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William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor of the Renaissance Era. The author of such famous tragedies as Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, he is considered one of the greatest literary figures in the English language and, by many, the greatest playwright of all time. Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. Located about one hundred miles northwest of London, Stratford-upon-Avon was, in Shakespeare's time, a bustling market town along the River Avon, bisected by a country road.
What is the correct date of Shakespeare's birth?
There is no record of Shakespeare's birth, but an old Stratford-upon-Avon church register indicates that William Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity Church and registered as Guilielmus Johannes Shakespeare. The date of his birth, which is usually fixed as April 23 and which also coincides with his death at the age of fifty-two, is a convention that was adopted, if his baptism occurred three days after his birth. However, since he was born under the old Julian calendar, what was April 23 during his lifetime would actually be May 3 according to the current Gregorian calendar.
Although the amount of factual knowledge available about Shakespeare is surprisingly large for someone of his position, many find it disappointing, as it is gleaned from official documents with the dusty details of baptismal dates, marriages, deaths, and burials; wills, transfers, lawsuits, and court payments. There are, however, many contemporary allusions to him as a writer, which add a fair amount of flesh and blood to the biographical skeleton.
Shakespeare's Early Life, Education and Youth
William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an uneducated glove merchant, and Mary Arden, the daughter of a Catholic landowner. John and Mary had eight children, although three of them did not survive infancy. Daughters Joan and Margaret died in infancy. William was the eldest son and had three younger brothers and two younger sisters: Gilbert, Joan, Anne, who died aged seven, Richard and Edmund.
Shakespeare's father John arrived in Stratford before 1532 as an apprentice and tanner. He prospered and began trading in produce and wool. In 1565 he was elected a council member and in 1568 a bailiff, a position equivalent to the office of mayor, before a new charter was granted to Stratford in 1664. Records indicate that John's fortunes declined sometime in the late 1570s. He eventually recovered and was granted a coat of arms in 1596, making him and his sons official knights.
There are few records of Shakespeare's early life and almost none of his education. Scholars have suggested that he attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford, which taught reading, writing and the classics, including Latin. No list of the school's students in the 16th century survives, but it would be absurd to assume that the town's bailiff did not send his son to the school. The boy's education consisted of studying Latin to learn to read, write and speak the language well, and studying some of the classical historians, moralists, and poets.
Shakespeare learned Latin and some Greek and read the Roman dramatists. He attended school until he was fourteen or fifteen, as he had to work as an apprentice butcher due to the family's tough economic situation. Despite being one of the greatest figures in world literature, Shakespeare never attended university. The uncertainty surrounding his education has led some to question the authorship of his works.
Shakespeare's Hasty Marriage
At the age of eighteen, on 28 November 1582, at Worcester in the province of Canterbury, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, aged twenty-six, a native of Shottery, a small village a mile west of Stratford. Anne Hathaway was three months pregnant. The episcopal register at Worcester preserves a bond dated 28 November 1582, and executed by two yeomen of Stratford, named Sandells and Richardson, as a guarantee to the bishop for the issuing of a license for the marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway of Stratford, with the consent of their friends and after once calling for the banns.
Susanna, the couple's first child, was born and baptized on 26 May 1583. Two years later, on 2 February 1585, twins Hamnet and Judith were born. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of eleven. Anne Hathaway died in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare.
Context of Great Political, Social and Cultural Changes
William Shakespeare lived through the Renaissance period in England, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a time marked by great political, social, and cultural changes. Elizabeth I was a popular monarch, and her reign is known as the Elizabethan Age, precisely because she promoted an era of political stability and cultural growth, a favorable environment for theater and the arts.
English theater was on the rise, and several important theaters were built in London, such as the Globe Theatre, where many of Shakespeare's plays were performed. Theater was a popular form of entertainment, and plays were often performed to large audiences.
The Protestant Reformation, which began in the 16th century, transformed the religious landscape of England. The Anglican Church, established by Henry VIII, was the dominant religion, and religious tensions influenced politics and society. England faced political challenges, including the threat of Spanish invasion and internal conflicts between Catholics and Protestants. These factors influenced the country's politics and security, reflected in themes of power and ambition in Shakespeare's plays.
