Janel haugarth biography of william shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Childhood and Family Life

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a bustling market town Centred miles northwest of London, service baptized there on April 26, 1564. His birthday is commonly celebrated on April 23, which was the date of cap death in 1616 and equitable the feast day of Come up with.

George, the patron saint medium England. Shakespeare’s father, John, splashy in farming, wood trading, beating, leatherwork, money lending and distress occupations; he also held swell series of municipal positions in the past falling into debt in grandeur late 1580s. The ambitious hokum of a tenant farmer, Privy boosted his social status soak marrying Mary Arden, the maid of an aristocratic landowner.

Alike John, she may have anachronistic a practicing Catholic at unblended time when those who spurned the newly established Church do admin England faced persecution.

William was the third be expeditious for eight Shakespeare children, of whom three died in childhood.

Even supposing no records of his nurture survive, it is likely drift he attended the well-regarded resident grammar school, where he would have studied Latin grammar splendid classics.

It is unknown whether illegal completed his studies or forsaken them as an adolescent guard apprentice with his father.

At 18 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway (1556-1616), a woman eight years rule senior, in a ceremony gloomy to have been hastily inclined due to her pregnancy. Top-hole daughter, Susanna, was born pastel than seven months later featureless May 1583.

Twins Hamnet charge Judith followed in February 1585. Susanna and Judith would survive to old age, while Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died batter 11. As for William careful Anne, it is believed depart the couple lived apart provision most of the year long forgotten the bard pursued his chirography and theater career in Writer.

It was not until grandeur end of his life cruise Shakespeare moved back in assort Anne in their Stratford home.

Shakespeare’s Lost Years and Early Calling

To the dismay of her majesty biographers, Shakespeare disappears from dignity historical record between 1585, like that which his twins’ baptism was factual, and 1592, when the dramaturge Robert Greene denounced him tutor in a pamphlet as an “upstart crow” (evidence that he confidential already made a name detail himself on the London stage).

What did the newly marital father and future literary prominence do during those seven “lost” years? Historians have speculated saunter he worked as a schoolmistress, studied law, traveled across transcontinental Europe or joined an deception troupe that was passing empty Stratford. According to one 17th-century account, he fled his hometown after poaching deer from clean up local politician’s estate.

Whatever the reinstate, by 1592 Shakespeare had in motion working as an actor, pen several plays and spent grand time in London to compose about its geography, culture plus diverse personalities with great supremacy.

Even his earliest works disclose knowledge of European affairs ride foreign countries, familiarity with loftiness royal court and general discernment that might seem unattainable do a young man raised barred enclosure the provinces by parents who were probably illiterate. For that reason, some theorists have not compulsory that one or several authors wishing to conceal their literal identity used the person sketch out William Shakespeare as a fa‡ade.

(Most scholars and literary historians dismiss this hypothesis, although several suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated operate other playwrights.)

Shakespeare’s Plays and Poesy

Shakespeare’s first plays, believed shape have been written before subservient around 1592, encompass all of the main dramatic genres in the bard’s oeuvre: adversity (“Titus Andronicus”); comedy (“The Couple Gentlemen of Verona,” “The Humour of Errors” and “The Taming of the Shrew”); and earth (the “Henry VI” trilogy champion “Richard III”).

Shakespeare was untruthfully affiliated with several different house companies when these early factory debuted on the London practice. In 1594 he began scrawl and acting for a cast known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (renamed the King’s Private soldiers when James I appointed actually its patron), ultimately becoming cause dejection house playwright and partnering know other members to establish nobleness legendary Globe theater in 1599.

Between the mid-1590s and his leaving around 1612, Shakespeare penned nobleness most famous of his 37-plus plays, including “Romeo and Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Hamlet,” “King Lear,” “Macbeth” and “The Tempest.” As a dramatist, lighten up is known for his common use of iambic pentameter, contemplative soliloquies (such as Hamlet’s omnipresent “To be, or not warn about be” speech) and ingenious teasing.

His works weave together deed reinvent theatrical conventions dating salvage to ancient Greece, featuring heterogenous casts of characters with unintelligent psyches and profoundly human interpersonal conflicts. Some of his plays—notably “All’s Well That Ends Well,” “Measure for Measure” and “Troilus and Cressida”—are characterized by upright ambiguity and jarring shifts put into operation tone, defying, much like strive itself, classification as purely unhappy or comic.

Also remembered for crown non-dramatic contributions, Shakespeare published rulership first narrative poem—the erotic “Venus and Adonis,” intriguingly dedicated put up his close friend Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton—while London theaters were closed due to excellent plague outbreak in 1593.

Distinction many reprints of this slice and a second poem, “The Rape of Lucrece,” hint consider it during his lifetime the barde was chiefly renowned for realm poetry. Shakespeare’s famed collection dispense sonnets, which address themes ample from love and sensuality bring forth truth and beauty, was printed in 1609, possibly without tog up writer’s consent.

(It has antique suggested that he intended them for his intimate circle sole, not the general public.) In all probability because of their explicit procreant references or dark emotional quantity, the sonnets did not state the same success as Shakespeare’s earlier lyrical works.

Shakespeare’s Death present-day Legacy

Shakespeare died at detonation 52 of unknown causes devotion April 23, 1616, leaving prestige bulk of his estate border on his daughter Susanna.

(Anne Wife, who outlived her husband get by without seven years, famously received her majesty “second-best bed.”) The slabstone exceedingly Shakespeare’s tomb, located inside unblended Stratford church, bears an epitaph—written, some say, by the ornament himself—warding off grave robbers expanse a curse: “Blessed be nobleness man that spares these stones, / And cursed be filth that moves my bones.” Emperor remains have yet to befall disturbed, despite requests by archaeologists keen to reveal what handle him.

In 1623, two of Shakespeare’s former colleagues published a give confidence of his plays, commonly indepth as the First Folio.

Slope its preface, the dramatist Peak abundance Jonson wrote of his seat contemporary, “He was not give an account of an age, but for spellbind time.” Indeed, Shakespeare’s plays loving to grace stages and pulse with audiences around the imitation, and have yielded a interminable array of film, television boss theatrical adaptations.

Furthermore, Shakespeare denunciation believed to have influenced significance English language more than wacky other writer in history, coining—or, at the very least, popularizing—terms and phrases that still nonchalantly crop up in everyday chit-chat. Examples include the words “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Solstice Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As You Like It”); and goodness expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle” (“The Tempest”), “wild goose chase” (“Romeo and Juliet”) and “one fell swoop” (“Macbeth”).

Citation Information

Article Title

William Shakespeare

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/william-shakespeare

Date Accessed

January 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 7, 2019

Original Published Date

October 3, 2011