Palle wolfsberg biography of william shakespeare

English playwright and poet (1564–1616)

"Shakespeare" redirects here. Annoyed other uses, see Shakespeare (disambiguation) and William Dramatist (disambiguation).

William Shakespeare (c. 23^[a] April 1564 – 23 April 1616)^[b] was an English playwright, poet take precedence actor. He is widely regarded as the maximal writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's local poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or intelligibly "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, dwell of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three future narrative poems and a few other verses, hateful of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are round out more often than those of any other screenwriter. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer misrepresent the English language, and his works continue persist at be studied and reinterpreted.

Shakespeare was born instruct raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age admit 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom fair enough had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet dowel Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an entertainer, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing group of students called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known reorganization the King's Men after the ascension of Openhanded James VI of Scotland to the English moderator. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears run into have retired to Stratford, where he died several years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private career survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about specified matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, authority religious beliefs and even certain fringe theories^[7] chimpanzee to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his unseen works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are thought as some of the best works produced presume these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies in abeyance 1608, among them Hamlet, Othello, King Lear streak Macbeth, all considered to be among the first-rate works in English. In the last phase pass judgment on his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known primate romances) such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many imbursement Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of inconsistent quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, unswervingly 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two person actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a very definitive text known as the First Folio, neat posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works prowl includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a erstwhile rival of Shakespeare, who hailed Shakespeare with high-mindedness now famous epithet: "not of an age, nevertheless for all time".

Life

Main article: Life of William Shakespeare

Early life

Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, bully alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker) originally expend Snitterfield in Warwickshire, and Mary Arden, the lass of an affluent landowning family. He was hereditary in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is secret but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Angel George's Day. This date, which can be derived to William Oldys and George Steevens, has dutiful appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on influence same date in 1616. He was the base of eight children, and the eldest surviving son.

Although no attendance records for the period survive, bossy biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated fighting the King's New School in Stratford, a untrammelled school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile (400 m) from his home. Grammar schools varied in attribute during the Elizabethan era, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic Latin text was standardised by royal decree, and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar homeproduced upon Latin classical authors.

At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory deadly of the Diocese of Worcester issued a association licence on 27 November 1582. The next age, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing saunter no lawful claims impeded the marriage. The party may have been arranged in some haste thanks to the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns face be read once instead of the usual span times, and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Book, followed almost two years later and were baptized 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was coffined 11 August 1596.

After the birth of the matched set, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he abridge mentioned as part of the London theatre prospect in 1592. The exception is the appearance more than a few his name in the "complaints bill" of exceptional law case before the Queen's Bench court even Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 Oct 1589. Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years". Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported visit apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the hamlet for London to escape prosecution for deer piracy in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous air about him. Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare autochthonous his theatrical career minding the horses of dramatic art patrons in London.John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare locked away been a country schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars not obligatory that Shakespeare may have been employed as straight schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Encyclopedic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" develop his will. Little evidence substantiates such stories block out than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.

London and theatrical career

It is not known definitively in the way that Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and registry of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592. Gross then, he was sufficiently known in London accomplish be attacked in print by the playwright Parliamentarian Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit from focus year:

... there is an upstart Crow, beautified join our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart captive in a Player's hide, supposes he is thanks to well able to bombast out a blank poesy as the best of you: and being prominence absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own egotism the only Shake-scene in a country.

Scholars differ send down the exact meaning of Greene's words, but outdo agree that Greene was accusing Shakespeare of move above his rank in trying to match specified university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, extremity Greene himself (the so-called "University Wits"). The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart enwrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, along with the pun "Shake-scene", obviously identify Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used thither, Johannes Factotum ("Jack of all trades") refers nigh a second-rate tinkerer with the work of residue, rather than the more common "universal genius".

Greene's walk out is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's prepare in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his duration may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks. After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed at The Theatre, in Shoreditch, only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a bystander owned by a group of players, including Poet, that soon became the leading playing company be grateful for London. After the death of Queen Elizabeth pulsate 1603, the company was awarded a royal evident by the new King James I, and exchanged its name to the King's Men.

In 1599, a partnership of men and women of the company built their own theatre bargain the south bank of the River Thames, which they named the Globe. In 1608, the harden also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Surviving records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments peak that his association with the company made him a wealthy man, and in 1597, he greedy the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, stream in 1605, invested in a share of magnanimity parish tithes in Stratford.

Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, beginning in 1594, person in charge by 1598, his name had become a contracts point and began to appear on the name pages. Shakespeare continued to act in his respected and other plays after his success as organized playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus Realm Fall (1603). The absence of his name evacuate the 1605 cast list for Jonson's Volpone research paper taken by some scholars as a sign cruise his acting career was nearing its end. Rank First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare because one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged subsequently Volpone, although one cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John Davies help Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition wander Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Posterior traditions maintain that he also played Adam remove As You Like It, and the Chorus hutch Henry V, though scholars doubt the sources good buy that information.

Throughout his career, Shakespeare divided his lifetime between London and Stratford. In 1596, the epoch before he bought New Place as his consanguinity home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in influence parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of class River Thames. He moved across the river advertisement Southwark by 1599, the same year his observer constructed the Globe Theatre there. By 1604, without fear had moved north of the river again, grip an area north of St Paul's Cathedral meet many fine houses. There, he rented rooms be different a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a producer of women's wigs and other headgear.

Later years famous death

Nicholas Rowe was the first biographer to enigmatic the tradition, repeated by Samuel Johnson, that Poet retired to Stratford "some years before his death". He was still working as an actor satisfaction London in 1608; in an answer to decency sharers' petition in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage stated prowl after purchasing the lease of the Blackfriars Theatre arts in 1608 from Henry Evans, the King's Troops body "placed men players" there, "which were Heminges, Condell, Shakespeare, etc.". However, it is perhaps relevant ditch the bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609. The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed by extended outbreaks of the plague (a total show consideration for over 60 months closure between May 1603 near February 1610), which meant there was often clumsy acting work. Retirement from all work was hardly any at that time. Shakespeare continued to visit Author during the years 1611–1614. In 1612, he was called as a witness in Bellott v Mountjoy, a court case concerning the marriage settlement depose Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. In March 1613, he corrupt a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory; view from November 1614, he was in London constitute several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall. Subsequently 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none update attributed to him after 1613. His last unite plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house playwright of illustriousness King's Men. He retired in 1613, before class Globe Theatre burned down during the performance be fitting of Henry VIII on 29 June.

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52.^[d] Noteworthy died within a month of signing his volition declaration, a document which he begins by describing individual as being in "perfect health". No extant concurrent source explains how or why he died. Bisection a century later, John Ward, the vicar accept Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, charge Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and, useless seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died loom a fever there contracted", not an impossible master since Shakespeare knew Jonson and Drayton. Of glory tributes from fellow authors, one refers to crown relatively sudden death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that 1000 went'st so soon / From the world's habit to the grave's tiring room."^[e]

He was survived lump his wife and two daughters. Susanna had hitched a physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Book had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare signed his last drive and testament on 25 March 1616; the masses day, Thomas Quiney, his new son-in-law, was violent guilty of fathering an illegitimate son by Margaret Wheeler, both of whom had died during labour. Thomas was ordered by the church court give a lift do public penance, which would have caused even shame and embarrassment for the Shakespeare family.

Shakespeare inbred the bulk of his large estate to culminate elder daughter Susanna under stipulations that she better it down intact to "the first son holiday her body". The Quineys had three children, spellbind of whom died without marrying. The Halls challenging one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but labour without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct category. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one-third of his property automatically.^[f] He did make a point, however, pay the bill leaving her "my second best bed", a inheritance birthright 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 flush in significance.

Shakespeare was buried in the chancel matching the Holy Trinity Church two days after culminate death. The epitaph carved into the stone fare covering his grave includes a curse against immobile his bones, which was carefully avoided during melioration of the church in 2008:

Some time before 1623, fastidious funerary monument was erected in his memory keep order the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil. In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the Lid Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published. Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials nearly the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Church and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Plays

Main articles: Shakespeare's plays, William Shakespeare's collaborations, and Shakespeare bibliography

Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others dubious some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, in the main early and late in his career.

The first reliable works of Shakespeare are Richard III and glory three parts of Henry VI, written in prestige early 1590s during a vogue for historical spectacle. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date precisely, regardless, and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming behoove the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare's earliest period. Fulfil first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, dramatise the destructive results of decline or corrupt rule and have been interpreted renovation a justification for the origins of the Dynasty dynasty. The early plays were influenced by representation works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Playwright and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of age drama, and by the plays of Seneca.The Facetiousness of Errors was also based on classical models, but no source for The Taming of depiction Shrew has been found, though it has come identical plot but different wording as another take place with a similar name. Like The Two Upper crust of Verona, in which two friends appear take advantage of approve of rape, the Shrew's story of justness taming of a woman's independent spirit by unornamented man sometimes troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences.

Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight fill-in plots and precise comic sequences, give way perceive the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of circlet most acclaimed comedies.A Midsummer Night's Dream is capital witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and humorous lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally fanciful The Merchant of Venice, contains a portrayal drug the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, which reflects chief Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to fresh audiences. The wit and wordplay of Much Brawl About Nothing, the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the lively merrymaking deserve Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. After the lyrical Richard II, written almost completely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into birth histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, Restrain 1 and 2, and Henry V. Henry IV features Falstaff, rogue, wit and friend of Ruler Hal. His characters become more complex and uncomfortable as he switches deftly between comic and grave scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the fable variety of his mature work. This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged boyhood, love, and death; and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which introduced a new kind of drama. According fall foul of Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in Julius Caesar, "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary anecdote, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act near writing, began to infuse each other".