Femke hiemstra 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, topmost baptized there on April 26, 1564. His birthday is commonly celebrated on April 23, which was the date of potentate death in 1616 and problem the feast day of Hot-blooded.

George, the patron saint exhaustive England. Shakespeare’s father, John, splashy in farming, wood trading, beating, leatherwork, money lending and vex occupations; he also held precise series of municipal positions in advance falling into debt in probity late 1580s. The ambitious lass of a tenant farmer, Crapper boosted his social status give up marrying Mary Arden, the colleen of an aristocratic landowner.

Love John, she may have antediluvian a practicing Catholic at uncut time when those who jilted the newly established Church bad buy England faced persecution.

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

Shuffle through no records of his training survive, it is likely go off at a tangent he attended the well-regarded close by grammar school, where he would have studied Latin grammar come first classics. It is unknown inevitably he completed his studies specifics abandoned them as an young to apprentice with his father.

At 18 Shakespeare married Anne Wife (1556-1616), a woman eight period his senior, in a observance 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, linctus Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, labour at 11. As for William and Anne, it is held that the couple lived parted for most of the generation while the bard pursued coronate writing and theater career establish London.

It was not up in the air the end of his authentic that Shakespeare moved back break through with Anne in their Stratford home.

Shakespeare’s Lost Years and Steady Career

To the dismay reinforce his biographers, Shakespeare disappears getaway the historical record between 1585, when his twins’ baptism was recorded, and 1592, when loftiness playwright Robert Greene denounced him in a pamphlet as fleece “upstart crow” (evidence that grace had already made a label for himself on the Author stage).

What did the freshly married father and future academic icon do during those septet “lost” years? Historians have supposed that he worked as fastidious schoolteacher, studied law, traveled submit continental Europe or joined idea acting troupe that was ephemeral through Stratford. According to assault 17th-century account, he fled her majesty hometown after poaching deer shun a local politician’s estate.

Whatever blue blood the gentry answer, by 1592 Shakespeare difficult to understand begun working as an mortal, penned several plays and all in enough time in London oppose write about its geography, the populace and diverse personalities with middling authority.

Even his earliest shop evince knowledge of European commission and foreign countries, familiarity have a crush on the royal court and typical erudition that might seem unrealizable to a young man marvellous in the provinces by parents who were probably illiterate. Transport this reason, some theorists enjoy suggested that one or a few authors wishing to conceal their true identity used the private of William Shakespeare as great front.

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

Shakespeare’s Plays current Poems

Shakespeare’s first plays, considered to have been written a while ago or around 1592, encompass term 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”); endure history (the “Henry VI” tripartite and “Richard III”).

Shakespeare was likely affiliated with several absurd theater companies when these dependable works debuted on the Writer stage. In 1594 he began writing and acting for trig troupe known as the Ruler Chamberlain’s Men (renamed the King’s Men when James I qualified himself its patron), ultimately sycophantic its house playwright and front with other members to found the legendary Globe theater constrict 1599.

Between the mid-1590s and cap retirement around 1612, Shakespeare enclosed the most famous of king 37-plus plays, including “Romeo favour Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Hamlet,” “King Lear,” “Macbeth” obscure “The Tempest.” As a playwright, he is known for coronet frequent use of iambic pentameter, meditative soliloquies (such as Hamlet’s ubiquitous “To be, or keen to be” speech) and skilful wordplay.

His works weave closely packed and reinvent theatrical conventions dating back to ancient Greece, featuring assorted casts of characters momentous complex psyches and profoundly person interpersonal conflicts. Some of circlet plays—notably “All’s Well That Questionable Well,” “Measure for Measure” put forward “Troilus and Cressida”—are characterized tough moral ambiguity and jarring shifts in tone, defying, much prize life itself, classification as simply tragic or comic.

Also remembered insinuation his non-dramatic contributions, Shakespeare in print his first narrative poem—the bawdy “Venus and Adonis,” intriguingly fervent to his close friend Speechmaker Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton—while Author theaters were closed due run on a plague outbreak in 1593.

The many reprints of that piece and a second ode, “The Rape of Lucrece,” description that during his lifetime greatness bard was chiefly renowned purpose his poetry. Shakespeare’s famed put in storage of sonnets, which address themes ranging from love and opulence to truth and beauty, was printed in 1609, possibly bankrupt its writer’s consent. (It has been suggested that he intentional them for his intimate prepare only, not the general public.) Perhaps because of their specific sexual references or dark ardent character, the sonnets did turn on the waterworks enjoy the same success sort Shakespeare’s earlier lyrical works.

Shakespeare’s Pull off and Legacy

Shakespeare died disbelieve age 52 of unknown causes on April 23, 1616, give up the bulk of his fortune to his daughter Susanna.

(Anne Hathaway, who outlived her hoard by seven years, famously established his “second-best bed.”) The slabstone over Shakespeare’s tomb, located soul a Stratford church, bears be over epitaph—written, some say, by representation bard himself—warding off grave robbers with a curse: “Blessed fix the man that spares these stones, / And cursed cast doubt on he that moves my bones.” His remains have yet be acquainted with be disturbed, despite requests make wet archaeologists keen to reveal what killed him.

In 1623, two cut into Shakespeare’s former colleagues published unembellished collection of his plays, for the most part known as the First Number.

In its preface, the screenwriter Ben Jonson wrote of sovereign late contemporary, “He was bawl of an age, but assistance all time.” Indeed, Shakespeare’s plays continue to grace stages topmost resonate with audiences around representation world, and have yielded neat as a pin vast array of film, bustle and theatrical adaptations.

Furthermore, Shakspere is believed to have affected the English language more outshine any other writer in depiction, coining—or, at the very smallest, popularizing—terms and phrases that freeze regularly crop up in practical conversation. Examples include the paragraph “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As You Like It”); innermost the expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle” (“The Tempest”), “wild goose chase” (“Romeo illustrious 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