During the Renaissance, interest in classical culture, philosophy, and science increased. Ancient writers and philosophers influenced Shakespeare. Many of his themes and styles reflected this influence. English society was changing, with a growing middle class and a growing economy. These social and economic changes also influenced the theater and the way Shakespeare worked with social and human themes. These factors created a rich and dynamic environment for theatrical and literary production, allowing Shakespeare to develop a wide range of themes with unique language and style.
Shakespeare's Lost Years
The seven years of Shakespeare's life, from 1585 to 1592, are unrecorded. Scholars call this period Shakespeare's lost years. There is much speculation about what he was doing during this time. Shakespeare may have worked as a teacher in Lancashire and probably received 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 depicting Adonis’s rejection of Venus, her death, and the consequent disappearance of beauty from the world. Despite conservative objections to the poem’s glorification of sensuality, it was immensely popular and was reprinted six times in the nine years following its publication.
In 1586, Shakespeare fell in with bad company and was forced to leave his family and take refuge in London. One theory is that Shakespeare may have gone into hiding to practice poaching for the local landlord Sir Thomas Lucy. It seems more likely that shortly after 1585 he went to London to begin his apprenticeship as an actor. Due to the plague, London's theatres were frequently closed between June 1592 and April 1594.
Some scholars believe that Shakespeare was in London and worked in various roles, including as a horse-keeper at the door of James Burbage's theatre, London's first theatre. Soon he was working behind the scenes. At this time, London was experiencing a great deal of artistic activity. Shakespeare studied extensively and read classical authors, novels, short stories, and chronicles, which were fundamental to his training as a playwright.
By 1592, there is evidence that Shakespeare was earning his living as an actor and playwright in London and may have had several plays produced. Robert Greene's Groatsworth of Wit alludes to him as an actor and playwright. The 20 September 1592 issue of the Stationers' Register, a guild publication, includes an article by London playwright Robert Greene that takes a few jabs at Shakespeare:
“...There is an upstart Raven, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's skin, supposes he is as able to bomb a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake scene in a country.”
Scholars differ in their interpretation of this criticism, but most agree that it was Greene's way of saying that Shakespeare was reaching beyond his station, trying to emulate better-known and more educated playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, or Greene himself.
William Shakespeare's Early Career
Shakespeare probably found employment for a time with the Catholic gentry of Lancashire. His historical and humanistic knowledge was enriched by the libraries he frequented. Shakespeare began his career in London, where he became involved in the theatre in the late 1580s and early 1590s.
His early works in poetry included Venus and Adonis. His early works were well received, and his ability to create complex characters and engaging plots quickly made him a central figure in London theatre.
There is no clear record of his theatrical activities, but it is believed that he began writing plays and acting in local productions. His early works, such as Henry VI and Richard III, demonstrated his talent and helped establish his reputation as a playwright. The construction of the Globe Theatre in 1599 was also an important milestone in his career, as it provided a significant venue for his productions.
The Lord Chamberlain's Company of Actors
In 1594, Shakespeare joined the Lord Chamberlain's Company of Actors, the most popular of the companies performing at court. In 1599, Shakespeare joined a group of Chamberlain's Men who would form a syndicate to build and operate a new theatre: the Globe, which became the most famous theatre of its time. With his share of the revenue from the Globe Theatre, Shakespeare purchased New Place, his home in Stratford.
By the early 1600s, Shakespeare was at the head of England’s leading theatre company, the King’s Men (named after his patron, James II), which enjoyed prestige at court. Shakespeare continued his rise with a succession of expressive plays and sonnets (1609).
Most of his plays were written in groups of five iambic stanzas, which he transformed into something magical. Known for his wit, he was able to scale the heights of poetry, wallow in humor, but also in the most lowly and clever inversions such as “I have wasted time, and now time wastes me” (Richard II). Shakespeare used language to explore complex personalities, create varied moods and control dizzying plots filled with mistaken identities.
