William Shakespeare

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William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616)Modèle:Ref label was an English poet and playwright, now widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.<ref>Shakespeare voted millennium's best writer, BBC News, March 1, 1999, accessed Oct. 11, 2007.</ref><ref>Greenblatt, Stephen (2005). Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. London: Pimlico, 11. ISBN 0712600981.
• Bevington, David (2002) Shakespeare, 1–3. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0631227199.
• Wells, Stanley (1997). Shakespeare: A Life in Drama. New York: W. W. Norton, 399. ISBN 0393315622.</ref> He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays,Modèle:Ref label 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.<ref>Modèle:Cite book</ref>

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.<ref>Modèle:Cite book; Modèle:Cite book; Modèle:Cite book</ref>

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, producing plays, such as Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.

Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry".<ref>Bertolini, John Anthony (1993). Shaw and Other Playwrights. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 119. ISBN 027100908X.</ref> In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

Life

Main article: Shakespeare's life

Early life

William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, a successful glover and alderman originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 14–22.</ref> He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised on 26 April 1564. His unknown birthday is traditionally observed on 23 April, St George's Day.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 24–6.</ref> This date, which can be traced back to an eighteenth-century scholar's mistake, has proved appealing because Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 24, 296.
• Honan, 15–16.</ref> He was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 23–24.</ref>

Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was educated at the King's New School in Stratford,<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 62–63.
• Ackroyd, Peter (2006). Shakespeare: The Biography. London: Vintage, 53. ISBN 0749386558.
• Wells, Stanley, et al (2005). The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xv–xvi. ISBN 0199267170.</ref> a free school chartered in 1553,<ref>Modèle:Cite book</ref> about a quarter of a mile from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but the curriculum was dictated by law throughout England,<ref>Baldwin, 164–84.
• Cressy, David (1975). Education in Tudor and Stuart England. New York: St Martin's Press, 28, 29. OCLC 2148260.</ref> and the school would have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and the classics.<ref>Baldwin, 164–66.
• Cressy, 80–82.
• Ackroyd, 545.
• Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xvi.</ref> At the age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. Two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds the next day as surety that there were no impediments to the marriage.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 77–78.</ref> The couple may have arranged the ceremony in some haste, since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times.<ref>Wood, Michael (2003). Shakespeare. New York: Basic Books, 84. ISBN 0465092640.
• Schoenbaum, Compact, 78–79.</ref> Anne's pregnancy could have been the reason for this. Six months after the marriage, she gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, who was baptised on 26 May 1583.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 93</ref> Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised on 2 February 1585.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 94.</ref> Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried on 11 August, 1596.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 224.</ref>

After the birth of the twins, there are few historical traces of Shakespeare until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. Because of this gap, scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years".<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 95.</ref> Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare’s first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 97–108.
• Rowe, Nicholas (1709). Some Account of the Life &c. of Mr. William Shakespear. Reproduced by Terry A. Gray (1997) at: Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet. Retrieved 30 July 2007.</ref> Another eighteenth-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 144–45.</ref> John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 110–11.</ref> Some twentieth-century scholars have 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.<ref>Honigmann, E. A. J. (1999). Shakespeare: The Lost Years. Revised Edition. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1. ISBN 0719054257.
• Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xvii.</ref> No evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 95–117.
• Wood, 97–109.</ref>

London and theatrical career

It is not known exactly when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592.<ref>Chambers, E.K. (1930). William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 287, 292. OCLC 353406.</ref> He was well enough known in London by then to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene:

...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, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.<ref>Greenblatt, 213.</ref>

Scholars differ on the exact meaning of these words,<ref>Greenblatt, 213.
• Schoenbaum, 153.</ref> but most agree that Greene is accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match university-educated writers, such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe and Greene himself.<ref>Ackroyd, 176.</ref> The italicised line parodying the phrase "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 3, along with the pun "Shake-scene", identifies Shakespeare as Greene’s target.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 151–52.</ref>

Greene’s attack is the first recorded mention of Shakespeare’s career in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene’s remarks.<ref>Wells, Stanley (2006). Shakespeare & Co. New York: Pantheon, 28. ISBN 0375424946.
• Schoenbaum, Compact, 144–46.
• Chambers, William Shakespeare, Vol. 1, p. 59.</ref> From 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed 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.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 184.</ref> 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 the King's Men.<ref>Chambers, E.K. (1923). The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 208–209. OCLC 336379.</ref>

