William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He wrote about 38 plays and 154 sonnets over the course of his career. Some of his most famous plays include Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Shakespeare began his career in London in the 1590s where he achieved fame as an actor and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which was later named the King's Men when King James became their patron. He retired to Stratford sometime in the early 1610s where he died in 1616 at the age of 52. Shakespeare is considered one of the greatest writers in the English language.
1. William Shakespeare
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the poet and playwright. For other persons of the same name, see William Shakespeare
(disambiguation). For other uses of "Shakespeare", see Shakespeare (disambiguation).
William Shakespeare
The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed. National
Portrait Gallery, London.
Born
Baptised 26 April 1564 (birth date unknown)
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire,England
Died
23 April 1616 (aged 52)
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Occupation
Playwright, poet, actor
Period
English Renaissance
2. Spouse(s)
Children
Anne Hathaway (m. 1582–1616)
Susanna Hall
Hamnet Shakespeare
Judith Quiney
Relative(s)
John Shakespeare (father)
Mary Shakespeare (mother)
Signature
William Shakespeare (/ˈ eɪ kspɪ ər/;[1] 26 April 1564 (baptised) – 23 April 1616)[nb 1] was an
ʃ
English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist.[2] He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon".[3][nb 2] His extant works,
including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays,[nb 3] 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few
other verses, the authorship of some of which is uncertain. His plays have been translated into every
major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.[4]
Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway,
with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began
a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called theLord
Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age
49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been
considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and
whether the works attributed to him were written by others.[5]
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613.[6][nb 4] His early plays were
mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th
century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, andMacbeth,
considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also
known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, John
Heminges and Henry Condell, two friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, published the First Folio, a
collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.
It was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as "not of an age, but
for all time."[7]
3. Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present
heights until the 19th century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and
the Victorians worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry".[8]In the
20th century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and
performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in
diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.
Contents
[hide]
1 Life
o
1.1 Early life
o
1.2 London and theatrical career
o
1.3 Later years and death
2 Plays
o
2.1 Performances
o
2.2 Textual sources
3 Poems
o
3.1 Sonnets
4 Style
5 Influence
6 Critical reputation
7 Speculation about Shakespeare
o
7.1 Authorship
o
7.2 Religion
o
7.3 Sexuality
o
7.4 Portraiture
8 List of works
o
8.1 Classification of the plays
o
8.2 Works
9 See also
10 Notes
o
10.1 Footnotes
o
10.2 Citations
4. 11 References
12 External links
Life
Main article: Shakespeare's life
Early life
William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally
from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer.[9] He was born inStratfordupon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual date of birth remains unknown, but is traditionally
observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day.[10] This date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholar's
mistake, has proved appealing to biographers, since Shakespeare died 23 April 1616. [11] He was the third child
of eight and the eldest surviving son.[12]
Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably
educated at the King's New School in Stratford,[13] a free school chartered in 1553,[14] about a quarter-mile from
his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but grammar school curricula were
largely similar, the basic Latin text was standardised by royal decree,[15] and the school would have provided an
intensive education in grammar based upon Latin classical authors.[16]
John Shakespeare's house, believed to be Shakespeare's birthplace, in Stratford-upon-Avon.
At the age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court 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.[17] 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,[18] and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised
26 May 1583.[19] Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2
February 1585.[20] Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596. [21]
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 1588 and 9 October 1589.[22]Scholars refer to
5. the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years".[23] Biographers attempting to account for this
period have reported manyapocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a
Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching in the
estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by
writing a scurrilous ballad about him.[24] Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical
career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London.[25] John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a
country schoolmaster.[26] Some 20th-century scholars have suggested that Shakespeare may have been
employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain
"William Shakeshafte" in his will.[27] Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after
his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.[28]
London and theatrical career
"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..."
