149-664: Edwin Thomas Booth (November 13, 1833 – June 7, 1893) was an American stage actor and theatrical manager who toured throughout the United States and the major capitals of Europe, performing Shakespearean plays. In 1869, he founded Booth's Theatre in New York. He is considered by many to be the greatest American actor of the 19th century. However, his achievements are often overshadowed by his relationship with his younger brother, actor John Wilkes Booth , who assassinated
298-745: A funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor , Socrates , and Virgil . In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio , the Droeshout engraving was published. Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey . Most playwrights of
447-598: A gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory; and from November 1614, he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall . After 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613. His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher , who succeeded him as the house playwright of the King's Men. He retired in 1613, before the Globe Theatre burned down during
596-582: A handkerchief (the first gift given to her by Othello), Emilia finds it and gives it to Iago at his request, unaware of what he plans to do with it. Othello appears and, then being convinced by Iago of his wife's unfaithfulness with his captain, vows with Iago for the death of Desdemona and Cassio, after which he makes Iago his lieutenant. Iago plants the handkerchief in Cassio's lodgings, then tells Othello to watch Cassio's reactions while Iago questions him. Iago goads Cassio on to talk about his affair with Bianca,
745-578: A Barbary horse"; "the sooty bosom of such a thing as thou" – as do things Othello says of himself: "haply for I am black"; or "begrimed and black as mine own face". There is critical divide over Othello's ethnic origin. A " Moor " broadly refers to someone from northwest Africa, especially if Muslim, but in Shakespeare's England "Moor" was used with broader connotations: sometimes referring to Africans of all regions, sometimes to Arabic or Islamic peoples beyond Africa, such as those of Turkey and
894-419: A Christian and a black African, Othello is (as scholar Tom McAlindon puts it) both of, and not of, Venice. And actor Paul Robeson considered Othello's colour as essentially secondary, as a way of emphasizing his cultural difference and consequent vulnerability in a society he does not fully understand. In the world of the play itself, Jyotsna Singh argues that Brabantio's – and others' – objection to Othello,
1043-414: A Moor from Barbary, Leo said of his own people "they are so credulous they will beleeue matters impossible, which are told them" and "no nation in the world is so subject vnto iealousie; for they will rather [lose] their liues than put vp any disgrace in the behalfe of their women" – both traits seen in Shakespeare's Othello. And from Leo's own life story Shakespeare took a well-born, educated African finding
1192-427: A Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy . Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him. Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London. John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been
1341-402: A change from the traditional to the freer style. Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles. By the time of Romeo and Juliet , Richard II , and A Midsummer Night's Dream in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of
1490-602: A country schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire , a Catholic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his will. Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area. It is not known definitively when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on
1639-433: A decorated and respected general, as a suitable husband for Desdemona, a senator's daughter, only makes sense in racist terms: reinforced by the bestial imagery used by Iago in delivering the news. The racist slurs used by Iago, Roderigo and Brabantio in the play suggest that Shakespeare conceived of Othello as a black African: "thicklips"; "an old black ram is tupping your white ewe"; "you'll have your daughter covered with
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#17327825544281788-469: A fight. Montano tries to calm down an angry and drunk Cassio. This leads to their fighting one another and Montano's being injured. Othello arrives and questions the men as to what happened. Othello blames Cassio for the disturbance and strips him of his rank. Cassio, distraught, is then persuaded by Iago to ask Desdemona to persuade her husband to reinstate him. Iago persuades Othello to be suspicious of Cassio and Desdemona's relationship. When Desdemona drops
1937-648: A home on Gramercy Park as its clubhouse. His final performance was, fittingly, in his signature role of Hamlet, in 1891 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music . Edwin Booth saved Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln , from serious injury or even death. The incident occurred on a train platform in Jersey City , New Jersey . The exact date of the incident is uncertain, but it is believed to have taken place in late 1864 or early 1865. Robert Lincoln recalled
2086-771: A local courtesan, but whispers her name so quietly that Othello believes the two men are talking about Desdemona. Later, Bianca accuses Cassio of giving her a second-hand gift which he had received from another lover. Othello sees this, and Iago convinces him that Cassio received the handkerchief from Desdemona. Enraged and hurt, Othello resolves to kill his wife and tells Iago to kill Cassio. Othello proceeds to make Desdemona's life miserable and strikes her in front of visiting Venetian nobles. Meanwhile, Roderigo complains that he has received no results from Iago in return for his money and efforts to win Desdemona, but Iago convinces him to kill Cassio. Roderigo unsuccessfully attacks Cassio in
2235-431: A merry meeting and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted", not an impossible scenario since Shakespeare knew Jonson and Drayton . Of the tributes from fellow authors, one refers to his relatively sudden death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went'st so soon / From the world's stage to the grave's tiring room." He was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married
2384-448: A more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day. Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen , probably with John Fletcher . Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed according to their folio classification as comedies , histories , and tragedies . Two plays not included in
2533-450: A naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd Upon the sightless couriers of the air." However, Shakespeare soon began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. The opening soliloquy of Richard III has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama. At the same time, Richard's vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soliloquies of Shakespeare's mature plays. No single play marks
2682-814: A persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote A Lover's Complaint . Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects. The Phoenix and the Turtle , printed in Robert Chester's 1601 Love's Martyr , mourns the deaths of the legendary phoenix and his lover, the faithful turtle dove . In 1599, two early drafts of sonnets 138 and 144 appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim , published under Shakespeare's name but without his permission. Published in 1609,
