Shakespeare, William

From New World Encyclopedia
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{{epname|Shakespeare, William}}
 
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===Early life===
 
===Early life===
  
William Shakespeare was born in and lived on Henley Street, in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, [[England]], in April 1564, the son of John Shakespeare, a successful tradesman and alderman, and Mary Arden, a daughter of the gentry. Shakespeare's baptismal record dates to April 26 of that year. Because baptisms were performed within a few days of birth, tradition has settled on April 23 as his birthday. This date is convenient as Shakespeare died on the same day in 1616.
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Shakespeare (also spelled Shakspere, Shaksper, and Shake-speare, due to the fact that [[Elizabethan]] spelling was very erratic and there are also several different signatures in several different hands with no explanation{{ref|Spelling}}) was born in and lived on Henley Street, in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, [[England]], in April 1564, the son of John Shakespeare, a successful tradesman and alderman, and of Mary Arden, a daughter of the gentry. Shakespeare's baptismal record dates to April 26 of that year. Because baptisms were performed within a few days of birth, tradition has settled on April 23 as his birthday. This date is convenient as Shakespeare died on the same day in 1616.
  
 
As the son of a prominent town official, Shakespeare was entitled to attend King Edward VI Grammar school in central Stratford, which may have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and literature. At the age of 18, he married [[Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare's wife)|Anne Hathaway]] on November 28, 1582 at Temple Grafton, near Stratford. Hathaway, who was 25, was seven years his senior. Two neighbors of Anne posted bond that there were no impediments to the marriage. There was some haste in arranging the ceremony, presumably as Anne was three months pregnant.
 
As the son of a prominent town official, Shakespeare was entitled to attend King Edward VI Grammar school in central Stratford, which may have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and literature. At the age of 18, he married [[Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare's wife)|Anne Hathaway]] on November 28, 1582 at Temple Grafton, near Stratford. Hathaway, who was 25, was seven years his senior. Two neighbors of Anne posted bond that there were no impediments to the marriage. There was some haste in arranging the ceremony, presumably as Anne was three months pregnant.
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===London and theatrical career===
 
===London and theatrical career===
  
By 1592 Shakespeare was a playwright in [[London]]. Around this time he evidently had enough of a reputation for [[Robert Greene]] to denounce him as "an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his ''Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde'', supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a country." (The italicized line parodies the phrase "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" in Shakespeare's ''Henry VI, Part III''.)
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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.<ref>[[Edmund Kerchever Chambers|Chambers, E.K.]] (1930). ''William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems''. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 287, 292. [[OCLC]] [http://worldcat.org/oclc/353406&tab=editions 353406].</ref> He was well enough known in London by then to be attacked in print by the playwright [[Robert Greene (16th century)|Robert Greene]]:
  
In addition to being a playwright, Shakespeare was also an actor and, eventually, part-owner of a playing company known as ''The Lord Chamberlain's Men''. The company took its name, like others of the period, from its aristocratic sponsor, the [[Lord Chamberlain]]. The group became popular enough that after the death of [[Elizabeth I of England|Elizabeth I]] and the coronation of [[James I of England|James I]] (1603), the new monarch adopted the company and it became known as the ''King's Men''.
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<blockquote>...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.<ref>Greenblatt, 213.</ref></blockquote>
  
In 1596 Shakespeare's son Hamnet died; some suspect that his death was part of the inspiration behind ''Hamlet''. Other possible inspirations for ''Hamlet'' include the death of his father and the imprisonment of Lord Southampton, both of which happened around the time the play was written, in 1601.
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Scholars differ on the exact meaning of these words,<ref>Greenblatt, 213.<br />• Schoenbaum, 153.</ref> 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.<ref>Ackroyd, 176.</ref> The italicised line parodying the phrase "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.<ref>Schoenbaum, ''Compact'', 151–52.</ref>
  
