76-) English Literature
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William Shakespeare
Although
the amount of factual knowledge available about Shakespeare is surprisingly
large for one of his station in life, many find it a little disappointing, for
it is mostly gleaned from documents of an official character. Dates of
baptisms, marriages, deaths, and burials; wills, conveyances, legal processes,
and payments by the court—these are the dusty details. There are, however, many
contemporary allusions to him as a writer, and these add a reasonable amount of
flesh and blood to the biographical skeleton.
William
Shakespeare (bapt. 26[a] April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright,
poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English
language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's
national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the
Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39
plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of
uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living
language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English
language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare
was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he
married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins
Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career
in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner (sharer) of a playing company
called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. At age 49
(around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three
years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has
stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical
appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs and whether the works
attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare
produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were
primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced
in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet,
Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among
the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he
wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other
playwrights.
Many
of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and
accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminges and Henry
Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more
definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of
Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a
prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed
Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all
time".
Life
Early
life in Stratford
Shakespeare
was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover
(glove-maker) originally from Snitterfield in Warwickshire, and Mary Arden, the
daughter of an affluent landowning family. His father, John Shakespeare, was a
burgess of the borough, who in 1565 was chosen an alderman and in 1568 bailiff
(the position corresponding to mayor, before the grant of a further charter to
Stratford in 1664). He was engaged in various kinds of trade and appears to
have suffered some fluctuations in prosperity. His wife, Mary Arden, of
Wilmcote, Warwickshire, came from an ancient family and was the heiress to some
land. (Given the somewhat rigid social distinctions of the 16th century, this
marriage must have been a step up the social scale for John Shakespeare.)He was
born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date
of birth is unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's
Day. This date, which can be traced to William Oldys and George Steevens, has
proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on the same date in
1616. He was the third of eight children, and the eldest surviving son. The
parish register of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire,
shows that he was baptized there on April 26, 1564; his birthday is
traditionally celebrated on April 23.
Although
no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that
Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford, a free
school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile (400 m) from his home. Grammar
schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but grammar school
curricula were largely similar: the basic Latin text was standardised by royal
decree, and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar
based upon Latin classical authors.
Stratford
enjoyed a grammar school of good quality, and the education there was free, the
schoolmaster’s salary being paid by the borough. No lists of the pupils who
were at the school in the 16th century have survived, but it would be absurd to
suppose the bailiff of the town did not send his son there. The boy’s education
would consist mostly of Latin studies—learning to read, write, and speak the
language fairly well and studying some of the Classical historians, moralists,
and poets. Shakespeare did not go on to the university, and indeed it is
unlikely that the scholarly round of logic, rhetoric, and other studies then
followed there would have interested him.
At
the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. Where and exactly
when are not known, but the episcopal registry at Worcester preserves a bond
dated November 28, 1582, and executed by two yeomen of Stratford, named
Sandells and Richardson, as a security to the bishop for the issue of a license
for the marriage of William Shakespeare and “Anne Hathaway of Stratford,” upon
the consent of her friends and upon once asking of the banns. (Anne died in
1623, seven years after Shakespeare. There is good evidence to associate her
with a family of Hathaways who inhabited a beautiful farmhouse, now much
visited, 2 miles [3.2 km] from Stratford.) The next day, two of Hathaway's
neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the
marriage. 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, and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter,
Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed
almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of
unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596. (Hamnet,
Shakespeare’s only son, died 11 years later.)
After
the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is
mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the
appearance of his name in the "complaints bill" of a law case before
the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October
1589. Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's
"lost years". 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 in the estate of local squire
Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by
writing a scurrilous ballad about him. Another 18th-century story has
Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre
patrons in London. John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country
schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars 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.
Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after
his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.
How
Shakespeare spent the next eight years or so, until his name begins to appear
in London theatre records, is not known. There are stories—given currency long
after his death—of stealing deer and getting into trouble with a local magnate,
Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford; of earning his living as a
schoolmaster in the country; of going to London and gaining entry to the world
of theatre by minding the horses of theatregoers. It has also been conjectured
that Shakespeare spent some time as a member of a great household and that he
was a soldier, perhaps in the Low Countries. In lieu of external evidence, such
extrapolations about Shakespeare’s life have often been made from the internal
“evidence” of his writings. But this method is unsatisfactory: one cannot
conclude, for example, from his allusions to the law that Shakespeare was a
lawyer, for he was clearly a writer who without difficulty could get whatever
knowledge he needed for the composition of his plays.