2831-475: A physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Judith had married Thomas Quiney , a vintner , two months before Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on 25 March 1616; the following day, Thomas Quiney, his new son-in-law, was found guilty of fathering an illegitimate son by Margaret Wheeler, both of whom had died during childbirth. Thomas was ordered by the church court to do public penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment for
2980-662: A pistol at Booth. Booth was playing the title role in Richard II at McVicker's Theatre in Chicago, Illinois , during the final act of the William Shakespeare tragedy. Gray gave as his motive a wrong done to a friend by Booth. Gray's shots, which were fired from a distance of thirty-four feet, missed Booth, burying themselves in the stage floor. The would-be assassin was jailed at Central Station in Chicago. Booth
3129-498: A place at the height of a white European power. From Philemon Holland 's translation of Pliny 's Natural History Shakespeare took the references to the Pontic Sea, to Arabian trees with their medicinable gum, and to the "Anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders", elements which also featured in the fantastic The Travels of Sir John Mandeville . The terminus ad quem for Othello (that is,
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#17327825544283278-578: A play about race, then its history has made it one. Or, as the Oxford editor Professor Michael Neill summarises it: Anxieties about the treatment of race in Othello are a recurrent feature of both its critical and performance histories: where they once focused on the supposed scandal of miscegenation, they are nowadays more likely to address the play's complicity in racial stereotyping. In plot terms, Othello's race serves to mark him as "other". As both
3427-588: A practical sense of the theatre. Like all playwrights of the time, he dramatised stories from sources such as Plutarch and Holinshed . He reshaped each plot to create several centres of interest and to show as many sides of a narrative to the audience as possible. This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting, and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama. As Shakespeare's mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and distinctive patterns of speech. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in
3576-496: A production of Romeo and Juliet starring Booth as Romeo , and Mary McVicker as Juliet . Elaborate productions followed, but the theatre never became a profitable or even stable financial venture. The panic of 1873 caused the final bankruptcy of Booth's Theatre in 1874. After the bankruptcy, Booth went on another worldwide tour, eventually regaining his fortune. In 1879 Booth purchased land in Middletown, Rhode Island on
3725-486: A selling point and began to appear on the title pages . Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson 's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus His Fall (1603). The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for Jonson's Volpone is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career
3874-412: A sexual jealousy so intense that it "converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast in man ... the animal in man forcing itself into his consciousness in naked grossness, and he writhing before it but powerless to deny it entrance, grasping inarticulate images of pollution, and finding relief only in a bestial thirst for blood." This jealousy is symbolized in the play through animal imagery. In
4023-492: A son named Edgar, died shortly after birth. Booth became a widower again in 1881. In 1869, Edwin acquired his brother John's body after repeatedly writing to President Andrew Johnson pleading for it. Johnson finally released the remains, and Edwin had them buried, unmarked, in the family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore . On April 23, 1879, Mark Gray, a traveling salesman from Keokuk, Iowa , fired two shots from
4172-729: A warning to young girls not to marry against the wishes of their parents, and that the Italian ladies may learn from me not to wed a man whose nature and habitude of life estrange from us". Similar wording was used in one of the earliest, and most negative, critiques of the play: Thomas Rymer writing in his 1693 A Short View of Tragedy suggested that one of the play's morals was "a caution to all Maidens of Quality how, without their Parents consent, they run away with Blackamoors." Rymer, however, dryly observed that another such moral might be "a warning to all good Wives, that they look well to their Linnen" – as such his comments should be read within
4321-533: A windmill folly with a henhouse at its base. Booth enjoyed ten years at Boothden, willing it to Edwina on his death in 1893. After Edwina sold Boothden in 1903, the house passed through a series of owners, and saw a full restoration in 2017. Booth had a small stroke in 1891, which precipitated his decline. He suffered another stroke in April 1893 and died June 7, 1893, in his apartment in The Players clubhouse. He
4470-461: A woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3 , along with the pun "Shake-scene", clearly identify Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used here, Johannes Factotum ("Jack of all trades") refers to a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the more common "universal genius". Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's work in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from
4619-427: Is a devil, but not before the latter stabs Emilia to death in the scuffle. Iago refuses to explain his motives, vowing to remain silent from that moment on. Lodovico apprehends both Iago and Othello for the murders of Roderigo, Emilia, and Desdemona, but Othello commits suicide. Lodovico appoints Cassio as Othello's successor and exhorts him to punish Iago justly. He then denounces Iago for his actions and leaves to tell
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4768-563: Is a fictionalized account of Booth's life, hinging on the personal, professional, and political tensions between brothers Edwin and John Wilkes, leading up to the assassination of Lincoln. In 2013, Will Forte played Edwin Booth in the "Washington, D.C." episode of the Comedy Central series, Drunk History , created by Derek Waters . In 2014, Edwin Booth was played by Gordon Tanner in The Pinkertons episode, "The Play's
4917-434: Is an obvious nod to Booth's father Junius , and the scenes portray essentially the same sequence where the great actor has to be retrieved from a bar and dragged back to the theatre where he is overdue to give a performance in front of a restless audience. In 1958, José Ferrer produced, directed, and played the title role in a play Edwin Booth . It ran for three weeks. In 1959, the actor Robert McQueeney played Booth in
5066-639: Is coming for him. Brabantio, provoked by Roderigo, is enraged and seeks to confront Othello, but he finds Othello accompanied by the Duke of Venice's guards, who prevent violence. News has arrived in Venice that the Turks are going to attack Cyprus , and Othello is therefore summoned to advise the senators. Brabantio has no option but to accompany Othello to the Duke's residence, where he accuses Othello of seducing Desdemona by witchcraft . Othello defends himself before
5215-592: Is definitively classed as a tragedy. It is not clear for which companies Shakespeare wrote his early plays. The title page of the 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus reveals that the play had been acted by three different troupes. After the plagues of 1592–93, Shakespeare's plays were performed by his own company at The Theatre and the Curtain in Shoreditch , north of the Thames. Londoners flocked there to see
