William Shakespeare

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This article is about the poet and playwright. For other
persons of the same name, see William
Shakespeare (disambiguation). For other uses of "Shakespeare", see Shakespeare
(disambiguation).

William Shakespeare

The Chandos portrait,
artist and authenticity unconfirmed. National
Portrait Gallery, London.

Born

Baptised 26 April 1564 (birth date unknown)
Stratford-upon-Avon,
Warwickshire, England

Died

23 April 1616 (aged 52)
Stratford-upon-Avon,
Warwickshire, England

Occupation

Playwright, poet, actor

Literary movement

English
Renaissance theatre

Spouse(s)

Anne
Hathaway (m. 1582–1616) «start: (1582)–end+1: (1617)»"Marriage: Anne
Hathaway to William Shakespeare" Location: (linkback:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare)

Children

Susanna Hall
Hamnet
Shakespeare
Judith Quiney

Signature

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23
April 1616)[nb
1] was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded
as the greatest writer in the English language and
the world's pre-eminent dramatist.[1]
He is often called England's national poet and the
"Bard of Avon".[2][nb
2] His surviving works, including some collaborations,
consist of about 38 plays,[nb
3] 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.[3]

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon.
At the age of 18, he married Anne
Hathaway, with whom he had 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 a playing company called
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 physical
appearance, sexuality,
religious
beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by
others.[4]

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613.[5][nb
4] His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres
he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th
century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until
about 1608, including Hamlet, King
Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of
the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies,
also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy
during his lifetime. 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 19th century. The Romantics, in particular,
acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians worshipped
Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw
called "bardolatry".[6]
In the 20th century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new
movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today
and are constantly studied, performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and
political contexts throughout the world.

Contents

1 Life

1.1 Early
life

1.2 London and theatrical
career

1.3 Later years and
death

2 Plays

2.1 Performances

2.2 Textual
sources

3 Poems

3.1 Sonnets

4 Style

5 Influence

6 Critical
reputation

7 Speculation about
Shakespeare

7.1 Authorship

7.2 Religion

7.3 Sexuality

7.4 Portraiture

8 List of works

8.1 Classification of the
plays

8.2 Works

9 See also

10 Notes

11 References

12 Bibliography

13 External
links

14 Related
information

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.[7]
He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His
actual birthdate remains unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, St
George's Day.[8]
This date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholar's mistake, has
proved appealing to biographers, since Shakespeare died 23 April 1616.[9]
He was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son.[10]

Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree
that Shakespeare probably was educated at the King's
New School in Stratford,[11]
a free school chartered in 1553,[12]
about a quarter-mile from his home. Grammar schools varied in
quality during the Elizabethan era, but the curriculum was dictated by law
throughout England,[13]
and the school would have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and the classics.

John Shakespeare's house, believed to be Shakespeare's
birthplace, in Stratford-upon-Avon.

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 27 November 1582. The next day two of
Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded
the marriage.[14]
The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste, since the Worcester chancellor
allowed the marriage banns to be
read once instead of the usual three times,[15]
and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May
1583.[16]
Twins, son Hamnet and daughter
Judith, followed almost
two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585.[17]
Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August
1596.[18]

After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he
is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592, and scholars refer to
the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years".[19]
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.[20]
Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career
minding the horses of theatre patrons in London.[21]
John
Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster.[22]
Some 20th-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.[23]
No evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay
collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire
area.[24]

London and
theatrical career

"All the world's a stage,

and all the men and women merely players:

they have their exits and their entrances;

and one man in his time plays many parts..."

As You Like It,
Act II, Scene 7, 139–42.[25]

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.[26]
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.[27]

Scholars differ on the exact meaning of these words,[28]
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.[29]
The italicised phrase parodying the line "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.[30]

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.[31]
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.[32]
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.[33]

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.[34]
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.[35]

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.[36]
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).[37]
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.[38]
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 which roles he played.[39]
In 1610, John Davies of
Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles.[40]
In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of
Hamlet's father.[41]
Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You
Like It and the Chorus in Henry V,[42]
though scholars doubt the sources of the information.[43]

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.[44]
He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the year
his company constructed the Globe Theatre there.[45]
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.[46]

Later years and
death

Rowe was the first biographer to pass down the tradition that Shakespeare
retired to Stratford some years before his death;[47]
but retirement from all work was uncommon at that time,[48]
and Shakespeare continued to visit London.[47]
In 1612 he was called as a witness in a court case concerning the marriage
settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary.[49]
In March 1613 he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory;[50]
and from November 1614 he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law,
John Hall.[51]

Shakespeare's
funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon.

