the 21st century.
Another question in Shakespearean research addresses whether Shakespeare himself wrote every word of his commonly accepted plays, given that a number of his "later plays" show signs of collaboration and/or revision. This would not be uncommmon, as collaboration between dramatists routinely occurred in the Elizabethan theatre.
Religion
In 1559, five years before Shakespeare's birth, the Elizabethan Religious Settlement finally severed the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church after decades of uncertainty. In the ensuing years, extreme pressure was placed on England's Catholics to convert to the Protestant Church of England, and recusancy laws made Catholicism illegal. Some historians maintain that in Shakespeare's lifetime there was a substantial and widespread quiet resistance to the newly imposed faith. Some scholars, using both historical and literary evidence, have argued that Shakespeare was one of these recusants.
Some scholars claim that there is evidence that members of Shakespeare's family were recusant Catholics. The strongest evidence is a tract professing secret Catholicism signed by John Shakespeare, father of the poet. The tract was found in the 18th century in the rafters of a house which had once been John Shakespeare's, and was seen and described by the reputable scholar Edmond Malone. Malone later changed his mind and declared that he thought the tract was a forgery. His opinion is shared by most modern scholars. However, the tract has since been lost, and the truth can therefore never be known. John Shakespeare was also listed as one who did not attend church services, but this was "for feare of processe for Debtte", according to the commissioners, not because he was a recusant. Then again, avoiding creditors may have merely been a convenient pretext for a recusant's avoidance of the established church's services.
Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, was a member of a conspicuous and determinedly Catholic family in Warwickshire. In 1606, William's daughter Susannah was listed as one of the residents of Stratford refusing to take Holy Communion, which may suggest Catholic sympathies. It may, however, also be a sign of Puritan sympathies; Susannah's sister Judith was, according to some statements, of a Puritanical bent. Archdeacon Richard Davies, an 18th century Anglican cleric, allegedly wrote of Shakespeare: "He dyed a Papyst". Four of the six schoolmasters at the grammar school during Shakespeare's youth were Catholic sympathisers, and Simon Hunt, likely one of Shakespeare’s teachers, later became a Jesuit.
While none of this evidence proves Shakespeare's own Catholic sympathies, one historian, Clare Asquith, has claimed that those sympathies are detectable in his writing. Asquith claims that Shakespeare uses terms such as "high" when referring to Catholic characters and "low" when referring to Protestants (the terms refer to their altars) and "light" or "fair" to refer to Catholic and "dark" to refer to Protestant, a reference to certain clerical garbs. Asquith also detects in Shakespeare's work the use of a simple code used by the Jesuit underground in England which took the form of a mercantile terminology wherein priests were 'merchants' and souls were 'jewels', the people pursuing them were 'creditors', and the Tyburn gallows where the members of the underground died was called 'the place of much trading'. The Jesuit underground used this code so their correspondences looked like innocuous commercial letters, and Asquith claims that Shakespeare also used this code.
Needless to say, Shakespeare’s Catholicism is by no means universally accepted. The Catholic Encyclopedia questions not only his Catholicism, but whether "Shakespeare was not infected with the atheism, which... was rampant in the more cultured society of the Elizabethan age." Stephen Greenblatt, of Harvard, suspects Catholic sympathies of some kind or another in Shakespeare and his family but considers the writer to be a less than pious person with essentially worldly motives. An increasing number of scholars do look to matters biographical and evidence from Shakespeare’s work such as the placement of young Hamlet as a student at Wittenberg while old Hamlet’s ghost is in purgatory, the sympathetic view of religious life ("thrice blessed"), scholastic theology in The Phoenix and the Turtle, and sympathetic allusions to martyred English Jesuit St. Edmund Campion in Twelfth Night and many other matters as suggestive of a Catholic worldview.
On the other hand, the Porter's speech in Macbeth has been read by some as a criticism of the equivocation of Father Henry Garnet after it became topical in 1606 due to his execution.
Sexuality
Main article: Sexuality of William ShakespeareAs with many aspects of Shakespeare's life, there is little direct evidence with regards to Shakespeare's sexuality aside from the fact that he was married to Anne Hathaway and fathered three children. Circumstantial evidence suggests Shakespeare's wedding to Hathaway was hurried because she was already pregnant. Evidence for this is that their first child, Susanna, was born six months after the marriage ceremony on 26 May 1583. In addition, a marriage license was issued for the couple after only one reading of their intent to marry (the reading was normally done three times in order to give local residents a chance to voice any legal or other objection to the marriage).
It is possible that Shakespeare felt trapped by this marriage, speculation supported by the fact that he left his family and moved to London after only three years of marriage.
While in London, Shakespeare may have had affairs with different women. One anecdote along these lines is provided by a law student named John Manningham, who wrote in his diary that Shakespeare had a brief affair with a woman during a performance of Richard III. While this is one of the few surviving contemporary anecdotes about Shakespeare, scholars are skeptical of its validity (although the anecdote may have helped inspire the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love). Still, the anecdote suggests that at least one of Shakespeare's contemporaries (Manningham) believed that Shakespeare was heterosexual, even if he wasn't "averse to an occasional infidelity to his marriage vows." Possible evidence of other affairs are that twenty-six of Shakespeare's Sonnets are love poems addressed to a married woman (the so-called "Dark Lady").
In recent decades some scholars have taken another view of Shakespeare's sexuality, stating that possible homoerotic allusions in a number of his works suggest that Shakespeare was bisexual. While twenty-six of Shakespeare's Sonnets are addressed to his Dark Lady, one hundred and twenty-six are addressed to a young man (known as the "Fair Lord"). The amorous tone of the latter group, which focuses on the young man's beauty and the writer's devotion, has been interpreted as suggestive evidence for Shakespeare's being bisexual. For example, in 1954, C.S. Lewis wrote that the sonnets are "too lover-like for ordinary male friendship" (although he added that they are not the poetry of "full-blown pederasty") and that he "found no real parallel to such language between friends in the sixteenth-century literature." Nonetheless, others interpret them as referring to intense friendship rather than sexual love.
See also
- Shakespearean authorship
- Shakespeare's life
- Shakespeare's reputation
- Shakespeare's plays
- Shakespeare's sonnets
- Complete Works of Shakespeare
- Shakespeare's late romances
- Chronology of Shakespeare plays
- Chronology of Shakespeare's Plays - Oxfordian
- Anne Hathaway
- Elizabethan era
- English Renaissance theatre
- Globe Theatre
- Shakespeare on screen
- List of Shakespearean characters
- List of English words invented by Shakespeare
- Early Modern English language
Bibliography
Shakespeare's plays are traditionally organised into three groups: Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories. The following list separates the plays according to their classification in the First Folio, the first published edition of Shakespeare's plays. Today, some of the comedies are usually considered as a separate subgenre, the 'romances' or tragicomedies; these plays are highlighted with an asterisk (*).
ComediesMain article: Shakespearean comedy
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HistoriesMain article: Shakespearean histories
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TragediesMain article: Shakespearean tragedy
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Shakespeare on screenMain article: Shakespeare on screenEarly editions of ShakespeareNotes and references
Further reading
External linksOnline texts
Research
Influence on culture
In theatre and film
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