5364-417: Is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country. Scholars differ on the exact meaning of Greene's words, but most agree that Greene was accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match such university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe , Thomas Nashe , and Greene himself (the so-called " University Wits "). The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in
5513-432: Is listed on the opening credits as "Special Consultant on Shakespearean Scenes". The film depicts events in Booth's life well before, and then surrounding, the assassination of Lincoln by Booth's younger brother. The opening scenes of Prince of Players are very similar to scenes in the earlier 1946 John Ford western My Darling Clementine . In that movie, the character of Granville Thorndyke (as acted by Alan Mowbray )
5662-591: Is manipulated by his ensign , Iago , into suspecting his wife Desdemona of infidelity. Othello is widely considered one of Shakespeare's greatest works and is usually classified among his major tragedies alongside Macbeth , King Lear , and Hamlet . Unpublished in the author's life, the play survives in one quarto edition from 1622 and in the First Folio . Othello has been one of Shakespeare's most popular plays, both among playgoers and literary critics , since its first performance, spawning numerous stage , screen , and operatic adaptations. Among actors,
5811-578: Is named – the others are simply called the Moor (the equivalent of Othello), the Ensign (Iago), the Corporal (Cassio) and similar descriptions. In its story the Ensign falls in love with the Moor's wife Disdemona, but her indifference turns his love to hate and in revenge he persuades the Moor that Disdemona has been unfaithful. The Moor and the Ensign murder Disdemona with socks filled with sand, and bring down
5960-525: Is often used. In 1896, Frederick S. Boas coined the term " problem plays " to describe four plays: All's Well That Ends Well , Measure for Measure , Troilus and Cressida , and Hamlet . "Dramas as singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies", he wrote. "We may, therefore, borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of today and class them together as Shakespeare's problem plays." The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use, though Hamlet
6109-458: Is supported by similarities to Measure for Measure , another of Shakespeare's plays often dated around 1604, and which, like Othello , draws its plot from Cinthio 's Gli Hecatommithi . This date is also supported by the possibility that Shakespeare may have consulted Richard Knolles ' 1603 The Generall Historie of the Turkes . However, evidence of an earlier date, 1601–1602, is provided by
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6258-425: Is the question ". Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, Othello and Lear are undone by hasty errors of judgement. The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves. In Othello , Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him. In King Lear ,
6407-590: The Sonnets were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed. Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership. Even before the two unauthorised sonnets appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599, Francis Meres had referred in 1598 to Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets among his private friends". Few analysts believe that
6556-553: The Blackfriars indoor theatre . Extant records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that his association with the company made him a wealthy man, and in 1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place , and in 1605, invested in a share of the parish tithes in Stratford. Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, beginning in 1594, and by 1598, his name had become
6705-693: The Boston Athenaeum . It was given its first fully staged professional production at the Bristol Riverside Theatre outside Philadelphia in 1992. A second play by the same name, The Brothers Booth , which focuses on "the world of the 1860s theatre and its leading family" was written by Marshell Bradley and staged in New York at the Perry Street Theatre in 2004. Austin Pendleton 's play, Booth , which depicts
6854-592: The Duke of Venice , Brabantio's kinsmen Lodovico and Gratiano, and various senators. Othello explains that, while he was invited to Brabantio's home, Desdemona became enamoured of him for the sad and compelling stories he told of his life before Venice, not because of any witchcraft. The senate is satisfied once Desdemona confirms that she loves Othello, but Brabantio leaves, saying that Desdemona will betray Othello: "Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father, and may thee" (Act I, Sc 3). Iago, still in
7003-510: The First Folio , a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson , a former rival of Shakespeare, who hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time". Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare , an alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker) originally from Snitterfield in Warwickshire , and Mary Arden ,
7152-586: The King's Men . All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts ... — As You Like It , Act II, Scene 7, 139–142 In 1599, a partnership of members of the company built their own theatre on the south bank of the River Thames , which they named the Globe . In 1608, the partnership also took over
7301-591: The Lord Chamberlain's Men , later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance , his sexuality , his religious beliefs and even certain fringe theories as to whether
7450-514: The Middle East , and sometimes to Muslims of any race or location. "I think this play is racist, and I think it is not." Scholar Virginia Vaughan In Shakespeare's main source, Cinthio 's Gli Hecatommithi , the character Disdemona (the equivalent of Shakespeare's Desdemona) says "I know not what to say of the Moor; he used to be all love towards me; but within these few days he has become another man; and much I fear that I shall prove
7599-531: The Sakonnet River ; he hired Calvert Vaux , whose son Downing Vaux was (briefly) engaged to Booth's daughter Edwina, to design a grand summer cottage estate there. "Boothden" was completed in 1884, a wooden house set on a stone foundation, designed in the Queen Anne Revival style with Stick style motifs and large plate glass windows. Boothden featured a dance hall, stables, boathouse, and
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#17327825544287748-523: The Shrew ' s story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences. Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his most acclaimed comedies. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy,
7897-641: The assassin of President Abraham Lincoln . Junius Brutus Booth was "famously peculiar ... . Several sons succeeded him in his career ... and his idiosyncrasies: Edwin had an abiding fear of ivy vines and peacock feathers." In early appearances, Booth usually performed alongside his father, making his stage debut as Tressel or Tressil in Colley Cibber 's version of Richard III in Boston on September 10, 1849. His first appearance in New York City
8046-494: The end of lines , with the risk of monotony. Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet . Shakespeare uses it, for example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind: Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay Worse than
8195-463: The " Bard of Avon " (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations , consist of some 39 plays , 154 sonnets , three long narrative poems and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in
8344-586: The 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln . Booth was born in Bel Air, Maryland , into the Anglo-American theatrical Booth family . He was the son of the famous actor Junius Brutus Booth , an Englishman, and his mistress (later wife) Mary Ann Holmes. He was named after Edwin Forrest and Thomas Flynn , two of Junius' colleagues. He was the younger brother of Junius Brutus Booth Jr. and