After 1606–1607, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to
him after 1613.[52]
His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John
Fletcher,[53]
who succeeded him as the house playwright for the King’s Men.[54]

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616[55]
and was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician,
John Hall, in 1607,[56]
and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two
months before Shakespeare’s death.[57]

In his will, Shakespeare left the bulk of his large estate to his elder
daughter Susanna.[58]
The terms instructed that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her
body".[59]
The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying.[60]
The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children
in 1670, ending Shakespeare’s direct line.[61]
Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled
to one third of his estate automatically.[62]
He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest
that has led to much speculation.[63]
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.[64]

Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy
Trinity Church two days after his death.[65]
The epitaph carved into the stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving
his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in
2008:[66]

Shakespeare's grave.

Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,

To digg the dvst encloased heare.

Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones,

And cvrst be he yt moves my bones.[67]

Sometime before 1623, a funerary
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.[68]
In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving
was published.[69]

Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and
memorials around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral
and Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Plays

Main articles: Shakespeare's
plays and Shakespeare's
collaborations

Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some
point, and critics agree that Shakespeare did the same, mostly early and late in
his career.[70]
Some attributions, such as Titus Andronicus
and the early history plays, remain controversial, while The Two Noble
Kinsmen and the lost Cardenio have well-attested
contemporary documentation. Textual evidence also supports the view that several
of the plays were revised by other writers after their original composition.

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,[71]
and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus,
The Comedy of
Errors, The Taming of the
Shrew and The Two
Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare’s earliest
period.[72]
His first histories, which
draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's
Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,[73]
dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been
interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty.[74]
The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists,
especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe,
by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca.[75]
The Comedy of Errors was also based on classical models, but no source
for 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.[76]
Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve
of rape,[77]
the Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man
sometimes troubles modern critics and directors.[78]

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies
Dancing. By William Blake, c. 1786. Tate
Britain.

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.[79]
A Midsummer
Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic
lowlife scenes.[80]
Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic Merchant of
Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, which
reflects Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences.[81]
The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About
Nothing,[82]
the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and
the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete
Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies.[83]
After the lyrical Richard II,
written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the
histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1
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.[84]
This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet,
the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and
death;[85]
and Julius
Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579
translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which
introduced a new kind of drama.[86]
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".[87]

Hamlet, Horatio, Marcellus, and the Ghost of
Hamlet's Father. Henry Fuseli, 1780–5. Kunsthaus
Zürich.

In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem
plays" Measure for
Measure, Troilus and
Cressida, and All's Well That
Ends Well and a number of his best known tragedies.[88]
Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of
his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, Hamlet, has
probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially
for his famous soliloquy "To be or not to be; that
is the question".[89]
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.[90]
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.[91]
In Othello, the villain Iago stokes Othello's
sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves
him.[92]
In King
Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers,
initiating the events which lead to the murder of his daughter and the torture
and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester. According to the critic Frank Kermode,
"the play offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from
its cruelty".[93]
In Macbeth, the shortest and
most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies,[94]
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.[95]
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.[96]

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.[97]
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.[98]
Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and
The Two Noble
Kinsmen, probably with John
Fletcher.[99]

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.[100]
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.[101]
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".[102]
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.[103]
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.[104]

The reconstructed Globe Theatre,
London.

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.[105]
After 1608, they performed at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre
during the winter and the Globe during the summer.[106]
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."[107]

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.[108]
The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in Romeo and
Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About
Nothing, among other characters.[109]
He was replaced around the turn of the 16th century by Robert Armin, who played
roles such as Touchstone
in As You Like It and the fool in King Lear.[110]
In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that
Henry VIII "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp
and ceremony".[111]
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.[111]

Textual sources

Title page of the First Folio, 1623. Copper
engraving of Shakespeare by Martin
Droeshout.

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.[112]
Many of the plays had already appeared in quarto versions—flimsy books
made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves.[113]
No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First
Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies".[114]
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.[115]
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.[116]
In some cases, for example Hamlet, Troilus and
Cressida and Othello, Shakespeare could have revised the texts
between the quarto and folio editions. In the case of King Lear, however, while most
modern additions do conflate them, the 1623 folio version is so different from
the 1608 quarto, that the Oxford Shakespeare prints them both, arguing
that they cannot be conflated without confusion.[117]

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 virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful
Tarquin.[118]
Influenced by Ovid's
Metamorphoses,[119]
the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled
lust.[120]
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.[121]
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.[122]

Sonnets

Main article: Shakespeare's
sonnets

Title page from 1609 edition of Shake-Speares
Sonnets.

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.[123]
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".[124]
Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's
intended sequence.[125]
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
conflicted 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".[126]
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.[127]
Critics praise the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the nature of
love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time.[128]

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate..."

Lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet
18.[129]

The production of Shakespeare's Sonnets was in some way influenced by the Italian
sonnet: it was popularised by Dante and Petrarch and refined in Spain and France by DuBellay
and Ronsard.[130]
Shakespeare probably had access to these last two authors, and read English
poets as Richard Field
and John Davies.[130]
The French and Italian poets gave preference to the Italian form of sonnet—two
groups of four lines, or quatrains (always rhymed
a-b-b-a-b-b-a) followed by two groups of three lines, or tercets (variously rhymed c-c-d
e-e-d or c-c-d e-d-e)—which created a sonorous music in the vowel rich Romance languages, but
in Shakespeare it is artificial and monotonous for the English language. To
overcome this problem derived from the difference of language, Shakespeare chose
to follow the idiomatic rhyme scheme used by Philip Sidney in his Astrophel and
Stella (published posthumously in 1591), where the rhymes are interlaced
in two pairs of couplets to make the quatrain.[130]

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.[131]
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.[132]

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.[133]
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.[134]
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.

Pity by William
Blake, 1795, Tate Britain, is an
illustration of two similes in Macbeth: "And pity, like a naked new-born
babe, / Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd / Upon the sightless
couriers of the air".

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.[135]
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:[136]

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...

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2, 4–8[136]

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".[137]
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.[138]
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.[138]
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.[139]

Shakespeare's poetic genius was allied with a practical sense of the
theatre.[140]
Like all playwrights of the time, Shakespeare dramatised stories from sources
such as Petrarch and Holinshed.[141]
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.[142]
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 Shakespeare's
late romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which
emphasised the illusion of theatre.[143]

Influence

Main article: Shakespeare's
influence

Macbeth Consulting the Vision of the Armed
Head. By Henry Fuseli, 1793–94. Folger
Shakespeare Library, Washington.

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.[144]
Until Romeo and Juliet,
for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy.[145]
Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or
events; but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds.[146]
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."[147]

Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and
Charles Dickens. 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.[148]
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.[149]
Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites.
The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a friend of
William Blake, even
translated Macbeth into German.[150]
The psychoanalyst Sigmund
Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular that of Hamlet, for
his theories of human nature.

In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling and pronunciation were less
standardised than they are now,[151]
and his use of language helped shape modern English.[152]
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.[153]
Expressions such as "with bated breath" (Merchant of Venice) and "a
foregone conclusion" (Othello) have found their way into everyday English
speech.[154]

Critical
reputation

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

"He was not of an age, but for all time."