In 1599, a partnership of company members built their own theatre on the south bank of the Thames, which they called the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that the company made him a wealthy man.<ref>Chambers, William Shakespeare, Vol. 2, p. 67–71.</ref> In 1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, he invested in a share of the parish tithes in Stratford.<ref>Bentley, G. E (1961). Shakespeare: A Biographical Handbook. New Haven: Yale University Press, 36. OCLC 356416.</ref>

Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions from 1594. By 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title pages.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 188.
• Kastan, David Scott (1999). Shakespeare After Theory. London; New York: Routledge, 37. ISBN 041590112X.
• Modèle:Cite book</ref> 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).<ref>Adams, Joseph Quincy (1923). A Life of William Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 275. OCLC 1935264.</ref> 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 was nearing its end.<ref>Wells, Shakespeare & Co., 28.</ref> 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 we cannot know for certain what roles he played.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 200.</ref> In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 200–201.</ref> In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father.<ref>Rowe, N., Account.</ref> Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It and the Chorus in Henry V,<ref>Ackroyd, 357.
• Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xxii.</ref> though scholars doubt the sources of the information.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 202–3.</ref>

Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford during his career. 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.<ref>Honan, Park (1998). Shakespeare: A Life. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 121. ISBN 0198117922.</ref> He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there.<ref>Shapiro, 122.</ref> 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 called Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear.<ref>Honan, 325; Greenblatt, 405.</ref>

Later years and death

After 1606–7, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 279.</ref> His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher,<ref>Honan, 375–78.</ref> who succeeded him as the house playwright for the King’s Men.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 276.</ref>

Rowe was the first biographer to pass down the tradition that Shakespeare retired to Stratford some years before his death;<ref name="Ac">Ackroyd, 476.</ref> but retirement from all work was uncommon at that time,<ref>Honan, 382–83.</ref> and Shakespeare continued to visit London.<ref name="Ac">Ackroyd, 476.</ref> In 1612, he was called as a witness in a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary.<ref>Honan, 326.
• Ackroyd, 462–464.</ref> In March 1613, he bought a gatehouse in the Blackfriars priory;<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 272–274.</ref> and from November 1614, he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall.<ref>Honan, 387.</ref>

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616,<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 25, 296.</ref> and was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607,<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 287.</ref> and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare’s death.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 292, 294.</ref>

In his will, Shakespeare left the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 304.</ref> The terms instructed that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body".<ref>Honan, 395–96.</ref> The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying.<ref>Chambers, William Shakespeare, Vol 2: 8, 11, 104.
• Schoenbaum, Compact, 296.</ref> The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare’s direct line.<ref>Chambers, William Shakespeare, Vol 2: 7, 9, 13.
• Schoenbaum, Compact, 289, 318–19.</ref> Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who 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.<ref>Ackroyd, 483.
• Frye, Roland Mushat (2005). The Art of the Dramatist. London; New York: Routledge, 16. ISBN 0415352894.
• Greenblatt, 145–6.</ref> 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.<ref>Schoenbaum, 301–3.</ref>

Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 306–07.
• Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xviii.</ref> Sometime before 1623, a 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.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 308–10.</ref> A stone slab covering his grave is inscribed with a curse against moving his bones.

Plays

Main article: Shakespeare's plays

Scholars have often noted four periods in Shakespeare's writing career.<ref>Dowden, Edward (1881). Shakspere. New York: Appleton & Co., 48–9. OCLC 8164385.</ref> Until the mid-1590s, he wrote mainly comedies influenced by Roman and Italian models and history plays in the popular chronicle tradition. His second period began in about 1595 with the tragedy Romeo and Juliet and ended with the tragedy of Julius Caesar in 1599. During this time, he wrote what are considered his greatest comedies and histories. From about 1600 to about 1608, his "tragic period", Shakespeare wrote mostly tragedies, and from about 1608 to 1613, mainly tragicomedies called romances.