By 1598 Shakespeare had moved to the parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, and appeared at the top of a list of actors in ''Every Man in his Humor'' by [[Ben Jonson]]. Various documents recording legal affairs and commercial transactions show that Shakespeare grew rich enough to buy a property in Blackfriars, London and to own the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place.
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"All the world's a stage,
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and all the men and women merely players:
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they have their exits and their entrances;
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and one man in his time plays many parts..."
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|-
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| style="text-align: left;" | ''[[As You Like It]]'', Act II, Scene 7, 139–42.<ref>Wells, ''Oxford'', 666.</ref>
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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.<ref>Wells, Stanley (2006). ''Shakespeare & Co.'' New York: Pantheon, 28. ISBN 0375424946.<br />•  Schoenbaum, ''Compact'', 144–46.<br />• Chambers, ''William Shakespeare'', Vol. 1, p. 59.</ref> 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.<ref>Schoenbaum, ''Compact'', 184.</ref> After the death of [[Elizabeth I of England| Queen Elizabeth]] in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new king, [[James I of England|James I]], and changed its name to the [[King's Men (playing company)|King's Men]].<ref>[[Edmund Kerchever Chambers|Chambers, E.K.]] (1923). ''The Elizabethan Stage''. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 208–209. [[OCLC]] [http://worldcat.org/oclc/336379 336379].</ref>
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In 1599, a partnership of company members built their own theatre on the south bank of the [[Thames]], which they called the [[Globe Theatre|Globe]]. In 1608, the partnership also took over the [[Blackfriars Theatre|Blackfriars indoor theatre]]. Records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that the company made him a wealthy man.<ref>Chambers, ''William Shakespeare'', Vol. 2, p. 67–71.</ref> 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.<ref>Bentley, G. E (1961). ''Shakespeare: A Biographical Handbook.'' New Haven: Yale University Press, 36. [[OCLC]] [http://worldcat.org/oclc/356416&tab=editions 356416].</ref>
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Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in [[Bookbinding#Terms and techniques|quarto]] editions from 1594. By 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the [[title page]]s.<ref>Schoenbaum, ''Compact'', 188.<br />• Kastan, David Scott (1999). ''Shakespeare After Theory''. London; New York: Routledge, 37. ISBN 041590112X.<br />•  {{cite book |last=Knutson |first=Roslyn |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare's Time |year=2001 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |pages=17 |isbn=0521772427 }}</ref> 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 (play)|Sejanus, His Fall]]'' (1603).<ref>[[Joseph Quincy Adams|Adams, Joseph Quincy]] (1923). ''A Life of William Shakespeare.''  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 275. [[OCLC]] [http://worldcat.org/oclc/1935264 1935264].</ref> 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.<ref>Wells, ''Shakespeare & Co.'', 28.</ref> 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 what roles he played.<ref>Schoenbaum, ''Compact'', 200.</ref> In 1610, [[John Davies of Hereford]] wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles.<ref>Schoenbaum, ''Compact'', 200–201.</ref> In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father.<ref>Rowe, N., ''Account''.</ref> Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in ''[[As You Like It]]'' and the Chorus in ''[[Henry V (play)|Henry V]]'',<ref>Ackroyd, 357.<br />• Wells, ''Oxford Shakespeare'', xxii.</ref> though scholars doubt the sources of the information.<ref>Schoenbaum, ''Compact'', 202–3.</ref>
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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.<ref>Honan, Park (1998). ''Shakespeare: A Life''. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 121. ISBN 0198117922.</ref> He moved across the river to [[Southwark]] by 1599, the year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there.<ref>Shapiro, 122.</ref> 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.<ref>Honan, 325; Greenblatt, 405.</ref>
  
 
===Later years===
 
===Later years===
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:Blest be the man that spares these stones,
 
:Blest be the man that spares these stones,
 
:But cursed be he that moves my bones.
 
:But cursed be he that moves my bones.
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Whereas the Stratfordian faithful would say that this is the playful nature of the Bard, others have criticized it as a piece of doggerel and unworthy of a great literary talent and one more “proof” of the authorship question.
  
 
==Works==
 
==Works==
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By the late 1500s the popularity of morality and academic plays waned as the [[Renaissance|English Renaissance]] took hold, and playwrights like [[Thomas Kyd]] and [[Christopher Marlowe]] began to revolutionize theater. Their plays blended the old morality drama with academic theater to produce a new secular form. The new drama had the poetic grandeur and philosophical depth of the academic play and the bawdy populism of the moralities. However, it was more ambiguous and complex in its meanings, and less concerned with simple moral allegories. Inspired by this new style, Shakespeare took these changes to a new level, creating plays that not only resonated on an emotional level with audiences but also explored and debated the basic elements of what it meant to be human.
 
By the late 1500s the popularity of morality and academic plays waned as the [[Renaissance|English Renaissance]] took hold, and playwrights like [[Thomas Kyd]] and [[Christopher Marlowe]] began to revolutionize theater. Their plays blended the old morality drama with academic theater to produce a new secular form. The new drama had the poetic grandeur and philosophical depth of the academic play and the bawdy populism of the moralities. However, it was more ambiguous and complex in its meanings, and less concerned with simple moral allegories. Inspired by this new style, Shakespeare took these changes to a new level, creating plays that not only resonated on an emotional level with audiences but also explored and debated the basic elements of what it meant to be human.
  
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==Reputation==
  
== Shakespeare and religion ==
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Shakespeare's reputation has grown considerably through the years. During his lifetime and shortly after his death, Shakespeare was well-regarded but not considered the supreme poet of his age. He was included in some contemporary lists of leading poets, but he lacked the stature of [[Edmund Spenser]] or [[Philip Sidney]]. After the Interregnum stage ban of 1642–1660, the new [http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/restoration_drama_001.html Restoration theater] companies had the previous generation of playwrights as the mainstay of their repertory, most of all the phenomenally popular [[Beaumont and Fletcher|Beaumont and Fletcher team]], but also [[Ben Jonson]] and Shakespeare. As with other older playwrights, Shakespeare's plays were mercilessly adapted by later dramatists for the Restoration stage with little of the reverence that would later develop.
  