Ben Jonson[155]

Shakespeare was never revered in his lifetime, but he received his share of
praise.[156]
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.[157]
And the authors of the Parnassus plays at St John's
College, Cambridge, numbered him with Chaucer, Gower and
Spenser.[158]
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". He
was also recognised highly by James I by making them his 'Kings Men'.[159]

Between the Restoration of the
monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue.
As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher
and Ben
Jonson.[160]
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".[161]
For several decades, Rymer's view held sway; but during the 18th 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.[162]
By 1800, he was firmly enshrined as the national poet.[163]
In the 18th and 19th centuries, his reputation also spread abroad. Among those
who championed him were the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal and Victor
Hugo.[164]

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.[165]
In the 19th century, critical admiration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered
on adulation.[166]
"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".[167]
The Victorians produced his
plays as lavish spectacles on a grand scale.[168]
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.[169]

The modernist revolution in the arts during the early 20th 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.[170]
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.[171]
By the eighties, Shakespeare studies were open to movements such as structuralism, feminism, New
Historicism, African American
studies, and queer studies.[172][173]

Speculation about
Shakespeare

Authorship

Main article: Shakespeare
authorship question

Around 150 years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to emerge about the
authorship of the works attributed to him.[174]
Proposed alternative candidates include Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe,
and Edward
de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.[175]
Several "group theories" have also been proposed.[176]
Only a small minority of academics believe there is reason to question the
traditional attribution,[177]
but interest in the subject, particularly the Oxfordian theory,
continues into the 21st century.[178]

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.[179]
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.[180]
In 1591, the authorities reported that John had missed church "for fear of
process for debt", a common Catholic excuse.[181]
In 1606, William's daughter Susanna was listed among those who failed to attend
Easter communion in Stratford.[181]
Scholars find evidence both for and against Shakespeare's Catholicism in his
plays, but the truth may be impossible to prove either way.[182]

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.[183]
At the same time, the twenty-six so-called "Dark
Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of
heterosexual liaisons.[184]

Portraiture

Main article: Portraits of
Shakespeare

There is no written description of Shakespeare's physical appearance and no
evidence that he ever commissioned a portrait, so the Droeshout engraving,
which Ben Jonson approved of as a good likeness,[185]
and his Stratford monument
provide the best evidence of his appearance. From the 18th century, the desire
for authentic Shakespeare portraits fuelled claims that various surviving
pictures depicted Shakespeare. That demand also led to the production of several
fake portraits, as well as misattributions, repaintings and relabelling of
portraits of other people.[186][187]

List of works

Further information: List of
Shakespeare's works and Chronology
of Shakespeare plays

Classification of the
plays

The Plays of William Shakespeare. By Sir John Gilbert,
1849.

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.[188]
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.[189]
No Shakespearean poems were included in the First Folio.

In the late 19th 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.[190]
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.[191]
"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."[192]
The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use,
though Hamlet is definitively classed as a tragedy.[193]
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
apocrypha.

Works

Comedies

Main article: Shakespearean
comedy

All's
Well That Ends Well‡

As You Like
It

The Comedy of
Errors

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*†

The Taming
of the Shrew

The
Tempest*

Twelfth
Night

The Two
Gentlemen of Verona

The Two Noble
Kinsmen*†

The Winter's
Tale*

Histories

Main article: Shakespearean
history

King
John

Richard
II

Henry IV, part
1

Henry IV, part
2

Henry V

Henry VI, part
1†

Henry VI, part
2

Henry VI, part
3

Richard
III

Henry
VIII†

Tragedies

Main article: Shakespearean
tragedy

Romeo and
Juliet

Coriolanus

Titus
Andronicus†

Timon of
Athens†

Julius
Caesar

Macbeth†

Hamlet

Troilus and
Cressida‡

King Lear

Othello

Antony and
Cleopatra

Cymbeline*

Poems

Shakespeare's
Sonnets

Venus
and Adonis

The Rape of
Lucrece

The
Passionate Pilgrim[nb
5]

The
Phoenix and the Turtle

A Lover's
Complaint

Lost plays

Love's
Labour's Won

Cardenio†

Apocrypha

Main article: Shakespeare
Apocrypha

Arden of
Faversham

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

v · d · eEarly editions of William Shakespeare's works

Folios
and Quartos

Foul papers • Quarto •
Folio • Bad quarto • First Quarto •
First Folio • Second Folio •
False
Folio