Private life
Shakespeare
had little contact with officialdom, apart from walking—dressed in the royal
livery as a member of the King’s Men—at the coronation of King James I in 1604.
He continued to look after his financial interests. He bought properties in
London and in Stratford. In 1605 he purchased a share (about one-fifth) of the
Stratford tithes—a fact that explains why he was eventually buried in the
chancel of its parish church. For some time he lodged with a French Huguenot
family called Mountjoy, who lived near St. Olave’s Church in Cripplegate,
London. The records of a lawsuit in May 1612, resulting from a Mountjoy family
quarrel, show Shakespeare as giving evidence in a genial way (though unable to
remember certain important facts that would have decided the case) and as
interesting himself generally in the family’s affairs.
No
letters written by Shakespeare have survived, but a private letter to him
happened to get caught up with some official transactions of the town of
Stratford and so has been preserved in the borough archives. It was written by
one Richard Quiney and addressed by him from the Bell Inn in Carter Lane,
London, whither he had gone from Stratford on business. On one side of the
paper is inscribed: “To my loving good friend and countryman, Mr. Wm.
Shakespeare, deliver these.” Apparently Quiney thought his fellow Stratfordian
a person to whom he could apply for the loan of £30—a large sum in Elizabethan
times. Nothing further is known about the transaction, but, because so few
opportunities of seeing into Shakespeare’s private life present themselves,
this begging letter becomes a touching document. It is of some interest,
moreover, that 18 years later Quiney’s son Thomas became the husband of Judith,
Shakespeare’s second daughter.
Shakespeare’s
will (made on March 25, 1616) is a long and detailed document. It entailed his
quite ample property on the male heirs of his elder daughter, Susanna. (Both
his daughters were then married, one to the aforementioned Thomas Quiney and
the other to John Hall, a respected physician of Stratford.) As an
afterthought, he bequeathed his “second-best bed” to his wife; no one can be
certain what this notorious legacy means. The testator’s signatures to the will
are apparently in a shaky hand. Perhaps Shakespeare was already ill. He died on
April 23, 1616. No name was inscribed on his gravestone in the chancel of the
parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon. Instead these lines, possibly his own,
appeared:
Good
friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear
To
dig the dust enclosed here.
Blest
be the man that spares these stones,
And
curst be he that moves my bones.
Religion
Shakespeare
conformed to the official state religion, but his private views on religion
have been the subject of debate. Shakespeare's will uses a Protestant formula,
and he was a confirmed member of the Church of England, where he was married,
his children were baptised , and where he is buried. Some scholars claim that
members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time when practising Catholicism
in England was against the law. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, certainly
came from a pious Catholic family. The strongest evidence might be a Catholic
statement of faith signed by his father, John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in the
rafters of his former house in Henley Street. However, the document is now lost
and scholars differ as to its authenticity. In 1591, the authorities reported
that John Shakespeare had missed church "for fear of process for
debt", a common Catholic excuse. In 1606, the name of William's daughter
Susanna appears on a list of those who failed to attend Easter communion in
Stratford. Other authors argue that there is a lack of evidence about
Shakespeare's religious beliefs. Scholars find evidence both for and against
Shakespeare's Catholicism, Protestantism, or lack of belief in his plays, but
the truth may be impossible to prove.
Portraiture
No
written contemporary description of Shakespeare's physical appearance survives,
and no evidence suggests that he ever commissioned a portrait, so the Droeshout
engraving, which Ben Jonson approved of as a good likeness, and his Stratford
monument provide perhaps 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.
William
Shakespeare (baptized April 26, 1564, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire,
England—died April 23, 1616, Stratford-upon-Avon) English poet, dramatist, and
actor often called the English national poet and considered by many to be the
greatest dramatist of all time.
Shakespeare
occupies a position unique in world literature. Other poets, such as Homer and
Dante, and novelists, such as Leo Tolstoy and Charles Dickens, have transcended
national barriers, but no writer’s living reputation can compare to that of
Shakespeare, whose plays, written in the late 16th and early 17th centuries for
a small repertory theatre, are now performed and read more often and in more
countries than ever before. The prophecy of his great contemporary, the poet
and dramatist Ben Jonson, that Shakespeare “was not of an age, but for all
time,” has been fulfilled.