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, however,<ref>Frye, 9.
• Honan, 166.</ref> and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew and Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare’s earliest period.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 159–61.
• Frye, 9.</ref> His first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,<ref>Dutton, Richard; and Jean Howard (2003). A Companion to Shakespeare's Works: The Histories. Oxford: Blackwell, 147. ISBN 0631226338.</ref> dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty.<ref>Ribner, Irving (2005). The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare. London; New York: Routledge, 154–155. ISBN 0415353149.</ref> Their composition was influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher MarloweModèle:Ref label, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca.<ref>Frye, 105.
• Ribner, 67.
• Cheney, Patrick Gerard (2004). The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 100. ISBN 0521527341.</ref> The Comedy of Errors’’ was also based on classical models; but no source for the The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though it is related to a separate play of the same name and may have derived from a folk story.<ref>Honan, 136.
• Schoenbaum, Compact, 166.</ref> Like Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve of rape,<ref>Frye, 91.
• Honan 116–117.
• Werner, Sarah (2001). Shakespeare and Feminist Performance. London; New York: Routledge, 96–100. ISBN 0415227291.</ref> the Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics and directors.<ref>Friedman, Michael D (2006). "'I'm not a feminist director but...': Recent Feminist Productions of The Taming of the Shrew," in Acts of Criticism: Performance Matters in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: Essays in Honor of James P. Lusardi. Paul Nelsen and June Schlueter (eds.). New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 159. ISBN 0838640591.</ref>

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 greatest comedies.<ref>Ackroyd, 235.</ref> A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic low-life scenes.<ref>Wood, 161–162.</ref> Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic The Merchant of Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock which reflected Elizabethan views but may appear racist to modern audiences.<ref>Wood, 205–206.
• Honan 258.</ref> The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing,<ref>Ackroyd, 359.</ref> the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies.<ref>Ackroyd, 362–383.</ref> After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts I and 2, and Henry V. 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.<ref>Shapiro, 150.
• Gibbons, Brian (1993). Shakespeare and Multiplicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1. ISBN 0521444063.
•

Ackroyd, 356.</ref> This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death;<ref>Wood, 161.
• Honan, 206.</ref> and  Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which introduced a new kind of drama.<ref>Ackroyd, 353, 358.
• Shapiro, 151–153.</ref> According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in Julius Caesar "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to infuse each other".<ref>Shapiro, 151.</ref>

Image:Henry Fuseli- Hamlet and his father's Ghost.JPG

Shakespeare's so-called "tragic period" lasted from about 1600 to 1608, though he also wrote the so-called "problem plays" Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends Well during this time and had written tragedies before.<ref>Bradley, A. C (1991 edition). Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. London: Penguin, 85. ISBN 0140530193.
• Muir, Kenneth (2005). Shakespeare's Tragic Sequence. London; New York: Routledge, 12–16. ISBN 0415353254.</ref> Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The hero of the first, Hamlet, has probably been more discussed than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy "To be or not to be; that is the question."<ref>Bradley, 94.</ref> Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, the heroes of the tragedies that followed, Othello and King Lear, are undone by hasty errors of judgement.<ref>Bradley, 86.</ref> 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.<ref>Bradley, 40, 48.</ref> In Othello, the villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him.<ref>Bradley, 42, 169, 195.
• Greenblatt, 304.</ref> In King Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, triggering scenes which lead to the murder of his daughter and the torture and blinding of the Duke of Gloucester. According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty".<ref>Bradley, 226.
• Ackroyd, 423.
• Kermode, Frank (2004). The Age of Shakespeare. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 141–2. ISBN 029784881X.</ref> In Macbeth, the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies,<ref>McDonald, Russ (2006). Shakespeare's Late Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 43–46. ISBN 0521820685.</ref> uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful king and usurp the throne, until their own guilt destroys them in turn.<ref>Bradley, 306.</ref> 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.<ref>Ackroyd, 444.
• McDonald, 69–70.
• Eliot, T S (1934). Elizabethan Essays. London: Faber & Faber, 59. OCLC 9738219.</ref>

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.<ref>Dowden, 57.</ref> Some commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day.<ref>Dowden, 60.
• Frye, 123.
• McDonald, 15.</ref> Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.<ref>Wells, Oxford, 1247, 1279. ISBN 0199267170.</ref>

Performances

Main article: Shakespeare in performance

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.<ref>Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xx.</ref> After the plagues of 1592–3, Shakespeare's plays were performed by his own company at The Theatre and the Curtain in Shoreditch, north of the Thames.<ref>Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xxi.</ref> Londoners flocked there to see the first part of Henry IV, Leonard Digges recording, "Let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest...and you scarce shall have a room".<ref>Shapiro, 16.</ref> 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.<ref>Foakes, R. A (1990). "Playhouses and Players". In The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama. A. Braunmuller and Michael Hattaway (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 6. ISBN 0521386624.
• Shapiro, 125–31.</ref> The Globe opened in autumn 1599; with Julius Caesar one of the first plays staged. Most of Shakespeare's greatest post-1599 plays were written for the Globe, including Hamlet, Othello and King Lear.<ref>Foakes, 6.
• Nagler, A.M (1958). Shakespeare's Stage. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 7. ISBN 0300026897.
• Shapiro, 131–2.</ref>