Early
editors

John Heminges
• Henry Condell
• Edward
Knight • John
Leason

Publishers

Robert Allot •
William
Aspley • John
Benson • Edward Blount
• Cuthbert
Burby • Nathaniel
Butter • Philip
Chetwinde • Richard
Hawkins • Henry
Herringman • William Leake
• Richard
Meighen • Thomas
Millington • Thomas Pavier
• John
Smethwick • Thomas Thorpe
• Thomas
Walkley • John Waterson
• Andrew
Wise

Printers

Edward Allde •
Thomas Cotes •
Thomas Creede
• George Eld • Richard
Field • William
Jaggard • Augustine
Matthews • Nicholas Okes
• Peter
Short • Valentine
Simmes • William
Stansby

See also

Poetry
portal

Shakespeare
portal

World
Shakespeare Bibliography

Wikipedia Books: William
Shakespeare

Notes

^
Dates follow the Julian calendar, used
in England throughout Shakespeare's lifespan, but with the start of year
adjusted to 1 January (see Old Style
and New Style dates). Under the Gregorian calendar,
adopted in Catholic countries in 1582, Shakespeare died on 3 May (Schoenbaum
1987, xv).

^
The "national cult" of Shakespeare, and the "bard" identification, dates from
September 1769, when the actor David Garrick organised
a week-long carnival at Stratford to mark the town council awarding him the freedom of the
town. In addition to presenting the town with a statue of Shakespeare, Garrick
composed a doggerel verse, lampooned in the London newspapers, naming the
banks of the Avon as the birthplace of the "matchless Bard" (McIntyre
1999, 412–432).

^
The exact figures are unknown. See Shakespeare's
collaborations and Shakespeare
Apocrypha for further details.

^
Individual play dates and precise writing span are unknown. See Chronology
of Shakespeare's plays for further details.

^
The Passionate Pilgrim, published under Shakespeare's name in 1599
without his permission, includes early versions of two of his sonnets, three
extracts from Love's Labour's Lost, several poems known to be by other
poets, and eleven poems of unknown authorship for which the attribution to
Shakespeare has not been disproved (Wells
et al. 2005, 805)

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^
Dobson
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^
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^
Shapiro
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^
Chambers
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^
Bertolini
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^
Schoenbaum
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^
Schoenbaum
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^
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^
Schoenbaum
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^
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^
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Wells
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Chambers
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Adams
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Wells
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Schoenbaum
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Schoenbaum
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^
Rowe
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Ackroyd
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Schoenbaum
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^
Honan
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Shapiro
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Honan
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^ a
b
Ackroyd
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^
Honan
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^
Honan
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^
Schoenbaum
1987, 272–274.

^
Honan
1998, 387.

^
Schoenbaum
1987, 279.

^
Honan
1998, 375–78.

^
Schoenbaum
1987, 276.

^
Schoenbaum
1987, 25, 296.

^
Schoenbaum
1987, 287.

^
Schoenbaum
1987, 292, 294.

^
Schoenbaum
1987, 304.

^
Honan
1998, 395–96.

^
Chambers
1930, Vol. 2: 8, 11, 104; Schoenbaum
1987, 296.

^
Chambers
1930, Vol. 2: 7, 9, 13; Schoenbaum
1987, 289, 318–19.

^
Charles
Knight, 1842, in his notes on Twelfth Night, quoted in Schoenbaum
1991, 275.

^
Ackroyd
2006, 483; Frye
2005, 16; Greenblatt
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^
Schoenbaum
1987, 301–3.

^
Schoenbaum
1987, 306–07; Wells
et al. 2005, xviii

^
"Bard's 'cursed' tomb is revamped", BBC News, 28 May 2008.
Retrieved 23 April 2010.

^
Schoenbaum
1987, 306.

^
Schoenbaum
1987, 308–10.

^
National Portrait Gallery, Searching for Shakespeare, NPG publications,
2006

^
Thomson, Peter, "Conventions of Playwriting". in Wells
& Orlin 2003, 49.

^
Frye
2005, 9; Honan
1998, 166.

^
Schoenbaum
1987, 159–61; Frye
2005, 9.

^
Dutton
& Howard 2003, 147.