It
may be audacious even to attempt a definition of his greatness, but it is not
so difficult to describe the gifts that enabled him to create imaginative
visions of pathos and mirth that, whether read or witnessed in the theatre,
fill the mind and 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
conflicts. Other writers have applied their keenness of mind in this way, but
Shakespeare is astonishingly clever with words and images, so that his mental
energy, when applied to intelligible human situations, finds full and memorable
expression, convincing and imaginatively stimulating. As if this were not
enough, the art form into which his creative energies went was not remote and
bookish but involved the vivid stage impersonation of human beings, commanding
sympathy and inviting vicarious participation. Thus, Shakespeare’s merits can
survive translation into other languages and into cultures remote from that of
Elizabethan England.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare
Few
details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married 26-year-old
Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children,
was born six months later on 26 May 1583. Over the centuries, some readers have
posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical, and point to them as
evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the
expression of intense friendship rather than romantic love. The 26 so-called
"Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as
evidence of heterosexual liaisons.
Like
so many circumstances of Shakespeare’s personal life, the question of his
sexual nature is shrouded in uncertainty. At age 18, in 1582, he married Anne
Hathaway, a woman who was eight years older than he. Their first child,
Susanna, was born on May 26, 1583, about six months after the marriage
ceremony. A license had been issued for the marriage on November 27, 1582, with
only one reading (instead of the usual three) of the banns, or announcement of
the intent to marry in order to give any party the opportunity to raise any
potential legal objections. This procedure and the swift arrival of the
couple’s first child suggest that the pregnancy was unplanned, as it was
certainly premarital. The marriage thus appears to have been a “shotgun”
wedding. Anne gave birth some 21 months after the arrival of Susanna to twins,
named Hamnet and Judith, who were christened on February 2, 1585. Thereafter
William and Anne had no more children. They remained married until his death in
1616.
Were
they compatible, or did William prefer to live apart from Anne for most of this
time? When he moved to London at some point between 1585 and 1592, he did not
take his family with him. Divorce was nearly impossible in this era. Were there
medical or other reasons for the absence of any more children? Was he present
in Stratford when Hamnet, his only son, died in 1596 at age 11? He bought a
fine house for his family in Stratford and acquired real estate in the
vicinity. He was eventually buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford, where
Anne joined him in 1623. He seems to have retired to Stratford from London
about 1612. He had lived apart from his wife and children, except presumably
for occasional visits in the course of a very busy professional life, for at least
two decades. His bequeathing in his last will and testament of his “second best
bed” to Anne, with no further mention of her name in that document, has
suggested to many scholars that the marriage was a disappointment necessitated
by an unplanned pregnancy.
What
was Shakespeare’s love life like during those decades in London, apart from his
family? Knowledge on this subject is uncertain at best. According to an entry
dated March 13, 1602, in the commonplace book of a law student named John
Manningham, Shakespeare had a brief affair after he happened to overhear a
female citizen at a performance of Richard III making an assignation with
Richard Burbage, the leading actor of the acting company to which Shakespeare
also belonged. Taking advantage of having overheard their conversation,
Shakespeare allegedly hastened to the place where the assignation had been
arranged, was “entertained” by the woman, and was “at his game” when Burbage
showed up. When a message was brought that “Richard the Third” had arrived, Shakespeare
is supposed to have “caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was
before Richard the Third. Shakespeare’s name William.” This diary entry of
Manningham’s must be regarded with much skepticism, since it is verified by no
other evidence and since it may simply speak to the timeless truth that actors
are regarded as free spirits and bohemians. Indeed, the story was so amusing
that it was retold, embellished, and printed in Thomas Likes’s A General View
of the Stage (1759) well before Manningham’s diary was discovered. It does at
least suggest, at any rate, that Manningham imagined it to be true that
Shakespeare was heterosexual and not averse to an occasional infidelity to his
marriage vows. The film Shakespeare in Love (1998) plays amusedly with this
idea in its purely fictional presentation of Shakespeare’s torchy affair with a
young woman named Viola De Lesseps, who was eager to become a player in a
professional acting company and who inspired Shakespeare in his writing of
Romeo and Juliet—indeed, giving him some of his best lines.
