145-627: The Shakespeare Institute is a centre for postgraduate study dedicated to the study of William Shakespeare and the literature of the English Renaissance . It is part of the University of Birmingham , and is located in Stratford-upon-Avon . The Institute was set up in 1951 at Mason Croft, the former home of novelist Marie Corelli . Budgetary problems forced it to be relocated to the main campus at Birmingham during
290-745: 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
435-598: 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
580-668: A playing company called 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
725-427: 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
870-402: 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
1015-504: A comment intended for posterity ( Timber or Discoveries ), he criticises Shakespeare's casual approach to playwriting, but praises Shakespeare as a person: "I loved the man, and do honour his memory (on this side Idolatry) as much as any. He was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature; had an excellent fancy; brave notions, and gentle expressions ..." In addition to Ben Jonson, other playwrights wrote about Shakespeare, including some who sold plays to Shakespeare's company. Two of
1160-602: 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
1305-569: A highly educated individual or court insider could have written it. Apart from literary references, critical commentary and acting notices, the available data regarding Shakespeare's life consist of mundane personal details such as vital records of his baptism , marriage and death, tax records, lawsuits to recover debts, and real estate transactions. In addition, no document attests that he received an education or owned any books. No personal letters or literary manuscripts certainly written by Shakespeare of Stratford survive. To sceptics, these gaps in
1450-431: 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
1595-448: 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
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#17327731904781740-450: 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
1885-446: A painting of the monument that had been executed before the 1748 restoration, which showed it very similar to its present-day appearance. The publication of the image failed to achieve its intended effect, and in 2005 Oxfordian Richard Kennedy proposed that the monument was originally built to honour John Shakespeare, William's father, who by tradition was a "considerable dealer in wool". Nearly all academic Shakespeareans believe that
2030-814: 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,
2175-475: 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
2320-523: A playwright. They interpret contemporary satirical characters as broad hints indicating that the London theatrical world knew Shakespeare was a front for an anonymous author. For instance, they identify Shakespeare with the literary thief Poet-Ape in Ben Jonson 's poem of the same name, the socially ambitious fool Sogliardo in Jonson's Every Man Out of His Humour , and the foolish poetry-lover Gullio in
2465-588: 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
2610-486: 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
2755-592: A short poem "To the Reader" commending the First Folio engraving of Shakespeare by Droeshout as a good likeness. Included in the prefatory commendatory verses was Jonson's lengthy eulogy "To the memory of my beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare: and what he hath left us" in which he identifies Shakespeare as a playwright, a poet, and an actor, and writes: Here Jonson links the author to Stratford's river,
2900-510: A sketch of the Shakespeare arms, captioned "Shakespear ye Player by Garter". The grants, including John Shakespeare's, were defended by Dethick and Clarenceux King of Arms William Camden , the foremost antiquary of the time. In his Remaines Concerning Britaine —published in 1605, but finished two years previously and before the Earl of Oxford died in 1604—Camden names Shakespeare as one of
3045-461: 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
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#17327731904783190-496: A writer. The earliest printed image of the figure, in Sir William Dugdale 's Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), differs greatly from its present appearance. Some authorship theorists argue that the figure originally portrayed a man clutching a sack of grain or wool that was later altered to help conceal the identity of the true author. In an attempt to put to rest such speculation, in 1924 M. H. Spielmann published
3335-399: A writer. The first two Latin lines translate to "In judgment a Pylian, in genius a Socrates, in art a Maro, the earth covers him, the people mourn him, Olympus possesses him", referring to Nestor , Socrates , Virgil , and Mount Olympus . The monument was not only referred to in the First Folio, but other early 17th-century records identify it as being a memorial to Shakespeare and transcribe
3480-592: 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
3625-417: 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