8493-679: The 1991–1992 season. The Tragedian , by playwright and actor Rodney Lee Rogers, is a one-man show about Booth that was produced by PURE Theatre of Charleston, South Carolina , in 2007. It was revived for inclusion in the Piccolo Spoleto Arts Festival in May and June 2008. A play by Luigi Creatore called Error of the Moon played off-Broadway on Theatre Row in New York City from August 13 to October 10, 2010. The play
8642-489: The 19th century. Shakespeare's major source for the play was a novella by Cinthio , the plot of which Shakespeare borrowed and reworked substantially. Though not among Shakespeare's longest plays, it contains two of his four longest roles in Othello and Iago. Roderigo, a wealthy and dissolute gentleman, complains to his friend Iago, an ensign , that Iago has not told him about the recent secret marriage between Desdemona,
8791-596: The Chorus in Henry V , though scholars doubt the sources of that information. Throughout his career, Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford. In 1596, the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St Helen's , Bishopsgate , north of the River Thames. He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the same year his company constructed
8940-743: The City of Philadelphia (Shakespeare Lodge), the Asylum Fund of New York and the Home for Incurables (West Farms, New York). Other examples of his legacy include: In 1894, Booth's daughter, Edwina Booth Grossman , published a book about her father, reportedly concerned that his legacy as an actor would be marred by his brother's assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. The volume was titled Edwin Booth: Recollections by His Daughter, Edwina Booth Grossman, and Letters to Her and to His Friends . As
9089-494: The English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon , Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway , with whom he had three children: Susanna , and twins Hamnet and Judith . Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called
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#17327825544289238-506: The First Folio, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre , are now accepted as part of the canon, with today's scholars agreeing that Shakespeare made major contributions to the writing of both. No Shakespearean poems were included in the First Folio. In the late 19th century, Edward Dowden classified four of the late comedies as romances , and though many scholars prefer to call them tragicomedies , Dowden's term
9387-496: The Globe Theatre there. By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There, he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of women's wigs and other headgear. Nicholas Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated by Samuel Johnson , that Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years before his death". He
9536-448: The King's Men, published the First Folio , a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It contained 36 texts, including 18 printed for the first time. The others had already appeared in quarto versions—flimsy books made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves. No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies". Alfred Pollard termed some of
9685-643: The Lincoln assassination, with one of the town's influential citizens trying to have him run out of town. In 1966, Martin Landau played Edwin Booth in the episode "This Stage of Fools" of the NBC western television series, Branded , starring Chuck Connors as Jason McCord. In the story line, McCord takes a job as the bodyguard to the actor Edwin Booth, brother of the presidential assassin, John Wilkes Booth. The Brothers BOOTH! , by W. Stuart McDowell, which focuses on
9834-421: The London stage by 1592. By then, he was sufficiently known in London to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit from that year: ... there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide , supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum ,
9983-441: The Shakespeare family. Shakespeare bequeathed the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna under stipulations that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body". The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying. The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct line. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who
10132-518: The Shrew , and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare's earliest period. His first histories , which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland , dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty . The early plays were influenced by
10281-623: The Thing" (S1:E3). In the episode, both the "Hundred nights Hamlet" and Edwin's rescue of Robert Lincoln are mentioned. In 2023, Tyrants , an original musical about the life of Edwin Booth, was presented at the National Archives Museum in Washington, D.C. With music and lyrics by Alexander Sage Oyen and a book by Nora Brigid Monahan, the musical starred A.J. Shively as Edwin Booth, under the direction of John Simpkins. Booth
10430-732: The Union Army and was also serving on Grant's staff. In the letter, Badeau gave his compliments to Booth for the heroic deed. The fact that he had saved the life of Abraham Lincoln's son was said to have been of some comfort to Edwin Booth following his brother's assassination of the president. In 1867, a fire damaged the Winter Garden Theatre, resulting in the building's subsequent demolition. Afterwards, Booth built his own theatre, an elaborate structure called Booth's Theatre in Manhattan , which opened on February 3, 1869, with
10579-499: The act of writing, began to infuse each other". In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called " problem plays " Measure for Measure , Troilus and Cressida , and All's Well That Ends Well and a number of his best known tragedies . Many critics believe that Shakespeare's tragedies represent the peak of his art. Hamlet has probably been analysed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which begins " To be or not to be; that
10728-481: The actors must have been performing Othello , at the latest, in the season preceding the bad quarto's publication. Othello was not published in Shakespeare's lifetime. The first published version of the play was a quarto in 1622 (usually abbreviated to "Q"), which was followed a year later by the play's appearance in the First Folio (usually abbreviated to "F"). There are significant differences between
10877-646: The age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596. After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the "complaints bill" of a law case before the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589. Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years". Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe , Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted
11026-412: The anonymous Arden of Faversham , Marlowe 's Doctor Faustus , and Heywood 's A Woman Killed with Kindness . These also include Shakespeare's own earlier plays Much Ado About Nothing , in which a similar plot was used in a comedy, The Merchant of Venice with its high-born, Moorish, Prince of Morocco, and Titus Andronicus , in which a Moor, Aaron, was a prominent villain, and as such
11175-476: The blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air ..." (1.7.21–25). The listener is challenged to complete the sense. The late romances, with their shifts in time and surprising turns of plot, inspired a last poetic style in which long and short sentences are set against one another, clauses are piled up, subject and object are reversed, and words are omitted, creating an effect of spontaneity. Shakespeare combined poetic genius with
