On this date in English literary history – April 23,
1564, and according to legend, the great English dramatist and poet William
Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon. It is impossible to be certain the
exact day on which he was born, but church records show that he was baptized on
April 26, and three days was a customary amount of time to wait before
baptizing a newborn. Shakespeare's date of death is conclusively known,
however: it was April 23, 1616. He was 52 years old and had retired to
Stratford three years before.
Although few plays have been performed or analyzed as
extensively as the 38 plays ascribed to William Shakespeare, there are few
surviving details about the playwright's life. This lack of biographical
information is due primarily to his station in life; he was not a noble, but
the son of John Shakespeare, a leather trader and the town bailiff. The events
of William Shakespeare's early life can only be assembled from official
records, such as baptism and marriage records. He probably attended the grammar
school in Stratford, where he would have studied Latin and read classical
literature. He did not go to university but at age 18 married Anne Hathaway,
who was eight years his senior and pregnant at the time of the marriage. Their
first daughter, Susanna, was born six months later, and in 1585 William and
Anne had twins, Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died 11
years later, and Anne Shakespeare outlived her husband, dying in 1623. Nothing
is known of the period between the birth of the twins and Shakespeare's
emergence as a playwright in London in the early 1590s, but unfounded stories
have him stealing deer, joining a group of traveling players, becoming a
schoolteacher, or serving as a soldier in the Low Countries.
The first reference to Shakespeare as a London playwright
came in 1592, when a fellow dramatist, Robert Greene, wrote derogatorily of him
on his deathbed. It is believed that Shakespeare had written the three parts of
Henry VI by that point. In 1593, Venus and Adonis was Shakespeare's
first published poem, and he dedicated it to the young Henry Wriothesley, the
3rd Earl of Southampton. In 1594, having probably composed, among other plays, Richard
III, The Comedy of Errors, and The Taming of the Shrew, he
became an actor and playwright for the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which became the
King's Men after James I's ascension to the throne in 1603. The company grew
into England's finest, in no small part because of Shakespeare, who was its
principal dramatist. It also had the finest actor of the day, Richard Burbage,
and the best theater, the Globe, which was located on the Thames' south bank.
Shakespeare stayed with the King's Men until his retirement and often acted in
small parts.
By 1596, the company had performed the classic
Shakespeare plays Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A
Midsummer Night's Dream. That year, John Shakespeare was granted a coat of
arms, a testament to his son's growing wealth and fame. In 1597, William
Shakespeare bought a large house in Stratford. In 1599, after producing his
great historical series, the first and second part of Henry IV and Henry
V, he became a partner in the ownership of the Globe Theatre. The beginning
of the 17th century saw the performance of the first of his great tragedies,
Hamlet. During the next decade, Shakespeare produced such masterpieces as Othello,
King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest. In 1609, his sonnets,
probably written during the 1590s, were published. The 154 sonnets are marked
by the recurring themes of the mutability of beauty and the transcendent power
of love and art. Shakespeare died in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1616.
Michael Thomas Barry is the author of numerous books that include Literary Legends of the British Isles : The Lives and Burial Places of 50 Great Writers. Visit the author's website for more information - www.michaelthomasbarry.com
His book can be purchased at Amazon through the following link:
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