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Contents
Introduction
I. Three important points about Shakespeare
II. Birth and Early Life
III. The Playwright
IV. Shakespeare’s World
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
Any discussion of Shakespeare’s life is bound to be loaded with
superlatives. In the course of a quarter century, Shakespeare wrote some
thirty-eight plays. Taken individually, several of them are among the
world’s finest written works; taken collectively, they establish
Shakespeare as the foremost literary talent of his own Elizabethan Age
and, even more impressively, as a genius whose creative achievement has
never been surpassed in any age.
In light of Shakespeare’s stature and the passage of nearly four
centuries since his death, it is not surprising that hundreds of
Shakespeare biographies have been written in all of the world’s major
languages. Scanning this panorama, most accounts of the Bard’s life (and
certainly the majority of modern studies) are contextual in the sense
that they place the figure of Shakespeare against the rich tapestry of
his “Age” or “Times” or “Society.” This characteristic approach to
Shakespeare biography is actually a matter of necessity, for without
such fleshing out into historical, social, and literary settings, the
skeletal character of what we know about Shakespeare from primary
sources would make for slim and, ironically, boring books. As part of
this embellishment process, serious scholars continue to mine for hard
facts about the nature of Shakespeare’s world. The interpretation of
their meaning necessarily varies, often according to the particular
school or ideology of the author.
Whatever the differences of opinion, valid or at least plausible views
about Shakespeare, his character and his personal experience continue to
be advanced. Yet even among modern Shakespeare biographies, in addition
to outlandish interpretations of the available facts, there persists
(and grows) a body of traditions about such matters as Shakespeare’s
marriage, his move to London, the circumstances of his death and the
like. The result of all this is that there is now a huge tapestry of
descriptive, critical, and analytical work about Shakespeare in
existence, much of it reasonable, some of it outlandish, and some of it
hogwash.
I. Three important points about Shakespeare
In examining Shakespeare’s life, three broad points should be kept in
mind from the start. First, despite the frustration of Shakespeare
biographers with the absence of a primary source of information written
during (or even shortly after) his death on 23 April 1616 (his
fifty-second birthday), Shakespeare’s life is not obscure. In fact, we
know more about Shakespeare’s life, its main events and contours, than
we know about most famous Elizabethans outside of the royal court
itself. Shakespeare’s life is unusually well-documented: there are well
over 100 references to Shakespeare and his immediate family in local
parish, municipal, and commercial archives and we also have at least
fifty observations about Shakespeare’s plays (and through them, his
life) from his contemporaries.
The structure of Shakespeare’s life is remarkably sound; it is the flesh
of his personal experience, his motives, and the like that have no firm
basis and it is, of course, this descriptive content in which we are
most interested. Second, the appeal of seeing an autobiographical basis
in Shakespeare’s plays and poetry must be tempered by what the bulk of
the evidence has to say about him.
Although there are fanciful stories about Shakespeare, many centering
upon his romantic affairs, connections between them and the events or
characters of his plays are flimsy, and they generally disregard our
overall impression of the Bard.
In his personal life, Shakespeare was, in fact, an exceedingly practical
individual, undoubtedly a jack of many useful trades, and a shrewd
businessman in theatrical, commercial and real estate circles. Third,
the notion that plays ascribed to Shakespeare were actually written by
others (Sir Francis Bacon, the poet Phillip Sidney among the candidates)
has become even weaker over time. The current strong consensus is that
while Shakespeare may have collaborated with another Elizabethan
playwright in at least one instance (probably with John Fletcher on The
Two Noble Kinsman), and that one or two of his plays were completed by
someone else (possibly Fletcher on an original or revised version of
Henry VIII), the works ascribed to Shakespeare are his.
II. Birth and Early Life
Parish records establish that William Shakespeare was born on 26 April
1564. Simply counting backwards the three customary days between birth
and baptism in Anglican custom, most reckon that the Bard of Avon was
born on 23 April, 1564. This is, indeed, Shakespeare’s official birthday
in England, and, it is also the traditional birth date of St. George,
the patron saint of England. The exact date and the precise cause of
Shakespeare’s death are unknown: one local tradition asserts that the
Bard died on 23 April, 1616, of a chill caught after a night of drinking
with fellow playwrights Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton. Shakespeare was,
in fact, buried three days later, exactly 52 years after his baptism.
