William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's
national poet
A national poet or national bard is a poet held by tradition and popular acclaim to represent the identity, beliefs and principles of a particular national culture. The national poet as culture hero is a long-standing symbo ...
and the "
Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including
collaborations, consist of some
39 plays,
154 sonnets, three long
narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been
translated
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...
into every major
living language
A modern language is any human language that is currently in use. The term is used in language education to distinguish between languages which are used for day-to-day communication (such as French and German) and dead classical languages such as ...
and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in
Stratford-upon-Avon,
Warwickshire
Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Av ...
. At the age of 18, he married
Anne Hathaway
Anne Jacqueline Hathaway (born November 12, 1982) is an American actress. The recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award, she was among the world's highest-paid actresses in 2 ...
, 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
Play is a range of intrinsically motivated activities done for recreational pleasure and enjoyment. Play is commonly associated with children and juvenile-level activities, but may be engaged in at any life stage, and among other higher-functio ...
called the
Lord Chamberlain's Men
The Lord Chamberlain's Men was a company of actors, or a " playing company" (as it then would likely have been described), for which Shakespeare wrote during most of his career. Richard Burbage played most of the lead roles, including Hamlet, Oth ...
, 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. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his
physical appearance
Human physical appearance is the outward phenotype or look of human beings.
There are infinite variations in human phenotypes, though society reduces the variability to distinct categories. The physical appearance of humans, in particular those a ...
, his
sexuality, his
religious beliefs and whether the works attributed to him were
written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily
comedies
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term origin ...
and
histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly
tragedies
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...
until 1608, among them ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
'', ''
Romeo and Juliet'', ''
Othello'', ''
King Lear
''King Lear'' is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare.
It is based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between two of his daughters. He becomes destitute and insane ...
'', 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.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy in his lifetime. However, in 1623,
John Heminges
John Heminges (bapt. 25 November 1566 – 10 October 1630) was an actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. Along with Henry Condell, he was an editor of the First Folio, the collected plays of Shakespeare ...
and
Henry Condell
Henry Condell ( bapt. 5 September 1576 – December 1627) was a British actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. With John Heminges, he was instrumental in preparing and editing the First Folio, the col ...
, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the
First Folio
''Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies'' is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare's death. It is cons ...
, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that included all but two of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".
Life
Early life
Shakespeare was the son of
John Shakespeare
John Shakespeare (c. 1531 – 7 September 1601) was an English businessman in Stratford-upon-Avon and the father of William Shakespeare. He was a glover and whittawer ( leather worker) by trade. Shakespeare was elected to several municipal ...
, an
alderman
An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members t ...
and a successful glover (glove-maker) originally from
Snitterfield
Snitterfield is a village and civil parish in the Stratford on Avon district of Warwickshire, England, less than to the north of the A46 road, from Stratford upon Avon, from Warwick and from Coventry. The population of the civil parish at t ...
in
Warwickshire
Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Av ...
, and
Mary Arden, the daughter of an
affluent landowning family. He was born in
Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was
baptised
Baptism (from grc-x-koine, βάπτισμα, váptisma) is a form of ritual purification—a characteristic of many religions throughout time and geography. In Christianity, it is a Christian sacrament of initiation and adoption, almost inv ...
on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April,
Saint George's Day
Saint George's Day is the feast day of Saint George, celebrated by Christian churches, countries, and cities of which he is the patron saint, including Bulgaria, England, Georgia, Portugal, Romania, Cáceres, Alcoy, Aragon and Catalonia.
Sai ...
. This date, which can be traced to
William Oldys
William Oldys (14 July 1696 – 15 April 1761) was an English antiquarian and bibliographer.
Life
He was probably born in London, the illegitimate son of Dr William Oldys (1636–1708), chancellor of Lincoln diocese. His father had held the ...
and
George Steevens
George Steevens (10 May 1736 – 22 January 1800) was an English Shakespearean commentator.
Biography Early life
He was born at Poplar, the son of a captain and later director of the East India Company. He was educated at Eton College and at ...
, 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.
![William Shakespeares birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon 26l2007](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/William_Shakespeares_birthplace%2C_Stratford-upon-Avon_26l2007.jpg)
Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that 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.
