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William Shakespeare

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Theatre; Writers and
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   CAPTION: William Shakespeare

   The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed ( National
   Portrait Gallery, London).
   Born: c.April 1564
   Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
   Died: April 23, 1616
   Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
   Occupation(s): Playwright, poet, actor

   William Shakespeare ( baptised April 26, 1564 – died April 23, 1616)
   was an English poet and playwright widely regarded as the greatest
   writer of the English language, and the world's preeminent dramatist.
   He wrote about 38 plays and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other
   poems. Already a popular writer in his own lifetime, Shakespeare's
   reputation became increasingly celebrated after his death and his work
   adulated by numerous prominent cultural figures through the centuries.
   In addition, Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in the literature
   and history of the English-speaking world. He is often considered to be
   England's national poet and is sometimes referred to as the " Bard of
   Avon" (or simply "The Bard") or the "Swan of Avon".

   Shakespeare is believed to have produced most of his work between 1586
   and 1612, although the exact dates and chronology of the plays
   attributed to him are often uncertain. He is counted among the very few
   playwrights who have excelled in both tragedy and comedy, and his plays
   combine popular appeal with complex characterisation, poetic grandeur
   and philosophical depth.

   Shakespeare's works have been translated into every major living
   language, and his plays are continually performed all around the world.
   In addition, his many quotations and neologisms have passed into
   everyday usage in English and other languages. Over the years, many
   people have speculated about Shakespeare's life, raising questions
   about his sexuality, religious affiliation, and the authorship of his
   works.

Life

Early life

   William Shakespeare (also spelled Shakspere, Shakspear, Shakespere,
   Shakspere, Shaksper, Shaxper, and Shake-speare, since in Elizabethan
   times spelling was not fixed and absolute) was born in
   Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, the son of John Shakespeare, a
   successful glover and alderman from Snitterfield, and of Mary Arden, a
   daughter of the gentry. His birth is assumed to have occurred at the
   family house on Henley Street. Shakespeare's christening record dates
   to April 26 of that year. Because christenings were performed within a
   few days of birth, tradition has settled on April 23 as his birthday.
   This date provides a convenient symmetry because Shakespeare died on
   the same day, April 23 ( May 3 on the Gregorian calendar), in 1616.

   Shakespeare is believed to have attended King Edward VI Grammar School
   in central Stratford, since as the son of a prominent town official he
   was entitled to do so for free; however, the records that would confirm
   this no longer exist.

   By 1596, Shakespeare had moved to the parish of St. Helen's,
   Bishopsgate, and by 1598 he appeared at the top of a list of actors in
   Every Man in His Humour written by Ben Jonson. Also by 1598, his name
   began to appear on the title pages of his plays, presumably as a
   selling point.

   There is a tradition that Shakespeare, in addition to writing many of
   the plays his company enacted, and being concerned as part-owner of the
   company with business and financial details, continued to act in
   various parts, such as the ghost of Hamlet's father, Adam in As You
   Like It, and the Chorus in Henry V.

   He appears to have moved across the Thames River to Southwark sometime
   around 1599. By 1604, he had moved again, north of the river, where he
   lodged just north of St Paul's Cathedral with a Huguenot family named
   Mountjoy. His residence there is worth noting because he helped arrange
   a marriage between the Mountjoys' daughter and their apprentice Stephen
   Bellott. Bellott later sued his father-in-law for defaulting on part of
   the promised dowry, and Shakespeare was called as a witness.

   Various documents recording legal affairs and commercial transactions
   show that Shakespeare grew rich enough during his stay in London to buy
   a property in Blackfriars, London and own the second-largest house in
   Stratford, New Place.

Later years

   Shakespeare's House in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Now home of the
   Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust
   Enlarge
   Shakespeare's House in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Now home of the
   Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust

   Shakespeare's last two plays were written in 1613, after which he
   appears to have retired to Stratford. He died on April 23, 1616, at the
   age of 52, on the same date (though not same day for England was still
   functioning under the Julian calendar) as Spanish writer and poet
   Miguel de Cervantes. He also died on his birthday, if the tradition
   that he was born on April 23 is correct. He was married to Hathaway
   until his death and was survived by his two daughters, Susanna and
   Judith. Susanna married Dr John Hall, but there are no direct
   descendants of the poet and playwright alive today.

   Shakespeare is buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in
   Stratford-upon-Avon. He was granted the honour of burial in the chancel
   not on account of his fame as a playwright but for purchasing a share
   of the tithe of the church for £440 (a considerable sum of money at the
   time). A monument placed by his family on the wall nearest his grave
   features a bust of him posed in the act of writing. Each year on his
   claimed birthday, a new quill pen is placed in the writing hand of the
   bust.

