William Shakespeare
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Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as the
greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. He
is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His
works includes some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a
few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated
into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any
other playwright. They also continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare
was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he
married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna and twins
Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career
in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the
Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. At age 49 (around 1613),
he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later.
Shakespeare
produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were
primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work
produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them
Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be
among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life,
he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other
playwrights.
In
1623, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, John Heminges and Henry
Condell, published a definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous
collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that included all but two of
his plays. The volume was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Jonson
hailed Shakespeare in a now-famous quote as "not of an age, but for all
time".
Early life
William
Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful
glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an
affluent landowning family. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptized
on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown, but is traditionally observed
on 23 April, Saint George's Day. This date, which can be traced to a mistake
made by an 18th-century scholar, has proved appealing to biographers because
Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616. He was the third of eight children,
and the eldest surviving son. Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's
New School in Stratford, a free school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile
(400 m) from his home.
At
the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. Anne gave birth
to a daughter, Susanna. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost
two years later. Some 20th-century scholars suggested that Shakespeare may have
been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic
landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his will.
London and theatrical career
It
is 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. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun
any time from the mid-1580s. After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed
only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players,
including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London.
After 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.
In
1599, a partnership of members of the company built their own theatre on the
south bank of the River Thames, which they named the Globe. In 1608, the
partnership also took over the Black friars indoor theatre. Extant records of
Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that his association
with the company made him a wealthy man, and in 1597, he bought the
second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, invested in a share
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 to appear on the
title pages. Shakespeare continued to
act in 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 is taken by some scholars as a sign that
his acting career was nearing its end.
Throughout
his career, Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford. In 1596,
the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford,
Shakespeare was living in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the
River Thames. He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the same year his
company constructed the Globe Theatre there. By 1604, he had moved north of the
river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses.
Later years and death
Rowe
was the first biographer to record the tradition, that Shakespeare retired to
Stratford "some years before his death". He was still working as an
actor in London in 1608. The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed
during extended outbreaks of the plague (a total of over 60 months closure
between May 1603 and February 1610), which meant there was often no acting
work. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time. Shakespeare continued
to visit London during the years 1611–1614. In March 1613, he bought a
gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory, and from November 1614, he was in
London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall. After 1610,
Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613. His
last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher, who
succeeded him as the house playwright of the King's Men. He retired in 1613,
before the Globe Theatre burned down during the performance of Henry VIII on 29
June.
Shakespeare
died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52. He died within a month of signing his
will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in
"perfect health". Of the tributes from fellow authors, one refers to
his relatively sudden death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went'st
so soon / From the world's stage to the grave's tiring room." Shakespeare
was buried in the 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,
To
digg the dvst encloased heare.
Bleste
be yͤ man yͭ spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yͭ moves my bones.
In modern
language:
Good
friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To
dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed
be the man that spares these stones,
And
cursed be he that moves my bones.
Sometime
before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall,
with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to
Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil.
Shakespeare
has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including
funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster
Abbey.
Shakespeare's plays
Most
playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, and
critics agree that Shakespeare did the same, mostly early and late in his
career. The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three
parts of Henry VI, written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical
drama. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date precisely, however, and studies
of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of
the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare's
earliest period. His first histories, dramatise the destructive results of weak
or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of
the Tudor dynasty. The early plays were influenced by the works of other
Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the
traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca. The Comedy of Errors
was also based on classical models.
Shakespeare's
early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots and
precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere
of his most acclaimed comedies. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of
romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy, the
equally romantic Merchant of Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful
Jewish moneylender Shylock, which reflects Elizabethan views but may appear
derogatory to modern audiences. The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing,
the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the lively merrymaking of
Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. After Richard
II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into
the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. His
characters become more complex and tender as he switches between comic and
serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his
mature work.
In
the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem
plays" Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends
Well and a number of his best known tragedies. The titular hero of one of
Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, Hamlet, has probably been discussed more than
any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which
begins "To be or not to be; that is the question". The heroes of the
tragedies that followed, Othello and King Lear, are undone by hasty errors of
judgement. The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal
errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves.
In King Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers,
initiating the events which lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of
Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia. In Macbeth, the
shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies, uncontrollable
ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful
king and usurp the throne until their own guilt destroys them in turn. In this
play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic structure. His last
major tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, contain some of
Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies
by the poet and critic T. S. Eliot.
In
his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed
three more major plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, as well
as the collaboration, Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Less bleak than the tragedies,
these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they
end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Shakespeare
collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble
Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.
Shakespeare in performance
It
is not clear for which companies Shakespeare wrote his early plays. After the
plagues of 1592–93, Shakespeare's plays were performed by his own company at
The Theatre and the Curtain in Shore ditch, north of the Thames. Londoners
flocked there to see the first part of Henry IV. When the company found
themselves in dispute with their landlord, they pulled The Theatre down and
used the timbers to construct the Globe Theatre, the first playhouse built by
actors for actors, on the south bank of the Thames at Southwark. The Globe
opened in autumn 1599, with Julius Caesar one of the first plays staged. Most
of Shakespeare's greatest post-1599 plays were written for the Globe, including
Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.
After
the Lord Chamberlain's Men were renamed the King's Men in 1603, they entered a
special relationship with the new King James. The King's Men performed seven of
Shakespeare's plays at court between 1 November 1604, and 31 October 1605,
including two performances of The Merchant of Venice. After 1608, they
performed at the indoor Black friars Theatre during the winter and the Globe during
the summer. On 29 June, a cannon set fire to the thatch of the Globe and burned
the theatre to the ground, an event which pinpoints the date of a Shakespeare
play with rare precision.
