William Shakespeare's life is known only in outline.
and some
have thought the plays were written by others,
but William
Shakespeare (1564-1616) can be documented as a real
person. Born the son of a prominent businessman in Stratford-upon-Avon,
Shakespeare received the usual grammar school education,
which included Latin and a little Greek. At 18 he married
the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, had three children and then
took himself off to London, where he largely stayed, becoming
actor, successful playwright and part theatre-owner.
The plays
were written between 1590 and 1614. Within two years of
retirement at Stratford, Shakespeare was dead, and his will
does not mention the plays, most
of which of which were collected in the 1623 First Folio,
a decisive step in his slow rise to deification.
Shakespeare's art
Shakespeare
was preeminent in three areas: his exuberance in and
command of the English language, his stagecraft, and his
rich gallery of characters. He is the most quoted of English
writers. and theatre productions continue to reinterpret
his themes, sometimes in ways that would astound their author.
Shakespeare's plays transcend their period, but gain
immeasurably by being also seen in their social,
intellectualandpolitical
contexts. Shakespeare's language constantly evolves —
from the Italianate Venus
and Adonis, through the sugared Sonnets,
the felicitous phrasing of Midsummer
Night's Dream, supple blank verse of Hamlet,
the tangled darkness of Lear,
and the free rhythmic verse of Macbeth
and Antony
and Cleopatra, to the supreme accomplishment of
The
Tempest. F.E. Halliday's The Poetry of Shakespeare's
Plays (1954) and G.T. Wright's Shakespeare's Metrical
Art (1988) are two of many detailed examinations of
Shakespeare's art that repay study by anyone using verse
dramatically.