   He is believed to have written the epitaph on his tombstone:

          Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
          To dig the dust enclosèd here.
          Blest be the man that spares these stones,
          And cursed be he that moves my bones.

Works

Plays

   A number of Shakespeare's plays are widely regarded as among the
   greatest in the English language and in Western literature. He wrote
   tragedies, histories, comedies and romances, which have been translated
   into every major living language, in addition to being continually
   performed around the world.

   As was normal in the period, Shakespeare based many of his plays on the
   work of other playwrights and reworked earlier stories and historical
   material. For example, Hamlet (c. 1601) is probably a reworking of an
   older, lost play (the so-called Ur-Hamlet), and King Lear is an
   adaptation of an earlier play, also called King Lear. For plays on
   historical subjects, Shakespeare relied heavily on two principal texts.
   Most of the Roman and Greek plays are based on Plutarch's Parallel
   Lives (from the 1579 English translation by Sir Thomas North), and the
   English history plays are indebted to Raphael Holinshed's 1587
   Chronicles.

   Shakespeare's plays tend to be placed into three main stylistic groups:
     * early comedies and histories (such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and
       Henry IV, Part 1)
     * middle period (which includes his most famous tragedies, Othello,
       Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear, as well as " problem plays" such as
       Troilus and Cressida and Measure for Measure)
     * later romances (such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest).

   The earlier plays range from broad comedy to historical nostalgia,
   while the middle-period plays tend to be grander in terms of theme,
   addressing such issues as betrayal, murder, lust, power, and ambition.
   By contrast, his late romances feature redemptive plotlines with
   ambiguous endings and the use of magic and other fantastical elements.
   However, the borders between these genres are never clear.
   Image of Shakespeare from the First Folio (1623), the first collected
   edition of his plays
   Enlarge
   Image of Shakespeare from the First Folio (1623), the first collected
   edition of his plays

   Some of Shakespeare's plays first appeared in print as a series of
   quartos, but most remained unpublished until 1623 when the posthumous
   First Folio was published by two actors who had been in Shakespeare's
   company: John Heminges and Henry Condell. The traditional division of
   his plays into tragedies, comedies, and histories follows the logic of
   the First Folio. It is at this point that stage directions, punctuation
   and act divisions enter his plays, setting the trend for further future
   editorial decisions. Modern criticism has also labelled some of his
   plays " problem plays" or tragi-comedies, as they elude easy
   categorisation, or perhaps purposefully break generic conventions. The
   term "romances" has also been preferred for the later comedies.

   There are many controversies about the exact chronology of
   Shakespeare's plays. In addition, the fact that Shakespeare did not
   produce an authoritative print version of his plays during his life
   accounts for part of the textual problem often noted with his plays,
   which means that for several of the plays there are different textual
   versions. As a result, the problem of identifying what Shakespeare
   actually wrote became a major concern for most modern editions. Textual
   corruptions also stem from printers' errors, compositors' misreadings,
   or wrongly scanned lines from the source material. Additionally, in an
   age before standardised spelling, Shakespeare often wrote a word
   several times in a different spelling, contributing further to the
   transcribers' confusions. Modern scholars also believe Shakespeare
   revised his plays throughout the years, sometimes leading to two
   existing versions of one play.

Sonnets

   Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 poems that deal with such
   themes as love, beauty, and mortality. All but two first appeared in
   the 1609 publication entitled Shakespeare's Sonnets; numbers 138 ("When
   my love swears that she is made of truth") and 144 ("Two loves have I,
   of comfort and despair") had previously been published in a 1599
   miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrim. The Sonnets were written
   over a number of years, probably beginning in the early 1590s.

   The conditions under which the sonnets were published are unclear. The
   1609 text is dedicated to one " Mr. W.H.", who is described as "the
   only begetter" of the poems in the dedication. It is unknown if the
   dedication was written by Shakespeare or Thomas Thorpe, the publisher.
   It is also unknown who this man was, although there are many theories,
   including those who believe him to be the young man featured in the
   sonnets. In addition, it is not known whether the publication of the
   sonnets was even authorised by Shakespeare.

Other poems

   In addition to his sonnets, Shakespeare also wrote several longer
   poems, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece and A Lover's Complaint.
   These poems appear to have been written either in an attempt to win the
   patronage of a rich benefactor (as was common at the time) or as the
   result of such patronage. For example, The Rape of Lucrece and Venus
   and Adonis were both dedicated to Shakespeare's patron, Henry
   Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.