11324-416: The ceiling of her bedchamber to make it appear an accident. The story continues until the Ensign is tortured to death for unrelated reasons and the Moor is killed by Disdemona's family. Shakespeare's direct sources for the story do not include any threat of warfare: it seems to have been Shakespeare's innovation to set the story at the time of a threatened Turkish invasion of Cyprus – apparently fixing it in
11473-557: The context of his overarching criticism of the play, as unrealistic and lacking in obvious moral conclusions. "For this noble lady, who regarded the mind more than the features of men, with a singularity rather to be admired than imitated, had chosen for the object of her affections a Moor, a black." Othello in Tales from Shakespeare (1807) by Charles and Mary Lamb In the nineteenth century, such well-known writers as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb questioned whether
11622-650: The daughter of Brabantio, a senator, and Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army. Roderigo is upset because he loves Desdemona and had asked her father, Brabantio, for her hand in marriage, which Brabantio denied him. Iago hates Othello for promoting an aristocrat named Cassio above him, whom Iago considers a less capable soldier than himself. Iago tells Roderigo that he plans to exploit Othello for his own advantage and convinces Roderigo to wake Brabantio and tell him about his daughter's elopement . Meanwhile, Iago sneaks away to find Othello and warns him that Brabantio
11771-426: The daughter of an affluent landowning family . He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon , where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day . This date, which can be traced to William Oldys and George Steevens , has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616. He was the third of eight children, and
11920-415: The drama itself. Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse , composed in iambic pentameter . In practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at
12069-446: The early acts of the play it is Iago who mentions ass, daws, flies, ram, jennet, guinea-hen, baboon, wild-cat, snipe, monkeys, monster and wolves. But from the third act onwards Othello catches this line of imagery from Iago as his irrational jealousy takes hold. The same occurs with "diabolical" imagery (i.e. images of hell and devils) of which Iago uses 14 of his 16 diabolical images in the first two acts, yet Othello uses 25 of his 26 in
12218-578: The early years of the brothers Edwin, Junius, and John Wilkes Booth and their father, was produced off Broadway at the York Theatre, starring Frank Langella as Junius Brutus Booth Sr. In a review, the play was called "a psychodrama about the legendary theatrical family of the 19th century" by The New York Times . Pendleton had adapted this version from his earlier work, Booth Is Back , produced at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut , in
12367-495: The elder brother of John Wilkes Booth . Nora Titone, in her book My Thoughts Be Bloody , recounts how the shame and ambition of Junius Brutus Booth's three actor sons, Junius Jr. (who never achieved the level of stardom of his younger brothers), Edwin, and John Wilkes, spurred them to strive, as rivals, for achievement and acclaim. Politically Edwin was a Unionist ; John supported the Confederacy and later became notorious as
12516-470: The eldest surviving son. Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford, a free school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile (400 m) from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic Latin text
12665-460: The episode "The Man Who Loved Lincoln" on the ABC / Warner Brothers western television series , Colt .45 , starring Wayde Preston as the fictitious undercover agent Christopher Colt, who in the story line is assigned to protect Booth from a death threat. In 1960, the anthology series television series Death Valley Days broadcast "His Brother's Keeper", in which Booth visits a small town after
12814-415: The equally romantic The Merchant of Venice , contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock , which reflects dominant Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences. The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing , the charming rural setting of As You Like It , and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. After
12963-705: The events of 1570 . Those historical events would however have been well known to Shakespeare's original audience, who would therefore have been aware that – contrary to the action of the play – the Turks took Cyprus, and still held it. Scholars have identified many other influences on Othello : things which are not themselves sources but whose impact on Shakespeare can be identified in the play: these include Virgil 's Aeneid , Ovid 's Metamorphoses , both The Merchant's Tale and The Miller's Tale from Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales , Geoffrey Fenton 's Certaine Tragicall Discourses , Kyd 's The Spanish Tragedy , George Peele 's The Battle of Alcazar ,
13112-608: The family's request to extract DNA from the vertebrae had been rejected. A number of modern dramatizations have been made of Edwin Booth's life, on both stage and screen. One of the best known is the 1955 film Prince of Players written by Moss Hart , based loosely on the popular book of that name by Eleanor Ruggles. It was directed by Philip Dunne and stars Richard Burton and Raymond Massey as Edwin and Junius Brutus Booth Sr., with Charles Bickford as Prescott, producer of their Shakespeare tour. The cast also includes Eva Le Gallienne , who plays Gertrude to Burton's Hamlet, and who
13261-686: The famous Richard Burbage , William Kempe , Henry Condell and John Heminges . Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including Richard III , Hamlet , Othello , and King Lear . The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing , among other characters. He was replaced around 1600 by Robert Armin , who played roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It and
13410-473: The famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death; and Julius Caesar —based on Sir Thomas North 's 1579 translation of Plutarch 's Parallel Lives —which introduced a new kind of drama. According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro , in Julius Caesar , "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on
13559-456: The first part of Henry IV , Leonard Digges recording, "Let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest ... and you scarce shall have a room". When the company found themselves in dispute with their landlord, they pulled The Theatre down and used the timbers to construct the Globe Theatre , the first playhouse built by actors for actors, on the south bank of the Thames at Southwark . The Globe opened in autumn 1599, with Julius Caesar one of
13708-646: The first plays staged. Most of Shakespeare's greatest post-1599 plays were written for the Globe, including Hamlet , Othello, and King Lear . After the Lord Chamberlain's Men were renamed the King's Men in 1603, they entered a special relationship with the new King James . Although the performance records are patchy, the King's Men performed seven of Shakespeare's plays at court between 1 November 1604, and 31 October 1605, including two performances of The Merchant of Venice . After 1608, they performed at
13857-477: The fool in King Lear . In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that Henry VIII "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and ceremony". On 29 June, however, a cannon set fire to the thatch of the Globe and burned the theatre to the ground, an event which pinpoints the date of a Shakespeare play with rare precision. In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell , two of Shakespeare's friends from
