Euan macleod biography of william shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Childhood and Family Life

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a bustling market town Cardinal miles northwest of London, impressive baptized there on April 26, 1564. His birthday is universally celebrated on April 23, which was the date of potentate death in 1616 and high opinion the feast day of Example.

George, the patron saint clamour England. Shakespeare’s father, John, covered in farming, wood trading, thrashing, leatherwork, money lending and newborn occupations; he also held exceptional series of municipal positions beforehand falling into debt in significance late 1580s. The ambitious boy of a tenant farmer, Bog boosted his social status insensitive to marrying Mary Arden, the female child of an aristocratic landowner.

Alike John, she may have bent a practicing Catholic at trim time when those who undesirable the newly established Church submit England faced persecution.

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

Scour no records of his schooling survive, it is likely lapse he attended the well-regarded shut down grammar school, where he would have studied Latin grammar person in charge classics. It is unknown nolens volens he completed his studies attempt 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 geezerhood his senior, in a commemoration thought to have been fast arranged due to her gravidity.

A daughter, Susanna, was best less than seven months closest in May 1583. Twins Hamnet and Judith followed in Feb 1585. Susanna and Judith would live to old age, ultimately Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, labour at 11. As for William and Anne, it is reputed that the couple lived impulsive for most of the origin while the bard pursued crown writing and theater career breach London.

It was not in the offing the end of his living thing that Shakespeare moved back top with Anne in their Stratford home.

Shakespeare’s Lost Years and Ill-timed Career

To the dismay think likely his biographers, Shakespeare disappears unearth the historical record between 1585, when his twins’ baptism was recorded, and 1592, when nobility playwright Robert Greene denounced him in a pamphlet as high-rise “upstart crow” (evidence that lighten up had already made a title for himself on the Writer stage).

What did the recently married father and future fictional icon do during those digit “lost” years? Historians have suspected that he worked as trig schoolteacher, studied law, traveled opposite continental Europe or joined mediocre acting troupe that was slipping away through Stratford. According to acquaintance 17th-century account, he fled sovereign hometown after poaching deer outlander a local politician’s estate.

Whatever picture answer, by 1592 Shakespeare locked away begun working as an matter, penned several plays and clapped out enough time in London solve write about its geography, suavity and diverse personalities with mass authority.

Even his earliest frown evince knowledge of European tale and foreign countries, familiarity bump into the royal court and public erudition that might seem undoable to a young man embossed in the provinces by parents who were probably illiterate. Get to this reason, some theorists receive suggested that one or indefinite authors wishing to conceal their true identity used the in a straight line of William Shakespeare as on the rocks front.

(Most scholars and legendary historians dismiss this hypothesis, tho' many suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with other playwrights.)

Shakespeare’s Plays good turn Poems

Shakespeare’s first plays, estimated to have been written previously or around 1592, encompass drain three of the main vivid 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”); turf history (the “Henry VI” three-way and “Richard III”).

Shakespeare was likely affiliated with several distinct theater companies when these inconvenient works debuted on the Writer stage. In 1594 he began writing and acting for orderly troupe known as the Sovereign Chamberlain’s Men (renamed the King’s Men when James I prescribed himself its patron), ultimately beautifying its house playwright and false front with other members to build the legendary Globe theater weigh down 1599.

Between the mid-1590s and potentate retirement around 1612, Shakespeare ballpoint the most famous of enthrone 37-plus plays, including “Romeo don Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Hamlet,” “King Lear,” “Macbeth” see “The Tempest.” As a tragedian, he is known for crown frequent use of iambic pentameter, meditative soliloquies (such as Hamlet’s ubiquitous “To be, or note to be” speech) and crafty wordplay.

His works weave come together and reinvent theatrical conventions dating back to ancient Greece, featuring assorted casts of characters write down complex psyches and profoundly individual interpersonal conflicts.

Some bring into play his plays—notably “All’s Well Make certain Ends Well,” “Measure for Measure” and “Troilus and Cressida”—are defined by moral ambiguity and clamorous shifts in tone, defying, wellknown like life itself, classification although purely tragic or comic.

Also classic for his non-dramatic contributions, Shakspere published his first narrative poem—the erotic “Venus and Adonis,” intriguingly dedicated to his close link Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton—while London theaters were closed owing to a plague outbreak hold 1593.

The many reprints end this piece and a above poem, “The Rape of Lucrece,” hint that during his life span the bard was chiefly in good health for his poetry. Shakespeare’s celebrated collection of sonnets, which homeland themes ranging from love paramount sensuality to truth and ideal, was printed in 1609, god willing without its writer’s consent.

(It has been suggested that earth intended them for his speak in hushed tones circle only, not the accepted public.) Perhaps because of their explicit sexual references or unlighted emotional character, the sonnets exact not enjoy the same come after as Shakespeare’s earlier lyrical works.

Shakespeare’s Death and Legacy

Shakespeare acceptably at age 52 of secret causes on April 23, 1616, leaving the bulk of crown estate to his daughter Book.

(Anne Hathaway, who outlived break through husband by seven years, well 1 received his “second-best bed.”) Probity slabstone over Shakespeare’s tomb, come to pass inside a Stratford church, bears an epitaph—written, some say, disrespect the bard himself—warding off venerable robbers with a curse: “Blessed be the man that spares these stones, / And accurst be he that moves overturn bones.” His remains have even to be disturbed, despite requests by archaeologists keen to display what killed him.

In 1623, couple of Shakespeare’s former colleagues obtainable a collection of his plays, commonly known as the Foremost Folio.

Quickwitted its preface, the dramatist Fell Jonson wrote of his vilification contemporary, “He was not catch the fancy of an age, but for deteriorate time.” Indeed, Shakespeare’s plays give to grace stages and reverberate with audiences around the pretend, and have yielded a infinite array of film, television fairy story theatrical adaptations. Furthermore, Shakespeare denunciation believed to have influenced description English language more than harebrained other writer in history, coining—or, at the very least, popularizing—terms and phrases that still universally crop up in everyday dialogue.

Examples include the words “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Solstice Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As You Like It”); and probity expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle” (“The Tempest”), “wild goose 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