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.<ref>Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xxii.</ref> After 1608, they performed at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre during the winter and the Globe during the summer.<ref>Foakes, 33.</ref> 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."<ref>Ackroyd, 454.
• Holland, Peter (ed.) (2000). Cymbeline. London: Penguin; Introduction, xli. ISBN 0140714723.</ref>

The actors in Shakespeare's company included 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.<ref>Ringler, William Jr. (1997)."Shakespeare and His Actors: Some Remarks on King Lear". In Lear from Study to Stage: Essays in Criticism. James Ogden and Arthur Hawley Scouten (eds.). New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 127. ISBN 083863690X.</ref> The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, among other characters.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 210.
• Chambers, William Shakespeare, Vol. 1, p. 341.</ref> He was replaced around the turn of the sixteenth century by Robert Armin, who played roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It and the fool in King Lear.<ref>Shapiro, 247–9.</ref> In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that Henry VIII "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and ceremony".<ref name =WGlobe>Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, 1247.</ref> 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.<ref name =WGlobe>Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, 1247.</ref>

Textual sources

In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's friends from 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.<ref>Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xxxvii.</ref> Many of the plays had already appeared in quarto versions—flimsy books made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves.<ref name = "Oxfxxxiv">Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xxxiv.</ref> No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies".<ref>Pollard, xi.</ref> Alfred Pollard termed some of them "bad quartos" because of their adapted, paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed from memory.<ref>Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xxxiv.
• Pollard, Alfred W (1909). Shakespeare Quartos and Folios. London: Methuen, xi. OCLC 46308204.
• Maguire, Laurie E (1996). Shakespearean Suspect Texts: The "Bad" Quartos and Their Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 28. ISBN 0521473640.</ref> Where several versions of a play survive, each differs from the other. The differences may stem from copying or printing errors, from notes by actors or audience members, or from Shakespeare's own papers.<ref>Bowers, Fredson (1955). On Editing Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Dramatists. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 8–10.
• Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xxxiv–xxxv.</ref> In some cases, for example Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida and Othello, Shakespeare could have revised texts between the quarto and folio editions. The folio version of King Lear is so different from the 1608 quarto that the Oxford Shakespeare prints them both, since they cannot be conflated without confusion.<ref>Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, 909, 1153.</ref>

Poems

In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on erotic 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 the sexual advances of Venus; while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virgin Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin.<ref>Rowe, John; Brian Gibbons; and A.R. Braunmuller (eds.) (2006). The Poems: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, The Passionate Pilgrim, A Lover's Complaint, by William Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd revised ed.; introduction, 21. ISBN 0521855519.</ref> Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses,<ref>Frye, 288.</ref> the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust.<ref>Rowe J., The Poems, 3, 21.</ref> 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 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.<ref>Rowe J., The Poems, 1.
• Jackson, MacD P (2004). "A Lover's Complaint Revisited". In Shakespeare Studies. Susan Zimmermann (ed.). Cranbury, NJ.: Associated University Press, 267–294. ISBN 0838641202.
• Honan, 289.</ref> 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.<ref>Rowe J., The Poems, 1.
• Honan, 289.
• Schoenbaum, Compact, 327.</ref>

Sonnets

Main article: Shakespeare's sonnets

 ; ed. W. J. Craig 

     (1914)
   
.    Sonnet 18 
. The Oxford Shakespeare: the Complete Works of William Shakespeare
. Oxford: Oxford University Press 
   

Published in 1609, 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.<ref>Wood, 178.
• Schoenbaum, Compact, 180.</ref> 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".<ref>Honan, 180.</ref> Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 268.</ref> 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 pure 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 the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart".<ref>Honan, 180.
• Schoenbaum, Compact, 180.</ref> 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 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.<ref>Schoenbaum, Compact, 268–269.</ref> Critics praise the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time.<ref>Wood, 177.</ref>