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Beginning in the late seventeenth century, Shakespeare began to be considered the supreme English-language playwright and, to a lesser extent, poet. Initially this reputation focused on Shakespeare as a dramatic poet, to be studied on the printed page rather than in the theater. By the early nineteenth century, though, Shakespeare began hitting peaks of fame and popularity. During this time, theatrical productions of Shakespeare provided spectacle and melodrama for the masses and were extremely popular. [[Romanticism|Romantic]] critics such as [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] then raised admiration for Shakespeare to adulation or 'bardolatry' (from bard + idolatry), in line with the Romantic reverence for the poet as prophet and genius. In the middle to late nineteenth century, Shakespeare also became an emblem of English pride and a "rallying-sign," as [[Thomas Carlyle]] wrote in 1841, for the whole [[British Empire]].
  
[[Image:Shakespeare.jpg|200px|right|thumb|right|William Shakespeare ([[National Portrait Gallery, London|National Portrait Gallery]]), in the famous [[Chandos portrait]], artist and authenticity unconfirmed.]]
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This reverence has of course provoked a negative reaction. In the twenty-first century most inhabitants of the English-speaking world encounter Shakespeare at school at a young age, and there is a common association of his work with boredom and incomprehension. At the same time, Shakespeare's plays remain more frequently staged than the works of any other playwright and are frequently adapted into film.
Over the years, there have been a number of speculations about the '''religious beliefs of William Shakespeare'''. While little direct evidence exists, circumstantial evidence suggests that [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]]'s family had [[Roman Catholic Church|Catholic]] sympathies and that he himself was Catholic, though there is disagreement over whether he in fact was.
 
  
===Shakespeare's family===
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==Speculations about Shakespeare==
In [[1559]], five years before Shakespeare's birth, the [[Elizabethan Religious Settlement]] finally severed the [[Church of England]] from the [[Roman Catholic Church]].  In the ensuing years, extreme pressure was placed on England's Catholics to convert to the [[Protestantism|Protestant]] Church of England, and [[recusancy]] laws made Catholicism illegal. Some historians maintain that in Shakespeare's lifetime there was a substantial and widespread quiet resistance to the newly imposed faith.<ref>''The Shakespeares and ‘the Old Faith’'' (1946) by John Henry de Groot; ''Die Verborgene Existenz Des William Shakespeare: Dichter Und Rebell Im Katholischen Untergrund'' (2001) by Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel; [http://books.google.com/books?id=XX1LpzEmsusC&dq=&pg=PP1&ots=MCL9PBFlz6&sig=BsObFtFCGcDuj9pJ3GDohlhpXns&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fclient%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla%253Aen-US%253Aofficial%26channel%3Ds%26hl%3Den%26q%3DClare%2BAsquith%2BShadowplay%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title] ''Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare'' (2005) by [[Clare Asquith]].</ref> Some scholars, using both historical and literary evidence, have argued that Shakespeare was one of these recusants.<ref name="wilshake">[http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/anglica/Chronology/16thC/Shakespeare/sha_jesu.html]  Richard Wilson, "Shakespeare and the Jesuits:
 
New connections supporting the theory of the lost Catholic years in Lancashire," ''Times Literary Supplement'', 12/19/1997, pp. 11-13</ref>
 
 
 
Some scholars claim that there is evidence that members of Shakespeare's family were recusant Catholics. The strongest evidence is a tract professing secret Catholicism signed by [[John Shakespeare]], father of the poet. The tract was found in the 18th century in the rafters of a house which had once been John Shakespeare's, and was seen and described by the reputable scholar [[Edmond Malone]]. Malone later changed his mind and declared that he thought the tract was a forgery.  Although the tract document itself has been lost, 20th century evidence has linked Malone's reported wording of the tract definitively to a testament written by [[Charles Borromeo]] and circulated by [[Edmund Campion]], copies of which still exist in Italian and English.<ref name="holdshak">[http://www.hbgusa.com/books/64/0316518492/chapter_excerpt10046.html] Holden, Anthony, ''William Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Genius,'' Little, Brown, 2000</ref>  John Shakespeare was also listed as one who did not attend church services, but this was "for feare of processe for Debtte", according to the commissioners, not because he was a recusant.<ref>Mutschmann, H. and Wentersdorf, K.,  ''Shakespeare and Catholicism'', Sheed and Ward: New York, 1952, p. 401.</ref>  Then again, avoiding creditors may have merely been a convenient pretext for a recusant's avoidance of the established church's services.
 
