William Shakespeare : Biography
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| William Shakespeare
William
Shakespeare : Biography
William Shakespeare was baptized on
April 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. From roughly 1594 onward he
was an important member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men company of theatrical
players. Written records give little indication of the way in which
Shakespeare’s professional life molded his artistry. All that can be deduced is
that over the course of 20 years, Shakespeare wrote plays that capture the
complete range of human emotion and conflict.
Known throughout the world, the works
of William Shakespeare have been performed in countless hamlets, villages,
cities and metropolises for more than 400 years. And yet, the personal history
of William Shakespeare is somewhat a mystery. There are two primary sources
that provide historians with a basic outline of his life. One source is his
work—the plays, poems and sonnets—and the other is official documentation such
as church and court records. However, these only provide brief sketches of
specific events in his life and provide little on the person who experienced
those events.
Early
Life
Though no birth records exist, church
records indicate that a William Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity Church
in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564. From this, it is believed he was born
on or near April 23, 1564, and this is the date scholars acknowledge as William
Shakespeare's birthday.
Located 103 miles west of London,
during Shakespeare's time Stratford-upon-Avon was a market town bisected with a
country road and the River Avon. William was the third child of John
Shakespeare, a leather merchant, and Mary Arden, a local landed heiress.
William had two older sisters, Joan and Judith, and three younger brothers,
Gilbert, Richard and Edmund. Before William's birth, his father became a successful
merchant and held official positions as alderman and bailiff, an office
resembling a mayor. However, records indicate John's fortunes declined sometime
in the late 1570s.
Scant records exist of William's
childhood, and virtually none regarding his education. Scholars have surmised
that he most likely attended the King's New School, in Stratford, which taught
reading, writing and the classics. Being a public official's child, William
would have undoubtedly qualified for free tuition. But this uncertainty
regarding his education has led some to raise questions about the authorship of
his work and even about whether or not William Shakespeare ever existed.
Married
Life
William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway
on November 28, 1582, in Worcester, in Canterbury Province. Hathaway was from
Shottery, a small village a mile west of Stratford. William was 18 and Anne was
26, and, as it turns out, pregnant. Their first child, a daughter they named
Susanna, was born on May 26, 1583. Two years later, on February 2, 1585, twins
Hamnet and Judith were born. Hamnet later died of unknown causes at age 11.
After the birth of the twins, there
are seven years of William Shakespeare's life where no records exist.
Scholars call this period the
"lost years," and there is wide speculation on what he was doing
during this period. One theory is that he might have gone into hiding for
poaching game from the local landlord, Sir Thomas Lucy. Another possibility is
that he might have been working as an assistant schoolmaster in Lancashire. It
is generally believed he arrived in London in the mid- to late 1580s and may
have found work as a horse attendant at some of London's finer theaters, a
scenario updated centuries later by the countless aspiring actors and
playwrights in Hollywood and Broadway.
Theatrical
Beginnings
By 1592, there is evidence William
Shakespeare earned a living as an actor and a playwright in London and possibly
had several plays produced. The September 20, 1592 edition of the Stationers'
Register (a guild publication) includes an article by London playwright
Robert Greene that takes a few jabs at William Shakespeare: "...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," Greene wrote of
Shakespeare.
Scholars differ on the interpretation
of this criticism, but most agree that it was Greene's way of saying
Shakespeare was reaching above his rank, trying to match better known and
educated playwrights like Christopher
Marlowe, Thomas Nashe or Greene himself.
By the early 1590s, documents show
William Shakespeare was a managing partner in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, an
acting company in London. After the crowning of King James I, in 1603, the
company changed its name to the King's Men. From all accounts, the King's Men
company was very popular, and records show that Shakespeare had works published
and sold as popular literature. The theater culture in 16th century England was
not highly admired by people of high rank. However, many of the nobility were
good patrons of the performing arts and friends of the actors. Early in his
career, Shakespeare was able to attract the attention of Henry Wriothesley, the
Earl of Southampton, to whom he dedicated his first- and second-published
poems: "Venus and Adonis" (1593) and "The Rape of Lucrece"
(1594).
Establishing
Himself
By 1597, 15 of the 37 plays written by
William Shakespeare were published. Civil records show that at this time he
purchased the second largest house in Stratford, called New House, for his
family. It was a four-day ride by horse from Stratford to London, so it is
believed that Shakespeare spent most of his time in the city writing and acting
and came home once a year during the 40-day Lenten period, when the theaters
were closed.
By 1599, William Shakespeare and his
business partners built their own theater on the south bank of the Thames
River, which they called the Globe. In 1605, Shakespeare purchased leases of
real estate near Stratford for 440 pounds, which doubled in value and earned
him 60 pounds a year.
This made him an entrepreneur as well
as an artist, and scholars believe these investments gave him the time to write
his plays uninterrupted.
William Shakespeare's early plays were written in the conventional style
of the day, with elaborate metaphors and rhetorical phrases that didn't always
align naturally with the story's plot or characters. However, Shakespeare was
very innovative, adapting the traditional style to his own purposes and
creating a freer flow of words. With only small degrees of variation,
Shakespeare primarily used a metrical pattern consisting of lines of unrhymed
iambic pentameter, or blank verse, to compose his plays. At the same time,
there are passages in all the plays that deviate from this and use forms of
poetry or simple prose.