—As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7, 139–42[29]
It is not known exactly when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of
performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592.[30] By then, he was sufficiently
well 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.[31]
Scholars differ on the exact meaning of these words,[32] but most agree that Greene is accusing Shakespeare
of reaching above his rank in trying to match university-educated writers such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas
Nashe and Greene himself (the "university wits").[33] The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart
wrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, along with the pun "Shake-scene", identifies
Shakespeare as Greene's target. Here Johannes Factotum—"Jack of all trades"— means a second-rate
tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the more common "universal genius".[32][34]
Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's career in the theatre. Biographers suggest
that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks.[35]From 1594,
Shakespeare's plays were performed by only the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of
players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London.[36] After the death
6. of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new king, James I, and changed
its name to the King's Men.[37]
In 1599, a partnership of company members built their own theatre on the south bank of the River Thames,
which they called the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Records of
Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that the company made him a wealthy man. [38] In
1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, he invested in a share of the
parish tithes in Stratford.[39]
Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions from 1594. By 1598, his name had become a
selling point and began to appear on the title pages.[40] Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other
plays after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists
for Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus His Fall (1603).[41] The absence of his name from the 1605
cast list for Jonson's Volpone is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career was nearing its
end.[42] The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays",
some of which were first staged after Volpone, although we cannot know for certain which roles he played.[43] In
1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles.[44] In 1709, Rowe passed down a
tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father.[45] Later traditions maintain that he also played
Adam in As You Like It and the Chorus in Henry V,[46] though scholars doubt the sources of the information.[47]
Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford during his career. 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.[48][49] He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the
year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there.[48][50] 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 named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear.[51]
Later years and death
Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated by Johnson, that Shakespeare retired to
Stratford 'some years before his death'.[52][53] He was still working as an actor in London in 1608; in an answer
to the sharers' petition in 1635 Cuthbert Burbage stated that after purchasing the lease of the Blackfriars
Theatre in 1608 from Henry Evans, the King's Men 'placed men players' there, 'which wereHeminges, Condell,
Shakespeare, etc.'.[54] In a document dated 7 June 1609 in a lawsuit he brought in Stratford against John
Addenbrooke, Shakespeare is described as 'generosus nuper in curia domini Jacobi' ('gentleman, recently at
the Court of King James').[55][56][57] However it is perhaps relevant that the bubonic plague raged in London
throughout 1609.[58][59] 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),[60] which meant there was
often no acting work. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time.[61] Shakespeare continued to visit
7. London during the years 1611–1614.[52] In 1612, he was called as a witness in Bellott v. Mountjoy, a court case
concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary.[62] In March 1613 he bought a gatehouse in
the former Blackfriars priory;[63] and from November 1614 he was in London for several weeks with his son-inlaw, John Hall.[64]
Shakespeare's funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon.
After 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613.[65] His last three plays
were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher,[66] who succeeded him as the house playwright for the King's
Men.[67]
Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616[68] and was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a
physician, John Hall, in 1607,[69] and Judith had marriedThomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before
Shakespeare's death.[70] Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on the 25th 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.[71]
In his will, Shakespeare left the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna. [72] The terms instructed
that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body".[73]The Quineys had three children, all of whom died
8. without marrying.[74] The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670,
ending Shakespeare's direct line.[75] Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably
entitled to one third of his estate automatically.[76] He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second
best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation.[77] 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.[78]
Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death.[79] 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:[80]
Shakespeare's grave
Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,
To digg the dvst encloased heare.
Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones.[81][nb 5]
(Modern spelling: Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, | To dig the dust enclosed here. | Blessed be the man
that spares these stones, | And cursed be he that moves my bones.)
Sometime before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of
him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil.[82] In 1623, in conjunction with
the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published.[83]
Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral
monuments inSouthwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Plays
Main articles: Shakespeare's plays and William Shakespeare's collaborations
9. Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, and critics agree that
Shakespeare did the same, mostly early and late in his career.[84] Some attributions, such as Titus
Andronicus and the early history plays, remain controversial, while The Two Noble Kinsmen and the
lost Cardenio have well-attested contemporary documentation. Textual evidence also supports the view that
several of the plays were revised by other writers after their original composition.