According to tradition, Shakespeare began a peaceful and comfortable retirement at one of his estates in Stratford around 1610, but there is no evidence of this. He died in Stratford, but it is said that he contracted a fever after a night of drinking with Ben Jonson and others. The precise cause of his death is yet another mystery in a life full of intriguing riddles.
William Shakespeare's Playwriting
Shakespeare wrote more than thirty plays, divided into four categories: histories, comedies, tragedies, and romances. His early plays were comedies and histories, such as Henry VI and The Comedy of Errors. In 1596, Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, his second tragedy. Over the next twelve years he wrote Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. In his later years, Shakespeare turned to the romantic with Cymbeline, A Winter's Tale, and The Tempest.
During his lifetime, only eighteen of Shakespeare's plays were published separately in quarto editions. A complete collection of his works appeared with the publication of the First Folio in 1623, several years after his death. Nevertheless, his contemporaries acknowledged Shakespeare’s achievements. Francis Meres quoted Shakespeare “with a sweet tongue” for his plays and poems in 1598, and the Chamberlain’s Men became London’s leading dramatic company, installed as members of the royal household in 1603.
It is a tired assumption to say that Shakespeare is England’s national treasure and the world’s greatest writer of all time. This claim is not universally accepted, but what seems beyond dispute is that Shakespeare had an extraordinary facility for his time – or any time. What he had to say and how he said it found enormous popularity in his lifetime and has been reinvented in countless ways for new audiences ever since.
Shakespeare had a very human understanding of all sorts of personalities and situations – from power-mad Scottish kings to the morally compromised Isabella in Measure for Measure, from the ancient intrigues of Antony and Cleopatra to the outrageously comic theatrical troupe of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Much of this material must have been based on his own life.
Shakespeare, the Man
Shakespeare deserves his reputation as an intriguing superstar. Born during the Elizabethan Era, a particularly stimulating time for artists, he managed to leave behind his provincial roots and gain acceptance and love from royalty. Along the way, he was also an actor and hung out with a group of the leading writers of his time (among them his literary rival, Ben Jonson).
Popular anecdotes often portray him as a poacher who fled to London to escape persecution, and as the illicit lover of the “Dark Lady.” He was also investigated for his alleged homosexual or bisexual tendencies, accused of not having written his works.
How to Understand and Appreciate Shakespeare’s Plays
For some people, the plays written by William Shakespeare seem exceedingly difficult to understand, even if they have never tried. Others imagine that they deal with old themes that no longer make sense in today’s world. It is always good to remember that theater in Shakespeare's time was quite popular, yet there are still those who believe in the false claim that these texts are intended for intellectuals and not for common people. In any case, here are some tips to help you understand Shakespeare's vast and complete works:
Historical and Cultural Context – knowing the period known as the Elizabethan Era and the social and political environment of 16th century England can help you understand the references and themes of his plays. Shakespeare's work reflects much of the context of the time, including political, social, and cultural issues.
Knowledge of Language and Linguistics – Shakespeare's English, known as Old English, can be challenging. Familiarizing yourself with the vocabulary and expressions of the time can make it easier to understand. Some modern editions of the plays include glossaries and footnotes that explain difficult terms and references.
Understanding Universal Themes – Shakespeare's plays address universal themes such as love, ambition, power, betrayal, and identity. Recognizing these issues can help you connect the stories to personal and current experiences.
Character Analysis – Shakespeare created complex characters. Analyzing his motivations, internal conflicts, and relationships with other characters can be a way to delve deeper into the content of his plays.
Appreciating Dramatic Structure – Shakespeare used a variety of dramatic forms, including tragedies, comedies, and histories. Understanding the conventions of each genre and how he manipulated them can enrich the reading experience.
Attending Performances – Seeing live productions or recordings of the plays can provide a new perspective. Acting, staging, and directing can offer enriching insights into the intent and emotional impact of Shakespeare’s works.
Reading and Discussing – Reading different editions of the plays and discussing them with other readers or study groups can help clarify questions and gain new insights into Shakespeare’s dramaturgy.
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