^
Ribner
2005, 154–155.

^
Frye
2005, 105; Ribner
2005, 67; Cheney
2004, 100.

^
Honan
1998, 136; Schoenbaum
1987, 166.

^
Frye
2005, 91; Honan
1998, 116–117; Werner
2001, 96–100.

^
Friedman
2006, 159.

^
Ackroyd
2006, 235.

^
Wood
2003, 161–162.

^
Wood
2003, 205–206; Honan
1998, 258.

^
Ackroyd
2006, 359.

^
Ackroyd
2006, 362–383.

^
Shapiro
2005, 150; Gibbons
1993, 1; Ackroyd
2006, 356.

^
Wood
2003, 161; Honan
1998, 206.

^
Ackroyd
2006, 353, 358; Shapiro
2005, 151–153.

^
Shapiro
2005, 151.

^
Bradley
1991, 85; Muir
2005, 12–16.

^
Bradley
1991, 94.

^
Bradley
1991, 86.

^
Bradley
1991, 40, 48.

^
Bradley
1991, 42, 169, 195; Greenblatt
2005, 304.

^
Bradley
1991, 226; Ackroyd
2006, 423; Kermode
2004, 141–2.

^
McDonald
2006, 43–46.

^
Bradley
1991, 306.

^
Ackroyd
2006, 444; McDonald
2006, 69–70; Eliot
1934, 59.

^
Dowden
1881, 57.

^
Dowden
1881, 60; Frye
2005, 123; McDonald
2006, 15.

^
Wells
et al. 2005, 1247, 1279

^
Wells
et al. 2005, xx

^
Wells
et al. 2005, xxi

^
Shapiro
2005, 16.

^
Foakes
1990, 6; Shapiro
2005, 125–31.

^
Foakes
1990, 6; Nagler
1958, 7; Shapiro
2005, 131–2.

^
Wells
et al. 2005, xxii

^
Foakes
1990, 33.

^
Ackroyd
2006, 454; Holland
2000, xli.

^
Ringler
1997, 127.

^
Schoenbaum
1987, 210; Chambers
1930, Vol. 1: 341.

^
Shapiro
2005, 247–9.

^ a
b
Wells
et al. 2005, 1247

^
Wells
et al. 2005, xxxvii

^
Wells
et al. 2005, xxxiv

^
Pollard
1909, xi.

^
Wells
et al. 2005, xxxiv; Pollard
1909, xi; Maguire
1996, 28.

^
Bowers
1955, 8–10; Wells
et al. 2005, xxxiv–xxxv

^
Wells
et al. 2005, 909, 1153

^
Rowe
2006, 21.

^
Frye
2005, 288.

^
Rowe
2006, 3, 21.

^
Rowe
2006, 1; Jackson
2004, 267–294; Honan
1998, 289.

^
Rowe
2006, 1; Honan
1998, 289; Schoenbaum
1987, 327.

^
Wood
2003, 178; Schoenbaum
1987, 180.

^
Honan
1998, 180.

^
Schoenbaum
1987, 268.

^
Honan
1998, 180; Schoenbaum
1987, 180.

^
Schoenbaum
1987, 268–269.

^
Wood
2003, 177.

^
Shakespeare
1914.

^ a
b
c
Bruce MacEvoy. "Shakespeare's
Sonnets", 2005. Retrieved on June 18th.

^
Clemen
2005a, 150.

^
Frye
2005, 105, 177; Clemen
2005b, 29.

^
Brooke, Nicholas, "Language and Speaker in Macbeth", 69; and Bradbrook, M.C.,
"Shakespeare's Recollection of Marlowe", 195: both in Edwards,
Ewbank & Hunter 2004.

^
Clemen
2005b, 63.

^
Frye
2005, 185.

^ a
b
Wright
2004, 868.

^
Bradley
1991, 91.

^ a
b
McDonald
2006, 42–6.

^
McDonald
2006, 36, 39, 75.

^
Gibbons
1993, 4.

^
Gibbons
1993, 1–4.

^
Gibbons
1993, 1–7, 15.

^
McDonald
2006, 13; Meagher
2003, 358.