Apart
from these intriguing circumstances, little evidence survives other than the
poems and plays that Shakespeare wrote. Can anything be learned from them? The
sonnets, written perhaps over an extended period from the early 1590s into the
1600s, chronicle a deeply loving relationship between the speaker of the
sonnets and a well-born young man. At times the poet-speaker is greatly
sustained and comforted by a love that seems reciprocal. More often, the relationship
is one that is troubled by painful absences, by jealousies, by the poet’s
perception that other writers are winning the young man’s affection, and
finally by the deep unhappiness of an outright desertion in which the young man
takes away from the poet-speaker the dark-haired beauty whose sexual favours
the poet-speaker has enjoyed (though not without some revulsion at his own
unbridled lust, as in Sonnet 129). This narrative would seem to posit
heterosexual desire in the poet-speaker, even if of a troubled and guilty sort;
but do the earlier sonnets suggest also a desire for the young man? The
relationship is portrayed as indeed deeply emotional and dependent; the
poet-speaker cannot live without his friend and that friend’s returning the
love that the poet-speaker so ardently feels. Yet readers today cannot easily
tell whether that love is aimed at physical completion. Indeed, Sonnet 20 seems
to deny that possibility by insisting that Nature’s having equipped the friend
with “one thing to my purpose nothing”—that is, a penis—means that physical sex
must be regarded as solely in the province of the friend’s relationship with
women: “But since she [Nature] pricked thee out for women’s pleasure, / Mine be
thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.” The bawdy pun on “pricked”
underscores the sexual meaning of the sonnet’s concluding couplet. Critic
Joseph Pequigney has argued at length that the sonnets nonetheless do
commemorate a consummated physical relationship between the poet-speaker and
the friend, but most commentators have backed away from such a bold assertion.
A
significant difficulty is that one cannot be sure that the sonnets are
autobiographical. Shakespeare is such a masterful dramatist that one can easily
imagine him creating such an intriguing story line as the basis for his sonnet
sequence. Then, too, are the sonnets printed in the order that Shakespeare
would have intended? He seems not to have been involved in their publication in
1609, long after most of them had been written. Even so, one can perhaps ask
why such a story would have appealed to Shakespeare. Is there a level at which
fantasy and dreamwork may be involved?
The
plays and other poems lend themselves uncertainly to such speculation. Loving
relationships between two men are sometimes portrayed as extraordinarily deep.
Antonio in Twelfth Night protests to Sebastian that he needs to accompany
Sebastian on his adventures even at great personal risk: “If you will not
murder me for my love, let me be your servant” (Act II, scene 1, lines 33–34).
That is to say, I will die if you leave me behind. Another Antonio, in The
Merchant of Venice, risks his life for his loving friend Bassanio. Actors in
today’s theatre regularly portray these relationships as homosexual, and indeed
actors are often incredulous toward anyone who doubts that to be the case. In
Troilus and Cressida, Patroclus is rumoured to be Achilles’ “masculine whore”
(V, 1, line 17), as is suggested in Homer, and certainly the two are very close
in friendship, though Patroclus does admonish Achilles to engage in battle by
saying,
A
woman impudent and mannish grown
Is
not more loathed than an effeminate man
In
time of action
(III,
3, 218–220)
Again,
on the modern stage this relationship is often portrayed as obviously, even
flagrantly, sexual; but whether Shakespeare saw it as such, or the play
valorizes homosexuality or bisexuality, is another matter.
Certainly
his plays contain many warmly positive depictions of heterosexuality, in the
loves of Romeo and Juliet, Orlando and Rosalind, and Henry V and Katharine of
France, among many others. At the same time, Shakespeare is astute in his
representations of sexual ambiguity. Viola—in disguise as a young man, Cesario,
in Twelfth Night—wins the love of Duke Orsino in such a delicate way that what
appears to be the love between two men morphs into the heterosexual mating of
Orsino and Viola. The ambiguity is reinforced by the audience’s knowledge that
in Shakespeare’s theatre Viola/Cesario was portrayed by a boy actor of perhaps
16. All the cross-dressing situations in the comedies, involving Portia in The
Merchant of Venice, Rosalind/Ganymede in As You Like It, Imogen in Cymbeline,
and many others, playfully explore the uncertain boundaries between the
genders. Rosalind’s male disguise name in As You Like It, Ganymede, is that of
the cupbearer to Zeus with whom the god was enamoured; the ancient legends
assume that Ganymede was Zeus’s catamite. Shakespeare is characteristically
delicate on that score, but he does seem to delight in the frisson of sexual
suggestion.
London
and theatrical career
The
first reference to Shakespeare in the literary world of London comes in 1592,
when a fellow dramatist, Robert Greene, declared in a pamphlet written on his
deathbed:
There
is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart
wrapt in a Players 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.
