27/03/2019 William Shakespeare | Facts, Life, & Plays | Britannica.

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pathos and mirth that, whether read or witnessed in the theatre, ll the mind and
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linger there. He is a writer of great intellectual rapidity, perceptiveness, and poetic
power. Other writers have had these qualities, but with Shakespeare the keenness
of mind was applied not to abstruse or remote subjects but to human beings and
their complete range of emotions and con icts. Other writers have applied their
Introduction & Quick
keenness of mind Facts
in this way, but Shakespeare is astonishingly clever with words
Shakespeare
and images, the man
so that his mental energy, when applied to intelligible human
situations,
Life nds full and memorable expression, convincing and imaginatively
stimulating. As if this were not enough, the art form into which his creative
Early life in Stratford

Career in the
energies wenttheatre
was not remote and bookish but involved the vivid stage
Private life
impersonation of human beings, commanding sympathy and inviting vicarious
Sexuality
participation. Thus, Shakespeare’s merits can survive translation into other
Early posthumous
languages and into cultures remote from that of Elizabethan England.
documentation
The tributes of his colleagues

Anecdotes and documents

Shakespeare the poet and

Shakespeare The Man
dramatist
The intellectual background

Life
Poetic conventions and dramatic
traditions
Changes in language
Although the amount of factual knowledge available about Shakespeare is
Shakespeare’s literary debts
surprisingly large for one of his station in life, many nd it a little disappointing, for
Theatrical conditions
it is mostly gleaned from documents of an of cial character. Dates of baptisms,
The dating of Shakespeare’s plays
marriages, deaths, and burials; wills, conveyances, legal processes, and payments
Publication
by the court—these are the dusty details. There are, however, many contemporary
Shakespeare’s plays and
allusions to him as a writer, and these add a reasonable amount of esh and
poems
blood to plays
The early the biographical skeleton.
Titus Andronicus

The early romantic comedies

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The early histories

The poems
Britannica Classics: William Shakespeare
Plays
This of
lmthe middlethe
recounts andlifelate years
of Shakespeare from his early boyhood through his productive years as a
playwright and actor in London. It is a 1955 production of Encyclopædia Britannica Educational
Romantic comedies
Corporation.
Completion of the histories
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Romeo and Juliet

The “problem” plays

Julius Caesar
Early life in Stratford
The tragedies

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