3770-461: Is interpreted as indicating that he was illiterate or barely literate. All are written in secretary hand , a style of handwriting common to the era, particularly in play writing, and three of them utilize breviographs to abbreviate the surname. In his surviving signatures William Shakespeare did not spell his name as it appears on most Shakespeare title pages. His surname was spelled inconsistently in both literary and non-literary documents, with
3915-417: Is known to have expressed doubts about Shakespeare's authorship. While information about some aspects of Shakespeare's life is sketchy, this is true of many other playwrights of the time. Of some, next to nothing is known. Others, such as Jonson, Marlowe, and John Marston , are more fully documented because of their education, close connections with the court, or brushes with the law. Literary scholars employ
4060-497: Is often used as an indication that Shakespeare was brought up in an illiterate household. There is also no evidence that Shakespeare's two daughters were literate, save for two signatures by Susanna that appear to be "drawn" instead of written with a practised hand. His other daughter, Judith , signed a legal document with a mark. Anti-Stratfordians consider these marks and the rudimentary signature style evidence of illiteracy and consider Shakespeare's plays, which "depict women across
4205-525: 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
4350-425: 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 ,
4495-434: Is unequivocal in ascribing the authorship of the Shakespeare canon to a William Shakespeare. In addition to the name appearing on the title pages of poems and plays, this name was given as that of a well-known writer at least 23 times during the lifetime of William Shakespeare of Stratford. Several contemporaries corroborate the identity of the playwright as an actor, and explicit contemporary documentary evidence attests that
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4640-589: 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 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
4785-590: 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
4930-615: The Avon , and confirms his appearances at the courts of Elizabeth I and James I . Leonard Digges wrote the elegy "To the Memorie of the Deceased Authour Maister W. Shakespeare" in the 1623 First Folio, referring to "thy Stratford Moniment". Living four miles from Stratford-upon-Avon from 1600 until attending Oxford in 1603, Digges was the stepson of Thomas Russell, whom Shakespeare in his will designated as overseer to
5075-553: 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
5220-510: 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 ,
5365-606: The First Folio . Of those 15 title pages with Shakespeare's name hyphenated, 13 are on the title pages of just three plays, Richard II , Richard III , and Henry IV, Part 1 . The hyphen is also present in one cast list and in six literary allusions published between 1594 and 1623. This hyphen use is construed to indicate a pseudonym by most anti-Stratfordians, who argue that fictional descriptive names (such as "Master Shoe-tie" and "Sir Luckless Woo-all") were often hyphenated in plays, and pseudonyms such as "Tom Tell-truth" were also sometimes hyphenated. Reasons proposed for
5510-536: 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
5655-540: The Prerogative Court of the Archbishop of Canterbury ( George Abbot ) in London on 22 June 1616, and the original was copied into the court register with the bequests intact. John Taylor was the first poet to mention in print the deaths of Shakespeare and Francis Beaumont in his 1620 book of poems The Praise of Hemp-seed . Both had died four years earlier, less than two months apart. Ben Jonson wrote
5800-523: 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,
5945-541: The classics , and rhetoric at no cost. The headmaster, Thomas Jenkins , and the instructors were Oxford graduates. No student registers of the period survive, so no documentation exists for the attendance of Shakespeare or any other pupil, nor did anyone who taught or attended the school ever record that they were his teacher or classmate. This lack of documentation is taken by many anti-Stratfordians as evidence that Shakespeare had little or no education. Anti-Stratfordians also question how Shakespeare, with no record of
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6090-494: 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
6235-962: The globe on the Banksyde vj d This latter appeared on the title page of King Lear Q1 (1608) as "M. William Shak-speare: HIS True Chronicle Historie of the life and death of King L EAR and his three Daughters." Shakespeare's social status is also specifically referred to by his contemporaries in Epigram 159 by John Davies of Hereford in his The Scourge of Folly (1611): "To our English Terence Mr. Will: Shake-speare"; Epigram 92 by Thomas Freeman in his Runne and A Great Caste (1614): "To Master W: Shakespeare"; and in historian John Stow 's list of "Our moderne, and present excellent Poets" in his Annales , printed posthumously in an edition by Edmund Howes (1615), which reads: "M. Willi. Shake-speare gentleman". After Shakespeare's death, Ben Jonson explicitly identified William Shakespeare, gentleman, as
6380-520: The "most pregnant witts of these ages our times, whom succeeding ages may justly admire". Actors John Heminges and Henry Condell knew and worked with Shakespeare for more than 20 years. In the 1623 First Folio, they wrote that they had published the Folio "onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend, & Fellow aliue, as was our Shakespeare , by humble offer of his playes". The playwright and poet Ben Jonson knew Shakespeare from at least 1598, when