Shakespeare was born and raised in the picturesque Tudor market town of
Stratford-on-Avon, a local government and commercial center within a
larger rural setting, and it is likely that the surrounding woodlands of
his boyhood were reflected in the play As You Like It, with its Forest
of Arden. Shakespeare’s mother Mary Arden was a daughter of the local
gentry, holding extensive properties around Stratford-on-Avon in his
name. In marrying Shakespeare’s father, the glover and tenant farmer
John Shakespeare, Mary Arden took a step down the social ladder of the
Elizabethan Age, for her husband was of the yeoman class, a notch or two
below the gentry. Yet long before his son’s fame as a playwright fell to
his good fortune, John Shakespeare’s talents enabled him to rise
modestly on his own accord as he became a burgess member of the town
council. Despite evidence of a family financial setback when William was
fifteen, Shakespeare’s family was comfortable, if not privileged.
Shakespeare’s eventual fame and success spilled over to his parents in
the form of both money and title, and on the eve of his death in 1601,
Queen Elizabeth granted the Bard’s father a “gentleman’s” family
coat-of-arms.
We have good cause to believe that Shakespeare attended Stratford
Grammar School where he would have received a tuition-free education as
the son of a burgess father. There young William was exposed to a
standard Elizabethan curriculum strong on Greek and Latin literature
(including the playwrights Plautus and Seneca, and the amorous poet
Ovid), rhetoric (including that of the ancient Roman orator Cicero), and
Christian ethics (including a working knowledge of the Holy Bible).
These influences are pervasive in Shakespeare’s works, and it is also
apparent that Shakespeare cultivated a knowledge of English history
through chronicles written shortly before and during his adolescence.
Shakespeare left school in 1579 at the age of fifteen, possibly as the
result of a family financial problem. Shakespeare did not pursue formal
education any further: he never attended a university and was not
considered to be a truly learned man.
There is a period in Shakespeare’s life of some seven years (1585 to
1592) from which we have absolutely no primary source materials about
him. We do know that in November of 1582, at the age of eighteen, he
married Anne Hathaway (a woman eight years his senior), and that she
gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, six months later. Two years after
that, the Shakespeares had twins: Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet,
Shakespeare’s only son, would die at the age of eleven. Speculation has
it that Shakespeare was not happy in his marriage, and that this may
have played a role in his decision to move to London’s theatre scene.
In fact, during the late 1580s and early 1590s, Shakespeare travelled
back and forth between London and Stratford-on-Avon, but by this time,
the momentum of Shakespeare’s life was toward his career and away from
family, hearth, and home. Although we lack hard facts, we may surmise
that before he took up a career as a playwright, Shakespeare engaged in
a variety of occupations, probably working with his father in commercial
trades (leathers and grains), probably working as a law clerk, and
possibly serving as a soldier or sailor for an England threatened by
Spain. Shakespeare displays a command of the argot and the practices of
many such crafts, as in his portrayal of the law profession in trial
scenes of The Merchant of Venice.
III. The Playwright
Between the early 1590s (The Comedy of Errors) and the second decade of
the seventeenth century (The Tempest written in 1611), Shakespeare
composed the most extraordinary body of works in the history of world
drama. His works are often divided into periods, moving roughly from
comedies to histories to tragedies and then to his final romances capped
by a farewell to the stage in The Tempest.
The question of how and whether the Bard’s career should be divided into
periods aside, we do know that Shakespeare received a major boost in
1592 (the earliest review of his work that we have), when
playwright-critic Robert Greene condemned the future Bard as an impudent
“upstart” beneath the notice of established literary men or University
Wits. Greene’s critical diatribe was soon retracted by his editor as a
number of leading Elizabethan literary figures expressed their
admiration for his early plays.
Retreating from London in the plague years of 1592 through 1594,
Shakespeare briefly left playwriting aside to compose long poems like
Venus and Adonis and at least some of his sonnets. But during this
period, Shakespeare garnered the support of his first major sponsor, the
Earl of Southampton. Soon, as a leading figure in the Chamberlain’s Men
company he would garner even greater patronage from the courts of Queen
Elizabeth and her successor, King James.
Just as the rise of Shakespeare’s success, popularity, and fame began to
accelerate, he experienced a personal tragedy when his son Hamnet died
in 1596. Shakespeare undoubtedly returned to Stratford for Hamnet’s
funeral and this event may have prompted him to spend more time with his
wife and daughters. In 1597, Shakespeare purchased a splendid Tudor
Mansion in his hometown known as the New Place. During the period
between 1597 and 1611, Shakespeare apparently spent most of his time in
London during the theatrical season, but was active in Stratford as
well, particularly as an investor in grain dealings. Shakespeare also
purchased real estate in the countryside and in London as well, the
latter including Blackfriar’s Gatehouse which he bought in 1613. In
1612, four years before his death, Shakespeare went into semi-retirement
at the relatively young age of forty-eight. He died on or about 23 April
of 1616 of unknown causes.