Grammar school
A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school ...
s varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
text was standardised by royal decree, and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar based upon Latin
classical authors.
At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old
Anne Hathaway
Anne Jacqueline Hathaway (born November 12, 1982) is an American actress. The recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award, she was among the world's highest-paid actresses in 2 ...
. The
consistory court
A consistory court is a type of ecclesiastical court, especially within the Church of England where they were originally established pursuant to a charter of King William the Conqueror, and still exist today, although since about the middle of the ...
of the
Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage. The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste since the Worcester
chancellor allowed the
marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times, and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter,
Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583. Twins, son
Hamnet and daughter
Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596.
![William-Shakespeare CoA 1602](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/William-Shakespeare_CoA_1602.jpg)
After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the "complaints bill" of a law case before the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated
Michaelmas Term
Michaelmas term is the first academic term of the academic year in a number of English-speaking universities and schools in the northern hemisphere, especially in the United Kingdom. Michaelmas term derives its name from the Feast of St Micha ...
1588 and 9 October 1589. Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years". Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many
apocryphal stories.
Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer
poaching
Poaching has been defined as the illegal hunting or capturing of wild animals, usually associated with land use rights.
Poaching was once performed by impoverished peasants for subsistence purposes and to supplement meager diets. It was set a ...
in the estate of local squire
Thomas Lucy
Sir Thomas Lucy (24 April 15327 July 1600) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1571 and 1585. He was a magistrate in Warwickshire, but is best known for his links to William Shakespeare. As a Protestant activist, he cam ...
. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him. Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London.
John Aubrey
John Aubrey (12 March 1626 – 7 June 1697) was an English antiquary, natural philosopher and writer. He is perhaps best known as the author of the '' Brief Lives'', his collection of short biographical pieces. He was a pioneer archaeologist ...
reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...
, a Catholic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his will. Little evidence substantiates such stories other than
hearsay
Hearsay evidence, in a legal forum, is testimony from an under-oath witness who is reciting an out-of-court statement, the content of which is being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. In most courts, hearsay evidence is inadmiss ...
collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.
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. By then, he was sufficiently known in London to be attacked in print by the playwright
Robert Greene in his ''
Groats-Worth of Wit'':
... 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.
Scholars differ on the exact meaning of Greene's words, but most agree that Greene was accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match such university-educated writers as
Christopher Marlowe,
Thomas Nashe
Thomas Nashe (baptised November 1567 – c. 1601; also Nash) was an Elizabethan playwright, poet, satirist and a significant pamphleteer. He is known for his novel ''The Unfortunate Traveller'', his pamphlets including ''Pierce Penniless,'' ...
, and Greene himself (the so-called "
University Wits
The University Wits is a phrase used to name a group of late 16th-century English playwrights and pamphleteers who were educated at the universities ( Oxford or Cambridge) and who became popular secular writers. Prominent members of this group were ...
"). The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's ''
Henry VI, Part 3
''Henry VI, Part 3'' (often written as ''3 Henry VI'') is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1591 and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. Whereas '' 1 Henry VI'' deals with the loss of Eng ...
'', along with the pun "Shake-scene", clearly identify Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used here, ''
Johannes Factotum'' ("Jack of all trades") refers to a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the more common "universal genius".
Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's work in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks. After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed only by the
Lord Chamberlain's Men
The Lord Chamberlain's Men was a company of actors, or a " playing company" (as it then would likely have been described), for which Shakespeare wrote during most of his career. Richard Burbage played most of the lead roles, including Hamlet, Oth ...
, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading
playing company
Play is a range of intrinsically motivated activities done for recreational pleasure and enjoyment. Play is commonly associated with children and juvenile-level activities, but may be engaged in at any life stage, and among other higher-functio ...
in London. After the death of
Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new
King James I
James VI and I (James Charles Stuart; 19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until hi ...
, 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
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...
, which they named the
Globe
A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model glo ...
. In 1608, the partnership also took over the
Blackfriars 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
New Place () was William Shakespeare's final place of residence in Stratford-upon-Avon. He died there in 1616. Though the house no longer exists, the site is owned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which maintains it as a specially-desig ...
, and in 1605, invested in a share of the parish
tithes
A tithe (; from Old English: ''teogoþa'' "tenth") is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash or cheques or more ...
in Stratford.
Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in
quarto
Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...
editions, beginning in 1594, and by 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the
title page
The title page of a book, thesis or other written work is the page at or near the front which displays its title, subtitle, author, publisher, and edition, often artistically decorated. (A half title, by contrast, displays only the title of a w ...
s. Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
's ''Works'' names him on the cast lists for ''
Every Man in His Humour
''Every Man in His Humour'' is a 1598 play by the English playwright Ben Jonson. The play belongs to the subgenre of the " humours comedy," in which each major character is dominated by an over-riding humour or obsession.
Performance and pu ...
'' (1598) and ''
Sejanus His Fall
''Sejanus His Fall'', a 1603 play by Ben Jonson, is a tragedy about Lucius Aelius Sejanus, the favourite of the Roman emperor Tiberius.
''Sejanus His Fall'' was performed at court in 1603, and at the Globe Theatre in 1604. The latter perfor ...
'' (1603). The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for Jonson's ''
Volpone
''Volpone'' (, Italian for "sly fox") is a comedy play by English playwright Ben Jonson first produced in 1605–1606, drawing on elements of city comedy and beast fable. A merciless satire of greed and lust, it remains Jonson's most-perfor ...
'' is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end. The
First Folio
''Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies'' is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare's death. It is cons ...
of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged after ''Volpone'', although one cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610,
John Davies of Hereford
John Davies of Hereford (c. 1565 – July 1618) was a writing-master and an Anglo-Welsh poet. He referred to himself as ''John Davies of Hereford'' (after the city where he was born) in order to distinguish himself from others of the same nam ...
wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in ''
As You Like It'', and the Chorus in ''
Henry V Henry V may refer to:
People
* Henry V, Duke of Bavaria (died 1026)
* Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor (1081/86–1125)
* Henry V, Duke of Carinthia (died 1161)
* Henry V, Count Palatine of the Rhine (c. 1173–1227)
* Henry V, Count of Luxembourg (1 ...
'', though scholars doubt the sources of that information.
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. There, he rented rooms from a French
Huguenot
The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...
named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of women's wigs and other headgear.
Later years and death
Nicholas Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated by
Samuel Johnson, that Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years before his death". He was still working as an actor in London in 1608; in an answer to the sharers' petition in 1635,
Cuthbert Burbage
Cuthbert Burbage (c. 15 June 1565 – 15 September 1636) was an English theatrical figure, son of James Burbage, builder of the Theatre in Shoreditch and elder brother of the actor Richard Burbage. From 1589 he was the owner of the ground le ...
stated that after purchasing the lease of the
Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre was the name given to two separate theatres located in the former Blackfriars Dominican priory in the City of London during the Renaissance. The first theatre began as a venue for the Children of the Chapel Royal, child ac ...
in 1608 from
Henry Evans, the King's Men "placed men players" there, "which were
Heminges,
Condell, Shakespeare, etc.". However, it is perhaps relevant that the
bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609. 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 1612, he was called as a witness in ''
Bellott v Mountjoy
''Bellott v Mountjoy'' was a lawsuit heard at the Court of Requests in Westminster on 11 May 1612 that involved William Shakespeare in a minor role.
Case details
Stephen Bellott, a Huguenot, sued his father-in-law Christopher Mountjoy, a tyre ...
'', a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. In March 1613, he bought a
gatehouse
A gatehouse is a type of fortified gateway, an entry control point building, enclosing or accompanying a gateway for a town, religious house, castle, manor house, or other fortification building of importance. Gatehouses are typically the mo ...
in the former
Blackfriars priory; and from November 1614, he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law,
John Hall John Hall may refer to:
Academics
* John Hall (NYU President) (fl. c. 1890), American academic
* John A. Hall (born 1949), sociology professor at McGill University, Montreal
* John F. Hall (born 1951), professor of classics at Brigham Young Unive ...
. 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". No extant contemporary source explains how or why he died. Half a century later,
John Ward, the vicar of Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted", not an impossible scenario since Shakespeare knew Jonson and
Drayton. 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."
![Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Holy_Trinity_Church%2C_Stratford-upon-Avon.jpg)
He was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Judith had married
Thomas Quiney
Thomas Quiney (baptism, baptised 26 February 1589 – c. 1662 or 1663) was the husband of William Shakespeare's daughter Judith Quiney, Judith Shakespeare, and a vintner and tobacconist in Stratford-upon-Avon. Quiney held several municipal offic ...
, a
vintner
A winemaker or vintner is a person engaged in winemaking. They are generally employed by wineries or wine companies, where their work includes:
*Cooperating with viticulturists
*Monitoring the maturity of grapes to ensure their quality and to dete ...
, two months before Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on 25 March 1616; the following day, his new son-in-law, Thomas Quiney was found guilty of fathering an illegitimate son by Margaret Wheeler, who had died during childbirth. Thomas was ordered by the church court to do public penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment for the Shakespeare family.
Shakespeare bequeathed the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna under stipulations that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body". The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying. The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct line. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one-third of his estate automatically. He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest 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 rich in significance.
![Shakespeare grave -Stratford-upon-Avon -3June2007](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Shakespeare_grave_-Stratford-upon-Avon_-3June2007.jpg)
Shakespeare was buried in the
chancel
In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse.
Ov ...
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:
Some time before 1623, a
funerary monument
Funerary art is any work of art forming, or placed in, a repository for the remains of the dead. The term encompasses a wide variety of forms, including cenotaphs ("empty tombs"), tomb-like monuments which do not contain human remains, and comm ...
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
Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no te ...
, and
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
. In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the
First Folio
''Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies'' is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare's death. It is cons ...
, the
Droeshout engraving
The Droeshout portrait or Droeshout engraving is a portrait of William Shakespeare engraved by Martin Droeshout as the frontispiece for the title page of the First Folio collection of Shakespeare's plays, published in 1623. It is one of only tw ...
was published. Shakespeare has been commemorated in many
statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments in
Southwark Cathedral
Southwark Cathedral ( ) or The Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie, Southwark, London, lies on the south bank of the River Thames close to London Bridge. It is the mother church of the Anglican Diocese of Southwar ...
and
Poets' Corner
Poets' Corner is the name traditionally given to a section of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey in the City of Westminster, London because of the high number of poets, playwrights, and writers buried and commemorated there.
The first poe ...
in
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the Unite ...
.
Plays
Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, 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
''Titus Andronicus'' is a tragedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593, probably in collaboration with George Peele. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy and is often seen as his attempt to emul ...
'', ''
The Comedy of Errors
''The Comedy of Errors'' is one of William Shakespeare's early plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. ...
'', ''
The Taming of the Shrew
''The Taming of the Shrew'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1592. The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken ...
,'' and ''
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1589 and 1593. It is considered by some to be Shakespeare's first play, and is often seen as showing his first tentative steps in laying ...
'' may also belong to Shakespeare's earliest period. His first
histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's
''Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland'', dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the
Tudor dynasty
The House of Tudor was a royal house of largely Welsh and English origin that held the English throne from 1485 to 1603. They descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd and Catherine of France. Tudor monarchs ruled the Kingdom of England and it ...
. The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially
Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd (baptised 6 November 1558; buried 15 August 1594) was an English playwright, the author of ''The Spanish Tragedy'', and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.
Although well known in his own time, ...
and
Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of
Seneca
Seneca may refer to:
People and language
* Seneca (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname
* Seneca people, one of the six Iroquois tribes of North America
** Seneca language, the language of the Seneca people
Places Extrat ...
. ''The Comedy of Errors'' was also based on classical models, but no source for ''The Taming of the Shrew'' has been found, though it is related to a separate play of the same name and may have derived from a folk story. Like ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'', in which two friends appear to approve of rape, the ''Shrew''s story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences.
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
''The Merchant of Venice'' is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. A merchant in Venice named Antonio defaults on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock.
Although classified as a ...
'', contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender
Shylock, which reflects dominant Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences. The wit and wordplay of ''
Much Ado About Nothing
''Much Ado About Nothing'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare thought to have been written in 1598 and 1599.See textual notes to ''Much Ado About Nothing'' in ''The Norton Shakespeare'' ( W. W. Norton & Company, 1997 ) p. 1387 The play ...
