William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare, Shakespeare also spelled Shakspere, byname Bard of Avon

or Swan of Avon, (baptized April 26, 1564, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire,
England—died April 23, 1616, Stratford-upon-Avon), English poet, dramatist, and
actor, often called the English national poet and considered by many to be the
greatest dramatist of all time.

Shakespeare occupies a position unique in world literature. Other poets, such as Homer and
Dante, and novelists, such as Leo Tolstoy and Charles Dickens, have transcended national
barriers; but no writer’s living reputation can compare to that of Shakespeare, whose plays,
written in the late 16th and early 17th centuries for a small repertory theatre, are now
performed and read more often and in more countries than ever before. The prophecy of his
great contemporary, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson, that Shakespeare “was not of an age,
but for all time,” has been fulfilled.

It may be audacious even to attempt a definition of his greatness, but it is not so difficult to
describe the gifts that enabled him to create imaginative visions of pathos and mirth that,
whether read or witnessed in the theatre, fill the mind and linger there. He is a writer of great
intellectual rapidity, perceptiveness, and poetic power. Other writers have had these qualities,
but with Shakespeare the keenness of mind was applied not to abstruse or remote subjects but
to human beings and their complete range of emotions and conflicts. Other writers have applied
their keenness of mind in this way, but Shakespeare is astonishingly clever with words and
images, so that his mental energy, when applied to intelligible human situations, finds full and
memorable expression, convincing and imaginatively stimulating. As if this were not enough, the
art form into which his creative energies went was not remote and bookish but involved the
vivid stage impersonation of human beings, commanding sympathy and inviting vicarious
participation. Thus, Shakespeare’s merits can survive translation into other languages and into
cultures remote from that of Elizabethan England.

Life
Although the amount of factual knowledge available about Shakespeare is surprisingly
large for one of his station in life, many find it a little disappointing, for it is mostly
gleaned from documents of an official character. Dates of baptisms, marriages, deaths,
and burials; wills, conveyances, legal processes, and payments by the court—these are
the dusty details. There are, however, many contemporary allusions to him as a writer,
and these add a reasonable amount of flesh and blood to the biographical skeleton.

Early life in Stratford

The parish register of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, shows
that he was baptized there on April 26, 1564; his birthday is traditionally celebrated on
April 23. His father, John Shakespeare, was a burgess of the borough, who in 1565 was
chosen an alderman and in 1568 bailiff (the position corresponding to mayor, before the
grant of a further charter to Stratford in 1664). He was engaged in various kinds of trade
and appears to have suffered some fluctuations in prosperity. His wife, Mary Arden, of
Wilmcote, Warwickshire, came from an ancient family and was the heiress to some land.
(Given the somewhat rigid social distinctions of the 16th century, this marriage must
have been a step up the social scale for John Shakespeare.)

Stratford enjoyed a grammar school of good quality, and the education there was free,
the schoolmaster’s salary being paid by the borough. No lists of the pupils who were at
the school in the 16th century have survived, but it would be absurd to suppose the
bailiff of the town did not send his son there. The boy’s education would consist mostly
of Latin studies—learning to read, write, and speak the language fairly well and studying
some of the Classical historians, moralists, and poets. Shakespeare did not go on to the
university, and indeed it is unlikely that the scholarly round of logic, rhetoric, and other
studies then followed there would have interested him.

Instead, at age 18 he married. Where and exactly when are not known, but the episcopal
registry at Worcester preserves a bond dated November 28, 1582, and executed by two
yeomen of Stratford, named Sandells and Richardson, as a security to the bishop for the
issue of a license for the marriage of William Shakespeare and “Anne Hathaway of
Stratford,” upon the consent of her friends and upon once asking of the banns. (Anne
died in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare. There is good evidence to associate her
with a family of Hathaways who inhabited a beautiful farmhouse, now much visited, 2
miles [3.2 km] from Stratford.) The next date of interest is found in the records of the
Stratford church, where a daughter, named Susanna, born to William Shakespeare, was
baptized on May 26, 1583. On February 2, 1585, twins were baptized, Hamnet and
Judith. (Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died 11 years later.)