Style

Main article: Shakespeare's style

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 the needs of the characters or the drama.<ref>Clemen, Wolfgang (2005). Shakespeare's Dramatic Art: Collected Essays, 150. London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415352789.</ref> 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 Two Gentlemen of Verona has been described as stilted.<ref>Frye, 105, 177.
• Clemen, Wolfgang (2005). Shakespeare's Imagery. London; New York: Routledge, 29. ISBN 0415352800.</ref>

Soon, however, Shakespeare 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.<ref>Brooke, Nicholas, "Language and Speaker in Macbeth", 69; and Bradbrook, M.C., "Shakespeare's Recollection of Marlowe", 195: both in Shakespeare's Styles: Essays in Honour of Kenneth Muir. Edwards, Philip; Inga-Stina Ewbank, and G.K. Hunter (eds.) (2004 edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521616948.</ref> No single play marks 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.<ref>Clemen, Shakespeare's Imagery, 63.</ref> 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 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 the end of lines, with the risk of monotony.<ref>Frye, 185.</ref> 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:<ref>Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2, 4–8. Wright, George T (2004). "The Play of Phrase and Line". In Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, 1945–2000. Russ McDonald (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell, 868. ISBN 0631234888.</ref>

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting

That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay

Worse than 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".<ref>Bradley, 91.</ref> In 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.<ref name="McDxxxxii">McDonald, 42–6.</ref> 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 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.<ref name="McDxxxxii"/> 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.<ref>McDonald, 36, 39, 75.</ref>

Shakespeare's poetic genius was allied with a practical sense of the theatre.<ref>Gibbons, 4.</ref> Like all playwrights of the time, Shakespeare dramatised stories from sources such as Petrarch and Holinshed.<ref name="Gibbons">Gibbons, 1–4.</ref> He reshaped each plot to create several centres of interest and 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.<ref>Gibbons, 1–7, 15.</ref> 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 the later plays, however. In his late romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre.<ref>McDonald, 13.
• Meagher, John C. (2003). Pursuing Shakespeare's Dramaturgy: Some Contexts, Resources, and Strategies in his Playmaking. New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 358. ISBN 0838639933.</ref>

Influence

Main article: Shakespeare's influence

Shakespeare's work has made a lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, and genre.<ref>Chambers, E. K. (1944). Shakespearean Gleanings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 35. OCLC 2364570.</ref> Until Romeo and Juliet, for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy.<ref>Levenson, Jill L. (2000) (ed.). Introduction. Romeo and Juliet. William Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 49–50. ISBN 0192814966.</ref> Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events; but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds.<ref>Clemen, Wolfgang (1987). Shakespeare's Soliloquies. London: Routledge, 179. ISBN 0415352770.</ref> His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success. Critic George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson as "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes."<ref>Modèle:Cite book</ref>

Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy,<ref>Millgate, Michael, and Wilson, Keith (2006). Thomas Hardy Reappraised: Essays in Honour of Michael Millgate Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 38. ISBN 0802039553.</ref> William Faulkner,<ref>Modèle:Cite book</ref> and Charles Dickens. Dickens often quoted Shakespeare, drawing 25 of his titles from Shakespeare's works.<ref>Modèle:Cite book</ref> The American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in Moby Dick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King Lear.<ref>Bryant, John (1998). "Moby Dick as Revolution". In The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville. Robert Steven Levine (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 82. ISBN 052155571X.</ref> Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare's works. These include two operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Otello and Falstaff, whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays.<ref>Gross, John (2003). "Shakespeare's Influence". In Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide. Wells, Stanley and Orlin, Lena Cowen (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 641–2. ISBN 0199245223.</ref> Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites.<ref>Porter, Roy, and Mikuláš Teich (1988). Romanticism in National Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 48. ISBN 0521339138.
• Lambourne, Lionel (1999). Victorian Painting. London: Phaidon, 193–8. ISBN 0714837768.</ref> The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a friend of William Blake, even translated Macbeth into German.<ref>Paraisz, Júlia (2006). "The Nature of a Romantic Edition". In Shakespeare Survey 59. Peter Holland (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 130. ISBN 0521868386.</ref> The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature.<ref>Nicholas Royle (2000). "To Be Announced". In The Limits of Death: Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Joanne Morra, Mark Robson, Marquard Smith (eds.). Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 0719057515.</ref>