   In addition, Shakespeare wrote the short poem The Phoenix and the
   Turtle. The anthology The Passionate Pilgrim was attributed to him upon
   its first publication in 1599, but in fact only five of its poems are
   by Shakespeare and the attribution was withdrawn in the second edition.

Style

   Detail from statue of Shakespeare in Leicester Square, London.
   Enlarge
   Detail from statue of Shakespeare in Leicester Square, London.

   Shakespeare's works have been a major influence on subsequent theatre.
   Not only did Shakespeare create some of the most admired plays in
   Western literature, he also transformed English theatre by expanding
   expectations about what could be accomplished through characterisation,
   plot, action, language, and genre. His poetic artistry helped raise the
   status of popular theatre, permitting it to be admired by intellectuals
   as well as by those seeking pure entertainment.

   Theatre was changing when Shakespeare first arrived in London in the
   late 1580s or early 1590s. Previously, the most common forms of popular
   English theatre were the Tudor morality plays. These plays, which blend
   piety with farce and slapstick, were allegories in which the characters
   are personified moral attributes who validate the virtues of Godly life
   by prompting the protagonist to choose such a life over evil. The
   characters and plot situations are symbolic rather than realistic. As a
   child, Shakespeare would likely have been exposed to this type of play
   (along with mystery plays and miracle plays). Meanwhile, at the
   universities, academic plays were being staged based on Roman closet
   dramas. These plays, often performed in Latin, used a more exact and
   academically respectable poetic style than the morality plays, but they
   were also more static, valuing lengthy speeches over physical action.

   By the late 16th century, the popularity of morality and academic plays
   waned as the English Renaissance took hold, and playwrights like Thomas
   Kyd and Christopher Marlowe began to revolutionise theatre. Their plays
   blended the old morality drama with academic theatre to produce a new
   secular form. The new drama had the poetic grandeur and philosophical
   depth of the academic play and the bawdy populism of the moralities.
   However, it was more ambiguous and complex in its meanings, and less
   concerned with simple moral allegories. Inspired by this new style,
   Shakespeare took these changes to a new level, creating plays that not
   only resonated on an emotional level with audiences but also explored
   and debated the basic elements of what it means to be human.

Reputation

   Shakespeare's reputation has grown considerably since his own time.
   During his lifetime and shortly after his death, Shakespeare was
   well-regarded but not considered the supreme poet of his age. He was
   included in some contemporary lists of leading poets, but he lacked the
   stature of Edmund Spenser or Philip Sidney. After the Interregnum stage
   ban of 1642–1660, the new Restoration theatre companies had the
   previous generation of playwrights as the mainstay of their repertory,
   most of all the phenomenally popular Beaumont and Fletcher team, but
   also Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. As with other older playwrights,
   Shakespeare's plays were mercilessly adapted by later dramatists for
   the Restoration stage with little of the reverence that would later
   develop.

   Beginning in the late 17th century, Shakespeare began to be considered
   the supreme English-language playwright (and, to a lesser extent,
   poet). Initially this reputation focused on Shakespeare as a dramatic
   poet, to be studied on the printed page rather than in the theatre. By
   the early 19th century, though, Shakespeare began hitting peaks of fame
   and popularity. During this time, theatrical productions of Shakespeare
   provided spectacle and melodrama for the masses and were extremely
   popular. Romantic critics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge then raised
   admiration for Shakespeare to adulation or bardolatry (from bard +
   idolatry), in line with the Romantic reverence for the poet as prophet
   and genius. In the middle to late 19th century, Shakespeare also became
   an emblem of English pride and a "rallying-sign", as Thomas Carlyle
   wrote in 1841, for the whole British Empire.

   This reverence has provoked a negative reaction. In the 21st century
   most inhabitants of the English-speaking world encounter Shakespeare at
   school at a young age, and there is an association by some students of
   his work with boredom and incomprehension and of "high art" not easily
   appreciated by popular culture, an ironic fate considering the social
   mix of Shakespeare's audience. At the same time, Shakespeare's plays
   remain more frequently staged than the works of any other playwright
   and are frequently adapted into film—including Hollywood movies
   specifically marketed to broad teenage audiences, though many simply
   take credit for his plots rather than his narrative. Famously,
   Shakespeare's plays are often transferred to a different environment
   even when retaining his dialogue.

   On another level, many modern English words and phrases that are taken
   for granted were introduced by Shakespeare.

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