How Shakespeare spent the next eight years or so, until his name begins to appear in
London theatre records, is not known. There are stories—given currency long after his
death—of stealing deer and getting into trouble with a local magnate, Sir Thomas Lucy
of Charlecote, near Stratford; of earning his living as a schoolmaster in the country; of
going to London and gaining entry to the world of theatre by minding the horses of
theatregoers. It has also been conjectured that Shakespeare spent some time as a
member of a great household and that he was a soldier, perhaps in the Low Countries. In
lieu of external evidence, such extrapolations about Shakespeare’s life have often been
made from the internal “evidence” of his writings. But this method is unsatisfactory: one
cannot conclude, for example, from his allusions to the law that Shakespeare was a
lawyer, for he was clearly a writer who without difficulty could get whatever knowledge
he needed for the composition of his plays.

Career in the theatre

The first reference to Shakespeare in the literary world of London comes in 1592, when a
fellow dramatist, Robert Greene, declared in a pamphlet written on his deathbed:

There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in
a Players hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out 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.
What these words mean is difficult to determine, but clearly they are insulting, and
clearly Shakespeare is the object of the sarcasms. When the book in which they appear
(Greenes, groats-worth of witte, bought with a million of Repentance, 1592) was
published after Greene’s death, a mutual acquaintance wrote a preface offering an
apology to Shakespeare and testifying to his worth. This preface also indicates that
Shakespeare was by then making important friends. For, although the puritanical city of
London was generally hostile to the theatre, many of the nobility were good patrons of
the drama and friends of the actors. Shakespeare seems to have attracted the attention
of the young Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd earl of Southampton, and to this nobleman
were dedicated his first published poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.

One striking piece of evidence that Shakespeare began to prosper early and tried to
retrieve the family’s fortunes and establish its gentility is the fact that a coat of arms was
granted to John Shakespeare in 1596. Rough drafts of this grant have been preserved in
the College of Arms, London, though the final document, which must have been handed
to the Shakespeares, has not survived. Almost certainly William himself took the
initiative and paid the fees. The coat of arms appears on Shakespeare’s monument
(constructed before 1623) in the Stratford church. Equally interesting as evidence of
Shakespeare’s worldly success was his purchase in 1597 of New Place, a large house in
Stratford, which he as a boy must have passed every day in walking to school.

How his career in the theatre began is unclear, but from roughly 1594 onward he was an
important member of the Lord Chamberlain’s company of players (called the King’s Men
after the accession of James I in 1603). They had the best actor, Richard Burbage; they
had the best theatre, the Globe (finished by the autumn of 1599); they had the best
dramatist, Shakespeare. It is no wonder that the company prospered. Shakespeare
became a full-time professional man of his own theatre, sharing in a cooperative
enterprise and intimately concerned with the financial success of the plays he wrote.

Unfortunately, written records give little indication of the way in which Shakespeare’s
professional life molded his marvelous artistry. All that can be deduced is that for 20
years Shakespeare devoted himself assiduously to his art, writing more than a million
words of poetic drama of the highest quality.

SHAKESPEAR'S TOP 3 PLAYS

Midsummer Night's Dream
When was it written?
1595

What's it about?
A bunch of insane fairies attempt to solve the romantic problems of some mortals lost in
a wood.

Why's it so good?
People love this exuberant magical comedy – it’s the ultimate crowd-pleaser and the
perfect summer play.

Macbeth
When was it written?
1605

What's it about?
A Scottish lord is persuaded to commit brutal murder by his wife, who promptly gets all
guilty about it.

Why's it so good?
Short, thrilling and charged with the supernatural, this dark tragedy about the
consequences of a Scottish lord’s terrible lust for power is probably Shakespeare’s most
‘modern’ and accessible play.

Hamlet
When was it written?
1600

What's it about?
A student ponders the meaning of life when he should be on a killing spree.

Why's it so good?
What is there left to say about ‘Hamlet’? It reputation is so towering it’s hard to be
objective about it, but this epic about a young man contemplating his own mortality
while attempting to avenge his father is certainly a pretty hot contender for the greatest
thing ever written in English.

...and at last his most remarkable play.

Romeo and Juliet
When was it written?
1594

What's it about?
The children of mortal enemies fall for each other. It all gets a bit :’(.

Why's it so good?
It’s the uber-love story, the template for every tale of doomed romance ever written. Everything
else is just a variation.

Konstantinos Petsas B4
Thank you for your time.