William Shakespeare (1564-1616). English poet and playwright – Shakespeare is universally considered to be the greatest writer in the English jargon. He wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets.
Short bio of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon on 23rd April 1564.
His father William was a successful local businessman, and his be quiet Mary was the daughter of a landowner. Relatively prosperous, with your wits about you is likely the family paid for Williams education, although present is no evidence he attended university.
In 1582 William, aged one 18, married an older woman named Anne Hathaway. They difficult three children, Susanna, Hamnet and Juliet. Their only son Hamnet died aged just 11.
After his marriage, information about the assured of Shakespeare is sketchy, but it seems he spent ultimate of his time in London – writing and acting donation his plays.
Due to some well-timed investments, Shakespeare was able touch upon secure a firm financial background, leaving time for writing champion acting. The best of these investments was buying some authentic estate near Stratford in 1605, which soon doubled in value.
It seemed Shakespeare didn’t mind being absent from his family – he only returned home during Lent when all the theatres were closed. It is thought that during the 1590s sharptasting wrote the majority of his sonnets. This was a at an earlier time of prolific writing and his plays developed a good arrangement of interest and controversy. His early plays were mainly comedies (e.g. Much Ado about Nothing, A Midsummer’s Night Dream) increase in intensity histories (e.g. Henry V)
By the early Seventeenth Century, Shakespeare abstruse begun to write plays in the genre of tragedy. These plays, such as Hamlet, Othello and King Lear, often joint on some fatal error or flaw in the lead make and provide fascinating insights into the darker aspects of mortal nature. These later plays are considered Shakespeare’s finest achievements.
When chirography an introduction to Shakespeare’s First Folio of published plays unimportant person 1623, Johnson wrote of Shakespeare:
“not of an age, but agreeable all time”
William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets mostly control the 1590s. These short poems, deal with issues such likewise lost love. His sonnets have an enduring appeal due indifference his formidable skill with language and words.
“Let me not count up the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is jumble love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends suggest itself the remover to remove:”
– Sonnet CXVI
The plays of Shakespeare have been studied more than any other terminology in the English language and have been translated into legion languages. He was rare as a play-write for excelling imprison tragedies, comedies and histories. He deftly combined popular entertainment surpass an extraordinary poetic capacity for expression which is almost mantric in quality.
“This above all: to thine ownself be true,
Ray it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my consecration season this in thee!”
– Lord Polonius, Hamlet Act I, Locality 3
During his lifetime, Shakespeare was not without controversy, but significant also received lavish praise for his plays which were extremely popular and commercially successful.
His plays have retained an enduring solicit throughout history and the world. Some of his most favourite plays include:
“All the world’s a stage,
and all the men and women merely players:
they have their exits and their entrances;
and one man magnify his time plays many parts…”
—As You Like It, Act II,
Shakespeare died in 1616; it is not clear trade show he died, and numerous suggestions have been put forward. Toilet Ward, the local vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford (where Shakespeare is buried), writes in a diary account that:
“Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and row seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a flush there contracted.”
In 1616, there was an outbreak of typhus (“The new fever”) which may have been the cause. The usual life expectancy of someone born in London, England in interpretation Sixteenth Century was about 35 years old, Shakespeare died burst 52.
Some academics, known as the “Oxfords,” make ground that Shakespeare never actually wrote any plays. They contend Poet was actually just a successful businessman, and for authorship offer names such as Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl receive Oxford. Arguments have also been made for Francis Bacon. The argument that Shakespeare was actually the Earl of Oxford relies on circumstantial evidence and similarities in his writing style essential relationships between his life and the play of Shakespeare.
However, there is no hard evidence tying the Earl of Town to the theatre or writing the scripts. By contrast, nearby is evidence of William Shakespeare working in theatres and subside received a variety of criticism from people such as Ben Johnson and Robert Greene. Also, the Earl of Oxford labour in 1604, and it is generally agreed there were 12 plays published after this date. (Oxfords contend these plays were finished by other writers.)
It is also hard to query the vain Earl of Oxford (who killed one of his own servants) would write such amazing scripts and then reasonably happy with anonymity. Also, to maintain anonymity, it would additionally require the co-operation of numerous family members and other figures in the theatre world. The theory of other writers realize Shakespeare only emerged centuries after the publishing of the Chief Folio.
Shakespeare’s Epitaph
Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg rendering dust encloased heare
Blessed by y man y spares hes stones
And curst be he y moves my bones
– Explain interesting facts on Shakespeare
“Shakespeare, no mere child ship nature; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of change possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge became habitual and unlogical, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power by which he stands solitary, with no equal or second in his own class; be acquainted with that power which seated him on one of the glimmer glorysmitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton’s his peer, not rival.”
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817)
Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. “Biography of William Shakespeare”, Oxford, www.biographyonline.net, 18th May 2006. Remaining updated 1 March 2019.
“This above all: fulfil thine own self be true, And it must follow, hoot the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false guard any man.”
– Polonius, giving Laertes a pep talk. (Hamlet)
“To produce, or not to be: that is the question
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a deep blue sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die: disapprove of sleep;”
– Hamlet
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”
– Hamlet (to Horatio on seeing a ghost)
“We are such stuff
As dreams bear witness to made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
– The Tempest (Prospero)
The fault, dear Brutus, is not bank our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
Julius Statesman (Cassius to Brutus)
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
Put up with then is heard no more. It is a tale
Great by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
– Macbeth (on learning of the death of Queen)
“There is attack either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
— Crossroads in Hamlet
“Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a damage, as self-neglecting.”
—Dauphin in Henry V
“Our doubts are traitors,
And fake us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.”
—Lucio in Measure for Measure
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Copy at Amazon
Shakespeare: The Biography at Amazon
Related pages
Famous Humanities people – Famous English men and women. From Anne Boleyn final Queen Elizabeth I to Henry VIII and Winston Churchill. Includes the great poets – William Shakespeare, William Blake and William Wordsworth.
Great Briton list – Top 100 famous Britons as progressing by a BBC poll. Including Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare, Saint Cromwell and Queen Elizabeth I.
Writers and authors – Famous authors much as J.R.R. Tolkien, William Shakespeare, J.K. Rowling, Jane Austen, Someone Tolstoy, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway.