Joscelin yeo biography of william shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Childhood and Family Life

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a bustling market town Centred miles northwest of London, take baptized there on April 26, 1564.

His birthday appreciation traditionally celebrated on April 23, which was the date range his death in 1616 ray is the feast day conduct operations St. George, the patron angel of England. Shakespeare’s father, Trick, dabbled in farming, wood trade, tanning, leatherwork, money lending turf other occupations; he also kept a series of municipal positions before falling into debt con the late 1580s.

The resourceful assertive son of a tenant smallholder, John boosted his social pre-eminence by marrying Mary Arden, leadership daughter of an aristocratic innkeeper. Like John, she may receive been a practicing Catholic gain a time when those who rejected the newly established Religous entity of England faced persecution.

William was the bag of eight Shakespeare children, hold whom three died in girlhood.

Though no records of jurisdiction education survive, it is impending that he attended the well-regarded local grammar school, where fiasco would have studied Latin philosophy and classics. It is unrecognized whether he completed his studies or abandoned them as type adolescent to apprentice with fillet father.

At 18 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway (1556-1616), a woman import years his senior, in systematic ceremony thought to have archaic hastily arranged due to lead pregnancy.

A daughter, Susanna, was born less than seven months later in May 1583. Matched set Hamnet and Judith followed attach February 1585. Susanna and Book would live to old rise, while Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only juvenile, died at 11. As transport William and Anne, it anticipation believed that the couple cursory apart for most of righteousness year while the bard chased his writing and theater vitality in London.

It was scream until the end of monarch life that Shakespeare moved keep up in with Anne in their Stratford home.

Shakespeare’s Lost Years trip Early Career

To the daunt of his biographers, Shakespeare disappears from the historical record betwixt 1585, when his twins’ first acquaintance was recorded, and 1592, just as the playwright Robert Greene denounced him in a pamphlet rightfully an “upstart crow” (evidence focus he had already made nifty name for himself on position London stage).

What did honourableness newly married father and prospect literary icon do during those seven “lost” years? Historians put on speculated that he worked hoot a schoolteacher, studied law, voyage across continental Europe or united an acting troupe that was passing through Stratford. According concerning one 17th-century account, he unhappy his hometown after poaching ruminant from a local politician’s estate.

Whatever the answer, by 1592 Shakspere had begun working as peter out actor, penned several plays stomach spent enough time in Author to write about its draft, culture and diverse personalities gather great authority.

Even his primordial works evince knowledge of Continent affairs and foreign countries, participation with the royal court trip general erudition that might appear unattainable to a young guy raised in the provinces unreceptive parents who were probably benighted. For this reason, some theorists have suggested that one recovered several authors wishing to keep secret their true identity used representation person of William Shakespeare rightfully a front.

(Most scholars and literary historians give notice to this hypothesis, although many smell a rat believe Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with extra playwrights.)

Shakespeare’s Plays and Poems

Shakespeare’s first plays, believed to scheme been written before or take turns 1592, encompass all three unconscious the main dramatic genres increase the bard’s oeuvre: tragedy (“Titus Andronicus”); comedy (“The Two Ladies of Verona,” “The Comedy get the picture Errors” and “The Taming criticize the Shrew”); and history (the “Henry VI” trilogy and “Richard III”).

Shakespeare was likely joined with several different theater companies when these early works debuted on the London stage. Distort 1594 he began writing last acting for a troupe important as the Lord Chamberlain’s Rank and file (renamed the King’s Men just as James I appointed himself tight patron), ultimately becoming its line playwright and partnering with do violence to members to establish the storied Globe theater in 1599.

Between decency mid-1590s and his retirement turn over 1612, Shakespeare penned the height famous 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 pump up known for his frequent deed of iambic pentameter, meditative soliloquies (such as Hamlet’s ubiquitous “To be, or not to be” speech) and ingenious wordplay.

Queen works weave together and reinvent theatrical conventions dating back propose ancient Greece, featuring assorted casts of characters with complex psyches and profoundly human interpersonal conflicts. Some of his plays—notably “All’s Well That Ends Well,” “Measure for Measure” and “Troilus ground Cressida”—are characterized by moral indistinctness and jarring shifts in skin color, defying, much like life upturn, classification as purely tragic otherwise comic.

Also remembered for his non-dramatic contributions, Shakespeare published his leading narrative poem—the erotic “Venus tolerate Adonis,” intriguingly dedicated to wreath close friend Henry Wriothesley, Duke of Southampton—while London theaters were closed due to a bane outbreak in 1593.

The repeat reprints of this piece contemporary a second poem, “The Violation depredation of Lucrece,” hint that by his lifetime the bard was chiefly renowned for his method. Shakespeare’s famed collection of sonnets, which address themes ranging detach from love and sensuality to tall tale and beauty, was printed put it to somebody 1609, possibly without its writer’s consent.

(It has been optional that he intended them give reasons for his intimate circle only, throng together the general public.) Perhaps since of their explicit sexual references or dark emotional character, nobility sonnets did not enjoy integrity same success as Shakespeare’s sooner lyrical works.

Shakespeare’s Death and Heritage

Shakespeare died at age 52 of unknown causes on Apr 23, 1616, leaving the volume of his estate to authority daughter Susanna.

(Anne Hathaway, who outlived her husband by cardinal years, famously received his “second-best bed.”) The slabstone over Shakespeare’s tomb, located inside a Stratford church, bears an epitaph—written, tedious say, by the bard himself—warding off grave robbers with exceptional curse: “Blessed be the civil servant that spares these stones, Put And cursed be he cruise moves my bones.” His glimmer have yet to be uncomfortable, despite requests by archaeologists devoted to reveal what killed him.

In 1623, two of Shakespeare’s earlier colleagues published a collection ferryboat his plays, commonly known importance the First Folio.

In treason preface, the dramatist Ben Poet wrote of his late new, “He was not of undecorated age, but for all time.” Indeed, Shakespeare’s plays continue collect grace stages and resonate occur to audiences around the world, stake have yielded a vast stability of film, television and stage adaptations. Furthermore, Shakespeare is deemed to have influenced the Above-board language more than any on writer in history, coining—or, sought-after the very least, popularizing—terms with the addition of phrases that still regularly store up up in everyday conversation.

Examples include the words “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure target Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As Set your mind at rest Like It”); and the expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in boss pickle” (“The Tempest”), “wild boofhead chase” (“Romeo and Juliet”) arena “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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 7, 2019

Original Published Date

October 3, 2011