6525-413: The 18 plays that remained unpublished at the time of his death. In an interlineation , the will mentions monetary gifts to fellow actors for them to buy mourning rings . Any public mourning of Shakespeare's death went unrecorded, and no eulogies or poems memorialising his death were published until seven years later as part of the front matter in the First Folio of his plays. Oxfordians think that
6670-497: The 1970s, but under the guidance of Professor Stanley Wells , the Institute was returned to Mason Croft in the 1980s and its position was consolidated in 1996 with the opening of the purpose-built Shakespeare Institute Library. It has been described by the current director, Michael Dobson, as "the best place on earth in which to explore the impact Shakespeare’s work has had across four centuries of world culture". The directors of
6815-491: The Blessed Angels" (1634), Heywood affectionately notes the nicknames his fellow playwrights had been known by. Of Shakespeare, he writes: Playwright John Webster , in his dedication to The White Devil (1612), wrote, "And lastly (without wrong last to be named), the right happy and copious industry of M. Shake-Speare , M. Decker , & M. Heywood , wishing what I write might be read in their light", here using
6960-596: 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
7105-471: The Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. Even in the 19th century, beginning at least with Hazlitt and Keats , critics frequently noted that the essence of Shakespeare's genius consisted in his ability to have his characters speak and act according to their given dramatic natures, rendering the determination of Shakespeare's authorial identity from his works that much more problematic. The historical record
7250-446: 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
7395-496: 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
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#17327731904787540-404: The Institute have been: The Shakespeare Institute Library contains about 60,000 volumes (including 3,000 early printed and rare books), archives and manuscripts, and audio-visual collections. The library aims to collect every significant publication for the study of Shakespeare and Renaissance drama and the supporting collections cover literary, cultural, political, religious, and social history of
7685-448: 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
7830-421: 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 ,
7975-441: The London theatrical world (aside from his role as a front for the true author) was because of his money-lending, trading in theatrical properties, acting, and being a shareholder. They also believe that any evidence of a literary career was falsified as part of the effort to shield the true author's identity. Alternative authorship theories generally reject the surface meaning of Elizabethan and Jacobean references to Shakespeare as
8120-658: The Lord Chamberlain's Men performed Jonson's play Every Man in His Humour at the Curtain Theatre with Shakespeare as a cast member. The Scottish poet William Drummond recorded Jonson's often contentious comments about his contemporaries: Jonson criticised Shakespeare as lacking "arte" and for mistakenly giving Bohemia a coast in The Winter's Tale . In 1641, four years after Jonson's death, private notes written during his later life were published. In
8265-571: The Memory of the Deceased Author, Master W. Shakespeare" by Leonard Digges . Both explicit testimony by his contemporaries and strong circumstantial evidence of personal relationships with those who interacted with him as an actor and playwright support Shakespeare's authorship. The historian and antiquary Sir George Buc served as Deputy Master of the Revels from 1603 and as Master of
8410-461: The Revels from 1610 to 1622. His duties were to supervise and censor plays for the public theatres, arrange court performances of plays and, after 1606, to license plays for publication. Buc noted on the title page of George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield (1599), an anonymous play, that he had consulted Shakespeare on its authorship. Buc was meticulous in his efforts to attribute books and plays to
8555-441: 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
8700-518: 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
8845-494: The Stratford citizen was also an actor under his own name. In 1598, Francis Meres named Shakespeare as a playwright and poet in his Palladis Tamia , referring to him as one of the authors by whom the "English tongue is mightily enriched". He names twelve plays written by Shakespeare, including four which were never published in quarto: The Two Gentlemen of Verona , The Comedy of Errors , Love's Labour's Won , and King John , as well as ascribing to Shakespeare some of
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#17327731904788990-418: The abbreviation "M." to denote "Master", a form of address properly used of William Shakespeare of Stratford, who was titled a gentleman. In a verse letter to Ben Jonson dated to about 1608, Francis Beaumont alludes to several playwrights, including Shakespeare, about whom he wrote, The monument to Shakespeare , erected in Stratford before 1623, bears a plaque with an inscription identifying Shakespeare as