'', the charming rural setting of ''
As You Like It'', and the lively merrymaking of ''
Twelfth Night
''Twelfth Night'', or ''What You Will'' is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1601–1602 as a Twelfth Night's entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. The play centres on the twins Vi ...
'' complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. After the lyrical ''
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 Henry V may refer to:
People
* Henry V, Duke of Bavaria (died 1026)
* Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor (1081/86–1125)
* Henry V, Duke of Carinthia (died 1161)
* Henry V, Count Palatine of the Rhine (c. 1173–1227)
* Henry V, Count of Luxembourg (1 ...
''. His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his mature work. This period begins and ends with two tragedies: ''
Romeo and Juliet'', the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death; and ''
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, ...
''— based on Sir
Thomas North
Sir Thomas North (28 May 1535c. 1604) was an English translator, military officer, lawyer, and justice of the peace. His translation into English of Plutarch's ''Parallel Lives'' is notable for being the main source text used by William Sha ...
's 1579 translation of
Plutarch
Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for hi ...
's ''
Parallel Lives''—which introduced a new kind of drama. According to Shakespearean scholar James S. Shapiro, James Shapiro, in ''Julius Caesar,'' "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to infuse each other".
![Henry Fuseli rendering of Hamlet and his father's Ghost](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Henry_Fuseli_rendering_of_Hamlet_and_his_father%27s_Ghost.JPG)
In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "Shakespearean problem play, problem plays" ''Measure for Measure'', ''Troilus and Cressida'', and ''All's Well That Ends Well'' and a number of his best known
tragedies
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...
. Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
'', has probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which begins "To be, or not to be, To be or not to be; that is the question". Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, 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 ''
Othello'', the villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him. In ''
King Lear
''King Lear'' is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare.
It is based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between two of his daughters. He becomes destitute and insane ...
'', 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. According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play...offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty". 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 Shakespeare's late romances, 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. Some commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day. Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, ''
Henry VIII'' and ''The Two Noble Kinsmen'', probably with
John Fletcher.
Performances
It is not clear for which companies Shakespeare wrote his early plays. The title page of the 1594 edition of ''Titus Andronicus'' reveals that the play had been acted by three different troupes. After the Black Death in England, plagues of 1592–93, Shakespeare's plays were performed by his own company at The Theatre and the Curtain Theatre, Curtain in Shoreditch, north of the Thames. Londoners flocked there to see the first part of ''Henry IV'', Leonard Digges (writer), Leonard Digges recording, "Let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest ... and you scarce shall have a room". 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''.
![Shakespeare´s Globe (8162111781)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Shakespeare%C2%B4s_Globe_%288162111781%29.jpg)
After the Lord Chamberlain's Men were renamed the
King's Men in 1603, they entered a special relationship with the new James VI and I, King James. Although the performance records are patchy, 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
Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre was the name given to two separate theatres located in the former Blackfriars Dominican priory in the City of London during the Renaissance. The first theatre began as a venue for the Children of the Chapel Royal, child ac ...
during the winter and the Globe during the summer. The indoor setting, combined with the Jacobean era, Jacobean fashion for lavishly staged masques, allowed Shakespeare to introduce more elaborate stage devices. In ''Cymbeline'', for example, Jupiter (mythology), Jupiter descends "in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. The ghosts fall on their knees."
The actors in Shakespeare's company included the famous Richard Burbage, William Kempe,
Henry Condell
Henry Condell ( bapt. 5 September 1576 – December 1627) was a British actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. With John Heminges, he was instrumental in preparing and editing the First Folio, the col ...
and
John Heminges
John Heminges (bapt. 25 November 1566 – 10 October 1630) was an actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. Along with Henry Condell, he was an editor of the First Folio, the collected plays of Shakespeare ...
. Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including ''Richard III'', ''Hamlet'', ''Othello'', and ''King Lear''. The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in ''Romeo and Juliet'' and Dogberry in ''Much Ado About Nothing'', among other characters. He was replaced around 1600 by Robert Armin, who played roles such as Touchstone (As You Like It), Touchstone in ''As You Like It'' and the fool in ''King Lear''. In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that ''Henry VIII'' "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and ceremony". On 29 June, however, 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.
