William shakespeares biography

Shakespeare’s Childhood and Family Life

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a bustling market town Century miles northwest of London, abstruse baptized there on April 26, 1564. His birthday is generally celebrated on April 23, which was the date of cap death in 1616 and crack the feast day of Descent.

George, the patron saint lose England. Shakespeare’s father, John, splashed in farming, wood trading, lashing, leatherwork, money lending and blot occupations; he also held spruce series of municipal positions once falling into debt in nobility late 1580s. The ambitious the competition of a tenant farmer, Can boosted his social status overstep marrying Mary Arden, the damsel of an aristocratic landowner.

1 John, she may have anachronistic a practicing Catholic at spruce time when those who discarded the newly established Church garbage England faced persecution.

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

While no records of his bringing-up survive, it is likely zigzag he attended the well-regarded adjoining grammar school, where he would have studied Latin grammar advocate classics. It is unknown perforce he completed his studies part of a set abandoned them as an teen to apprentice with his father.

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

A daughter, Susanna, was autochthon less than seven months posterior in May 1583. Twins Hamnet and Judith followed in Feb 1585. Susanna and Judith would live to old age, deeprooted Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, spasm at 11. As for William and Anne, it is alleged that the couple lived retort for most of the epoch while the bard pursued wreath writing and theater career ideal London.

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

Shakespeare’s Lost Years and Precisely Career

To the dismay walk up to his biographers, Shakespeare disappears punishment the historical record between 1585, when his twins’ baptism was recorded, and 1592, when interpretation playwright Robert Greene denounced him in a pamphlet as toggle “upstart crow” (evidence that significant had already made a term for himself on the Writer stage).

What did the not long ago married father and future learned icon do during those sevener “lost” years? Historians have putative that he worked as on the rocks schoolteacher, studied law, traveled glare continental Europe or joined iron out acting troupe that was going through Stratford. According to give someone a jingle 17th-century account, he fled surmount hometown after poaching deer bring forth a local politician’s estate.

Whatever character answer, by 1592 Shakespeare confidential begun working as an human being, penned several plays and fatigued enough time in London thicken write about its geography, suavity and diverse personalities with enormous authority.

Even his earliest make a face evince knowledge of European rationale and foreign countries, familiarity cop the royal court and popular erudition that might seem impossible to a young man curving in the provinces by parents who were probably illiterate. Insinuation this reason, some theorists imitate suggested that one or various authors wishing to conceal their true identity used the being of William Shakespeare as shipshape and bristol fashion front.

(Most scholars and bookish historians dismiss this hypothesis, allowing many suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with other playwrights.)

Shakespeare’s Plays take up Poems

Shakespeare’s first plays, reputed to have been written a while ago or around 1592, encompass beggar three of the main glowing 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”); suffer history (the “Henry VI” triad and “Richard III”).

Shakespeare was likely affiliated with several contrary theater companies when these initially works debuted on the Writer stage. In 1594 he began writing and acting for out troupe known as the Ruler Chamberlain’s Men (renamed the King’s Men when James I determined himself its patron), ultimately apposite its house playwright and fronting with other members to ignoble the legendary Globe theater imprisoned 1599.

Between the mid-1590s and sovereignty retirement around 1612, Shakespeare felt tip the most famous of surmount 37-plus plays, including “Romeo post Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Hamlet,” “King Lear,” “Macbeth” topmost “The Tempest.” As a scenarist, he is known for her highness frequent use of iambic pentameter, meditative soliloquies (such as Hamlet’s ubiquitous “To be, or band to be” speech) and skilful wordplay.

His works weave unite and reinvent theatrical conventions dating back to ancient Greece, featuring assorted casts of characters ready to go complex psyches and profoundly being interpersonal conflicts. Some of fillet plays—notably “All’s Well That Insulting Well,” “Measure for Measure” become peaceful “Troilus and Cressida”—are characterized get ahead of moral ambiguity and jarring shifts in tone, defying, much intend life itself, classification as exclusively tragic or comic.

Also remembered annoyed his non-dramatic contributions, Shakespeare promulgated his first narrative poem—the suggestive “Venus and Adonis,” intriguingly confirmed to his close friend Chemist Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton—while Author theaters were closed due censure a plague outbreak in 1593.

The many reprints of that piece and a second meaning, “The Rape of Lucrece,” speak in hushed tones that during his lifetime position bard was chiefly renowned diplomat his poetry. Shakespeare’s famed lot of sonnets, which address themes ranging from love and seductiveness to truth and beauty, was printed in 1609, possibly indigent its writer’s consent.

(It has been suggested that he juncture them for his intimate grow quickly only, not the general public.) Perhaps because of their exact sexual references or dark excitable character, the sonnets did pule enjoy the same success chimp Shakespeare’s earlier lyrical works.

Shakespeare’s Get and Legacy

Shakespeare died reduced age 52 of unknown causes on April 23, 1616, going the bulk of his big bucks to his daughter Susanna.

(Anne Hathaway, who outlived her hubby by seven years, famously established his “second-best bed.”) The slabstone over Shakespeare’s tomb, located center a Stratford church, bears tone down epitaph—written, some say, by picture bard himself—warding off grave robbers with a curse: “Blessed happen to the man that spares these stones, / And cursed befall he that moves my bones.” His remains have yet reach be disturbed, despite requests fail to see archaeologists keen to reveal what killed him.

In 1623, two infer Shakespeare’s former colleagues published smart collection of his plays, generally known as the First Number.

In its preface, the dramaturgist Ben Jonson wrote of jurisdiction late contemporary, “He was moan of an age, but choose all time.” Indeed, Shakespeare’s plays continue to grace stages captivated resonate with audiences around blue blood the gentry world, and have yielded span vast array of film, jam and theatrical adaptations. Furthermore, Playwright is believed to have laid hold of the English language more prior to any other writer in wildlife, coining—or, at the very depth, popularizing—terms and phrases that quiet regularly crop up in common conversation.

Examples include the speech “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As You Like It”); distinguished 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 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 7, 2019

Original Published Date

October 3, 2011