In Shakespeare's day, English grammar and spelling were less standardised than they are now, and his use of language helped shape modern English.<ref>Crystal, David (2001). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 55–65, 74. ISBN 0521401798.</ref> Samuel Johnson quoted him more often than any other author in his A Dictionary of the English Language, the first serious work of its type.<ref> Wain, John (1975). Samuel Johnson. New York: Viking, 194. ISBN 0670616710.</ref> Expressions such as "with bated breath" (Merchant of Venice) and "a foregone conclusion" (Othello) have found their way into everyday English speech.<ref>Lynch, Jack (2002). Samuel Johnson's Dictionary: Selections from the 1755 Work that Defined the English Language. Delray Beach, FL: Levenger Press, 12. ISBN 184354296X.
• Crystal, 63.</ref>

Critical reputation

Main articles: Shakespeare's reputation and Timeline of Shakespeare criticism

Shakespeare was never revered in his lifetime, but he received his share of praise.<ref> Dominik, Mark (1988). Shakespeare–Middleton Collaborations. Beaverton, Or.: Alioth Press, 9. ISBN 0945088019.
• Grady, Hugh (2001). "Shakespeare Criticism 1600–1900". In deGrazia, Margreta, and Wells, Stanley (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 267. ISBN 0521650941.</ref> In 1598, the cleric and author Francis Meres singled him out from a group of English writers as "the most excellent" in both comedy and tragedy.<ref>Grady, Shakespeare Criticism, 265.
• Greer, Germaine (1986). William Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 9. ISBN 0192875388.</ref> And the authors of the Parnassus plays at St John's College, Cambridge, numbered him with Chaucer, Gower and Spenser.<ref>Grady, Shakespeare Criticism, 266</ref> In the First Folio, Ben Jonson called Shakespeare the "Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage", though he had remarked elsewhere that "Shakespeare wanted art".<ref>Grady, Shakespeare Criticism, 266–7</ref>

Between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the seventeenth century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson.<ref>Grady, Shakespeare Criticism, 269.</ref> Thomas Rymer, for example, condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic with the tragic. Nevertheless, poet and critic John Dryden rated Shakespeare highly, saying of Jonson, "I admire him, but I love Shakespeare".<ref>Dryden, John (1668). "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy". Cited by Grady in Shakespeare Criticism, 269; For the full quotation, see Levin, Harry (1986). "Critical Approaches to Shakespeare from 1660 to 1904". In The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies. Wells, Stanley (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 215. ISBN 0521318416.</ref> For several decades, Rymer's view held sway; but during the eighteenth century, critics began to respond to Shakespeare on his own terms and acclaim what they termed his natural genius. A series of scholarly editions of his work, notably those of Samuel Johnson in 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790, added to his growing reputation.<ref>Grady, Shakespeare Criticism, 270–271.
• Levin, 217.</ref> By 1800, he was firmly enshrined as the national poet.<ref>Dobson, Michael (1992). The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660–1769. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0198183232. Cited by Grady, Shakespeare Criticism, 270.</ref> In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, his reputation also spread abroad. Among those who championed him were the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal and Victor Hugo.<ref>Grady cites Voltaire's Philosophical Letters (1733); Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795); Stendhal's two-part pamphlet Racine et Shakespeare (1823–5); and Victor Hugo's prefaces to Cromwell (1827) and William Shakespeare (1864). Grady, Shakespeare Criticism, 272–274.</ref>

During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge; and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German Romanticism.<ref>Levin, 223.</ref> In the nineteenth century, critical admiration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered on adulation.<ref>Sawyer, Robert (2003). Victorian Appropriations of Shakespeare. New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 113. ISBN 0838639704.</ref> "That King Shakespeare," the essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1840, "does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying signs; indestructible".<ref>Carlyle, Thomas (1840). "On Heroes, Hero Worship & the Heroic in History". Quoted in Smith, Emma (2004). Shakespeare's Tragedies. Oxford: Blackwell, 37. ISBN 0631220100.</ref> The Victorians produced his plays as lavish spectacles on a grand scale.<ref>Schoch, Richard (2002). "Pictorial Shakespeare". In The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Wells, Stanley, and Sarah Stanton (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 58–59. ISBN 052179711X.</ref> The playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw mocked the cult of Shakespeare worship as "bardolatry". He claimed that the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare obsolete.<ref>Grady, Shakespeare Criticism, 276.</ref>