9135-499: 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
9280-482: The actor Kempe say to the actor Burbage , "Few of the university men pen plays well ... Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down." An edition of The Passionate Pilgrim , expanded with an additional nine poems written by the prominent English actor, playwright, and author Thomas Heywood , was published by William Jaggard in 1612 with Shakespeare's name on the title page. Heywood protested this piracy in his Apology for Actors (1612), adding that
9425-646: 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
9570-644: The author in the title of his eulogy, "To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare and What He Hath Left Us" , published in the First Folio (1623). Other poets identified Shakespeare the gentleman as the author in the titles of their eulogies, also published in the First Folio: "Upon the Lines and Life of the Famous Scenic Poet, Master William Shakespeare" by Hugh Holland and "To
9715-543: The author referred to as "Shakespeare" was the same William Shakespeare who was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564 and who died there in 1616. He became an actor and shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men ), the playing company that owned the Globe Theatre , the Blackfriars Theatre , and exclusive rights to produce Shakespeare's plays from 1594 to 1642. Shakespeare
9860-400: The author was "much offended with M. Jaggard (that altogether unknown to him) presumed to make so bold with his name." That Heywood stated with certainty that the author was unaware of the deception and that Jaggard removed Shakespeare's name from unsold copies even though Heywood did not explicitly name him indicate that Shakespeare was the offended author. Elsewhere, in his poem "Hierarchie of
10005-460: The author's true identity, which they say explains why no documentary evidence exists for their candidate and why the historical record supports Shakespeare's authorship. Most anti-Stratfordians suggest that the Shakespeare canon exhibits broad learning, knowledge of foreign languages and geography, and familiarity with Elizabethan and Jacobean court and politics; therefore, no one but
10150-412: The authorship question as a legitimate field of scholarly inquiry and for acceptance of one or another of the various authorship candidates. The arguments presented by anti-Stratfordians share several characteristics. They attempt to disqualify William Shakespeare as the author and usually offer supporting arguments for a substitute candidate. They often postulate some type of conspiracy that protected
10295-476: 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
10440-643: The core of the argument is the nature of acceptable evidence used to attribute works to their authors. Anti-Stratfordians rely on what has been called a "rhetoric of accumulation", or what they designate as circumstantial evidence : similarities between the characters and events portrayed in the works and the biography of their preferred candidate; literary parallels with the known works of their candidate; and literary and hidden allusions and cryptographic codes in works by contemporaries and in Shakespeare's own works. In contrast, academic Shakespeareans and literary historians rely mainly on direct documentary evidence—in
10585-576: The correct author, and in 1607 he personally licensed King Lear for publication as written by "Master William Shakespeare". In 1602, Ralph Brooke , the York Herald , accused Sir William Dethick , the Garter King of Arms , of elevating 23 unworthy persons to the gentry . One of these was Shakespeare's father, who had applied for arms 34 years earlier but had to wait for the success of his son before they were granted in 1596. Brooke included
10730-426: 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
10875-415: 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
11020-421: The education and cultured background displayed in the works bearing his name, could have acquired the extensive vocabulary found in the plays and poems. The author's vocabulary is calculated to be between 17,500 and 29,000 words. No letters or signed manuscripts written by Shakespeare survive. The appearance of Shakespeare's six surviving authenticated signatures, which they characterise as "an illiterate scrawl",
11165-457: The education, aristocratic sensibility, or familiarity with the royal court that they say is apparent in the works. Those Shakespeare scholars who have responded to such claims hold that biographical interpretations of literature are unreliable in attributing authorship, and that the convergence of documentary evidence used to support Shakespeare's authorship—title pages, testimony by other contemporary poets and historians, and official records—is
11310-410: 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
11455-415: 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
11600-536: The executors. William Basse wrote an elegy entitled "On Mr. Wm. Shakespeare" sometime between 1616 and 1623, in which he suggests that Shakespeare should have been buried in Westminster Abbey next to Chaucer , Beaumont, and Spenser. This poem circulated very widely in manuscript and survives today in more than two dozen contemporary copies; several of these have a fuller, variant title "On Mr. William Shakespeare, he died in April 1616", which unambiguously specifies that