Textual sources
![Title page William Shakespeare's First Folio 1623](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Title_page_William_Shakespeare%27s_First_Folio_1623.jpg)
In 1623,
John Heminges
John Heminges (bapt. 25 November 1566 – 10 October 1630) was an actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. Along with Henry Condell, he was an editor of the First Folio, the collected plays of Shakespeare ...
and
Henry Condell
Henry Condell ( bapt. 5 September 1576 – December 1627) was a British actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. With John Heminges, he was instrumental in preparing and editing the First Folio, the col ...
, two of Shakespeare's friends from the King's Men, published the
First Folio
''Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies'' is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare's death. It is cons ...
, a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It contained 36 texts, including 18 printed for the first time. Many of the plays had already appeared in Book size, quarto versions—flimsy books made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves. No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies". Nor did Shakespeare plan or expect his works to survive in any form at all; those works likely would have faded into oblivion but for his friends' spontaneous idea, after his death, to create and publish the First Folio.
Alfred W. Pollard, Alfred Pollard termed some of the pre-1623 versions as "bad quartos" because of their adapted, paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed from memory. Where several versions of a play survive, each Shakespeare's plays#Shakespeare and the textual problem, differs from the other. The differences may stem from copying or Typesetting#Letterpress era, printing errors, from notes by actors or audience members, or from Shakespeare's own foul papers, papers. In some cases, for example, ''Hamlet'', ''Troilus and Cressida,'' and ''Othello'', Shakespeare could have revised the texts between the quarto and folio editions. In the case of ''
King Lear
''King Lear'' is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare.
It is based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between two of his daughters. He becomes destitute and insane ...
'', however, while most modern editions do conflate them, the 1623 folio version is so different from the 1608 quarto that the ''Oxford Shakespeare'' prints them both, arguing that they cannot be conflated without confusion.
Poems
In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of Bubonic plague, plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on sexual themes, ''Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare poem), Venus and Adonis'' and ''The Rape of Lucrece''. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In ''Venus and Adonis'', an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus (mythology), Venus; while in ''The Rape of Lucrece'', the virtuous wife Lucretia, Lucrece is raped by the lustful Sextus Tarquinius, 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. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote ''A Lover's Complaint''. Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects. ''The Phoenix and the Turtle'', printed in Robert Chester's 1601 ''Love's Martyr'', mourns the deaths of the legendary phoenix (mythology), phoenix and his lover, the faithful European turtle dove, turtle dove. 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
![Sonnets1609titlepage](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Sonnets1609titlepage.jpg)
Published in 1609, the ''Shakespeare's sonnets, 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. Even before the two unauthorised sonnets appeared in ''The Passionate Pilgrim'' in 1599, Francis Meres had referred in 1598 to Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets among his private friends". Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence. He seems to have planned two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a married woman of dark complexion (the "dark lady"), and one about conflicted love for a fair young man (the "fair youth"). It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial "I" who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart".
The 1609 edition was dedicated to a "Mr. W.H.", credited as "the only begetter" of the poems. It is not known whether this was written by Shakespeare himself or by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, whose initials appear at the foot of the dedication page; nor is it known who Mr. W.H. was, despite numerous theories, or whether Shakespeare even authorised the publication. Critics praise the ''Sonnets'' as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time.
Style
Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in a stylised 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
''Titus Andronicus'' is a tragedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593, probably in collaboration with George Peele. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy and is often seen as his attempt to emul ...
'', in the view of some critics, often hold up the action, for example; and the verse in ''
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1589 and 1593. It is considered by some to be Shakespeare's first play, and is often seen as showing his first tentative steps in laying ...
'' has been described as stilted.
![WilliamBlakePity](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/WilliamBlakePity.jpeg)
However, Shakespeare soon began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. The opening soliloquy of ''
Richard III'' has its roots in the self-declaration of the Vice, Vice in medieval drama. At the same time, Richard's vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soliloquies of Shakespeare's mature plays. No single play marks a change from the traditional to the freer style. Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with ''
Romeo and Juliet'' perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles. By the time of ''Romeo and Juliet'', ''
Richard II'', and ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream'' in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself.
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-stopping, 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
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, ...