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, however, [85] and studies of
the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew and The Two
Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare's earliest period.[86] His firsthistories, which draw heavily
on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,[87] dramatise the
destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of
the Tudor dynasty.[88] The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists,
especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays
of Seneca.[89] 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.[90] Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve of
rape,[91] the Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern
critics and directors.[92]
Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing. By William Blake, c. 1786. Tate Britain.
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 greatest comedies.[93] A Midsummer
Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes.[94] Shakespeare's next
comedy, the equally romantic Merchant of Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish
moneylender Shylock, which reflects Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern
audiences.[95] The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing,[96] the charming rural setting of As You Like It,
and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies.[97] After the
lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of
10. the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. 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.[98] This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic
tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death;[99] and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's
1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which introduced a new kind of drama.[100] According to
Shakespearean scholar 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".[101]
Hamlet, Horatio, Marcellus, and the Ghost of Hamlet's Father. Henry Fuseli, 1780–5. Kunsthaus Zürich.
In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem plays" Measure for Measure, Troilus and
Cressida, and All's Well That Ends Well and a number of his best known tragedies.[102] Many critics believe that
Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's most
famous tragedies, Hamlet, has probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character,
especially for his famous soliloquy which begins "To be or not to be; that is the question".[103] 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.[104] 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.[105] In Othello, the
villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves
him.[106] In King Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which
lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia.
According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play-offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief
from its cruelty".[107] InMacbeth, the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's
tragedies,[108] 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.[109] 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.[110]
11. In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major
plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, as well as the collaboration, Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end
with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors.[111] 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.[112] Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The
Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.[113]
Performances
Main article: Shakespeare in performance
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.[114] After theplagues of 1592–3,
Shakespeare's plays were performed by his own company at The Theatre and the Curtain in Shoreditch, north
of the Thames.[115] Londoners flocked there to see the first part of Henry IV,Leonard Digges recording, "Let but
Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest...and you scarce shall have a room".[116] 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.[117] 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.[118]
The reconstructed Globe Theatre, London.
After the Lord Chamberlain's Men were renamed the King's Men in 1603, they entered a special relationship
with the new 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
ofThe Merchant of Venice.[119] After 1608, they performed at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre during the winter
and the Globe during the summer.[120] The indoor setting, combined with the Jacobean fashion for lavishly
staged masques, allowed Shakespeare to introduce more elaborate stage devices. In Cymbeline, for
12. example,Jupiter descends "in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. The ghosts
fall on their knees."[121]
The actors in Shakespeare's company included the famous Richard Burbage, William Kempe, Henry
Condell and John Heminges. Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of many of
Shakespeare's plays, including Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.[122] The popular comic actor Will
Kempe played the servant Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, among other
characters.[123] He was replaced around the turn of the 16th century byRobert Armin, who played roles such
as Touchstone in As You Like It and the fool in King Lear.[124] In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that Henry
VIII "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and ceremony".[125] 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.[125]
Textual sources
Title page of the First Folio, 1623. Copper engraving of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout.
In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's friends from the King's Men, published
the First Folio, a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It contained 36 texts, including 18 printed for the first
time.[126] Many of the plays had already appeared in quarto versions—flimsy books made from sheets of paper
folded twice to make four leaves.[127] No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which
the First Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies".[128] Alfred Pollard termed some of them "bad
quartos" because of their adapted, paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed
13. from memory.[129] Where several versions of a play survive, each differs from the other. The differences may
stem from copying or printing errors, from notes by actors or audience members, or from Shakespeare's
own papers.[130] 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, however, while most
modern additions 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.[131]
Poems
In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative
poems on erotic themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He dedicated them to Henry
Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances
of Venus; while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin.[132] Influenced
by Ovid's Metamorphoses,[133] the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled
lust.[134] 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.[135] The Phoenix and the Turtle, printed in
Robert Chester's 1601 Love's Martyr, mourns the deaths of the legendary phoenix and his lover, the
faithful 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.[136]
Sonnets
Main article: Shakespeare's sonnets
Title page from 1609 edition ofShake-Speares Sonnets.