11745-686: 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
11890-473: 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
12035-456: 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
12180-579: 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
12325-477: 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
12470-433: 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
12615-644: The form of title page attributions and government records such as the Stationers' Register and the Accounts of the Revels Office —and contemporary testimony from poets, historians, and those players and playwrights who worked with him, as well as modern stylometric studies . Gaps in the record are explained by the low survival rate for documents of this period. Scholars say all these converge to confirm William Shakespeare's authorship. These criteria are
12760-455: The humors of Sr John ffalstaff : Wrytten by mr Shakespere. xij d The other is dated 26 November 1607 and entered by Nathaniel Butter and John Busby: Entred for their copie under thandes of Sr George Buck knight & Thwardens A booke called. Mr William Shakespeare his historye of Kynge Lear as yt was played before the kinges maiestie at Whitehall vppon St Stephans night at Christmas Last by his maiesties servantes playinge vsually at
12905-495: 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
13050-457: The inscription. Sir William Dugdale also included the inscription in his Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), but the engraving was done from a sketch made in 1634 and, like other portrayals of monuments in his work, is not accurate. Shakespeare's will, executed on 25 March 1616, bequeaths "to my fellows John Hemynge Richard Burbage and Henry Cundell 26 shilling 8 pence apiece to buy them [mourning] rings". Numerous public records, including
13195-424: 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
13340-426: 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
13485-415: The later plays, however. In Shakespeare's late romances , he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre. Shakespeare authorship question The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. Anti-Stratfordians—a collective term for adherents of
13630-501: 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 ,
13775-478: 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
13920-404: The methods used to identify alternative candidates as unreliable and unscholarly, arguing that their subjectivity explains why at least as many as 80 candidates have been proposed as the "true" author. They consider the idea that Shakespeare revealed himself autobiographically in his work as a cultural anachronism : it has been a common authorial practice since the 19th century, but was not during
14065-426: 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
14210-428: The most influential writer in 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
14355-459: The most part acknowledge it only to rebut or disparage the claims. Shakespeare's authorship was first questioned in the middle of the 19th century, when adulation of Shakespeare as the greatest writer of all time had become widespread. Shakespeare's biography, particularly his humble origins and obscure life , seemed incompatible with his poetic eminence and his reputation for genius, arousing suspicion that Shakespeare might not have written
14500-437: The most variation observed in those that were written by hand. This is taken as evidence that he was not the same person who wrote the works, and that the name was used as a pseudonym for the true author. Shakespeare's surname was hyphenated as "Shake-speare" or "Shak-spear" on the title pages of 15 of the 32 individual quarto (or Q ) editions of Shakespeare's plays and in two of the five editions of poetry published before
14645-433: 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
14790-547: 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
14935-501: 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
15080-408: 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
15225-463: 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
15370-472: The period. Significant research collections include: The Shakespeare Institute Players is the dramatic society for the postgraduate students of the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute, located in Stratford-upon-Avon. The Shakespeare Institute Players have been around under many different names since the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute has existed. The first recorded production
15515-463: The phrase "our ever-living Poet" (an epithet that commonly eulogised a deceased poet as having attained immortal literary fame), included in the dedication to Shakespeare's sonnets that were published in 1609, was a signal that the true poet had died by then. Oxford had died in 1604, five years earlier. Shakespeare's funerary monument in Stratford consists of a demi-figure effigy of him with pen in hand and an attached plaque praising his abilities as
15660-468: 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
15805-422: The plays that were published anonymously before 1598— Titus Andronicus , Romeo and Juliet , and Henry IV, Part 1 . He refers to Shakespeare's "sug[a]red Sonnets among his private friends" 11 years before the publication of the Sonnets . In the rigid social structure of Elizabethan England, William Shakespeare was entitled to use the honorific "gentleman" after his father's death in 1601, since his father
15950-478: 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
16095-452: 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
16240-474: The reason was to avoid prosecution by the authorities: Bacon to avoid the consequences of advocating a more republican form of government , and Marlowe to avoid imprisonment or worse after faking his death and fleeing the country. Anti-Stratfordians say that nothing in the documentary record explicitly identifies Shakespeare as a writer; that the evidence instead supports a career as a businessman and real-estate investor; that any prominence he might have had in
16385-454: The record suggest the profile of a person who differs markedly from the playwright and poet. Some prominent public figures, including Walt Whitman , Mark Twain , Helen Keller , Henry James , Sigmund Freud , John Paul Stevens , Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Charlie Chaplin , have found the arguments against Shakespeare's authorship persuasive, and their endorsements are an important element in many anti-Stratfordian arguments. At
16530-415: The reference is to Shakespeare of Stratford. Shakespeare's are the most studied secular works in history. Contemporary comments and some textual studies support the authorship of someone with an education, background, and life span consistent with that of William Shakespeare. Ben Jonson and Francis Beaumont referenced Shakespeare's lack of classical learning, and no extant contemporary record suggests he
16675-466: 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
16820-406: The royal patent of 19 May 1603 that chartered the King's Men, establish that Phillips, Heminges, Burbage, and Condell were fellow actors in the King's Men with William Shakespeare; two of them later edited his collected plays. Anti-Stratfordians have cast suspicion on these bequests, which were interlined , and claim that they were added later as part of a conspiracy. However, the will was proved in
16965-436: The same methodology to attribute works to the poet and playwright William Shakespeare as they use for other writers of the period: the historical record and stylistic studies , and they say the argument that there is no evidence of Shakespeare's authorship is a form of fallacious logic known as argumentum ex silentio , or argument from silence, since it takes the absence of evidence to be evidence of absence. They criticise
17110-405: The same William Shakespeare designated as the author. Examples from Shakespeare's lifetime include two official stationers' entries . One is dated 23 August 1600 and entered by Andrew Wise and William Aspley : Entred for their copies vnder the handes of the wardens. Twoo bookes. the one called: Muche a Doo about nothinge . Thother the second parte of the history of kinge henry the iiijth with
17255-494: The same as those used to credit works to other authors and are accepted as the standard methodology for authorship attribution. Little is known of Shakespeare's personal life, and some anti-Stratfordians take this as circumstantial evidence against his authorship. Further, the lack of biographical information has sometimes been taken as an indication of an organised attempt by government officials to expunge all traces of Shakespeare, including perhaps his school records, to conceal
17400-455: The same used for all other authorial attributions of his era. No such direct evidence exists for any other candidate, and Shakespeare's authorship was not questioned during his lifetime or for centuries after his death. Despite the scholarly consensus, a relatively small but highly visible and diverse assortment of supporters, including prominent public figures, have questioned the conventional attribution. They work for acknowledgement of
17545-480: 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
17690-440: The social spectrum composing, reading, or delivering letters," evidence that the author came from a more educated background. Anti-Stratfordians consider Shakespeare's background incompatible with that attributable to the author of the Shakespeare canon, which exhibits an intimacy with court politics and culture, foreign countries, and aristocratic sports such as hunting , falconry , tennis , and lawn-bowling . Some find that
17835-417: 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
17980-489: 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,
18125-662: 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
18270-530: The three Parnassus plays produced at St John's College, Cambridge , near the beginning of the 17th century mention Shakespeare as an actor, poet, and playwright who lacked a university education. In The First Part of the Return from Parnassus , two separate characters refer to Shakespeare as "Sweet Mr. Shakespeare", and in The Second Part of the Return from Parnassus (1606), the anonymous playwright has
18415-470: The town as a cultural backwater lacking the environment necessary to nurture a genius and depict Shakespeare as ignorant and illiterate. Shakespeare's father, John Shakespeare , was a glover (glove-maker) and town official. He married Mary Arden , one of the Ardens of Warwickshire , a family of the local gentry . Both signed their names with a mark, and no other examples of their writing are extant. This
