William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616)[I] was an English poet and playwright now widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. His surviving works include at least 38 plays, two long narrative poems and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard").

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, and at 18 married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592 Shakespeare moved to London, where he was an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later known as the King's Men), with which he found financial success. Shakespeare appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later at the age of 52. Biographers know very little about Shakespeare's private life, especially the seven-year period between 1585 and 1592 known as his "lost years". Considerable speculation has been poured into this vacuum, including questions about his sexuality and religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were actually written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1612. He is one of the few playwrights of his time considered to have excelled in both tragedy and comedy, and many of his dramas, including Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear, are ranked among the greatest plays of Western literature. His works have been performed all over the world and translated into every major living language.

Shakespeare greatly influenced subsequent theatre and literature through his innovative use of plot, language, and genre, and even influenced the English language itself. Many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage. Among literary and dramatic critics, Shakespeare is probably best known for creating completely-realised characters capable of expressing the wide range of human experience at a time when dramatic characters were either flat or merely archetypes. Thus even villains such as Macbeth and Shylock can command the audience's understanding -- if not sympathy -- because they are portrayed as recognizably flawed human beings, not monsters.

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William Shakespeare (also spelled Shakspere, Shaksper, Shaxper, and Shake-speare)[III][IV] was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564,[7] the son of John Shakespeare, a successful glover and alderman originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, a daughter of an affluent landowning farmer. He was their eldest surviving son, the third child among eight. The family house on Henley Street is traditionally considered to be where he was born and is now known as the "Shakespeare Birthplace"; however, firm evidence is lacking and other sites have been conjectured. Shakespeare was christened on 26 April, and his birth date, which is unknown, is traditionally observed on 23 April (St George's Day).[V] This tradition has an appealing symmetry, for Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616.

Shakespeare most likely attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford, about a quarter-mile from the family home on Henley Street. The school was chartered as a free school in 1553, but no attendance records survive from the era. Although Elizabethan-era grammar schools varied in quality, by royal edict the curriculum was standardised across the nation, and the school provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and classical literature.

On 28 November 1582, at the age of eighteen, he married twenty-six year old Anne Hathaway. One document identifies her as being "of Temple Grafton," near Stratford, and the marriage may have taken place there. Two neighbours of Hathaway posted bonds stating there were no impediments to the marriage. There appears to have been some haste in arranging the ceremony, presumably because Anne was three months pregnant. On 26 May 1583, Shakespeare's first child, Susanna, was baptised at Stratford. Twin children, a son, Hamnet, and a daughter, Judith, were baptised on 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of the bubonic plague in 1596, aged 11. His date of death is unknown, but he was buried on 11 August.

From his marriage until his appearance on the London theatrical scene, Shakespeare left few historical traces. The period from 1585 (when his twin children were born) until 1592 has become known as Shakespeare's "lost years" because no evidence survives of exactly where he was or why he left Stratford for London. Numerous stories attempt to account for Shakespeare's life during this time: including one that Shakespeare got in trouble for poaching deer, one that he worked as a schoolmaster for the Catholic Hoghton family in Lancashire, and one that he minded the horses of theatre patrons in London. However, little direct evidence supports these stories, and they all appear to have begun circulating after Shakespeare's death.
London and theatrical career.

By 1592 Shakespeare was a well-known playwright in London and his reputation came under attack by Robert Greene: "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey." (Although interpretations differ, the italicised line certainly parodies the phrase "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" which Shakespeare wrote in Henry VI, part 3.)

"All the world's a stage,
and all the men and women merely players:
they have their exits and their entrances;
and one man in his time plays many parts..."

— Famous lines from Shakespeare's comedy
As You Like It, Act II Scene 7

By 1594 Shakespeare was an actor, writer and part-owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which, like others of the period, was named after its aristocratic sponsor. It became popular enough for the new king, James I, to adopt the company himself, after which it became the King's Men.

In 1596 Shakespeare moved to the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. In 1598 he appeared at the top of a list of actors in Every Man in His Humour by Ben Jonson,[34] and his name was featured on the title pages of published quartos—a sign that his name itself was a selling point for the volume.

He seems to have moved across the River Thames to Southwark sometime around 1599, the year when he became part-owner of the Globe Theatre. By 1604 he had moved north of the river, lodging just north of St Paul's Cathedral with a Huguenot family named Mountjoy. He helped arrange a marriage between the Mountjoys' daughter and their apprentice Stephen Bellott. When Bellott later sued his father-in-law for defaulting on part of the promised dowry, Shakespeare was called as a witness. According to various documents of legal affairs and commercial transactions, Shakespeare grew rich enough during his stay in London to buy a property in Blackfriars, London, and to own the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place.

Shakespeare's funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon


Shakespeare continued to act after he had established himself as a playwright, appearing in his own works and plays by other writers, including Jonson's Sejanus, His Fall. John Davies of Hereford wrote in 1610 that he played "kingly" roles. Nicholas Rowe claimed in 1709 that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Less established tradition has him playing Adam in As You Like It, and the Chorus in Henry V. This, however, has little scholarly basis.

Later years

Shakespeare retired to Stratford some time around the period 1610-1613. He died, aged 52, on 23 April 1616, the day traditionally presumed to be his birthday. He was married to Anne Hathaway until his death and was survived by her and their two daughters, Susanna and Judith. Although Susanna married Dr John Hall, there are no direct descendants of Shakespeare alive today. Judith married Thomas Quiney but all of their children died very young, and Susanna's daughter Elizabeth Hall died in 1670, marking the end of Shakespeare's lineage.

Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was granted the honour of burial in the chancel, not on account of his literary fame but for purchasing a share of the tithe of the church for £440. Shakespeare's funeral monument, on the church wall nearest his grave, has a bust of him posed in the act of writing. Shakespeare may have written his own epitaph:

“ Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosèd here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.”

(courtesy wikipedia)