What
these words mean is difficult to determine, but clearly they are insulting, and
clearly Shakespeare is the object of the sarcasms. When the book in which they
appear (Greenes, groats-worth of witte, bought with a million of Repentance,
1592) was published after Greene’s death, a mutual acquaintance wrote a preface
offering an apology to Shakespeare and testifying to his worth. This preface
also indicates that Shakespeare was by then making important friends. For,
although the puritanical city of London was generally hostile to the theatre,
many of the nobility were good patrons of the drama and friends of the actors.
Shakespeare seems to have attracted the attention of the young Henry
Wriothesley, the 3rd earl of Southampton, and to this nobleman were dedicated
his first published poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
One
striking piece of evidence that Shakespeare began to prosper early and tried to
retrieve the family’s fortunes and establish its gentility is the fact that a
coat of arms was granted to John Shakespeare in 1596. Rough drafts of this
grant have been preserved in the College of Arms, London, though the final
document, which must have been handed to the Shakespeares, has not survived.
Almost certainly William himself took the initiative and paid the fees. The
coat of arms appears on Shakespeare’s monument (constructed before 1623) in the
Stratford church. Equally interesting as evidence of Shakespeare’s worldly
success was his purchase in 1597 of New Place, a large house in Stratford,
which he as a boy must have passed every day in walking to school.
How
his career in the theatre began is unclear, but from roughly 1594 onward he was
an important member of the Lord Chamberlain’s company of players (called the
King’s Men after the accession of James I in 1603). They had the best actor,
Richard Burbage; they had the best theatre, the Globe (finished by the autumn
of 1599); they had the best dramatist, Shakespeare. It is no wonder that the
company prospered. Shakespeare became a full-time professional man of his own
theatre, sharing in a cooperative enterprise and intimately concerned with the
financial success of the plays he wrote.
Unfortunately,
written records give little indication of the way in which Shakespeare’s
professional life molded his marvelous artistry. All that can be deduced is
that for 20 years Shakespeare devoted himself assiduously to his art, writing
more than a million words of poetic drama of the highest quality.
The
tributes of his colleagues
The
memory of Shakespeare survived long in theatrical circles, for his plays
remained a major part of the repertory of the King’s Men until the closing of
the theatres in 1642. The greatest of Shakespeare’s great contemporaries in the
theatre, Ben Jonson, had a good deal to say about him. To William Drummond of
Hawthornden in 1619 he said that Shakespeare “wanted art.” But, when Jonson
came to write his splendid poem prefixed to the Folio edition of Shakespeare’s
plays in 1623, he rose to the occasion with stirring words of praise:
Triumph,
my Britain, thou hast one to show
To
whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He
was not of an age, but for all time!
Besides
almost retracting his earlier gibe about Shakespeare’s lack of art, he gives
testimony that Shakespeare’s personality was to be felt, by those who knew him,
in his poetry—that the style was the man. Jonson also reminded his readers of
the strong impression the plays had made upon Queen Elizabeth I and King James
I at court performances:
Sweet
Swan of Avon, what a sight it were
To
see thee in our waters yet appear,
And
make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That
so did take Eliza and our James!
Shakespeare
seems to have been on affectionate terms with his theatre colleagues. His
fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell (who, with Burbage, were
remembered in his will) dedicated the First Folio of 1623 to the earl of
Pembroke and the earl of Montgomery, explaining that they had collected the
plays “without ambition either of self-profit or fame; only to keep the memory
of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.”
It
is not known definitively when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary
allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on
the London stage by 1592. By then, he was sufficiently known in London to be
attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit
from that year:
...
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.
Scholars
differ on the exact meaning of Greene's words , but most agree that Greene was
accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match such
university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Greene
himself (the so-called "University Wits"). 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",
clearly identify Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used here, Johannes
Factotum ("Jack of all trades") refers to a second-rate tinkerer with
the work of others, rather than the more common "universal genius".
Greene's
attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's work in the theatre.
Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s
to just before Greene's remarks. After 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.
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.
In
1599, a partnership of members of the company built their own theatre on the
south bank of the River Thames, which they named the Globe. In 1608, the
partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Extant records of
Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that his association
with the company made him a wealthy man, and in 1597, he bought the
second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, invested in a share
of the parish tithes in Stratford.
Some
of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, beginning in 1594,
and by 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the
title pages. 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).
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. 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 one cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John
Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly"
roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost
of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As
You Like It, and the Chorus in Henry V, though scholars doubt the sources of
that information.
Throughout
his career, Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford. 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. He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the same year his
company constructed the Globe Theatre there. 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 named Christopher Mountjoy, a
maker of women's wigs and other headgear.