14. Published in 1609, the Sonnets were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed. Scholars are
not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote
sonnets throughout his career for a private readership.[137] 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".[138]Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's
intended sequence.[139] 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".[140]
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate..."
—Lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.[141]
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.[142] Critics praise the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the
nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time.[143]
Style
Main article: Shakespeare's 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.[144] The poetry
depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical—
written for actors to declaim rather than speak. The grand speeches in Titus Andronicus, in the view of some
critics, often hold up the action, for example; and the verse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona has been
described as stilted.[145]
Soon, however, Shakespeare began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. The
opening soliloquy of Richard III has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama. At the same time,
Richard's vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soliloquies of Shakespeare's mature plays. [146] 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.[147] 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.
15. Pity by William Blake, 1795, Tate Britain, is an illustration of two similes in Macbeth: "And pity, like a naked new-born babe, /
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd / Upon the sightless couriers of the air".
Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter. In practice, this meant
that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every
second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often
beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines, with the risk of
monotony.[148] Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This
technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet.
Shakespeare uses it, for example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind:[149]
Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly—
And prais'd be rashness for it—let us know
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well...
Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2, 4–8[149]
After Hamlet, Shakespeare varied his poetic style
further, particularly in the more emotional passages
of the late tragedies. The literary critic A. C.
Bradleydescribed this style as "more concentrated,
rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not
seldom twisted or elliptical".[150] In the last phase of
his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques
to achieve these effects. These included run-on
lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme
variations in sentence structure and
length.[151] In Macbeth, for example, the language
darts from one unrelated metaphor or simile to
16. another: "was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed
yourself?" (1.7.35–38); "...pity, like a naked newborn 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.[151] 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.[152]
Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a
practical sense of the theatre.[153] Like all playwrights
of the time, he dramatised stories from sources such
as Plutarch and Holinshed.[154] 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.[155] 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.[156]
Influence
Main article: Shakespeare's influence
17. Macbeth Consulting the Vision of the Armed
Head. By Henry Fuseli, 1793–94.Folger Shakespeare
Library, Washington.
Shakespeare's work has made a lasting impression
on later theatre and literature. In particular, he
expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation,
plot,language, and genre.[157] Until Romeo and
Juliet, for example, romance had not been viewed
as a worthy topic for tragedy.[158] Soliloquies had
been used mainly to convey information about
characters or events; but Shakespeare used them to
explore characters' minds.[159] His work heavily
influenced later poetry. The Romantic
poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse
drama, though with little success. Critic George
Steiner described all English verse dramas
from Coleridge toTennyson as "feeble variations on
Shakespearean themes."[160]
Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas
Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens. The
American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe
much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in MobyDick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King
18. Lear.[161] Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of
music linked to Shakespeare's works. These include
two operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Otello and Falstaff,
whose critical standing compares with that of the
source plays.[162]Shakespeare has also inspired
many painters, including the Romantics and the PreRaphaelites. The Swiss Romantic artist Henry
Fuseli, a friend of William Blake, even
translated Macbeth into
German.[163] The psychoanalyst Sigmund
Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in
particular that of Hamlet, for his theories of human
nature.[164]
In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling
and pronunciation were less standardised than they
are now,[165] and his use of language helped shape
modern English.[166] 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.[167]Expressions such as "with bated breath"
(Merchant of Venice) and "a foregone conclusion"
(Othello) have found their way into everyday English
speech.[168]
Critical reputation
Main articles: Shakespeare's
reputation and Timeline of Shakespeare criticism
"He was not of an age, but for all time."
—Ben Jonson[169]
Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he
received a large amount of praise.[170] In 1598, the
cleric and authorFrancis Meres singled him out from
a group of English writers as "the most excellent" in
both comedy and tragedy.[171] And the authors of
19. the Parnassus plays at St John's College,
Cambridge, numbered him
with Chaucer, Gower and Spenser.[172] In the First
Folio, Ben Jonson called Shakespeare the "Soul of
the age, the applause, delight, the wonder of our
stage", though he had remarked elsewhere that
"Shakespeare wanted art".
