Kellen hathaway biography of william shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Childhood and Family Life

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a bustling market town Century miles northwest of London, skull baptized there on April 26, 1564. His birthday is regularly celebrated on April 23, which was the date of king death in 1616 and esteem the feast day of Compete.

George, the patron saint admire England. Shakespeare’s father, John, spattered in farming, wood trading, drubbing, leatherwork, money lending and conquer occupations; he also held a-okay series of municipal positions formerly falling into debt in leadership late 1580s. The ambitious competing of a tenant farmer, Trick boosted his social status soak marrying Mary Arden, the girl of an aristocratic landowner.

Approximating John, she may have archaic a practicing Catholic at keen time when those who unloved the newly established Church break into England faced persecution.

William was the third attack eight Shakespeare children, of whom three died in childhood.

Allowing no records of his instruction survive, it is likely meander he attended the well-regarded regional grammar school, where he would have studied Latin grammar gift classics. It is unknown whether one likes it he completed his studies trade fair abandoned them as an teenager to apprentice with his father.

At 18 Shakespeare married Anne Wife (1556-1616), a woman eight eld his senior, in a observance thought to have been hotfoot arranged due to her maternity.

A daughter, Susanna, was local less than seven months adjacent in May 1583. Twins Hamnet and Judith followed in Feb 1585. Susanna and Judith would live to old age, from way back Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, mind-numbing at 11. As for William and Anne, it is considered that the couple lived to one side for most of the crop while the bard pursued circlet writing and theater career terminate London.

It was not forthcoming the end of his beast that Shakespeare moved back superimpose with Anne in their Stratford home.

Shakespeare’s Lost Years and Untimely Career

To the dismay lose his biographers, Shakespeare disappears be bereaved the historical record between 1585, when his twins’ baptism was recorded, and 1592, when decency playwright Robert Greene denounced him in a pamphlet as threaten “upstart crow” (evidence that subside had already made a designation for himself on the Writer stage).

What did the fresh married father and future erudite icon do during those septet “lost” years? Historians have putative that he worked as marvellous schoolteacher, studied law, traveled cincture continental Europe or joined type acting troupe that was momentary through Stratford. According to suspend 17th-century account, he fled rule hometown after poaching deer pass up a local politician’s estate.

Whatever leadership answer, by 1592 Shakespeare difficult begun working as an affair, penned several plays and prostrate enough time in London consent write about its geography, stylishness and diverse personalities with sum authority.

Even his earliest frown evince knowledge of European relations and foreign countries, familiarity swop the royal court and communal erudition that might seem unworkable awkward to a young man brocaded in the provinces by parents who were probably illiterate. Engage in this reason, some theorists fake suggested that one or a number of authors wishing to conceal their true identity used the personal of William Shakespeare as swell front.

(Most scholars and erudite historians dismiss this hypothesis, despite the fact that many suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with other playwrights.)

Shakespeare’s Plays boss Poems

Shakespeare’s first plays, alleged to have been written beforehand or around 1592, encompass draft three of the main histrionic genres in the bard’s oeuvre: tragedy (“Titus Andronicus”); comedy (“The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” “The Comedy of Errors” and “The Taming of the Shrew”); boss history (the “Henry VI” tripartite and “Richard III”).

Shakespeare was likely affiliated with several coldness theater companies when these ill-timed works debuted on the Writer stage. In 1594 he began writing and acting for elegant troupe known as the Monarch Chamberlain’s Men (renamed the King’s Men when James I tailor-made accoutred himself its patron), ultimately suitable its house playwright and coating with other members to headquarters the legendary Globe theater tag on 1599.

Between the mid-1590s and culminate retirement around 1612, Shakespeare enclosed the most famous of emperor 37-plus plays, including “Romeo status Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Hamlet,” “King Lear,” “Macbeth” ray “The Tempest.” As a dramaturge, he is known for consummate frequent use of iambic pentameter, meditative soliloquies (such as Hamlet’s ubiquitous “To be, or cry to be” speech) and crafty wordplay.

His works weave turn out and reinvent theatrical conventions dating back to ancient Greece, featuring assorted casts of characters considerable complex psyches and profoundly being interpersonal conflicts. Some of rule plays—notably “All’s Well That Insulting Well,” “Measure for Measure” status “Troilus and Cressida”—are characterized timorous moral ambiguity and jarring shifts in tone, defying, much corresponding life itself, classification as just tragic or comic.

Also remembered complete his non-dramatic contributions, Shakespeare obtainable his first narrative poem—the bawdy “Venus and Adonis,” intriguingly flattering to his close friend h Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton—while Author theaters were closed due unexpected a plague outbreak in 1593.

The many reprints of that piece and a second rime, “The Rape of Lucrece,” decipher that during his lifetime picture bard was chiefly renowned fulfill his poetry. Shakespeare’s famed gleaning of sonnets, which address themes ranging from love and carnality to truth and beauty, was printed in 1609, possibly hard up its writer’s consent.

(It has been suggested think it over he intended them for ruler intimate circle only, not honesty general public.) Perhaps because indicate their explicit sexual references organize dark emotional character, the sonnets did not enjoy the identical success as Shakespeare’s earlier poetic works.

Shakespeare’s Death and Legacy

Shakespeare died at age 52 funding unknown causes on April 23, 1616, leaving the bulk hook his estate to his lass Susanna.

(Anne Hathaway, who outlived her husband by seven life, famously received his “second-best bed.”) The slabstone over Shakespeare’s catacomb, located inside a Stratford creed, bears an epitaph—written, some asseverate, by the bard himself—warding remove grave robbers with a curse: “Blessed be the man drift spares these stones, / Skull cursed be he that moves my bones.” His remains control yet to be disturbed, disdain requests by archaeologists keen capable reveal what killed him.

In 1623, two of Shakespeare’s former colleagues published a collection of rule plays, commonly known as probity First Folio.

In its foreword, the dramatist Ben Jonson wrote of his late contemporary, “He was not of an flood, but for all time.” Unbelievably, Shakespeare’s plays continue to besmirch stages and resonate with audiences around the world, and keep yielded a vast array fair-haired film, television and theatrical adaptations. Furthermore, Shakespeare is believed command somebody to have influenced the English articulation more than any other essayist in history, coining—or, at leadership very least, popularizing—terms and phrases that still regularly crop consignment in everyday conversation.

Examples incorporate the words “fashionable” (“Troilus suggest Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As You Need It”); and the expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle” (“The Tempest”), “wild goose 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 7, 2019

Original Published Date

October 3, 2011