^
Chambers
1944, 35.

^
Levenson
2000, 49–50.

^
Clemen
1987, 179.

^
Steiner
1996, 145.

^
Bryant
1998, 82.

^
Gross, John, "Shakespeare's Influence" in Wells
& Orlin 2003, 641–2..

^
Paraisz
2006, 130.

^
Cercignani
1981.

^
Crystal
2001, 55–65, 74.

^
Wain
1975, 194.

^
Johnson
2002, 12; Crystal
2001, 63.

^
Jonson
1996, 10.

^
Dominik
1988, 9; Grady
2001b, 267.

^
Grady
2001b, 265; Greer
1986, 9.

^
Grady
2001b, 266.

^
Grady
2001b, 266–7.

^
Grady
2001b, 269.

^
Dryden
1889, 71.

^
Grady
2001b, 270–27; Levin
1986, 217.

^
Dobson
1992 Cited by Grady
2001b, 270.

^
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
2001b, 272–274.

^
Levin
1986, 223.

^
Sawyer
2003, 113.

^
Carlyle
1907, 161.

^
Schoch
2002, 58–59.

^
Grady
2001b, 276.

^
Grady
2001a, 22–6.

^
Grady
2001a, 24.

^
Grady
2001a, 29.

^
Drakakis
1985, 16–17, 23–25

^
McMichael
& Glenn 1962.

^
Gibson
2005, 48, 72, 124.

^
McMichael
& Glenn 1962, p. 56.

^
Did He or Didn’t He? That Is the Question, New York Times,
April 22, 2007

^
Kathman, David, "The Question of Authorship" in Wells
& Orlin 2003, 620, 625–626; Love
2002, 194–209; Schoenbaum
1991, 430–40.

^
Pritchard
1979, 3.

^
Wood
2003, 75–8; Ackroyd
2006, 22–3.

^ a
b
Wood
2003, 78; Ackroyd
2006, 416; Schoenbaum
1987, 41–2, 286.

^
Wilson
2004, 34; Shapiro
2005, 167.

^
Casey;
Pequigney
1985; Evans
1996, 132.

^
Fort
1927, 406–414.

^
Tarnya Cooper, Searching for Shakespeare, National Portrait Gallery,
Yale University Press, 2006, pp. 48; 57.

^
Pressly, William L. "The Ashbourne Portrait of Shakespeare: Through the
Looking Glass." Shakespeare Quarterly. 1993: pp. 54–72.

^
David Piper" O Sweet Mr. Shakespeare I'll Have His Picture: The Changing Image
of Shakespeare's Person, 1600-1800, National Portrait Gallery, Pergamon Press,
1980.

^
Boyce
1996, 91, 193, 513..

^
Kathman, David, "The Question of Authorship" in Wells
& Orlin 2003, 629; Boyce
1996, 91.

^
Edwards
1958, 1–10; Snyder
& Curren-Aquino 2007.

^
Schanzer
1963, 1–10.

^
Boas
1896, 345.

^
Schanzer
1963, 1; Bloom
1999, 325–380; Berry
2005, 37.

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v · d · eFamily of William
Shakespeare

Richard
Shakespeare • John
Shakespeare • Mary Arden
• Gilbert
Shakespeare • Joan
Shakespeare • Anne
Hathaway • Hamnet
Shakespeare • Susanna Hall •
John
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v · d · ePart of William
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Richard
Shakespeare

Robert Arden

John
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Mary
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William
Shakespeare

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Hathaway

Joan
Shakespeare

William
Hart

John
Hall

Susanna
Shakespeare

Hamnet
Shakespeare

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Barnard

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Thomas
Nash

Thomas Quiney

Shakespeare Quiney

Richard Quiney

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Authority
control: PND: 118613723 | LCCN:
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96994048

Persondata

Name

Shakespeare, William

Alternative names

Short description

English poet and playwright

Date of birth

April, 1564

Place of birth

Stratford-upon-Avon,
Warwickshire,
England

Date of death

23 April 1616

Place of death

Stratford-upon-Avon,
Warwickshire,
England

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This page was last modified on 7 January 2011 at
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