Shakespeare's
influence on the English-speaking world shows in the ready recognition
afforded many quotations from Shakespearean plays, the titles of
works based on Shakespearean phrases, and the many adaptations of
his plays. Other indicators of contemporary influence include his
appearance in the top ten of the "100 Greatest Britons"
poll sponsored by the BBC, the frequent productions based on his
work, such as the BBC Television Shakespeare, and the success of
the fictional account of his life in the 1998 film Shakespeare in
Love.
Biography
Most historians agree that William Shakespeare - actor, playwright
and poet - was a single person, one for whom we have considerable
historical records. (Note that Elizabethan English did not use standardised
spelling; although his surname most commonly appears as Shakespeare,
Shakespere also recurs frequently, and the name sometimes appears
as Shakespear, Shaksper and even Shaxberd.
Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in April 1564,
the son of John Shakespeare, a glove-maker, and of Mary Arden. His
baptismal record dates to April 26 of that year and (given traditional
timings of baptisms) tradition considers April 23 as his birthday.
Shakespeare's father, prosperous at the time of William's birth,
was prosecuted for participating in the black market in wool, and
later lost his position as an alderman. Some evidence exists that
both sides of the family had Roman Catholic sympathies.
As the son of a prominent town official, William Shakespeare most
likely attended the Stratford grammar school, which provided an
intensive education in Latin grammar and literature. There is no
evidence that his formal education extended beyond this.
Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, on November
28, 1582 at Temple Grafton, near Stratford. Two neighbors of Anne,
Fulk Sandalls and John Richardson, posted bond that there were no
impediments to the marriage. There appears to have been some haste
in arranging the ceremony: Anne was three months pregnant. After
his marriage, William Shakespeare left few traces in the historical
record until he appeared on the London literary scene.
On May 26, 1583 Shakespeare's first child, Susanna, was baptised
at Stratford. There soon followed on February 2, 1585 the baptisms
of a son, Hamnet, and of a daughter, Judith.
By 1592 Shakespeare had enough of a reputation for Robert Greene
to denounce him as "an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers,
that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is
as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and
beeing an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceit the
onely Shake-scene in a countrey." (The italicised line parodies
the phrase, "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide"
which Shakespeare used in Henry VI, part 3.)
In 1596 Hamnet died; he was buried on August 11, 1596. Because of
the similarities of their names, some suspect that his death provided
the impetus for Shakespeare's The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince
of Denmark.
By 1598 Shakespeare had moved to the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate,
and appeared top of a list of actors in Every man in his Humour
written by Ben Jonson.
Shakespeare became an actor, writer and ultimately part-owner of
an acting company known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men — the company
took its name, like others of the period, from its aristocratic
sponsor, the Lord Chamberlain. The group became sufficiently popular
that after the death of Elizabeth I and the coronation of James
I (1603), the new monarch adopted the company and it became known
as The King's Men.
Various documents recording legal affairs and commercial transactions
show that Shakespeare grew increasingly affluent in his London years.
He did well enough to buy a property in Blackfriars, London, and
owned the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place.
In 1609 he published his sonnets, love poems variously addressed:
some to a 'dark lady', and some to a young man (or 'fair lord').
Shakespeare retired in approximately 1611 and died in 1616, on April
23 — perhaps part of the reason behind the tradition of his birthday
being this same day. He remained married to Anne until his death.
His two daughters, Susannah and Judith, survived him. Susannah married
Dr John Hall, and later became the subject of a court case.
His tombstone reads, "Blest be the man who cast these stones,
and cursed be he that moves my bones." Popular myth claims
that unpublished works by Shakespeare may lie within the bard's
tomb, but no-one has ever verified these claims, perhaps for fear
of the curse included in the quoted epitaph.
Reputation
Main article: Shakespeare's reputation
During his lifetime and shortly after his death, Shakespeare was
well-regarded, but not considered the supreme poet of his age. He
was included in some contemporary lists of leading poets, but he
lacked the stature of Edmund Spenser or Philip Sidney. It is more
difficult to assess his contemporary reputation as a playwright:
plays were considered ephemeral and even somewhat disreputable entertainments
rather than serious literature. The fact that his plays were collected
in an expensively produced folio in 1623 (the only precedent being
Ben Jonson's Workes of 1616) and the fact that that folio went into
another edition within nine years, indicate that he was held in
unusually high regard for a playwright.
After the Interregnum stage ban of 1642—1660, the new Restoration
theatre companies had the previous generation of playwrights as
the mainstay of their repertory, most of all the phenomenally popular
Beaumont and Fletcher team, but also Ben Jonson and Shakespeare.
