William Shakespeare

Who was William Shakespeare?

William Shakespeare is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English
language. He was born on or around 23 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, the eldest son
of John Shakespeare, a prosperous glover and local dignitary, and Mary Arden, the
daughter of a wealthy farmer. There are no records of William’s education, but he
probably went to King’s New School – a reputable Stratford grammar school where he
would have learned Latin, Greek, theology and rhetoric – and may have had a Catholic
upbringing. He may also have seen plays by the travelling theatre groups touring
Stratford in the 1560s and 70s. At 18, William married Anne Hathaway, and the couple
had three children over the next few years.

What are Shakespeare’s ‘lost years’?

No-one knows what Shakespeare did between 1587 – the last documentary record of his
youth in Stratford – and 1592 when he is first mentioned in London. There is much
speculation about these ‘lost years’, including stories that Shakespeare was exiled from
Warwickshire for deer-stealing and that he worked at the London playhouses holding
horses for theatre-goers.

What did Shakespeare write?

Between about 1590 and 1613, Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and collaborated on
several more. His 17 comedies include The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About
Nothing. Among his 10 history plays are Henry V and Richard III. The most famous
among his tragediesare Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Shakespeare also
wrote 4 poems, and a famous collection of Sonnets which was first published in 1609.

Was Shakespeare successful in his lifetime?

By 1592, Shakespeare was well-known enough as a writer and actor to be criticised by

jealous rival Robert Greene as an ‘upstart crow’ and ‘Johannes Factotum’ (a ‘Johnny do-
it-all’) in his pamphlet Groats-worth of Wit (a groat being a small coin). Although it is
difficult to determine the chronology of Shakespeare’s works, it is likely that by 1592 he
had authored 11 plays, including Romeo and Juliet, Richard III and A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. His plays were successful: the box office takings from the first performance
of Henry VI, Part 1 at the Rose in 1592 were £3 16s. 8d., the highest recorded for the
season.
For much of the period from September 1592 to June 1594, the London playhouses were
shutbecause of the plague. Shakespeare published two epic poems during this
time, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.

Shakespeare’s success grew through the 1590s. He joined and became a shareholder of
the Lord Chamberlain’s Men who performed before Queen Elizabeth on numerous
occasions, and as well as writing more plays, he published several poems and circulated
his sonnet sequence in manuscript. His successes enabled him in 1597 to buy New
Place, the second largest house in Stratford. This success was not untainted by tragedy
however: in 1596 his 11 year old son Hamnet, died.

Where were Shakespeare’s plays performed?

In 1599, Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men took up residence in the
newly built Globe. Julius Caesar was one of the first plays performed there.
Performances at the Globe were divided into three seasons with breaks around
Christmas when the players performed at court; Lent, when playing was intermittent; and
summer when the players toured the provinces escaping the infection and infestation of
the city.

When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, her successor, King James I, announced that the
Lord Chamberlain’s Men would now be the King’s Men. This patronage was a huge coup
for the troupe, but Shakespeare was by no means a puppet playwright and he continued
to writeplays that posed difficult questions about kingship. The Jacobean works of 1604–
08 were darker and include the mature tragedies Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.

In 1608 the King’s Men took on a second theatre, a candlelit indoor venue at Blackfriars,
whose expensive seats catered to a more elite audience and whose lighting may have
influenced the atmosphere of late plays such as The Tempest.

What are the quartos?

Shakespeare’s plays began to be printed in 1594, probably with his tragedy Titus
Andronicus. This appeared as a small, cheap pamphlet called a quarto because of the
way it was printed. 18 of Shakespeare’s plays had appeared in quarto editions by the
time of his death in 1616. Another three plays were printed in quarto before 1642.

As only one literary manuscript fragment in Shakespeare’s hand survives, the earliest
printed editions are our only source for what he actually wrote. The quarto editions are
the texts closest to Shakespeare’s time. Some are thought to preserve either his working
drafts (his foul papers) or his fair copies. Others are thought to record versions
remembered by actors who performed the plays, providing information about staging
practices in Shakespeare’s day.

When did Shakespeare die?

In 1613 the Globe burned down and the same year Shakespeare retired from the London
theatre world and returned to Stratford. He died on 23 April 1616 and was buried in Holy
Trinity Church, where he had been baptised 52 years earlier.

What is the First Folio?

The first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, the First Folio, was collated and
published in 1623, seven years after the playwright’s death. Of the 36 plays in the First
Folio, 18 had not yet been printed at all. It is this fact that makes the First Folio so
important; without it, many of Shakespeare’s plays, including Twelfth Night, Measure for
Measure, Macbeth, Julius Caesarand The Tempest, might never have survived.

The text was collated by two of Shakespeare's fellow actors and friends, John Heminge
and Henry Condell, who edited it and supervised the printing. They divided the plays into
comedies, tragedies and histories, an editorial decision that has come to shape our idea
of the Shakespearean canon.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare