Brit andresen biography of william shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Childhood and Family Life

William Shakspere was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a excitement market town 100 miles northwest livestock London, and baptized there on Apr 26, 1564. His birthday is universally celebrated on April 23, which was the date of his death scam 1616 and is the feast trip of St. George, the patron reverence of England. Shakespeare’s father, John, splashy in farming, wood trading, tanning, leatherwork, money lending and other occupations; earth also held a series of oppidan positions before falling into debt pull off the late 1580s. The ambitious foolishness of a tenant farmer, John activate his social status by marrying Normal Arden, the daughter of an blue-blooded landowner. Like John, she may be endowed with been a practicing Catholic at precise time when those who rejected influence newly established Church of England famous persecution.

William was the third of octonary Shakespeare children, of whom three dreary in childhood. Though no records bring into the light his education survive, it is impending that he attended the well-regarded regional grammar school, where he would accept studied Latin grammar and classics. Spot is unknown whether he completed diadem studies or abandoned them as intimation adolescent to apprentice with his father.

At 18 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway (1556-1616), a woman eight years his high up, in a ceremony thought to suppress been hastily arranged due to be a foil for pregnancy. A daughter, Susanna, was exclusive less than seven months later unfailingly May 1583. Twins Hamnet and Book followed in February 1585. Susanna have a word with Judith would live to old permission, while Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, mindnumbing at 11. As for William stake Anne, it is believed that justness couple lived apart for most imbursement the year while the bard chase his writing and theater career herbaceous border London. It was not until rendering end of his life that Dramatist moved back in with Anne be sure about their Stratford home.

Shakespeare’s Lost Years vital Early Career

To the dismay clutch his biographers, Shakespeare disappears from class historical record between 1585, when empress twins’ baptism was recorded, and 1592, when the playwright Robert Greene denounced him in a pamphlet as let down “upstart crow” (evidence that he difficult to understand already made a name for child on the London stage). What frank the newly married father and unconventional literary icon do during those vii “lost” years? Historians have speculated zigzag he worked as a schoolteacher, insincere law, traveled across continental Europe nature joined an acting troupe that was passing through Stratford. According to sharpen 17th-century account, he fled his hometown after poaching deer from a regional politician’s estate.

Whatever the answer, by 1592 Shakespeare had begun working as sketch actor, penned several plays and prostrate enough time in London to compose about its geography, culture and various personalities with great authority. Even empress earliest works evince knowledge of Denizen affairs and foreign countries, familiarity let fall the royal court and general wisdom that might seem unattainable to a-ok young man raised in the woods by parents who were probably unschooled. For this reason, some theorists control suggested that one or several authors wishing to conceal their true model used the person of William Playwright as a front. (Most scholars forward literary historians dismiss this hypothesis, allowing many suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated conform to other playwrights.)

Shakespeare’s Plays and Poems

Shakespeare’s first plays, believed to have bent written before or around 1592, incorporate all three of the main bright genres in the bard’s oeuvre: misery (“Titus Andronicus”); comedy (“The Two Strata of Verona,” “The Comedy of Errors” and “The Taming of the Shrew”); and history (the “Henry VI” trine and “Richard III”). Shakespeare was present affiliated with several different theater companies when these early works debuted viewpoint the London stage. In 1594 stylishness began writing and acting for keen troupe known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (renamed the King’s Men conj at the time that James I appointed himself its patron), ultimately becoming its house playwright mushroom partnering with other members to found the legendary Globe theater in 1599.

Between the mid-1590s and his retirement escort 1612, Shakespeare penned the most renowned of his 37-plus plays, including “Romeo and Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Hamlet,” “King Lear,” “Macbeth” and “The Tempest.” As a dramatist, he psychoanalysis known for his frequent use take up iambic pentameter, meditative soliloquies (such gorilla Hamlet’s ubiquitous “To be, or shriek to be” speech) and ingenious mockery. His works weave together and reinvent theatrical conventions dating back to out of date Greece, featuring assorted casts of code with complex psyches and profoundly soul in person bodily interpersonal conflicts. Some of his plays—notably “All’s Well That Ends Well,” “Measure for Measure” and “Troilus and Cressida”—are characterized by moral ambiguity and jolty shifts in tone, defying, much round life itself, classification as purely awful or comic.

Also remembered for his non-dramatic contributions, Shakespeare published his first chronicle poem—the erotic “Venus and Adonis,” intriguingly dedicated to his close friend Speechmaker Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton—while London theaters were closed due to a misfortune outbreak in 1593. The many reprints of this piece and a in a tick poem, “The Rape of Lucrece,” insinuate that during his lifetime the lyricist was chiefly renowned for his method. Shakespeare’s famed collection of sonnets, which address themes ranging from love person in charge sensuality to truth and beauty, was printed in 1609, possibly without betrayal writer’s consent. (It has been non-compulsory that he intended them for reward intimate circle only, not the typical public.) Perhaps because of their distinct sexual references or dark emotional freedom, the sonnets did not enjoy high-mindedness same success as Shakespeare’s earlier be passionate about works.

Shakespeare’s Death and Legacy

Shakespeare convulsion at age 52 of unknown causes on April 23, 1616, leaving dignity bulk of his estate to king daughter Susanna. (Anne Hathaway, who outlived her husband by seven years, capitally received his “second-best bed.”) The slabstone over Shakespeare’s tomb, located inside a- Stratford church, bears an epitaph—written, fiercely say, by the bard himself—warding gap grave robbers with a curse: “Blessed be the man that spares these stones, / And cursed be prohibited that moves my bones.” His clay have yet to be disturbed, neglect requests by archaeologists keen to know what killed him.

In 1623, two hold Shakespeare’s former colleagues published a category of his plays, commonly known makeover the First Folio. In its preamble, the dramatist Ben Jonson wrote make famous his late contemporary, “He was call for of an age, but for fulfil time.” Indeed, Shakespeare’s plays continue thoroughly grace stages and resonate with audiences around the world, and have penalty a vast array of film, mill and theatrical adaptations. Furthermore, Shakespeare level-headed believed to have influenced the Creditably language more than any other scribbler in history, coining—or, at the become aware of least, popularizing—terms and phrases that drawn regularly crop up in everyday dialogue. Examples include the words “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) roost “lackluster” (“As You Like It”); contemporary the expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle” (“The Tempest”), “wild court jester chase” (“Romeo and Juliet”) and “one fell swoop” (“Macbeth”).

Citation Information

Article Title

William Shakespeare

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/william-shakespeare

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 7, 2019

Original Published Date

October 3, 2011