William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare LIFE AND STAGES

William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon, the son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. His father was successful as a glove maker until he was prosecuted for participating in the black market of wool and lost his position as successful tradesman.

William Shakespeare attended the King Edward IV grammar school in Stratford where he was taught Latin and Greek and showed a great interest in the great Roman and Greek tragedies, that were the foundation of his later works, who’s style and structure were clearly based upon ancient mythology and writing.

At the age of eighteen William Shakespeare married Anna Hathaway, a woman seven or eight years older than himself. Together they were blessed with three children: Susanna, born in 1583, Judith and Hamnet, born in 1585 who were twins. Hamnet died in 1596 due to an unknown illness. Because of the similarities between the name Hamnet and Hamlet many believe one of Shakespeare’s greatest works: The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark was based or at least inspired by the death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet.

Little is known about Shakespeare’s activities between 1585 and 1592. In Robert Greene\'s A Groatsworth of Wit however, Robert Greene tells about Shakespeare’s activities as a teacher at a grammar school at that time, but it seems more likely that shortly after 1585 he went to London to begin his acting career as an apprentice. Due to the plague, the London theaters were often closed between June 1592 and April 1594.

During that period Shakespeare probably had some income from his patron, Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton, to whom he dedicated his first two poems, Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594). The former was a long narrative poem describing the rejection of Venus by Adonis, his death, and the consequent disappearance of beauty from the world.

Despite many conservative concurs and objections about the way sexuality is glorified in that poem, it was extremely successful and was reprinted six times in the following nine years. Other sources say that in those years he was an actor traveling together with a group and performing to whomever was willing to pay to see them play short comedies and tragedies.

In 1594, William Shakespeare joined the Lord Chamberlain\'s company of actors, the most popular of the companies acting before the royal family and the court. In 1599 Shakespeare joined a group of Chamberlain\'s Men that united in order to be able to build and operate a new playhouse: the Globe, which became the most famous theater of its time. With his share of the income from the Globe, Shakespeare was able to purchase New Place, his home in Stratford. With the death of Elizabeth I and the coronation of James I the group were, from then on, known as The King’s Men (1603).

While Shakespeare was regarded as the most influential screenplay writer and writer in general of his time, evidence indicates that both he and his world looked to poetry, not playwriting, for ever lasting fame. Not his plays but his sonnets and poems were, to him, his greatest achievements. Shakespeare\'s sonnets were composed between 1593 and 1601, though not published until 1609. That edition, The Sonnets of Shakespeare, consists of 154 sonnets, all written in the form of three quatrains and a couplet that is now recognized as Shakespearean. The sonnets fall into two groups: sonnets 1-126, addressed to a beloved friend, a handsome and noble young man, and sonnets 127-152, to a evil but fascinating “Dark Lady”. Nearly all of Shakespeare\'s sonnets are about the inevitable end (death, the end of time), and the glorification and immortalization of beauty and love.

William Shakespeare retired in 1611 and said, for the last time, goodbye to the English theatre and social life where upon he returned to Stratford and lived a happy, but simple, life with his wife Anna till his death in 1616 on April the 23rd (which so happened to be his birthday only 52 years before).

Shakespeare wrote more than 30 plays. These are usually divided into three categories: histories, comedies and tragedies. His earliest plays were primarily comedies and histories such as Henry VI and The Comedy of Errors, but in 1596, Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, his second tragedy, and over the next dozen years he would return to the form, writing the plays for which he is now best known: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. In his final years, Shakespeare turned to the romantic with Cymbeline, A Winter\'s Tale, and The Tempest. Even today most of his plays are still extremely loved by people (with the exception of students who have to analyze those plays for school…). Romeo and Juliet remains to be a inspiration to many, most of whom work in Hollywood and transformed this famous play in to several Hollywood-productions. The idea that Shakespeare himself wrote all of what are commonly accepted as his plays however has been called into question. There is a serious academic debate going on to determine the authorship of plays and poems of the time, both those attributed to Shakespeare and others.

The list below handles the, commonly called, greatest plays Shakespeare wrote in his time divided in three categories (tragedies, comedies and histories), most of which are fairly known to all.

Shakespearean tragedies

• Romeo and Juliet • Macbeth • King Lear • Hamlet • Othello • Titus Andronicus • The Tragedy of Julius Caesar • Antony and Cleopatra • Coriolanus • The History of Troilus and Cressida • The Life of Timon of Athens

Shakespearean comedies

• All\'s Well That Ends Well • As You Like It • A Midsummer Night\'s Dream • Much Ado About Nothing • Measure for Measure • The Tempest • Taming of the Shrew • Twelfth Night • The Merchant of Venice • The Merry Wives of Windsor • Love\'s Labour\'s Lost • The Two Gentlemen of Verona • Pericles Prince of Tyre • Cymbeline • The Winter\'s Tale

Shakespearean histories

• Richard III • Richard II • Henry VI, part 1 • Henry VI, part 2 • Henry VI, part 3 • Henry V • Henry IV, part 1 • Henry IV, part 2 • Henry VIII • King John