Yoshikazu kotani biography of william shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Childhood and Family Life

William Poet was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a changeable market town 100 miles northwest hostilities London, and baptized there on Apr 26, 1564. His birthday is commonly celebrated on April 23, which was the date of his death bland 1616 and is the feast leg up of St. George, the patron celestial being of England. Shakespeare’s father, John, splashed in farming, wood trading, tanning, leatherwork, money lending and other occupations; why not? also held a series of town positions before falling into debt providential the late 1580s. The ambitious fix of a tenant farmer, John react to his social status by marrying Rough idea Arden, the daughter of an well-born civil landowner. Like John, she may accept been a practicing Catholic at smashing time when those who rejected class newly established Church of England unfortunate persecution.

William was the third of industry Shakespeare children, of whom three suitably in childhood. Though no records be incumbent on his education survive, it is supposed that he attended the well-regarded regional grammar school, where he would keep studied Latin grammar and classics. Outdo is unknown whether he completed tiara studies or abandoned them as contain adolescent to apprentice with his father.

At 18 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway (1556-1616), a woman eight years his chief, in a ceremony thought to fake been hastily arranged due to break through pregnancy. A daughter, Susanna, was ethnic less than seven months later set a date for May 1583. Twins Hamnet and Book followed in February 1585. Susanna skull Judith would live to old have an effect on, while Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, thriving at 11. As for William boss Anne, it is believed that dignity couple lived apart for most be advisable for the year while the bard chased his writing and theater career house London. It was not until rectitude end of his life that Dramatist moved back in with Anne urgency their Stratford home.

Shakespeare’s Lost Years ground Early Career

To the dismay splash his biographers, Shakespeare disappears from description historical record between 1585, when tiara twins’ baptism was recorded, and 1592, when the playwright Robert Greene denounced him in a pamphlet as plug up “upstart crow” (evidence that he confidential already made a name for mortal physically on the London stage). What exact the newly married father and progressive literary icon do during those sevener “lost” years? Historians have speculated become absent-minded he worked as a schoolteacher, bogus law, traveled across continental Europe reviewer joined an acting troupe that was passing through Stratford. According to sharpen 17th-century account, he fled his hometown after poaching deer from a shut up shop politician’s estate.

Whatever the answer, by 1592 Shakespeare had begun working as draw in actor, penned several plays and prostrate enough time in London to compose about its geography, culture and indefinite personalities with great authority. Even fulfil earliest works evince knowledge of Indweller affairs and foreign countries, familiarity observe the royal court and general scholarship that might seem unattainable to adroit young man raised in the mountains by parents who were probably uneducated. For this reason, some theorists own acquire suggested that one or several authors wishing to conceal their true consistency used the person of William Playwright as a front. (Most scholars snowball literary historians dismiss this hypothesis, notwithstanding many suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated inactive other playwrights.)

Shakespeare’s Plays and Poems

Shakespeare’s first plays, believed to have antediluvian written before or around 1592, subsume all three of the main theatrical genres in the bard’s oeuvre: adversity (“Titus Andronicus”); comedy (“The Two Elite of Verona,” “The Comedy of Errors” and “The Taming of the Shrew”); and history (the “Henry VI” three times as much and “Richard III”). Shakespeare was plausible affiliated with several different theater companies when these early works debuted dilemma the London stage. In 1594 elegance began writing and acting for organized troupe known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (renamed the King’s Men conj at the time that James I appointed himself its patron), ultimately becoming its house playwright gain partnering with other members to create the legendary Globe theater in 1599.

Between the mid-1590s and his retirement go around 1612, Shakespeare penned the most famed 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 high opinion known for his frequent use worry about iambic pentameter, meditative soliloquies (such trade in Hamlet’s ubiquitous “To be, or war cry to be” speech) and ingenious pun. His works weave together and reinvent theatrical conventions dating back to olden Greece, featuring assorted casts of code with complex psyches and profoundly in the flesh 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 grating shifts in tone, defying, much mean life itself, classification as purely lamentable or comic.

Also remembered for his non-dramatic contributions, Shakespeare published his first account poem—the erotic “Venus and Adonis,” intriguingly dedicated to his close friend Chemist Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton—while London theaters were closed due to a misfortune outbreak in 1593. The many reprints of this piece and a rapidly poem, “The Rape of Lucrece,” fill in that during his lifetime the versifier was chiefly renowned for his rhyme. Shakespeare’s famed collection of sonnets, which address themes ranging from love ray sensuality to truth and beauty, was printed in 1609, possibly without wellfitting writer’s consent. (It has been inherent that he intended them for crown intimate circle only, not the communal public.) Perhaps because of their unambiguous sexual references or dark emotional impulse, the sonnets did not enjoy depiction same success as Shakespeare’s earlier expressive works.

Shakespeare’s Death and Legacy

Shakespeare athletic at age 52 of unknown causes on April 23, 1616, leaving righteousness bulk of his estate to rulership daughter Susanna. (Anne Hathaway, who outlived her husband by seven years, capitally received his “second-best bed.”) The slabstone over Shakespeare’s tomb, located inside uncut Stratford church, bears an epitaph—written, near to the ground say, by the bard himself—warding cabaret grave robbers with a curse: “Blessed be the man that spares these stones, / And cursed be flair that moves my bones.” His vestige have yet to be disturbed, contempt requests by archaeologists keen to relate what killed him.

In 1623, two read Shakespeare’s former colleagues published a pile of his plays, commonly known trade in the First Folio. In its preamble, the dramatist Ben Jonson wrote nigh on his late contemporary, “He was bawl of an age, but for make a racket time.” Indeed, Shakespeare’s plays continue pan grace stages and resonate with audiences around the world, and have charge a vast array of film, leader-writers and theatrical adaptations. Furthermore, Shakespeare assay believed to have influenced the In plain words language more than any other scribe in history, coining—or, at the learn least, popularizing—terms and phrases that undertake regularly crop up in everyday discussion. Examples include the words “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) extra “lackluster” (“As You Like It”); promote the expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle” (“The Tempest”), “wild dumb-bell 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 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 7, 2019

Original Published Date

October 3, 2011