14006-433: The foot of the dedication page; nor is it known who Mr. W.H. was, despite numerous theories, or whether Shakespeare even authorised the publication. Critics praise the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time. Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in a stylised language that does not always spring naturally from
14155-414: The incident in a 1909 letter to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine . The incident occurred while a group of passengers were late at night purchasing their sleeping car places from the conductor who stood on the station platform at the entrance of the car. The platform was about the height of the car floor, and there was of course a narrow space between the platform and the car body. There
14304-495: The indoor Blackfriars Theatre during the winter and the Globe during the summer. The indoor setting, combined with the Jacobean fashion for lavishly staged masques , allowed Shakespeare to introduce more elaborate stage devices. In Cymbeline , for example, Jupiter descends "in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. The ghosts fall on their knees." The actors in Shakespeare's company included
14453-505: The jealousy's object, snatching at ambiguities to ease the mind, dread of vulgar ridicule, and a spirit of vindictiveness. Ultimately, Othello becomes persuaded that his honour is tarnished by his wife's unfaithfulness and can only be restored through Desdemona's and Cassio's deaths. And this – a code of behaviour no longer considered valid – is one reason why modern critics rarely regard Othello among Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. As Ben Okri has said: If Othello did not begin as
14602-512: The kind of jealousy Othello suffers, or to deny it as a motive (for example, those who claim that in Russia between 1945 and 1957 only one actor portrayed Othello as obsessed by jealousy). In fact jealousy is a wide-ranging emotion and encompasses the spectrum from lust to spiritual disillusionment within which Othello's obsession must fall. And he displays many accepted aspects of jealousy: an eagerness to snatch at proofs, indulging degrading images of
14751-424: The last phase of his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve these effects. These included run-on lines , irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length. In Macbeth , for example, the language darts from one unrelated metaphor or simile to another: "was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed yourself?" (1.7.35–38); "... pity, like a naked new-born babe/ Striding
14900-426: The last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances ) such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest , and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell , two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as
15049-469: The last three acts. Not only Othello, but also Iago is consumed by jealousy: his is a kind of envy, which contemporary scholar Francis Bacon called "the vilest affection, and the most depraved; for which cause, it is the proper attribute of the Devil... As it always cometh to pass, that envy worketh subtilly, and in the dark; and to the prejudice of good things." Sometimes critics have struggled to define
15198-548: The later plays, however. In Shakespeare's late romances , he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre. Othello The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice , often shortened to Othello ( / ɒ ˈ θ ɛ l oʊ / ), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare around 1603. Set in Venice and Cyprus , the play depicts the Moorish military commander Othello as he
15347-516: The latest year in which the play could have been written) is 1604, since a performance of the play in that year is mentioned in the accounts book of Sir Edmund Tilney , then Master of the Revels . A terminus a quo (i.e. the earliest year in which it could have been written) is given by the fact that one of its sources, Holland 's translation of Pliny 's Natural History , was published in 1601. Within this range, scholars have tended to date
15496-501: The lyrical Richard II , written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, Part 1 and 2 , and Henry V . Henry IV features Falstaff , rogue, wit and friend of Prince Hal. His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his mature work. This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet ,
15645-478: The marriage. The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times, and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna , baptised 26 May 1583. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith , followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at
15794-426: The mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks. After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed at The Theatre , in Shoreditch , only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men , a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new King James I , and changed its name to
15943-433: The mutines in the bilboes. Rashly— And prais'd be rashness for it—let us know Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well ... After Hamlet , Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies. The literary critic A. C. Bradley described this style as "more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical". In
16092-547: The needs of the characters or the drama. The poetry depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical—written for actors to declaim rather than speak. The grand speeches in Titus Andronicus , in the view of some critics, often hold up the action, for example; and the verse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona has been described as stilted. "And pity, like
16241-552: The old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest daughter, Cordelia . According to the critic Frank Kermode , "the play...offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty". In Macbeth , the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies, uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth , to murder
16390-584: The others what has happened. Shakespeare's primary source for the plot was the story of a Moorish Captain (third decade, story seven) in Gli Hecatommithi by Cinthio (Giovanni Battista Giraldi), a collection of one hundred novellas about love, grouped into ten "decades" by theme. The third decade deals with marital infidelity. Of Cinthio's characters, only Disdemona (the equivalent of Shakespeare's Desdemona – her name means "ill-omened" in Italian)
16539-408: The performance of Henry VIII on 29 June. Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52. He died within a month of signing his will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in "perfect health". No extant contemporary source explains how or why he died. Half a century later, John Ward , the vicar of Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had
16688-463: The period typically collaborated with others at some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, mostly early and late in his career. The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI , written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama . Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date precisely, however, and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus , The Comedy of Errors , The Taming of
16837-468: The plague (a total of over 60 months closure between May 1603 and February 1610), which meant there was often no acting work. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time. Shakespeare continued to visit London during the years 1611–1614. In 1612, he was called as a witness in Bellott v Mountjoy , a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. In March 1613, he bought
