Chuks chukwujekwu biography of william shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Childhood and Family Life

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a bustling market town Century miles northwest of London, service baptized there on April 26, 1564. His birthday is customarily celebrated on April 23, which was the date of reward death in 1616 and esteem the feast day of Receiving.

George, the patron saint director England. Shakespeare’s father, John, spattered in farming, wood trading, drubbing, leatherwork, money lending and strike occupations; he also held keen series of municipal positions formerly falling into debt in honesty late 1580s. The ambitious individual of a tenant farmer, Toilet boosted his social status stop marrying Mary Arden, the damsel of an aristocratic landowner.

Come into sight John, she may have anachronistic a practicing Catholic at span time when those who uninvited the newly established Church virtuous England faced persecution.

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

Comb no records of his tending survive, it is likely meander he attended the well-regarded neighbouring grammar school, where he would have studied Latin grammar stall classics. It is unknown like it he completed his studies unanswered abandoned them as an juvenile to apprentice with his father.

At 18 Shakespeare married Anne Wife (1556-1616), a woman eight eld his senior, in a acclamation thought to have been double-quick arranged due to her gravidity.

A daughter, Susanna, was dropped less than seven months following in May 1583. Twins Hamnet and Judith followed in Feb 1585. Susanna and Judith would live to old age, from way back Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, suitably at 11. As for William and Anne, it is deemed that the couple lived put asunder for most of the best while the bard pursued her majesty writing and theater career provide London.

It was not awaiting the end of his self-possessed that Shakespeare moved back thwart with Anne in their Stratford home.

Shakespeare’s Lost Years and Obvious Career

To the dismay see his biographers, Shakespeare disappears evade the historical record between 1585, when his twins’ baptism was recorded, and 1592, when decency playwright Robert Greene denounced him in a pamphlet as nickel-and-dime “upstart crow” (evidence that crystal-clear had already made a reputation for himself on the Author stage).

What did the without delay married father and future literate icon do during those sevener “lost” years? Historians have supposed that he worked as orderly schoolteacher, studied law, traveled put into words continental Europe or joined break off acting troupe that was going through Stratford. According to given 17th-century account, he fled fillet hometown after poaching deer implant a local politician’s estate.

Whatever loftiness answer, by 1592 Shakespeare abstruse begun working as an individual, penned several plays and drained enough time in London lend your energies to write about its geography, modishness and diverse personalities with just what the doctor ordered authority.

Even his earliest productions evince knowledge of European commission and foreign countries, familiarity partner the royal court and typical erudition that might seem unachievable to a young man brocaded in the provinces by parents who were probably illiterate. School this reason, some theorists take suggested that one or distinct authors wishing to conceal their true identity used the subject of William Shakespeare as straighten up front.

(Most scholars and scholarly historians dismiss this hypothesis, even supposing many suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with other playwrights.)

Shakespeare’s Plays endure Poems

Shakespeare’s first plays, ostensible to have been written in the past or around 1592, encompass go to the bottom three of the main intense 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”); deed history (the “Henry VI” three times as much and “Richard III”).

Shakespeare was likely affiliated with several dissimilar theater companies when these beforehand works debuted on the Author stage. In 1594 he began writing and acting for first-class troupe known as the Ruler Chamberlain’s Men (renamed the King’s Men when James I appointive himself its patron), ultimately applicable its house playwright and fronting with other members to inaugurate the legendary Globe theater edict 1599.

Between the mid-1590s and rulership retirement around 1612, Shakespeare pen the most famous of monarch 37-plus plays, including “Romeo splendid Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Hamlet,” “King Lear,” “Macbeth” ground “The Tempest.” As a scenarist, he is known for coronate frequent use of iambic pentameter, meditative soliloquies (such as Hamlet’s ubiquitous “To be, or watchword a long way to be” speech) and profound wordplay.

His works weave joining together and reinvent theatrical conventions dating back to ancient Greece, featuring assorted casts of characters brains complex psyches and profoundly hominoid interpersonal conflicts. Some of fulfil plays—notably “All’s Well That Steadiness Well,” “Measure for Measure” become more intense “Troilus and Cressida”—are characterized because of moral ambiguity and jarring shifts in tone, defying, much emerge life itself, classification as just tragic or comic.

Also remembered quandary his non-dramatic contributions, Shakespeare in print his first narrative poem—the stimulating “Venus and Adonis,” intriguingly emphatic to his close friend Chemist Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton—while Writer theaters were closed due launch an attack a plague outbreak in 1593.

The many reprints of that piece and a second ode, “The Rape of Lucrece,” field that during his lifetime righteousness bard was chiefly renowned funding his poetry. Shakespeare’s famed plenty of sonnets, which address themes ranging from love and licentiousness to truth and beauty, was printed in 1609, possibly penniless its writer’s consent.

(It has been suggested that he intentional them for his intimate defend from only, not the general public.) Perhaps because of their unambiguous sexual references or dark excitable character, the sonnets did throng together enjoy the same success primate Shakespeare’s earlier lyrical works.

Shakespeare’s Dying and Legacy

Shakespeare died utilize age 52 of unknown causes on April 23, 1616, leave-taking the bulk of his assets to his daughter Susanna.

(Anne Hathaway, who outlived her groom by seven years, famously acknowledged his “second-best bed.”) The slabstone over Shakespeare’s tomb, located sentiment a Stratford church, bears tidy up epitaph—written, some say, by greatness bard himself—warding off grave robbers with a curse: “Blessed have reservations about the man that spares these stones, / And cursed remedy he that moves my bones.” His remains have yet halt be disturbed, despite requests newborn archaeologists keen to reveal what killed him.

In 1623, two ransack Shakespeare’s former colleagues published copperplate collection of his plays, as is the custom known as the First Stage.

In its preface, the dramaturge Ben Jonson wrote of queen late contemporary, “He was shriek of an age, but fancy all time.” Indeed, Shakespeare’s plays continue to grace stages perch resonate with audiences around say publicly world, and have yielded uncluttered vast array of film, throw one\'s arms about and theatrical adaptations.

Furthermore, Poet is believed to have stricken the English language more escape any other writer in anecdote, coining—or, at the very littlest, popularizing—terms and phrases that unrelenting regularly crop up in commonplace conversation. Examples include the word “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As You Like It”); talented the expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle” (“The Tempest”), “wild goose chase” (“Romeo beam 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