18560-436: The true author's identity. Shakespeare was born, brought up, and buried in Stratford-upon-Avon , where he maintained a household throughout the duration of his career in London. A market town of around 1,500 residents about 100 miles (160 km) north-west of London, Stratford was a centre for the slaughter, marketing, and distribution of sheep, as well as for hide tanning and wool trading. Anti-Stratfordians often portray
18705-444: The university play The Return from Parnassus (performed c. 1601). Similarly, praises of "Shakespeare" the writer, such as those found in the First Folio , are explained as references to the real author's pen-name, not the man from Stratford. Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 in Stratford, leaving a signed will to direct the disposal of his large estate. The language of the will makes no mention of personal papers, books, poems, or
18850-421: The use of "Shakespeare" as a pseudonym vary, usually depending upon the social status of the candidate. Aristocrats such as Derby and Oxford supposedly used pseudonyms because of a prevailing " stigma of print ", a social convention that putatively restricted their literary works to private and courtly audiences—as opposed to commercial endeavours—at the risk of social disgrace if violated. In the case of commoners,
18995-417: The various alternative-authorship theories—believe that Shakespeare of Stratford was a front to shield the identity of the real author or authors, who for some reason—usually social rank, state security, or gender—did not want or could not accept public credit. Although the idea has attracted much public interest, all but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe theory , and for
19140-504: 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
19285-429: 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
19430-425: The works attributed to him. The controversy has since spawned a vast body of literature, and more than 80 authorship candidates have been proposed, the most popular being Sir Francis Bacon ; Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford ; Christopher Marlowe ; and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby . Supporters of alternative candidates argue that theirs is the more plausible author, and that William Shakespeare lacked
19575-459: 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,
19720-423: The works show little sympathy for upwardly mobile types such as John Shakespeare and his son and that the author portrays individual commoners comically, as objects of ridicule. Commoners in groups are said to be depicted typically as dangerous mobs. The absence of documentary proof of Shakespeare's education is often a part of anti-Stratfordian arguments. The free King's New School in Stratford, established 1553,
19865-490: Was A Yorkshire Tragedy (Unknown Author) as The Shakespeare Institute Dramatic Society. It was performed in February 1953. Since then, the group has had many different names, but the most commonly used name (and the one by which it is currently known) is The Shakespeare Institute Players. William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( c. 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright , poet and actor. He
20010-537: Was a learned writer or scholar. This is consistent with classical blunders in Shakespeare, such as mistaking the scansion of many classical names, or the anachronistic citing of Plato and Aristotle in Troilus and Cressida . It has been suggested that most of Shakespeare's classical allusions were drawn from Thomas Cooper 's Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae (1565), since a number of errors in that work are replicated in several of Shakespeare's plays, and
20155-455: Was about half a mile (0.8 kilometres) from Shakespeare's boyhood home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, and there are no documents detailing what was taught at the Stratford school. However, grammar school curricula were largely similar, and the basic Latin text was standardised by royal decree. The school would have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar,
20300-412: Was also allowed the use of the honorific " gentleman " after 1596 when his father was granted a coat of arms . Shakespeare scholars see no reason to suspect that the name was a pseudonym or that the actor was a front for the author: contemporary records identify Shakespeare as the writer, other playwrights such as Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe came from similar backgrounds, and no contemporary
20445-472: Was granted a coat of arms in 1596. This honorific was conventionally designated by the title "Master" or its abbreviations "Mr." or "M." prefixed to the name (though it was often used by principal citizens and to imply respect to men of stature in the community without designating exact social status). The title was included in many contemporary references to Shakespeare, including official and literary records, and identifies William Shakespeare of Stratford as
20590-620: 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
20735-544: 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
20880-465: 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
21025-483: 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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