Poems
In
1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare
published two narrative poems on sexual themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape
of Lucrece. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In
Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus;
while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful
Tarquin. Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses, the poems show the guilt and moral
confusion that result from uncontrolled lust. Both proved popular and were
often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, A
Lover's Complaint, in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive
suitor, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. In 1599, two
early drafts of sonnets 138 and 144 appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim,
published under Shakespeare's name but without his permission.
Sonnets
Published
in 1609, the Sonnets were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be
printed. Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but
evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a
private readership.
Style
Shakespeare's
first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in
a stylized language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the
characters or the drama. The poetry depends on extended, sometimes elaborate
metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical—written for actors
to declaim rather than speak. The grand speeches in Titus Andronicus, in the
view of some critics, often hold up the action, for example; and the verse in
The Two Gentlemen of Verona has been described as stilted. Shakespeare soon
began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes.
Shakespeare's
standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter. In
practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten
syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank
verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is
often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end
of lines, with the risk of monotony. Once Shakespeare mastered traditional
blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the
new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and
Hamlet.
In
the last phase of his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques. These
included run-on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in
sentence structure and length. Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a
practical sense of the theatre. He dramatized stories from sources such as
Plutarch and Holinshed. He reshaped each plot to create several centers of
interest and to show as many sides of a narrative to the audience as possible.
This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive
translation, cutting and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama. As
Shakespeare's mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations
and distinctive patterns of speech. In Shakespeare's late romances, he
deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasized the illusion
of theatre.
Influence
Shakespeare's
work has made a lasting impression on later theatre and literature. He expanded
the dramatic potential of characterization, plot, language, and genre. Until
Romeo and Juliet, for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic
for tragedy. Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about
characters or events, but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds.
His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to
revive Shakespearean verse drama.
Shakespeare
influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles
Dickens. The American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to
Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero, inspired
by King Lear. Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to
Shakespeare's works. These include three operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Macbeth,
Otello and Falstaff. Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the
Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites. The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a
friend of William Blake, even translated Macbeth into German. The psychoanalyst
Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular, that of Hamlet,
for his theories of human nature.
In
Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling, and pronunciation were less standardized
than they are now, and his use of language helped shape modern English. Samuel
Johnson quoted him more often than any other author in his A Dictionary of the
English Language. Expressions such as "with bated breath" (Merchant
of Venice) and "a foregone conclusion" (Othello) have found their way
into everyday English speech.
Shakespeare's
influence extends far beyond his native England and the English language. His
reception in Germany was particularly significant; as early as the 18th century
Shakespeare was widely translated and popularized in Germany, and gradually
became a "classic of the German Weimar era;" Christoph Martin Wieland
was the first to produce complete translations of Shakespeare's plays in any
language. Some of the most deeply affecting productions of Shakespeare have
been non-English, and non-European. He is that unique writer: he has something
for everyone."
"He
was not of an age, but for all time."
—Ben
Jonson
Shakespeare
was not revered in his lifetime, but he received a large amount of praise. In
1598, the cleric and author Francis Meres singled him out from a group of
English playwrights as "the most excellent" in both comedy and
tragedy. The authors of the Parnassus plays at St John's College, Cambridge,
numbered him with Chaucer, Gower, and Spenser. In the First Folio, Ben Jonson
called Shakespeare the "Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the wonder
of our stage".
Between
the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century,
classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated
Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson. Thomas Rymer condemned
Shakespeare for mixing the comic with the tragic. John Dryden rated Shakespeare
highly, saying of Jonson, "I admire him, but I love Shakespeare". For
several decades, Rymer's view held sway; but during the 18th century, critics
began to respond to Shakespeare on his own terms and acclaim what they termed
his natural genius. A series of scholarly editions of his work, notably those
of Samuel Johnson in 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790, added to his growing
reputation. By 1800, he was firmly enshrined as the national poet. In the 18th
and 19th centuries, his reputation also spread abroad. Among those who
championed him were the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal, and Victor Hugo.
During
the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his
plays in the spirit of German Romanticism. "This King Shakespeare,"
the essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1840, "does not he shine, in crowned
sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying
signs; indestructible". The Victorians produced his plays as lavish
spectacles on a grand scale. The playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw
mocked the cult of Shakespeare worship as "bardolatry", claiming that
the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare obsolete.
The
modernist revolution in the arts during the early 20th century, enlisted his
work in the service of the avant-garde. The Expressionists in Germany and the
Futurists in Moscow mounted productions of his plays. Marxist playwright and
director Bertolt Brecht devised an epic theatre under the influence of
Shakespeare. The poet and critic T.S. Eliot argued against Shaw that
Shakespeare's "primitiveness" in fact made him truly modern. Eliot,
along with G. Wilson Knight and the school of New Criticism, led a movement
towards a closer reading of Shakespeare's imagery. In the 1950s, a wave of new
critical approaches replaced modernism and paved the way for "post-modern"
studies of Shakespeare. By the 1980s, Shakespeare studies were open to
movements such as structuralism, feminism, New Historicism, African-American
studies, and queer studies. Comparing Shakespeare's accomplishments to those of
leading figures in philosophy and theology, Harold Bloom wrote:
"Shakespeare was larger than Plato and than St. Augustine.
Works
Shakespeare's
works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed according
to their folio classification as comedies, histories, and tragedies. Two plays
not included in the First Folio, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of
Tyre, are now accepted as part of the canon, with today's scholars agreeing
that Shakespeare made major contributions to the writing of both. No
Shakespearean poems were included in the First Folio.
In
the late 19th century, Edward Dowden classified four of the late comedies as
romances, and though many scholars prefer to call them tragicomedies, Dowden's
term is often used. In 1896, Frederick S. Boas coined the term "problem
plays" to describe four plays: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for
Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and Hamlet.
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