William Shakespeare’s family lineage came to an end two generations
after his death. His two daughters followed different paths in their
father’s eyes. His older daughter, Susanna, married a prominent local
doctor, John Hall, in 1607 and there are indications that a close
friendship developed between Hall and his renowned father-in-law.
Susanna gave Shakespeare his only grandchild, Elizabeth Hall in 1608.
Although she inherited the family estate and was married twice (her
first husband dying) Elizabeth had no children of her own. Shakespeare’s
other daughter, Judith married Thomas Quiney, a tavern owner and reputed
rake given to pre-marital and extramarital affairs and the fathering of
illegitimate children. They had three legitimate sons, all of whom died
young.
IV. Shakespeare’s World
Most of Shakespeare’s career unfolded during the monarchy of Elizabeth
I, the Great Virgin Queen from whom the historical period of the Bard’s
life takes its name as the Elizabethan Age. Elizabeth came to the throne
under turbulent circumstances in 1558 (before Shakespeare was born) and
ruled until 1603. Under her reign, not only did England prosper as a
rising commercial power at the expense of Catholic Spain, Shakespeare’s
homeland undertook an enormous expansion into the New World and laid the
foundations of what would become the British Empire. This ascendance
came in the wake of the Renaissance and the Reformation, the former
regaining Greek and Roman classics and stimulating an outburst of
creative endeavor throughout Europe, the latter transforming England
into a Protestant/Anglican state, and generating continuing religious
strife, especially during the civil wars of Elizabeth’s Catholic sister,
Queen Margaret or “Bloody Mary.”
The Elizabethan Age, then, was an Age of Discovery, of the pursuit of
scientific knowledge, and the exploration of human nature itself. The
basic assumptions underpinning feudalism/Scholasticism were openly
challenged with the support of Elizabeth and, equally so, by her
successor on the throne, James I. There was in all this an optimism
about humanity and its future and an even greater optimism about the
destiny of England in the world at large. Nevertheless, the Elizabethans
also recognized that the course of history is problematic, that Fortune
can undo even the greatest and most promising, as Shakespeare reveals in
such plays as Antony & Cleopatra. More specifically, Shakespeare and his
audiences were keenly aware of the prior century’s prolonged bloodshed
during the War of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York.
Many Elizabethans, particularly the prosperous, feared the prospect of
civil insurrection and the destruction of the commonwealth, whether as a
result of an uprising from below or of usurpation at the top. Thus,
whether or not we consider Shakespeare to have been a political
conservative, his histories, tragedies and even his romances and
comedies are slanted toward the restoration or maintenance of civil
harmony and the status quo of legitimate rule.
Conclusion
To cut a long story short, William Shakespeare was one of the greatest
and famous writers. He was born in 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon. It was a
small English town. His father wanted his son to be an educated person
and William was sent to the local grammar school. When the boy studied
at school he had no free time. When he had a rest William liked to go to
the forest and to the river Avon.
At that time actors and actresses visited Stratford-on-Avon. William
liked to watch them. He was fond of their profession and he decided to
become an actor. He went to London. There he became an actor. He began
to write plays too. Shakespeare was both an actor and a playwright. In
his works Shakespeare described important and dramatic events of life.
His plays were staged in many theatres, translated into many languages
and they made Shakespeare a very popular man.
The most famous plays of the writer are “Othello”, “King Lear”,
“Hamlet”, “Romeo and Juliet”. He produced thirty seven plays. He was
connected with the best theatres of England during twenty five years.
William Shakespeare wrote a lot of poetry. His poems have been published
in many languages. They are well-known among people. We don’t know a lot
of facts of Shakespeare’s life. We can only guess what kind of man he
was, that’s why there are many legends about his life. William
Shakespeare died in 1616. But his plays are popular now and millions of
people admire them.
Bibliography
1. A new history of Great Britain. Edward W. Wagner, Edward J. Shultz. –
Edinburgh, 2005.
2. England, it’s history & culture. – Seoul, 2004
3. Modern Shakespeare. – London, 2006.
4. Жизнь и творчество Шекспира. /Под ред. П. А. Воробьева. – М., 1985.
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