 
 
Shakespeare's mother, [[Mary Arden]], was a member of a conspicuous and determinedly Catholic family in [[Warwickshire]].<ref name="ackrob">[http://books.google.com/books?id=eXdRAAAACAAJ&dq=Peter+Ackroyd] [[Peter Ackroyd]], ''Shakespeare: The Biography''. Doubleday, 2005. p. 29</ref> In 1606, William's daughter Susannah was listed as one of the residents of Stratford refusing to take [[Holy Communion]] in a Protestant service, which may suggest Catholic sympathies.<ref name="ackrosa">[http://books.google.com/books?id=eXdRAAAACAAJ&dq=Peter+Ackroyd] [[Peter Ackroyd]], ''Shakespeare: The Biography''. Doubleday, 2005. p. 451</ref>  It may, however, also be a sign of [[Puritan]] sympathies; Susannah's sister Judith was, according to some statements, of a Puritanical bent.<ref>[[Catholic Encyclopedia]], http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13748c.htm</ref> [[Archdeacon]] Richard Davies, an 18th century Anglican cleric, allegedly wrote of Shakespeare: "He dyed a Papyst".<ref>[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13748c.htm The Religion of Shakespeare] Catholic Encyclopedia on CD-ROM. (Accessed Dec. 23, 2005.)</ref>
 
 
 
=== Shakespeare's schooling ===
 
 
 
Four of the six schoolmasters at the grammar school during Shakespeare's youth, King’s New School in Stratford, were Catholic sympathisers,<ref name="ackroyd">[http://books.google.com/books?id=eXdRAAAACAAJ&dq=Peter+Ackroyd] [[Peter Ackroyd]], ''Shakespeare: The Biography''. Doubleday, 2005. pp. 63–64 </ref> and [[Simon Hunt (teacher)|Simon Hunt]], who was likely to have been one of Shakespeare’s teachers, later became a [[Society of Jesus|Jesuit]].<ref>[http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/uni/nec/ham-hu1223.htm Hammerschmidt-Hummel, H., "The most important subject that can possibly be": A Reply to E. A. J. Honigmann, ''Connotations'', 2002-3]</ref> Thomas Jenkins, who succeeded Hunt as teacher in the grammar school, was a student of [[Edmund Campion]] at [[St. John's College, Oxford]].  Jenkins's successor at the grammar school in 1579, John Cottam, was the brother of Jesuit priest [[Thomas Cottam]].  A fellow grammar school pupil with Shakespeare, [[Robert Dibdale|Robert Debdale]], joined the Jesuits at [[Douai]] and was later executed in England for Catholic proselytising along with [[Thomas Cottam]].<ref name="ackroy2">[http://books.google.com/books?id=eXdRAAAACAAJ&dq=Peter+Ackroyd] [[Peter Ackroyd]], ''Shakespeare: The Biography''. Doubleday, 2005, p. 64</ref>
 
 
 
[[John Aubrey]] reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster,<ref>Schoenbaum, ''Compact'', 110–11.</ref> a tale augmented in the 20th century with the theory that his employer might have been Alexander Hoghton of [[Lancashire]],<ref name="oakshaf2">[http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3249] Edward T. Oakes, "Shakespeare’s Millennium," ''First Things,'' December, 1999</ref> a prominent Catholic landowner who left money in his will to a certain "William Shakeshafte", referencing theatrical costumes and paraphernalia.<ref>Honigmann E. A. J. (1999). ''Shakespeare: The Lost Years.'' Revised Edition. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1. ISBN 0719054257; Wells, ''Oxford Shakespeare'', xvii.</ref> Shakespeare's grandfather Richard had also once used the name Shakeshafte. [[Peter Ackroyd|Ackroyd]] adds that study of the marginal notes in the Hoghton family copy of  [[Edward Hall]]'s ''Chronicles'', an important source for Shakespeare's early histories, shows that they were in "probability" in Shakespeare's writing.<ref>{{cite book
 
  | last =Ackroyd
 
  | first =Peter
 
  | authorlink = Peter Ackroyd
 
  | coauthors =
 
  | title =Shakespeare the Biography
 
  | publisher =Chatto and Windus
 
  | date =2005
 
  | location =London
 
  | pages = p 76
 
  | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=eXdRAAAACAAJ&dq=Peter+Ackroyd
 
  | doi =
 
  | id = 
 
  | isbn =1-856-19726-3}}</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
=== Catholic sympathies ===
 
Shakespeare's marriage to [[Anne Hathaway]] in 1582 may have been officiated, amongst other candidates, by John Frith <ref>Schoenbaum, S. (1987) Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life. p.87</ref> in the town of Temple Grafton a few miles from Stratford. In 1586 the crown named Frith, who maintained the appearance of Protestantism, as a Roman Catholic priest<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/events/event92.html William marries Anne Hathaway] In Search of Shakespeare, P.B.S. (MayaVision International 2003)</ref>. Some surmise Shakespeare wed in Temple Grafton rather than the Protestant Church in Stratford in order for his wedding to be performed as a Catholic sacrament. He was thought to have rushed his marriage ceremony, Anne was 3 months pregnant. <ref>[http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/events/event92.html William marries Anne Hathaway] In Search of Shakespeare, P.B.S. (MayaVision International 2003)</ref>
 
 
 