The modernist revolution in the arts during the early twentieth century, far from discarding Shakespeare, eagerly enlisted his work in the service of the avant garde. The Expressionists in Germany and the Futurists in Moscow mounted productions of his plays. Marxist playwright and director Bertolt Brecht devised an epic theatre under the influence of Shakespeare. The poet and critic T. S. Eliot argued against Shaw that Shakespeare's "primitiveness" in fact made him truly modern.<ref>Grady, Hugh (2001). "Modernity, Modernism and Postmodernism in the Twentieth Century's Shakespeare". In Shakespeare and Modern Theatre: The Performance of Modernity. Bristol, Michael, and Kathleen McLuskie (eds.). New York: Routledge, 22–6. ISBN 0415219841.</ref> Eliot, along with G. Wilson Knight and the school of New Criticism, led a movement towards a closer reading of Shakespeare's imagery. In the 1950s, a wave of new critical approaches replaced modernism and paved the way for "post-modern" studies of Shakespeare.<ref>Grady, Modernity, Modernism and Postmodernism, 24.</ref> By the eighties, Shakespeare studies were open to movements such as structuralism, feminism, African American studies, and queer studies.<ref name="GradyMMP">Grady, Modernity, Modernism and Postmodernism, 29.</ref>

Speculation about Shakespeare

Authorship

Main article: Shakespearean authorship question

Around 150 years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to emerge about the authorship of Shakespeare's works.<ref>McMichael, George; and Edgar M. Glenn (1962). Shakespeare and his Rivals: A Casebook on the Authorship Controversy. New York: Odyssey Press. OCLC 2113359.</ref> Alternative candidates proposed include Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.<ref>Modèle:Cite book</ref> Although all alternative candidates are almost universally rejected in academic circles, popular interest in the subject, particularly the Oxfordian theory, has continued into the 21st century.<ref>Kathman, David (2003). "The Question of Authorship". In Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide. Wells, Stanley (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 620, 625–626. ISBN 0199245223.
• Love, Harold (2002). Attributing Authorship: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 194–209. ISBN 0521789486.
• Schoenbaum, Lives, 430–40.
• Modèle:Cite book</ref>

Religion

Main article: Shakespeare's religion

Some scholars claim that members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time when Catholic practice was against the law, <ref>Modèle:Cite book</ref> Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, certainly came from a pious Catholic family. The strongest evidence might be a Catholic statement of faith signed by John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in the rafters of his former house in Henley Street. The document is now lost, however, and scholars differ on its authenticity.<ref>Wood, 75–8.
• Ackroyd, 22–3.</ref> In 1591, the authorities reported that John had missed church "for fear of process for debt", a common Catholic excuse.<ref name = "Cath">Wood, 78.
• Ackroyd, 416.
•Schoenbaum, Compact, 41–2, 286.</ref> In 1606, William's daughter Susanna was listed among those who failed to attend Easter communion in Stratford.<ref name = "Cath">Wood, 78.
• Ackroyd, 416.
•Schoenbaum, Compact, 41–2, 286.</ref> Scholars find evidence both for and against Shakespeare's Catholicism in his plays, but the truth may be impossible to prove either way.<ref>Wilson, Richard (2004). Secret Shakespeare: Studies in Theatre, Religion and Resistance. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 34. ISBN 0719070244.
• Shapiro, 167.</ref>

Sexuality

Main article: Sexuality of William Shakespeare

Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 1583. However, over the centuries readers have pointed to Shakespeare's sonnets as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than sexual love.<ref>Casey, Charles (Fall 1998). Was Shakespeare gay? Sonnet 20 and the politics of pedagogy. College Literature. Retrieved 2 April 2007.
• Pequigney, Joseph (1985). Such Is My Love: A Study of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226655636.
• Shakespeare, William (1996). The Sonnets. G.Blakemore Evans (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Commentary, 132. ISBN 0521222257.</ref> At the same time, the twenty-six so-called "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.<ref>Fort, J. A. "The Story Contained in the Second Series of Shakespeare's Sonnets." The Review of English Studies. (Oct 1927) 3.12, 406–414.</ref>

List of works

Modèle:Further

Classification of the plays

Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed below according to their folio classification as comedies, histories and tragedies.<ref>Boyce, Charles (1996). Dictionary of Shakespeare. Ware, Herts, UK: Wordsworth, 91, 193, 513. ISBN 1853263729.</ref> Shakespeare did not write every word of the plays attributed to him; and several show signs of collaboration, a common practice at the time.<ref>Thomson, Peter (2003). "Conventions of Playwriting". In Shakespeare: an Oxford Guide. Stanley Wells and Lena Cowen Orlin (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 49. ISBN 0199245223.</ref> Two plays not included in the First Folio, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, are now accepted as part of the canon, with scholars agreed that Shakespeare made a major contribution to their composition.<ref>Kathman, 629.
• Boyce, 91.</ref> No poems were included in the First Folio.