'' and ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
''. Shakespeare uses it, for example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind:
After ''Hamlet'', Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies. The literary critic A. C. Bradley described this style as "more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical". In the last phase of his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve these effects. These included enjambment, run-on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length. In ''
Macbeth'', for example, the language darts from one unrelated metaphor or simile to another: "was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed yourself?" (1.7.35–38); "... pity, like a naked new-born babe/ Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air ..." (1.7.21–25). The listener is challenged to complete the sense. The late romances, with their shifts in time and surprising turns of plot, inspired a last poetic style in which long and short sentences are set against one another, clauses are piled up, subject and object are reversed, and words are omitted, creating an effect of spontaneity.
Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a practical sense of the theatre. Like all playwrights of the time, he dramatised stories from sources such as
Plutarch
Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for hi ...
and Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed. He reshaped each plot to create several centres 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. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however. In Shakespeare's late romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre.
Influence
![Macbeth consulting the Vision of the Armed Head](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Macbeth_consulting_the_Vision_of_the_Armed_Head.jpg)
Shakespeare's work has made a significant and lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, and genre. Until ''
Romeo and Juliet'', for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy. Soliloquy, 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 Romanticism, Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success. Critic George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Tennyson as "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes."
Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy (writer), 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 (opera), Macbeth'', ''Otello'' and ''Falstaff (opera), Falstaff'', whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays. Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 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 standardised 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'', the first serious work of its type. 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 popularised in Germany, and gradually became a "classic of the Weimar Classicism, German Weimar era;" Christoph Martin Wieland was the first to produce complete translations of Shakespeare's plays in any language. Actor and theatre director Simon Callow writes, "this master, this titan, this genius, so profoundly British and so effortlessly universal, each different culture – German, Italian, Russian – was obliged to respond to the Shakespearean example; for the most part, they embraced it, and him, with joyous abandon, as the possibilities of language and character in action that he celebrated liberated writers across the continent. 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."
According to ''Guinness World Records'', Shakespeare remains the world's best-selling playwright, with sales of his plays and poetry believed to have achieved in excess of four billion copies in the almost 400 years since his death. He is also the third List of most translated individual authors, most translated author in history.
Critical reputation
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 Parnassus plays, the ''Parnassus'' plays at St John's College, Cambridge, numbered him with Geoffrey Chaucer, Chaucer, John Gower, Gower, and Edmund Spenser, Spenser. In the
First Folio
''Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies'' is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare's death. It is cons ...
,
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
called Shakespeare the "Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage", although he had remarked elsewhere that "Shakespeare wanted art" (lacked skill).
Between Stuart Restoration, 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, for example, condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic with the tragic. Nevertheless, poet and critic John Dryden rated Shakespeare highly, saying of Jonson, "I admire him, but I love Shakespeare". He also famously remarked that Shakespeare "was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there."
For several decades, Rymer's view held sway. But during the 18th century, critics began to respond to Shakespeare on his own terms and, like Dryden, to 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, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe, Stendhal, and Victor Hugo.
![William Shakespeare Statue in Lincoln Park](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/William_Shakespeare_Statue_in_Lincoln_Park.JPG)
During the Romanticism, 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. In the 19th century, critical admiration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered on adulation. "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 Victorian era, 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 (theatre), naturalism of Henrik Ibsen, Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare obsolete.
The modernist revolution in the arts during the early 20th century, far from discarding Shakespeare, eagerly enlisted his work in the service of the avant-garde. The German Expressionism (cinema), Expressionists in Germany and the Futurism, 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 postmodernism, 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. He ''encloses'' us because we ''see'' with his fundamental perceptions."
Works
Classification of the plays
![Gilbert WShakespeares Plays](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Gilbert_WShakespeares_Plays.jpg)
Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the
First Folio
''Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies'' is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare's death. It is cons ...
of 1623, listed according to their folio classification as
comedies
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term origin ...
,
histories, and
tragedies
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...
. 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 ''Tragicomedy, tragicomedies'', Dowden's term is often used. In 1896, Frederick S. Boas coined the term "Shakespearean problem play, problem plays" to describe four plays: ''All's Well That Ends Well'', ''Measure for Measure'', ''Troilus and Cressida,'' and ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
''. "Dramas as singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies", he wrote. "We may, therefore, borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of today and class them together as Shakespeare's problem plays." The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use, though ''Hamlet'' is definitively classed as a tragedy.