While none of this evidence proves Shakespeare's own Catholic sympathies, one historian, [[Clare Asquith]], has claimed that those sympathies are detectable in his writing. Asquith claims that Shakespeare uses terms such as "high" when referring to Catholic characters and "low" when referring to Protestants (the terms refer to their [[altar]]s) and "light" or "fair" to refer to Catholic and "dark" to refer to Protestant, a reference to certain clerical garbs. Asquith also detects in Shakespeare's work the use of a simple code used by the [[Jesuit]] underground in England which took the form of a mercantile terminology wherein priests were 'merchants' and souls were 'jewels', the people pursuing them were 'creditors', and the [[Tyburn, London|Tyburn]] gallows where the members of the underground died was called 'the place of much trading'.<ref name = shadow>[http://books.google.com/books?id=XX1LpzEmsusC&dq=&pg=PP1&ots=MCL9PBFlz6&sig=BsObFtFCGcDuj9pJ3GDohlhpXns&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fclient%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla%253Aen-US%253Aofficial%26channel%3Ds%26hl%3Den%26q%3DClare%2BAsquith%2BShadowplay%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title] ''Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare'' (2005) by [[Clare Asquith]].</ref> The Jesuit underground used this code so their correspondences looked like innocuous commercial letters, and Asquith claims that Shakespeare also used this code.<ref name = shadow/>
 
  
Needless to say, Shakespeare’s Catholicism is by no means universally accepted. The 1914 edition of the ''[[Catholic Encyclopedia]]'' questioned not only his Catholicism, but whether "Shakespeare was not infected with the [[atheism]], which... was rampant in the more cultured society of the Elizabethan age."<ref>[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13748c.htm The Religion of Shakespeare] Catholic Encyclopedia on CD-ROM. (Accessed Dec. 23, 2005.)</ref>  Stephen Greenblatt suspects Catholic sympathies of some kind or another in Shakespeare and his family but considers the writer to be a less than pious person with essentially worldly motives.<ref>''Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare'' by Stephen Greenblatt, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pages 156-165.</ref> An increasing number of scholars do look to matters biographical and evidence from Shakespeare’s work such as the placement of young Hamlet as a student at [[Wittenberg]] while old Hamlet’s ghost is in [[purgatory]],<ref name="oakshaft">[http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=345] Edward T. Oakes, "The Age of Shakespeare, Shakespeare The Trial of Man," ''First Things,'' June/July, 2004</ref> the sympathetic view of religious life ("thrice blessed"), [[scholasticism|scholastic theology]] in ''[[The Phoenix and the Turtle]]'', and sympathetic allusions to martyred English Jesuit [[Edmund Campion|St. Edmund Campion]] in ''[[Twelfth Night, or What You Will|Twelfth Night]]''<ref>[http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/virtualclassroom/12thnightdesper.htm "Allusions to Edmund Campion in Twelfth Night"] by C. Richard Desper, Elizabethan Review, Spring/Summer 1995.</ref> and many other matters as suggestive of a Catholic worldview.
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===Identity===
  
Greenblatt makes the case that the "equivocator" arriving at the gate of hell in the Porter's speech in ''[[Macbeth]]'' refers to the Jesuit [[Henry Garnet|Father Henry Garnet]] after his execution in 1606.<ref>{{cite book
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Over the years such figures as [[Walt Whitman]], [[Mark Twain]], [[Henry James]], and [[Sigmund Freud]] have expressed disbelief that the man from Stratford-upon-Avon actually produced the works attributed to him. These claims are based on the lack of direct historical evidence. Many questions pertaining to his sudden wealth, lack of a library left to his family and lack of any correspondence or evidence of a literary life after he returns to Stratford, etc. also contribute to the speculation. The doggerel verse, over his grave, said to have been written by him, seems unworthy of him. There are also unanswered questions as to his portraits and to his signatures, all of which are different. His very name is called into doubt, Shake-a-speare, spelled more than one way, etc. The orthodox Stratfordians consider the arguments against him to be baseless, and attribute the debate to the scarcity and ambiguity of many of the historical records of Shakespeare's life. Still, many questions remain as to the education and knowledge of this writer and the greatest mystery in English literature remains unsolved.
  | last =Greenblatt
 
  | first =Stephen
 
  | authorlink =Stephen Greenblatt
 
  | coauthors =
 
  | title =Will in the World How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
 
  | publisher =Jonathan Cape
 
  | date =2004
 
  | location =London
 
  | pages =p338
 
  | url =
 
  | doi =
 
  | id =ISBN 0-224-06276X }}</ref> He allows, however, that Shakespeare probably included the allusion for the sake of topicality, trusting that his audience would have heard of Garnet's pamphlet on [[equivocation]] rather than any hidden sympathy for the man or his cause—indeed the portrait is not a sympathetic one. Shakespeare was likely aware of the "equivocation" concept which appeared as the subject of a 1583 tract by Queen Elizabeth's chief councillor Lord Burghley as well as the 1584 Doctrine of Equivocation by the Spanish prelate [[Martin Azpilcueta]] that was disseminated across Europe and into England in the 1590s.<ref> Mark Anderson, ''Shakespeare By Another Name,'' 2005, pp. 402-403</ref>
 