Old plays were often adapted for the Restoration stage, and where
Shakespeare is concerned, this undertaking has seemed shockingly
respectless to posterity. A notorious example is Nahum Tate's happy-ending
King Lear of 1681, which held the stage until 1838. In the early
18th century, Shakespeare took over the lead on the English stage
from Beaumont and Fletcher, never to relinquish it again.
In literary criticism, by contrast, Shakespeare held a unique position
from the start. The unbending French neo-classical "rules"
and the three unities of time, place, and action never really caught
on in England, and and practically all critics gave the more "correct"
Ben Jonson second place to "the incomparable Shakespeare"
(John Dryden, 1668), the follower of nature, the untaught genius,
the great realist of human character. The long-lived myth that the
Romantics were the first generation to truly appreciate Shakespeare
and to prefer him to Ben Jonson is contradicted by accolades from
Restoration and 18th-century writers such as John Dryden, Joseph
Addison, Alexander Pope, and Samuel Johnson. The 18th century is
also largely responsible for setting the text of Shakespeare's plays.
Nicholas Rowe created the first truly scholarly text for the plays
in 1709, and Edmund Malone's Variorum Edition (published posthumously
in 1821] is still the basis of modern editions of the plays.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Romantic critics such as Samuel
Taylor Coleridge raised admiration for Shakespeare to adulation
or bardolatry, in line with the Romantic reverence for the poet
as prophet and genius.
Identity and authorship
Main article: Shakespearean authorship
As noted above, there is considerable historical evidence of the
existence of a William Shakespeare who lived in both Stratford-upon-Avon
and London. The vast majority of academics identify this Shakespeare
as the Shakespeare, contrary to the theories of some who believe
that there were two different Shakespeares, one an actor, the other
a playwright; or that some other writer used the name "Shakespeare"
as a pseudonym; or that the alternative spellings of Shakespeare's
surname were actually legitimate spellings of two different names.
In part, this debate stems from the scarcity and ambiguity of many
of the historical records of this period; even the painting that
accompanies this article (and that appears above the name "William
Shakespeare" in the National Portrait Gallery, London) may
not depict Shakespeare at all. Various fringe scholars have suggested
writers such as Sir Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, Christopher Marlowe
and even Queen Elizabeth I as alternative authors or co-authors
for some or all of "Shakespeare"'s work. The proponents
of such claims necessarily rely on conspiracy theories to explain
the lack of direct historical evidence for them.
A related question in mainstream academia addresses whether Shakespeare
himself wrote every word of his commonly-accepted plays, given that
collaboration between dramatists routinely occurred in the Elizabethan
theatre. Serious academic work continues to attempt to ascertain
the authorship of plays and poems of the time, both those attributed
to Shakespeare and others. See academic Shakespearean authorship
debates.
Works
Plays and their categories
Shakespeare's plays first appeared in print as a series of folios
and quartos, and scholars, actors and directors continue to study
and perform them extensively. They form an established part of the
Western canon of literature.
One could categorise his dramatic work as follows:
Tragedies
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
King Lear
Hamlet
Othello
Titus Andronicus
Julius Caesar
Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Troilus and Cressida
Timon of Athens
Comedies
The Comedy of Errors
All's Well That Ends Well
As You Like It
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Much Ado About Nothing
Measure for Measure
The Tempest
Taming of the Shrew
Twelfth Night or What You Will
The Merchant of Venice
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Love's Labour's Lost
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Cymbeline
The Winter's Tale
The Two Noble Kinsmen
Histories
Richard III
Richard II
Henry VI, part 1
Henry VI, part 2
Henry VI, part 3
Henry V
Henry IV, part 1
Henry IV, part 2
Henry VIII
King John
Some scholars of Shakespeare break the category of "Comedies"
into "Comedies" and "Romances". Plays in the
latter category would include Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, Pericles
Prince of Tyre, and The Tempest.
Dramatic collaborations
Like
most playwrights of his period, Shakespeare did not always write
alone, and scholars believe a number of his plays collaborative.
Some of the following attributions, such as for The Two Noble Kinsmen,
have well-attested contemporary documentation; others, such as for
Titus Andronicus, remain more controversial, depending on linguistic
analysis by modern scholars.
Cardenio, a lost play; reports suggest Shakespeare collaborated
on it with John Fletcher.
Henry VI, part 1, possibly the work of a team of playwrights, whose
identities we can only guess at. Some scholars argue that Shakespeare
wrote less than 20% of the text.