Speculation
Authorship
Around 230 years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship of the works attributed to him. Proposed alternative candidates include Francis Bacon,
Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Several "group theories" have also been proposed. All but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe theory, with only a small minority of academics who believe that there is reason to question the traditional attribution, but interest in the subject, particularly the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, continues into the 21st century.
Religion
Shakespeare conformed to the official state religion, but his private views on religion have been the subject of debate. Shakespeare's will uses a Protestant formula, and he was a confirmed member of the Church of England, where he was married, his children were baptised, and where he is buried. Some scholars claim that members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time when practising Catholicism in England was against the law. Shakespeare's mother,
Mary Arden, certainly came from a pious Catholic family. The strongest evidence might be a Catholic statement of faith signed by his father,
John Shakespeare
John Shakespeare (c. 1531 – 7 September 1601) was an English businessman in Stratford-upon-Avon and the father of William Shakespeare. He was a glover and whittawer ( leather worker) by trade. Shakespeare was elected to several municipal ...
, found in 1757 in the rafters of his former house in Henley Street. However, the document is now lost and scholars differ as to its authenticity. In 1591, the authorities reported that John Shakespeare had missed church "for fear of process for debt", a common Catholic excuse. In 1606, the name of William's daughter Susanna appears on a list of those who failed to attend Easter Eucharist, communion in Stratford. Other authors argue that there is a lack of evidence about Shakespeare's religious beliefs. Scholars find evidence both for and against Shakespeare's Catholicism, Protestantism, or lack of belief in his plays, but the truth may be impossible to prove.
Sexuality
Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married 26-year-old
Anne Hathaway
Anne Jacqueline Hathaway (born November 12, 1982) is an American actress. The recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award, she was among the world's highest-paid actresses in 2 ...
, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 1583. Over the centuries, some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical, and point to them as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than romantic love. The 26 so-called Dark Lady (Shakespeare), "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.
Portraiture
No written contemporary description of Shakespeare's physical appearance survives, and no evidence suggests that he ever commissioned a portrait, so the
Droeshout engraving
The Droeshout portrait or Droeshout engraving is a portrait of William Shakespeare engraved by Martin Droeshout as the frontispiece for the title page of the First Folio collection of Shakespeare's plays, published in 1623. It is one of only tw ...
, which
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
approved of as a good likeness, and his Shakespeare's funerary monument, Stratford monument provide perhaps the best evidence of his appearance. From the 18th century, the desire for authentic Shakespeare portraits fuelled claims that various surviving pictures depicted Shakespeare. That demand also led to the production of several fake portraits, as well as misattributions, repaintings, and relabelling of portraits of other people.
See also
* Outline of William Shakespeare
* English Renaissance theatre
* Spelling of Shakespeare's name
* ''World Shakespeare Bibliography''
Notes and references
Notes
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External links
;Digital editions
William Shakespeare's plays on Bookwise*
Internet Shakespeare EditionsThe Folger ShakespeareOpen Source Shakespearecomplete works, with search engine and concordance
The Shakespeare Quartos Archive*
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;Exhibitions
Shakespeare Documentedan online exhibition documenting Shakespeare in his own time
Shakespeare's Willfrom The National Archives (United Kingdom), The National Archives
''Discovering Literature: Shakespeare''at the British Library
William Shakespeareat the British Library
Benjamin Blom Drama Collection: Shakespeare Materialsat the Harry Ransom Center
;Legacy and criticism
Records on Shakespeare's Theatre Legacy from the UK Parliamentary CollectionsWinston Churchill & Shakespeare – UK Parliament Living Heritage
;Other links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Shakespeare, William
William Shakespeare,
1564 births
1616 deaths
16th-century English male actors
English male stage actors
16th-century English dramatists and playwrights
17th-century English dramatists and playwrights
16th-century English poets
Burials in Warwickshire
17th-century English poets
17th-century English male writers
English Renaissance dramatists
People educated at King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon
People from Stratford-upon-Avon
People of the Elizabethan era
Shakespeare family, William
Sonneteers
King's Men (playing company)
17th-century English male actors
English male dramatists and playwrights
English male poets