  
==Notes and references==
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Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, an English nobleman and intimate of [[Queen Elizabeth]], became the most prominent alternative candidate for authorship of the Shakespeare canon, after having been identified in the 1920s. Oxford partisans note the similarities between the Earl's life, and events and sentiments depicted in the plays and sonnets. His proximity to the throne and the royal court, his broad and deep education, not to mention his talents in literature, seem to have given him more opportunity than most. A recent book, ''Shakespeare By Another Name'', by Mark Anderson, seeks to solve the mystery. The principal hurdle for the Oxfordian theory is the evidence that many of the Shakespeare plays were written after their candidate's death, but well within the lifespan of William Shakespeare. This question is answered in this book. [[Christopher Marlowe]] is considered by some to be the most highly qualified to have written the works of Shakespeare. It has been speculated that Marlowe's recorded death in 1593 was faked for various reasons and that Marlowe went into hiding, subsequently writing under the name of William Shakespeare.
<!--READ ME!! PLEASE DO NOT JUST ADD NEW NOTES AT THE BOTTOM. Use<ref></ref> in the text. —>
 
{{reflist|2}}
 
{{shakespeare}}
 
  
 +
Other theories include Sir [[Francis Bacon]] as head of the twelve Rosicrucians, writing out the literature as the “medium” William Shakespeare dictated it.
 +
The authorship question has been debated by scholars, lawyers and fed through computers. So far, the results have been fifty-fifty, for and against. The Bard, whomever he may be, must be amused.
  
==Reputation==
+
A related question in mainstream academia addresses whether Shakespeare himself wrote every word of his commonly accepted plays, given that collaboration between dramatists routinely occurred in the Elizabethan theater. Serious academic work continues to attempt to ascertain the authorship of plays and poems of the time, both those attributed to Shakespeare and others.
  
Shakespeare's reputation has grown considerably through the years. During his lifetime and shortly after his death, Shakespeare was well-regarded but not considered the supreme poet of his age. He was included in some contemporary lists of leading poets, but he lacked the stature of [[Edmund Spenser]] or [[Philip Sidney]]. After the Interregnum stage ban of 1642–1660, the new [http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/restoration_drama_001.html Restoration theater] companies had the previous generation of playwrights as the mainstay of their repertory, most of all the phenomenally popular [[Beaumont and Fletcher|Beaumont and Fletcher team]], but also [[Ben Jonson]] and Shakespeare. As with other older playwrights, Shakespeare's plays were mercilessly adapted by later dramatists for the Restoration stage with little of the reverence that would later develop.
+
===Sexuality===
 
 
Beginning in the late seventeenth century, Shakespeare began to be considered the supreme English-language playwright and, to a lesser extent, poet. Initially this reputation focused on Shakespeare as a dramatic poet, to be studied on the printed page rather than in the theater. By the early nineteenth century, though, Shakespeare began hitting peaks of fame and popularity. During this time, theatrical productions of Shakespeare provided spectacle and melodrama for the masses and were extremely popular. [[Romanticism|Romantic]] critics such as [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] then raised admiration for Shakespeare to adulation or 'bardolatry' (from bard + idolatry), in line with the Romantic reverence for the poet as prophet and genius. In the middle to late nineteenth century, Shakespeare also became an emblem of English pride and a "rallying-sign," as [[Thomas Carlyle]] wrote in 1841, for the whole [[British Empire]].
 
 
 
This reverence has of course provoked a negative reaction. In the twenty-first century most inhabitants of the English-speaking world encounter Shakespeare at school at a young age, and there is a common association of his work with boredom and incomprehension. At the same time, Shakespeare's plays remain more frequently staged than the works of any other playwright and are frequently adapted into film.
 
 
 
==Speculations about Shakespeare==
 
  
Over the years such figures as [[Walt Whitman]], [[Mark Twain]], [[Henry James]], and [[Sigmund Freud]] have expressed disbelief that the man from Stratford-upon-Avon actually produced the works attributed to him. Many questions pertaining to his sudden wealth, lack of a library left to his family and lack of any correspondence or evidence of a literary life after he returns to Stratford also contribute to the speculation.  
+
The content of Shakespeare's works has raised the question of whether he may have been bisexual. It should be noted that the question of whether an Elizabethan was "gay" in a modern sense is anachronistic. The concepts of [[homosexuality]] and bisexuality did not emerge until the nineteenth century; while sodomy was a crime in the period, there was no word for an exclusively homosexual identity. Elizabethans also frequently wrote about friendship in more intense language than is common today. The etiquette of chivalry and brotherly love was also in evidence at that time.
  
Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, an English nobleman and intimate of [[Queen Elizabeth]], the playwright [[Christopher Marlowe]], and  Sir [[Francis Bacon]]became the most prominent alternative candidates for authorship of the Shakespeare canon. Other more fanciful proposals have included Sir Walter Raleigh and the highly learned Queen Elizabeth herself. Most Shakespeare scholars consider the arguments against Shakespeare's authorship to be baseless, and attribute the debate to the scarcity and ambiguity of many of the historical records of Shakespeare's life. Still, many questions remain about Shakespeare's education, his unequaled mastery of the English language, and profound understanding of the human heart and its complex motivations.
+
Although 26 of the sonnets are love poems addressed to a married woman (the "Dark Lady"), 126 are addressed to a young man (known as the "Fair Lord"). The amorous tone of the latter group, which focuses on the young man's beauty, has been interpreted as evidence for Shakespeare's bisexuality, although others interpret them as referring to intense friendship, not sexual love. Another explanation is that the poems are not autobiographical, but mere fiction, so that the "speaker" of the Sonnets should not be simplistically identified with Shakespeare himself. Despite these alternative interpretations, many readers have suspected otherwise. For example, in 1954 [[C. S. Lewis]] wrote that the sonnets are "too lover-like for ordinary male friendship" (although he added that they are not the poetry of "full-blown pederasty") and that he "found no real parallel to such language between friends in the sixteenth-century literature." {{ref|lewis}}
  
Shakespeare's works has raised the question of Shakespeare's sexuality in recent years. Some 26 of the sonnets are love poems addressed to a married woman (the "Dark Lady"), but 126 are addressed to a young man (known as the "Fair Lord"). The amorous tone of the latter group, which focuses on the young man's beauty, has been interpreted as evidence for Shakespeare's bisexuality, although others interpret them as referring to intense friendship, not sexual love. Another explanation is that the poems are not autobiographical, but mere fiction, so that the "speaker" of the Sonnets should not be simplistically identified with Shakespeare himself. Elizabethans also frequently wrote about friendship in more intense language than is common today. The etiquette of chivalry and brotherly love was also in evidence at that time.
+
Some readers have found similar evidence in the plays. The most commonly cited example is a number of comedies, such as ''Twelfth Night'' and ''As You Like It'', which contain comic situations in which a woman poses as a man, a device that exploits the fact that in Shakespeare's day women's roles were played by boys. While the situations thus presented are heterosexual in terms of the story and while other dramatists occasionally used the same device, Shakespeare seems to have had an exceptional preference for it, using it in five of his plays.
  
 
==Bibliography==
 
==Bibliography==

Revision as of 20:49, 2 February 2008

The famous Chandos portrait that is believed to be of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (Baptized April 26, 1564 – April 23, 1616) was an English poet and playwright. Shakespeare has the reputation as one of the greatest writers in the English language and in Western literature, as well as being one of the world's pre-eminent dramatists. Indeed, some critics have raised their praise of him to the level of “bardolatry.”

Shakespeare wrote his works between 1586 and 1616, although the exact dates and chronology of the plays attributed to him are often uncertain. Shakespeare is among the very few playwrights who have excelled in both tragedy and comedy, and his plays combine popular appeal with complex characterization, poetic grandeur and philosophical depth.

Shakespeare's works have been translated into every major living language, and his plays are continually performed all around the world. In addition, quotations from his plays have passed into everyday usage in many languages. Over the years there has been much speculation and debate about whether someone else wrote his plays and poetry.

Early life

Shakespeare (also spelled Shakspere, Shaksper, and Shake-speare, due to the fact that Elizabethan spelling was very erratic and there are also several different signatures in several different hands with no explanation[1]) was born in and lived on Henley Street, in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, in April 1564, the son of John Shakespeare, a successful tradesman and alderman, and of Mary Arden, a daughter of the gentry. Shakespeare's baptismal record dates to April 26 of that year. Because baptisms were performed within a few days of birth, tradition has settled on April 23 as his birthday. This date is convenient as Shakespeare died on the same day in 1616.

As the son of a prominent town official, Shakespeare was entitled to attend King Edward VI Grammar school in central Stratford, which may have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and literature. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582 at Temple Grafton, near Stratford. Hathaway, who was 25, was seven years his senior. Two neighbors of Anne posted bond that there were no impediments to the marriage. There was some haste in arranging the ceremony, presumably as Anne was three months pregnant.

File:Shakspeare signature.jpg
Shakespeare's signature, from his will

After his marriage, Shakespeare left no traces in the historical record until he appeared on the London theatrical scene. The late 1580s are known as Shakespeare's "Lost Years" because no evidence has survived to show exactly where he was or why he left Stratford for London. On May 26, 1583, Shakespeare's first child, Susannah, was baptized at Stratford. A son, Hamnet, and a daughter, Judith, were baptized on February 2, 1585.

London and theatrical career

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.[1] 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.[2]

Scholars differ on the exact meaning of these words,[3] 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.[4] The italicised line parodying the phrase "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.[5]

"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.[6]

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.[7] 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.[8] 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.[9]

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.[10] 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.[11]

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.[12] 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).[13] 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.[14] 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 what roles he played.[15] In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles.[16] In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father.[17] Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It and the Chorus in Henry V,[18] though scholars doubt the sources of the information.[19]

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.[20] He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there.[21] 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.[22]

Later years

Shakespeare's last two plays were written in 1613, after which he appears to have retired to Stratford. He died on April 23, 1616, at the age of 52. He remained married to Anne until his death and was survived by his two daughters, Susannah and Judith. Susannah married Dr. John Hall, but there are no direct descendants of the poet and playwright alive today.