Henry VIII, generally considered a collaboration between Shakespeare
and John Fletcher.
Macbeth: Thomas Middleton may have revised this tragedy in 1615
to incorporate extra musical sequences.
Measure for Measure may have undergone a light revision by Thomas
Middleton at some point after its original composition.
Pericles Prince of Tyre may include the work of George Wilkins,
either as collaborator, reviser, or revisee.
Timon of Athens may result from collaboration between Shakespeare
and Thomas Middleton; this might explain its incoherent plot and
its unusually cynical tone.
Titus Andronicus may be a collaboration with, or revision of, George
Peele.
The Two Noble Kinsmen, published in quarto in 1654 and attributed
to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare; each appears to have written
about about half of it.
Plays possibly by Shakespeare
Edward III Some scholars have recently chosen to attribute
this play to Shakespeare, based on the style of its verse. Others
refuse to accept it, citing, among other reasons, the mediocre quality
of the characters. If Shakespeare had involvement, he probably worked
as a collaborator.
Sir Thomas More, a collaborative work by several playwrights, possibly
including Shakespeare. That Shakespeare had any part in this play
remains uncertain.
Lost plays by Shakespeare
Love's Labour's Won A late sixteenth-century writer, Francis
Meres, and a scrap of paper (apparently from a bookseller), both
list this title among Shakespeare's recent works, but no play of
this title has survived. It may have become lost, or it may represent
an alternate title of one of the plays listed above, such as Much
Ado About Nothing or All's Well That Ends Well.
Cardenio, a late play by Shakespeare and Fletcher, referred to in
several documents, has not survived. It re-worked a tale in Cervantes'
Don Quixote. In 1727, Lewis Theobald produced a play he called Double
Falshood, which he claimed to have adapted from three manuscripts
of a lost play by Shakespeare that he did not name. Double Falshood
does re-work the Cardenio story, and modern scholarship generally
agrees that Double Falshood represents all we have of the lost play.
Other works
Shakespeare's other literary works include:
Sonnets
Longer poems:
Venus and Adonis
The Rape of Lucrece
The Passionate Pilgrim
The Phoenix and the Turtle
A Funeral Elegy by W.S. (?). For a period many believed, on the
basis of stylistic evidence researched by Don Foster, that Shakespeare
wrote a Funeral Elegy for William Peter. However most scholars,
including Foster, now conclude that this evidence was flawed and
that Shakespeare did not write the Elegy, which is more likely from
the pen of John Ford.
Shakespeare
and the textual problem
Unlike his contemporary Ben Jonson, Shakespeare did not have direct
involvement in publishing his plays. The problem of identifying
what Shakespeare actually wrote became a major concern for most
modern editions. Textual corruptions stemming from printers' errors,
misreadings by compositors or simply wrongly scanned lines from
the source material litter the Quartos and the First Folio. Additionally,
in an age before standardised spelling, Shakespeare often wrote
a word several times in a different spelling, and this may have
contributed to some of the transcribers' confusion. Modern editors
have the task of reconstructing Shakespeare's original words and
expurgating errors as far as possible.
In some cases the textual solution presents few difficulties. In
the case of Macbeth for example, scholars believe that someone (probably
Thomas Middleton) adapted and shortened the original to produce
the extant text published in the First Folio, but that remains our
only authorised text. In others the text may have become manifestly
corrupt or unreliable (Pericles or Timon of Athens) but no competing
version exists. The modern editor can only regularise and correct
erroneous readings that have survived into the printed versions.
The textual problem can, however, become rather complicated. Modern
scholarship now believes Shakespeare to have modified his plays
through the years, sometimes leading to two existing versions of
one play. To provide a modern text in such cases, editors must face
the choice between the original first version and the later, revised,
usually more theatrical version. In the past editors have resolved
this problem by conflating the texts to provide what they believe
to be a superior Ur-text, but critics now argue that to provide
a conflated text would run contrary to Shakespeare's intentions.
In King Lear for example, two independent versions, each with their
own textual integrity, exist in the Quarto and the Folio versions.
Shakespeare's changes here extend from the merely local to the structural.
Hence the Oxford Shakespeare, published in 1986, provides two different
versions of the play, each with respectable authority. The problem
exists with at least four other Shakespearean plays (Henry IV, part
1, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, and Othello ).
Specialist acting companies and theatres
John Bell's Bell Shakespeare Company in Australia
Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon
Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon
Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, Utah
The Shakespeare Theater in Washington, DC
Shakespeare by the Sea, various companies of this name in Canada
and the US
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