A recently garlanded statue of William Shakespeare
in Lincoln Park, Chicago, typical of many created in
the 19th and early 20th century.
Between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660
and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas
were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly
rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben
Jonson.[173] 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".[174] For
20. several decades, Rymer's view held sway; but
during the 18th century, critics began to respond to
Shakespeare on his own terms and acclaim what
they termed his natural genius. A series of scholarly
editions of his work, notably those of Samuel
Johnson in 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790,
added to his growing reputation.[175] By 1800, he
was firmly enshrined as the national poet.[176] In the
18th and 19th centuries, his reputation also spread
abroad. Among those who championed him were
the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal and Victor
Hugo.[177]
During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised
by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor
Coleridge; and the critic August Wilhelm
Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German
Romanticism.[178] In the 19th century, critical
admiration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered
on adulation.[179] "That 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".[180] The Victorians produced his plays
as lavish spectacles on a grand scale.[181] The
playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw mocked
the cult of Shakespeare worship as "bardolatry". He
claimed that the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had
made Shakespeare obsolete.[182]
The modernist revolution in the arts during the early
20th century, far from discarding Shakespeare,
eagerly enlisted his work in the service of the avantgarde. TheExpressionists in Germany and
the Futurists in Moscow mounted productions of his
plays. Marxist playwright and director Bertolt
Brecht devised an epic theatre under the influence
21. of Shakespeare. The poet and critic T. S.
Eliot argued against Shaw that Shakespeare's
"primitiveness" in fact made him truly
modern.[183] 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 "postmodern" studies of Shakespeare.[184] By the 1980s,
Shakespeare studies were open to movements such
as structuralism, feminism, New
Historicism, African-American studies, and queer
studies.[185][186]
Speculation about Shakespeare
Authorship
Main article: Shakespeare authorship question
Around 230 years after Shakespeare's death,
doubts began to be expressed about the authorship
of the works attributed to him.[187] Proposed
alternative candidates include Francis
Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere,
17th Earl of Oxford.[188] Several "group theories"
have also been proposed.[189] Only a small minority
of academics believe there is reason to question the
traditional attribution,[190] but interest in the subject,
particularly the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare
authorship, continues into the 21st century.[191]
Religion
Main article: Shakespeare's religion
Some scholars claim that members of
Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time
when Catholic practice was against the
law.[192] Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden,
22. certainly came from a pious Catholic family. The
strongest evidence might be a Catholic statement of
faith signed by John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in
the rafters of his former house in Henley Street. The
document is now lost, however, and scholars differ
as to its authenticity.[193] In 1591 the authorities
reported that John Shakespeare had missed church
"for fear of process for debt", a common Catholic
excuse.[194] In 1606 the name of William's daughter
Susanna appears on a list of those who failed to
attend Easter communion in Stratford.[194] Scholars
find evidence both for and against Shakespeare's
Catholicism in his plays, but the truth may be
impossible to prove either way.[195]
Sexuality
Main article: Sexuality of William Shakespeare
Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known.
At 18, he married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway,
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,[196] 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 sexual love.[197] The 26 so-called "Dark
Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are
taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.[198]
Portraiture
Main article: Portraits of Shakespeare
No written contemporary description of
Shakespeare's physical appearance survives, and
no evidence suggests that he ever commissioned a
portrait, so the Droeshout engraving, which Ben
23. Jonson approved of as a good likeness,[199] and
his Stratford monument provide 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.[200]
List of works
Further information: Shakespeare
bibliography and Chronology of Shakespeare's
plays
Classification of the plays
The Plays of William Shakespeare. BySir John
Gilbert, 1849.
Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in
the First Folio of 1623, listed below according to
their folio classification
as comedies, histories andtragedies.[201] 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 scholars agreed
that Shakespeare made a major contribution to their
24. composition.[202] No Shakespearean poems were
included in the First Folio.
In the late 19th century, Edward Dowden classified
four of the late comedies as romances, and though
many scholars prefer to call them tragicomedies, his
term is often used.[203] These plays and the
associated Two Noble Kinsmen are marked with an
asterisk (*) below. In 1896, Frederick S.
