Letersi

Considered the greatest English-speaking writer in history and

known as England’s national poet, William Shakespeare (1564-
1616) has had more theatrical works performed than any other
playwright. To this day, countless theater festivals around the
world honor his work, students memorize his eloquent poems and
scholars reinterpret the million words of text he composed. They
also hunt for clues about the life of the man who inspires such
“bardolatry” (as George Bernard Shaw derisively called it), much of
which remains shrouded in mystery. Born into a family of modest
means in Elizabethan England, the “Bard of Avon” wrote at least 37
plays and a collection of sonnets, established the legendary Globe
theater and helped transform the English language.
Shakespeare’s Childhood and Family Life
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a bustling
market town 100 miles northwest of London, and baptized there
on April 26, 1564. His birthday is traditionally celebrated on April
23, which was the date of his death in 1616 and is the feast day of
St. George, the patron saint of England. Shakespeare’s father, John,
dabbled in farming, wood trading, tanning, leatherwork, money
lending and other occupations; he also held a series of municipal
positions before falling into debt in the late 1580s. The ambitious
son of a tenant farmer, John boosted his social status by marrying
Mary Arden, the daughter of an aristocratic landowner. Like John,
she may have been a practicing Catholic at a time when those who
rejected the newly established Church of England faced
persecution.
Did you know? Sources from William Shakespeare's lifetime spell his
last name in more than 80 different ways, ranging from “Shappere” to
“Shaxberd.” In the handful of signatures that have survived, he himself
never spelled his name “William Shakespeare,” using variations such as
“Willm Shakspere” and “William Shakspeare” instead.
William was the third of eight Shakespeare children, of whom
three died in childhood. Though no records of his education
survive, it is likely that he attended the well-regarded local
grammar school, where he would have studied Latin grammar and
classics. It is unknown whether he completed his studies or
abandoned them as an adolescent to apprentice with his father.
At 18 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway (1556-1616), a woman
eight years his senior, in a ceremony thought to have been hastily
arranged due to her pregnancy. A daughter, Susanna, was born
less than seven months later in May 1583. Twins Hamnet and
Judith followed in February 1585. Susanna and Judith would live to
old age, while Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died at 11. As for
William and Anne, it is believed that the couple lived apart for most
of the year while the bard pursued his writing and theater career
in London. It was not until the end of his life that Shakespeare
moved back in with Anne in their Stratford home.
Shakespeare’s Lost Years and Early Career
To the dismay of his biographers, Shakespeare disappears from
the historical record between 1585, when his twins’ baptism was
recorded, and 1592, when the playwright Robert Greene
denounced him in a pamphlet as an “upstart crow” (evidence that
he had already made a name for himself on the London stage).
What did the newly married father and future literary icon do
during those seven “lost” years? Historians have speculated that he
worked as a schoolteacher, studied law, traveled across
continental Europe or joined an acting troupe that was passing
through Stratford. According to one 17th-century account, he fled
his hometown after poaching deer from a local politician’s estate.
Whatever the answer, by 1592 Shakespeare had begun working as
an actor, penned several plays and spent enough time in London
to write about its geography, culture and diverse personalities with
great authority. Even his earliest works evince knowledge of
European affairs and foreign countries, familiarity with the royal
court and general erudition that might seem unattainable to a
young man raised in the provinces by parents who were probably
illiterate. For this reason, some theorists have suggested that one
or several authors wishing to conceal their true identity used the
person of William Shakespeare as a front. (Most scholars and
literary historians dismiss this hypothesis, although many suspect
Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with other playwrights.)
Shakespeare’s Plays and Poems
Shakespeare’s first plays, believed to have been written before or
around 1592, encompass all three of the main dramatic 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”); and history (the “Henry VI” trilogy and “Richard III”).
Shakespeare was likely affiliated with several different theater
companies when these early works debuted on the London stage.
In 1594 he began writing and acting for a troupe known as the
Lord Chamberlain’s Men (renamed the King’s Men when James I
appointed himself its patron), ultimately becoming its house
playwright and partnering with other members to establish the
legendary Globe theater in 1599.
Between the mid-1590s and his retirement around 1612,
Shakespeare penned the most 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 is known for his frequent use of iambic pentameter,
meditative soliloquies (such as Hamlet’s ubiquitous “To be, or not
to be” speech) and ingenious wordplay. His works weave together
and reinvent theatrical conventions dating back to 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 and Cressida”—are characterized by moral ambiguity and
jarring shifts in tone, defying, much like life itself, classification as
purely tragic or comic.