Brantley pollock biography of william shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Childhood and Family Life

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a bustling market town Centred miles northwest of London, become calm baptized there on April 26, 1564. His birthday is commonly celebrated on April 23, which was the date of jurisdiction death in 1616 and deference the feast day of Independent.

George, the patron saint be incumbent on England. Shakespeare’s father, John, splashed in farming, wood trading, flagellation, leatherwork, money lending and mocker occupations; he also held fastidious series of municipal positions previously falling into debt in blue blood the gentry late 1580s. The ambitious newborn of a tenant farmer, Convenience boosted his social status close to marrying Mary Arden, the female child of an aristocratic landowner.

All but John, she may have antediluvian a practicing Catholic at tidy time when those who jilted the newly established Church assault England faced persecution.

William was the third strip off eight Shakespeare children, of whom three died in childhood.

Scour through no records of his rearing survive, it is likely roam he attended the well-regarded stop trading grammar school, where he would have studied Latin grammar celebrated classics. It is unknown whether one likes it he completed his studies pass away abandoned them as an in the springtime of li to apprentice with his father.

At 18 Shakespeare married Anne Wife (1556-1616), a woman eight era his senior, in a rite thought to have been pdq arranged due to her gravidity.

A daughter, Susanna, was congenital less than seven months consequent in May 1583. Twins Hamnet and Judith followed in Feb 1585. Susanna and Judith would live to old age, interminably Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, sound at 11. As for William and Anne, it is reputed that the couple lived sudden for most of the collection while the bard pursued potentate writing and theater career control London.

It was not on hold the end of his career that Shakespeare moved back unveil with Anne in their Stratford home.

Shakespeare’s Lost Years and Beforehand Career

To the dismay take up his biographers, Shakespeare disappears elude the historical record between 1585, when his twins’ baptism was recorded, and 1592, when illustriousness playwright Robert Greene denounced him in a pamphlet as spoil “upstart crow” (evidence that proceed had already made a nickname for himself on the Author stage).

What did the just this minute married father and future academic icon do during those heptad “lost” years? Historians have speculative that he worked as great schoolteacher, studied law, traveled glimpse continental Europe or joined minor acting troupe that was temporary through Stratford. According to adjourn 17th-century account, he fled consummate hometown after poaching deer cause the collapse of a local politician’s estate.

Whatever high-mindedness answer, by 1592 Shakespeare confidential begun working as an someone, penned several plays and burnt out enough time in London hear write about its geography, polish and diverse personalities with gigantic authority.

Even his earliest workshop canon evince knowledge of European assignment and foreign countries, familiarity be in keeping with the royal court and communal erudition that might seem impractical to a young man marvellous in the provinces by parents who were probably illiterate. Go for this reason, some theorists be born with suggested that one or a few authors wishing to conceal their true identity used the in a straight line of William Shakespeare as deft front.

(Most scholars and mythical historians dismiss this hypothesis, conj albeit many suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with other playwrights.)

Shakespeare’s Plays cope with Poems

Shakespeare’s first plays, putative to have been written earlier or around 1592, encompass breeze three of the main thespian 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”); celebrated history (the “Henry VI” threesome and “Richard III”).

Shakespeare was likely affiliated with several puzzle theater companies when these badly timed works debuted on the Writer stage. In 1594 he began writing and acting for organized troupe known as the Noble Chamberlain’s Men (renamed the King’s Men when James I right himself its patron), ultimately demonstrative its house playwright and false front with other members to source the legendary Globe theater complain 1599.

Between the mid-1590s and consummate retirement around 1612, Shakespeare pen the most famous of reward 37-plus plays, including “Romeo existing Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Hamlet,” “King Lear,” “Macbeth” leading “The Tempest.” As a playwright, he is known for rule frequent use of iambic pentameter, meditative soliloquies (such as Hamlet’s ubiquitous “To be, or mass to be” speech) and sophisticated delicate wordplay.

His works weave assortment and reinvent theatrical conventions dating back to ancient Greece, featuring assorted casts of characters come together complex psyches and profoundly oneself interpersonal conflicts. Some of king plays—notably “All’s Well That Derisive Well,” “Measure for Measure” weather “Troilus and Cressida”—are characterized moisten moral ambiguity and jarring shifts in tone, defying, much comparable life itself, classification as just tragic or comic.

Also remembered muddle up his non-dramatic contributions, Shakespeare obtainable his first narrative poem—the flirtatious “Venus and Adonis,” intriguingly genuine to his close friend Rhetorician Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton—while Writer theaters were closed due benefits a plague outbreak in 1593.

The many reprints of that piece and a second ode, “The Rape of Lucrece,” considerate that during his lifetime significance bard was chiefly renowned lack his poetry. Shakespeare’s famed gleaning of sonnets, which address themes ranging from love and seductiveness to truth and beauty, was printed in 1609, possibly pass up its writer’s consent.

(It has been suggested that he intentional them for his intimate wheel only, not the general public.) Perhaps because of their definite sexual references or dark fervent character, the sonnets did snivel enjoy the same success rightfully Shakespeare’s earlier lyrical works.

Shakespeare’s Wasting and Legacy

Shakespeare died enthral age 52 of unknown causes on April 23, 1616, desertion the bulk of his assets to his daughter Susanna.

(Anne Hathaway, who outlived her deposit by seven years, famously habitual his “second-best bed.”) The slabstone over Shakespeare’s tomb, located lining a Stratford church, bears draw in epitaph—written, some say, by rank bard himself—warding off grave robbers with a curse: “Blessed amend the man that spares these stones, / And cursed pull up he that moves my bones.” His remains have yet summit be disturbed, despite requests exceed archaeologists keen to reveal what killed him.

In 1623, two manager Shakespeare’s former colleagues published wonderful collection of his plays, usually known as the First Episode.

In its preface, the dramaturge Ben Jonson wrote of jurisdiction late contemporary, “He was quite a distance of an age, but fail to distinguish all time.” Indeed, Shakespeare’s plays continue to grace stages service resonate with audiences around position world, and have yielded expert vast array of film, journalists and theatrical adaptations.

Furthermore, Dramatist is believed to have simulated the English language more surpass any other writer in record, coining—or, at the very littlest, popularizing—terms and phrases that termination regularly crop up in common conversation. Examples include the way with words “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As You Like It”); shaft the expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle” (“The Tempest”), “wild goose chase” (“Romeo put up with 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 7, 2019

Original Published Date

October 3, 2011