Early Works:
Histories and Comedies
With the exception of Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare's
first plays were mostly histories written in the early 1590s. Richard II,
Henry VI (parts 1, 2 and 3) and Henry V dramatize the destructive
results of weak or corrupt rulers, and have been interpreted by drama
historians as Shakespeare's way of justifying the origins of the Tudor Dynasty.
Shakespeare also wrote several comedies during his early period: the
witty romance A Midsummer Night's Dream, the romantic Merchant of
Venice, the wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing, the charming
As You Like It and Twelfth Night. Other plays, possibly written
before 1600, include Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The
Taming of the Shrew and The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Later Works:
Tragedies and Tragicomedies
It was in William Shakespeare's later period, after 1600, that he wrote
the tragedies Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbeth.
In these, Shakespeare's characters present vivid impressions of human
temperament that are timeless and universal. Possibly the best known of these
plays is Hamlet, which explores betrayal, retribution, incest and moral
failure. These moral failures often drive the twists and turns of Shakespeare's
plots, destroying the hero and those he loves.
In William Shakespeare's final period, he wrote several tragicomedies.
Among these are Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest.
Though graver in tone than the comedies, they are not the dark tragedies of King
Lear or Macbeth because they end with reconciliation and
forgiveness.
Death
Tradition has it that William Shakespeare died on his birthday, April
23, 1616, though many scholars believe this is a myth. Church records show he
was interred at Trinity Church on April 5, 1616.
In his will, he left the bulk of his possessions to his eldest daughter,
Susanna. Though entitled to a third of his estate, little seems to have gone to
his wife, Anne, whom he bequeathed his "second-best bed." This has
drawn speculation that she had fallen out of favor, or that the couple was not
close. However, there is very little evidence the two had a difficult marriage.
Other scholars note that the term
"second-best bed" often refers to the bed belonging to the
household's master and mistres—the marital bed—and the "first-best
bed" was reserved for guests.
About 150 years after his death,
questions arose about the authorship of William Shakespeare's plays. Scholars
and literary critics began to float names like Christopher
Marlowe, Edward
de Vere and Francis
Bacon—men of more known backgrounds, literary accreditation, or
inspiration—as the true authors of the plays. Much of this stemmed from the
sketchy details of Shakespeare's life and the dearth of contemporary primary
sources. Official records from the Holy Trinity Church and the Stratford
government record the existence of a William Shakespeare, but none of these
attest to him being an actor or playwright.
Skeptics also questioned how anyone of
such modest education could write with the intellectual perceptiveness and
poetic power that is displayed in Shakespeare's works. Over the centuries,
several groups have emerged that question the authorship of Shakespeare's
plays.
The most serious and intense
skepticism began in the 19th century when adoration for Shakespeare was at its
highest. The detractors believed that the only hard evidence surrounding
William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon described a man from modest
beginnings who married young and became successful in real estate. Members of
the Shakespeare Oxford Society (founded in 1957) put forth arguments that
English aristocrat Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author
of the poems and plays of "William Shakespeare." The Oxfordians cite
de Vere's extensive knowledge of aristocratic society, his education, and the
structural similarities between his poetry and that found in the works
attributed to Shakespeare. They contend that William Shakespeare had neither
the education nor the literary training to write such eloquent prose and create
such rich characters.
However, the vast majority of
Shakespearean scholars contend that William Shakespeare wrote all his own
plays. They point out that other playwrights of the time also had sketchy
histories and came from modest backgrounds. They contend that Stratford's New
Grammar School curriculum of Latin and the classics could have provided a good
foundation for literary writers. Supporters of Shakespeare's authorship argue that
the lack of evidence about Shakespeare's life doesn't mean his life didn't
exist. They point to evidence that displays his name on the title pages of
published poems and plays. Examples exist of authors and critics of the time
acknowledging William Shakespeare as author of plays such as The Two
Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors and King John.
Royal records from 1601 show that William Shakespeare was recognized as a
member of the King's Men theater company (formally known as the Chamberlain's
Men) and a Groom of the Chamber by the court of King James I, where the company
performed seven of Shakespeare's plays. There is also strong circumstantial
evidence of personal relationships by contemporaries who interacted with
Shakespeare as an actor and a playwright.
What seems to be true is that William
Shakespeare was a respected man of the dramatic arts who wrote plays and acted
in some in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. But his reputation as a
dramatic genius wasn't recognized until the 19th century. Beginning with the
Romantic period of the early 1800s and continuing through the Victorian period,
acclaim and reverence for William Shakespeare and his work reached its height.
In the 20th century, new movements in scholarship and performance have rediscovered
and adopted his works.
Today, his plays are highly popular
and constantly studied and reinterpreted in performances with diverse cultural
and political contexts. The genius of Shakespeare's characters and plots are
that they present real human beings in a wide range of emotions and conflicts
that transcend their origins in Elizabethan England.
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