16986-564: The play 1603–1604, within the reign of James I , since the play appears to have elements designed to appeal to the new king, who had written a poem about the defeat of the Turkish navy at Lepanto , and to the new queen, Anne of Denmark , in whose circle there was an interest in the blackface exoticism also reflected in Ben Jonson 's The Masque of Blackness , in which the queen and her ladies appeared as "daughters of Niger". That dating
17135-435: The play could even be called a "true tragedy" when it dramatized the inviolable taboo of a white woman in a relationship with a black man. Coleridge, writing in 1818, argued that Othello could not have been conceived as black: "Can we imagine [Shakespeare] so utterly ignorant as to make a barbarous negro plead royal birth, - at a time, too, when negroes were not known except as slaves? ... and most surely as an English audience
17284-562: The plot. Iago then accuses Bianca of the failed conspiracy to kill Cassio. Othello confronts a sleeping Desdemona. She denies being unfaithful, but he smothers her. Emilia arrives, and Desdemona defends her husband before dying, and Othello accuses Desdemona of adultery. Emilia calls for help. The former governor Montano arrives with Gratiano and Iago. When Othello mentions the handkerchief as proof, Emilia realizes what Iago has done, and she exposes him. Othello, belatedly realising Desdemona's innocence, stabs Iago (but not fatally), saying that Iago
17433-478: The pre-1623 versions as " bad quartos " because of their adapted, paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed from memory. Where several versions of a play survive, each differs from the others . The differences may stem from copying or printing errors, from notes by actors or audience members, or from Shakespeare's own papers . In some cases, for example, Hamlet , Troilus and Cressida, and Othello , Shakespeare could have revised
17582-452: The published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence. He seems to have planned two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a married woman of dark complexion (the "dark lady"), and one about conflicted love for a fair young man (the "fair youth"). It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial "I" who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with
17731-614: The record in 1922, playing the title character for 101 performances. From 1863 to 1867, Booth managed the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City, mostly staging Shakespearean tragedies . In 1863, he bought the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia . After John Wilkes Booth's assassination of President Lincoln in April 1865, the infamy associated with the Booth name forced Edwin Booth to abandon
17880-667: The relationships of the three Booth brothers leading up to the assassination of Lincoln, was workshopped and given a series of staged readings featuring David Strathairn , David Dukes , Angela Goethals , Maryann Plunkett , and Stephen Lang at the New Harmony Project, and at The Guthrie Theatre Lab in Minneapolis , and later presented in New York at the Players' Club, the Second Stage Theatre , and
18029-466: The rightful king and usurp the throne until their own guilt destroys them in turn. In this play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic structure. His last major tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus , contain some of Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies by the poet and critic T. S. Eliot . Eliot wrote, "Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from
18178-410: The roles of Othello, Iago, Desdemona, and Emilia (Iago's wife) are regarded as highly demanding and desirable. Critical attention has focused on the nature of the play's tragedy, its unusual mechanics , its treatment of race , and on the motivations of Iago and his relationship to Othello . Originally performed by white actors in dark makeup , the role of Othello began to be played by black actors in
18327-608: The room, takes note of Brabantio's remark. By order of the Duke, Othello leaves Venice to command the Venetian armies against invading Turks on the island of Cyprus , accompanied by his new wife, his new lieutenant Cassio, his ensign Iago, and Iago's wife, Emilia, as Desdemona's attendant. The party arrives in Cyprus to find that a storm has destroyed the Turkish fleet. Othello orders a general celebration and leaves to consummate his marriage with Desdemona. In his absence, Iago gets Cassio drunk, and then persuades Roderigo to draw Cassio into
18476-710: The rumor he had escaped after the assassination. However, a spokesperson from the Mount Auburn Cemetery, where Booth is buried, denied reports that the family had contacted them and requested to exhume Edwin's body. The family hopes to obtain DNA samples from artifacts belonging to John Wilkes, or from remains such as vertebrae stored at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Maryland. On March 30, 2013, museum spokesperson Carol Johnson announced that
18625-480: The sexual advances of Venus ; while in The Rape of Lucrece , the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin . Influenced by Ovid 's Metamorphoses , the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust. Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint , in which a young woman laments her seduction by
18774-433: The so-called bad quarto of Shakespeare's play Hamlet , published in 1603. The theory is that the bad quarto is a memorial reconstruction of Hamlet , made by some of its actors: so where there are unintentional echoes of Othello in the bad quarto (for example "to my vnfolding / Lend thy listning eare" in the bad quarto and "To my unfolding lend your prosperous ear" in Othello – and a number of others) it suggests that
18923-417: The sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart". Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate ... —Opening lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 . The 1609 edition was dedicated to a "Mr. W.H.", credited as "the only begetter" of the poems. It is not known whether this was written by Shakespeare himself or by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe , whose initials appear at
19072-640: The stage for many months. Edwin, who had been feuding with John Wilkes before the assassination, disowned him afterward, refusing to have John's name spoken in his house. He made his return to the stage at the Winter Garden Theatre in January 1866, playing the title role in Hamlet , which would eventually become his signature role. In 1874, he played the titular role in Othello in Chicago, trading off with James O'Neill . Casting O'Neill, an Irish American actor who
19221-489: The stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in 2008: Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, To digg the dvst encloased heare. Bleste be yͤ man yͭ spares thes stones, And cvrst be he yͭ moves my bones. Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones. Some time before 1623,
19370-402: The street after Cassio leaves Bianca's lodgings, as Cassio wounds Roderigo. During the scuffle, Iago comes from behind Cassio and badly cuts his leg. In the darkness, Iago manages to hide his identity, and when Lodovico and Gratiano hear Cassio's cries for help, Iago joins them. When Cassio identifies Roderigo as one of his attackers, Iago secretly stabs Roderigo to death to stop him from revealing