In the late nineteenth century, Edward Dowden classified four of the late comedies as romances, and though many scholars prefer to call them tragicomedies, his term is often used.<ref>Edwards, Phillip (1958). "Shakespeare's Romances, 1900–1957." Shakespeare Survey 11: 1–10.
• Snyder, Susan, and Curren-Aquino, Deborah, T (eds.) (2007). The Winter's Tale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Introduction. ISBN 0521221587.</ref> These plays and the associated Two Noble Kinsmen are marked with an asterisk (*) below. 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.<ref>Schanzer, Ernest (1963). The Problem Plays of Shakespeare. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1–10. ISBN 041535305X.</ref> "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."<ref> Boas, F.S (1896), Shakspere and his Predecessors, 345. Quoted by Schanzer, 1.</ref> The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use, though Hamlet is definitively classed as a tragedy.<ref>Schanzer, 1.
• Bloom, Harold (1999). Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 325–380. ISBN 157322751X.
• Berry, Ralph (2005). Changing Styles in Shakespeare. London; New York: Routledge, 37. ISBN 0415353165.</ref> The other problem plays are marked below with a double dagger (‡).

Plays thought to be only partly written by Shakespeare are marked with a dagger (†) below. Other works occasionally attributed to him are listed as lost plays or apocrypha.

Works

Comedies

Main article: Shakespearean comedy

• All's Well That Ends Well‡
• As You Like It
• The Comedy of Errors
• Cymbeline*
• Love's Labour's Lost
• Measure for Measure‡
• The Merchant of Venice
• The Merry Wives of Windsor
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Pericles, Prince of Tyre*†Modèle:Ref label
• The Taming of the Shrew
• The Tempest*
• Twelfth Night, or What You Will
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona
• The Two Noble Kinsmen*†Modèle:Ref label
• The Winter's Tale*

Histories

Main article: Shakespearean histories

• King John
• Richard II
• Henry IV, part 1
• Henry IV, part 2
• Henry V
• Henry VI, part 1† Modèle:Ref label

• Henry VI, part 2
• Henry VI, part 3
• Richard III
• Henry VIII†Modèle:Ref label

Tragedies

Main article: Shakespearean tragedy

• Romeo and Juliet
• Coriolanus
• Titus Andronicus†Modèle:Ref label

• Timon of Athens†Modèle:Ref label

• Julius Caesar
• Macbeth† Modèle:Ref label

• Hamlet
• Troilus and Cressida‡
• King Lear
• Othello
• Antony and Cleopatra

Poems

• Shakespeare's Sonnets
• Venus and Adonis
• The Rape of Lucrece
• The Passionate PilgrimModèle:Ref label
• The Phoenix and the Turtle
• A Lover's Complaint

Lost plays

• Love's Labour's Won
• Cardenio†Modèle:Ref label

Apocrypha

Main article: Shakespeare Apocrypha

• The Birth of Merlin
• Locrine
• The London Prodigal
• The Puritan
• The Second Maiden's Tragedy
• Sir John Oldcastle
• Thomas Lord Cromwell
• A Yorkshire Tragedy
• Edward III
• Sir Thomas More

Modèle:Earlybard

Notes

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References

Further reading

• Modèle:Cite book
• Greenblatt, Stephen (2005). Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. London: Pimlico. ISBN 0712600981.
• Honan, Park (1998). Shakespeare: A Life. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198117922.
• Wells, Stanley, et al (2005). The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199267170.

External links

Modèle:Portal

Modèle:Sisterlinks

• Open Source Shakespeare includes the complete works, an advanced search function, a complete concordance, and some statistics about the works.
• The Internet Shakespeare Editions at the University of Victoria has old spelling versions of all the texts, with newly edited modern texts for some works; facsimiles, an extensive section on the life and times, a growing database of Shakespeare in performance, and a detailed section of links.
• Designing Shakespeare provides access to 40 years of Shakespearian performance in London and Stratford, including photographs, cast lists, reviews and interviews.
• The Royal Shakespeare Company. Latest information on current and future productions, ticket sales, merchandising, and press and educational resources.

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