Boas coined the term "problem plays" to describe
four plays: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for
Measure, Troilus and
Cressida and Hamlet.[204] "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."[205] The term, much
debated and sometimes applied to other plays,
remains in use, though Hamlet is definitively classed
as a tragedy.[206] The other problem plays are
marked below with a double dagger (‡).
Plays thought to be only partly written by
Shakespeare are marked with a dagger (†) below.
Other works occasionally attributed to him are listed
as apocrypha.
Works
Comedies
Main article: Shakespearean comedy
Histories
Main article: Shakespearean hi
All's Well That Ends Well ‡
King John
As You Like It
Richard II
The Comedy of Errors
Henry IV, Part 1
Love's Labour's Lost
Henry IV, Part 2
Measure for Measure ‡
Henry V
25. The Merchant of Venice *
Henry VI, Part 1 †
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Henry VI, Part 2
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Henry VI, Part 3
Much Ado About Nothing
Richard III
Pericles, Prince of Tyre *†
Henry VIII †
The Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest *
Twelfth Night
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Two Noble Kinsmen *†
The Winter's Tale *
Poems
Lost plays
Shakespeare's sonnets
Love's Labour's Won
Venus and Adonis
The History of Cardenio †
The Rape of Lucrece
The Passionate Pilgrim[nb 6]
The Phoenix and the Turtle
A Lover's Complaint
V
T
E
Early editions of W
See also
26. Book: William Shakespeare
Shakespeare portal
English Renaissance theatre
World Shakespeare Bibliography
Notes
Footnotes
1.
Jump up^ Dates follow the Julian calendar,
used in England throughout Shakespeare's
lifespan, but with the start of year adjusted to
1 January (see Old Style and New Style
dates). Under the Gregorian calendar,
adopted in Catholic countries in 1582,
Shakespeare died on 3 May (Schoenbaum
1987, xv).
2.
Jump up^ The "national cult" of
Shakespeare, and the "bard" identification,
dates from September 1769, when the
actor David Garrick organised a week-long
carnival at Stratford to mark the town council
awarding him the freedom of the town. In
addition to presenting the town with a statue
of Shakespeare, Garrick composed a
doggerel verse, lampooned in the London
newspapers, naming the banks of the Avon
as the birthplace of the "matchless Bard"
(McIntyre 1999, 412–432).
3.
Jump up^ The exact figures are unknown.
SeeShakespeare's
collaborations andShakespeare
Apocrypha for further details.
27. 4.
Jump up^ Individual play dates and precise
writing span are unknown. See Chronology of
Shakespeare's plays for further details.
5.
Jump up^ In the scribal
abbreviations ye for the (3rd line)
and yt for that (3rd and 4th lines) the
letter y represents in fact th: see article thorn.
6.
Jump up^ The Passionate Pilgrim, published
under Shakespeare's name in 1599 without
his permission, includes early versions of two
of his sonnets, three extracts from Love's
Labour's Lost, several poems known to be by
other poets, and eleven poems of unknown
authorship for which the attribution to
Shakespeare has not been disproved (Wells
et al. 2005, 805)
Citations
1.
Jump up^ "Shakespeare" entry in Collins
English Dictionary, HarperCollins Publishers,
1998.
2.
Jump up^ Greenblatt 2005, 11; Bevington
2002, 1–3;Wells 1997, 399.
3.
Jump up^ Dobson 1992, 185–186
4.
Jump up^ Craig 2003, 3.
5.
Jump up^ Shapiro 2005, xvii–
xviii; Schoenbaum 1991, 41, 66, 397–98,
402, 409; Taylor 1990, 145, 210–23, 261–5
6.
Jump up^ Chambers 1930, Vol. 1: 270–
71; Taylor 1987, 109–134.
7.
Jump up^ The Norton Anthology of English
Literature: Sixteenth/Early Seventeenth
Century, Volume B, 2012, pg. 1168
8.
Jump up^ Bertolini 1993, 119.
9.
Jump up^ Schoenbaum 1987, 14–22.
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