Later
years and death
Nicholas
Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated by Samuel
Johnson, that Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years before his
death". He was still working as an actor in London in 1608; in an answer
to the sharers' petition in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage stated that after purchasing
the lease of the Blackfriars Theatre in 1608 from Henry Evans, the King's Men
"placed men players" there, "which were Heminges, Condell,
Shakespeare, etc.". However, it is perhaps relevant that the bubonic
plague raged in London throughout 1609. The London public playhouses were
repeatedly closed during extended outbreaks of the plague (a total of over 60
months closure between May 1603 and February 1610), which meant there was often
no acting work. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time. Shakespeare
continued to visit London during the years 1611–1614. In 1612, he was called as
a witness in Bellott v Mountjoy, a court case concerning the marriage
settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. In March 1613, he bought a gatehouse in
the former Blackfriars priory; and from November 1614, he was in London for
several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall. After 1610, Shakespeare wrote
fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613 His last three plays
were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the
house playwright of the King's Men. He retired in 1613, before the Globe
Theatre burned down during the performance of Henry VIII on 29 June.
Shakespeare
died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52. He died within a month of signing his
will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in
"perfect health". No extant contemporary source explains how or why
he died. Half a century later, John Ward, the vicar of Stratford, wrote in his
notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and,
it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there
contracted", not an impossible scenario since Shakespeare knew Jonson and
Drayton. Of the tributes from fellow authors, one refers to his relatively
sudden death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went'st so soon / From
the world's stage to the grave's tiring room."
He
was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician,
John Hall, in1607, and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months
before Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on
25 March 1616; the following day, Thomas Quiney, his new son-in-law, was found
guilty of fathering an illegitimate son by Margaret Wheeler, both of whom had
died during childbirth. Thomas was ordered by the church court to do public
penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment for the
Shakespeare family.
Shakespeare
bequeathed the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna under
stipulations that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her
body". The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying.
The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children
in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct line. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions
his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one-third of his estate
automatically. He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second
best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation. 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.
Shakespeare
was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death.
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:
Good
frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,
To
digg the dvst encloased heare.
Bleste
be yͤ man yͭ spares thes stones,
And
cvrst be he yͭ moves my bones.]
Good
friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To
dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed
be the man that spares these stones,
And
cursed be he that moves my bones.
Some
time 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. In 1623, in conjunction with the publication
of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published. Shakespeare has been
commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral
monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Early posthumous documentation of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s
family or friends, however, were not content with a simple gravestone, and,
within a few years, a monument was erected on the chancel wall. It seems to
have existed by 1623. Its epitaph, written in Latin and inscribed immediately
below the bust, attributes to Shakespeare the worldly wisdom of Nestor, the
genius of Socrates, and the poetic art of Virgil. This apparently was how his
contemporaries in Stratford-upon-Avon wished their fellow citizen to be
remembered.
Anecdotes and documents
Seventeenth-century antiquaries began to collect
anecdotes about Shakespeare, but no serious life was written until 1709, when
Nicholas Rowe tried to assemble information from all available sources with the
aim of producing a connected narrative. There were local traditions at
Stratford: witticisms and lampoons of local characters; scandalous stories of
drunkenness and sexual escapades. About 1661 the vicar of Stratford wrote in
his diary: “Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and it
seems drank too hard; for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.” On the
other hand, the antiquary John Aubrey wrote in some notes about Shakespeare:
“He was not a company keeper; lived in Shoreditch; wouldn’t be debauched, and,
if invited to, writ he was in pain.” Richard Davies, archdeacon of Lichfield,
reported, “He died a papist.” How much trust can be put in such a story is
uncertain. In the early 18th century a story appeared that Queen Elizabeth had
obliged Shakespeare “to write a play of Sir John Falstaff in love” and that he
had performed the task (The Merry Wives of Windsor) in a fortnight. There are
other stories, all of uncertain authenticity and some mere fabrications.
When serious scholarship began in the 18th century, it was too late to gain anything from traditions. But documents began to be discovered. Shakespeare’s will was found in 1747 and his marriage license in 1836. The documents relating to the Mountjoy lawsuit already mentioned were found and printed in 1910. It is conceivable that further documents of a legal nature may yet be discovered, but as time passes the hope becomes more remote. Modern scholarship is more concerned to study Shakespeare in relation to his social environment, both in Stratford and in London. This is not easy, because the author and actor lived a somewhat detached life: a respected tithe-owning country gentleman in Stratford, perhaps, but a rather rootless artist in London.
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