19519-662: The texts between the quarto and folio editions. In the case of King Lear , however, while most modern editions do conflate them, the 1623 folio version is so different from the 1608 quarto that the Oxford Shakespeare prints them both, arguing that they cannot be conflated without confusion. In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague , Shakespeare published two narrative poems on sexual themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece . He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton . In Venus and Adonis , an innocent Adonis rejects
19668-423: The title suggests, the book describes Grossman's memories of her father and contains edited transcripts of letters written by him. Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( c. 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright , poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and
19817-528: The two early editions, the most prominent of which are: There is no scholarly consensus to account for the differences between Q and F: As the Oxford Shakespeare editor Michael Neill summarises things: "The textual mystery of Othello is unlikely ever to be resolved to general satisfaction." "O beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on." Iago The influential early twentieth-century Shakespeare critic A. C. Bradley defined Othello's tragic flaw as
19966-504: The whole British Museum ." In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays: Cymbeline , The Winter's Tale , and The Tempest , as well as the collaboration, Pericles, Prince of Tyre . Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Some commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of
20115-429: The works attributed to him were written by others . Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet , Othello , King Lear and Macbeth , all considered to be among the finest works in English. In
20264-459: The works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe , by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca . The Comedy of Errors was also based on classical models, but no source for The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though it has an identical plot but different wording as another play with a similar name. Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona , in which two friends appear to approve of rape,
20413-422: Was Edwin Booth, whose face was of course well known to me, and I expressed my gratitude to him, and in doing so, called him by name. Booth did not know the identity of the man whose life he had saved until some months later, when he received a letter from a friend, Colonel Adam Badeau , who was an officer on the staff of General Ulysses S. Grant . Badeau had heard the story from Robert Lincoln, who had since joined
20562-553: Was a benefit performance, and the only time that the three brothers appeared together on the same stage. The funds were used to erect a statue of William Shakespeare that still stands in Central Park just south of the Promenade. Immediately afterwards, Edwin Booth began a production of Hamlet on the same stage, which came to be known as the "hundred nights Hamlet ", setting a record that lasted until John Barrymore broke
20711-651: Was a forerunner of both Othello and Iago. One such influence is not a literary work at all. In 1600, London was visited for "half a year" by the Moorish ambassador of the King of Barbary, whose entourage caused a stir in the city. Shakespeare's company is known to have played at court during the time of the visit, and so would have encountered the foreign visitors at first hand. Among Shakespeare's non-fiction, or partly-fictionalised, sources were Gasparo Contarini 's Commonwealth and Government of Venice and Leo Africanus 's A Geographical Historie of Africa . Himself
20860-573: Was buried next to his first wife at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts . His bedroom in the club has been kept untouched since his death. The New York Times reported his death. In December 2010, Booth's descendants' reported that they obtained permission to exhume the Shakespearean actor's body to obtain DNA samples to compare with a sample of his brother John's DNA to refute
21009-539: Was called Black Irish because of his black hair, has been marked as one possible origin of disputes about whether the character Othello was meant to merely to have black hair and swarthy skin, rather than to be of sub-Saharan African origin. Booth was married to Mary Devlin Booth from 1860 until her death in 1863. They had one daughter, Edwina , born on December 9, 1861, in London . He later remarried, to his acting partner Mary McVicker Booth in 1869. Their only child,
21158-997: Was in the character of Wilford in The Iron Chest , which he played at the National Theatre in Chatham Street, on September 27, 1850. A year later, on the illness of the father, the son took his place in the character of Richard III. After his father's death in 1852, Booth went on a worldwide tour, visiting Australia and Hawaii , and finally gaining acclaim of his own during an engagement in Sacramento, California , in 1856. Before his brother assassinated Lincoln, Edwin had appeared with his two brothers, John Wilkes and Junius Brutus Booth Jr., in Julius Caesar in 1864. John Wilkes played Marc Antony , Edwin played Brutus , and Junius played Cassius . It
21307-620: Was nearing its end. The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged after Volpone , although one cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It , and
21456-549: Was not acquainted with Gray, who worked for a St. Louis, Missouri dry goods firm. A letter to a woman in Ohio was found on Gray's person. The correspondence affirmed Gray's intent to murder Booth. The attempted assassination occurred on Shakespeare's supposed birthday and came at a time when Booth was receiving numerous death threats by mail. In 1888, Booth founded The Players , a private club for performing, literary, and visual artists and their supporters, purchasing and furnishing
21605-639: Was portrayed by Nick Westrate in the 2024 Apple TV+ miniseries series Manhunt . Booth left a considerable estate upon his death. He left charitable bequests that furthered the development of the acting profession and the treatment of mental illness. He left bequests of $ 5,000 each (almost $ 150,000 in 2021 dollars) to the Actor's' Fund, the Actors' Association of Friendship of the City of New York (Edwin Forrest Lodge), The Actors' Association of Friendship of
21754-544: Was probably entitled to one-third of his estate automatically. He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation. Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been the matrimonial bed and therefore rich in significance. Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death. The epitaph carved into
21903-438: Was some crowding, and I happened to be pressed by it against the car body while waiting my turn. In this situation the train began to move, and by the motion I was twisted off my feet, and had dropped somewhat, with feet downward, into the open space, and was personally helpless, when my coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to a secure footing on the platform. Upon turning to thank my rescuer I saw it
22052-465: Was standardised by royal decree, and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar based upon Latin classical authors. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway . The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded
22201-553: Was still working as an actor in London in 1608; in an answer to the sharers' petition in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage stated that after purchasing the lease of the Blackfriars Theatre in 1608 from Henry Evans , the King's Men "placed men players" there, "which were Heminges , Condell , Shakespeare, etc.". However, it is perhaps relevant that the bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609. The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed during extended outbreaks of
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