Shakespeare is buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was granted the honor of burial in the chancel not on account of his fame as a playwright but for purchasing a share of the tithe of the church for £440 (a considerable sum of money at the time). A bust of him placed by his family on the wall nearest his grave shows him posed in the act of writing. Each year on his claimed birthday, a new quill pen is placed in the writing hand of the bust.

He is believed to have written the epitaph on his tombstone:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
But cursed be he that moves my bones.

Whereas the Stratfordian faithful would say that this is the playful nature of the Bard, others have criticized it as a piece of doggerel and unworthy of a great literary talent and one more “proof” of the authorship question.

Works

Plays

As was normal in the period, Shakespeare based many of his plays on the work of other playwrights and recycled older stories and historical material. For example, Hamlet (c. 1601) is probably a reworking of an older, lost play (the so-called Ur-Hamlet), and King Lear is an adaptation of an older play, King Leir. For plays on historical subjects, Shakespeare relied heavily on two principal texts. Most of the Roman and Greek plays are based on Plutarch's Parallel Lives (from the 1579 English translation by Sir Thomas North[2]), and the English history plays are indebted to Raphael Holinshed's 1587 Chronicles.

Shakespeare's plays tend to be placed into three main stylistic groups: Early comedies and histories (such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and Henry IV, Part I), Middle period (which includes his most famous tragedies, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear), and Shakespeare's later romances (such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest). The earlier plays tend to be more light-hearted, while the middle-period plays tend to be darker, addressing such negative issues as betrayal, murder, lust, power, and egotism. His late romances feature a redemptive plotline with a happy ending and the use of magic and other fantastical elements. However, the borders between these groups are extremely blurry.

Some of Shakespeare's plays first appeared in print as a series of quartos, but most remained unpublished until 1623 when the posthumous First Folio was published. The traditional division of his plays into tragedies, comedies, and histories follows the logic of the First Folio. However, modern criticism has labeled some of these plays "problem plays" as they elude easy categorization and conventions, and has introduced the term "romances" for the later comedies.

There are many controversies about the exact chronology of Shakespeare's plays. In addition, the fact that Shakespeare did not produce an authoritative print version of his plays during his life accounts for part of Shakespeare's textual problem, often noted with his plays. This means that several of the plays have different textual versions. As a result, the problem of identifying what Shakespeare actually wrote became a major concern for most modern editions. Textual corruptions also stem from printers' errors, compositors' misreadings or wrongly scanned lines from the source material. Additionally, in an age before standardized spelling, Shakespeare often wrote a word several times in a different spelling, further adding to the transcribers' confusion. Modern scholars also believe Shakespeare revised his plays throughout the years, which could lead to two existing versions of one play.

Sonnets

Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 poems that deal with such themes as love, beauty, politics, and mortality. All but two first appeared in the 1609 publication entitled Shakespeare's Sonnets; numbers 138 ("When my love swears that she is made of truth") and 144 ("Two loves have I, of comfort and despair") had previously been published in a 1599 miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrim.

The conditions under which the sonnets were published are unclear. The 1609 text is dedicated to one "Mr. W. H.," who is described as "the only begetter" of the poems by the publisher Thomas Thorpe. It is not known who this man was although there are many theories. In addition, it is not known whether the publication of the sonnets was authorized by Shakespeare. The poems were probably written over a period of several years.

Other poems

In addition to his sonnets, Shakespeare also wrote several longer narrative poems, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece and A Lover's Complaint. These poems appear to have been written either in an attempt to win the patronage of a rich benefactor (as was common at the time) or as the result of such patronage. For example, The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis were both dedicated to Shakespeare's patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.

In addition, Shakespeare wrote the short poem “The Phoenix and the Turtle.” The anthology The Passionate Pilgrim was attributed to him upon its first publication in 1599, but in fact only five of its poems are by Shakespeare and the attribution was withdrawn in the second edition.

Style

Shakespeare's impact on modern theater cannot be overestimated. Not only did Shakespeare create some of the most admired plays in Western literature, he also transformed English theater by expanding expectations about what could be accomplished through characterization, plot, action, language and genre.[3] His poetic artistry helped raise the status of popular theater, permitting it to be admired by intellectuals as well as by those seeking pure entertainment.

Theater was changing when Shakespeare first arrived in London in the late 1580s or early 1590s. Previously, the commonest forms of popular English theater were the Tudor morality plays. These plays, which blend piety with farce and slapstick, were allegories in which the characters are personified moral attributes that validate the virtues of Godly life by prompting the protagonist to choose such a life over evil. The characters and plot situations are symbolic rather than realistic. As a child, Shakespeare would likely have been exposed to this type of play (along with mystery plays and miracle plays).[4] Meanwhile, at the universities, academic plays were being staged based on Roman closet dramas. These plays, often performed in Latin, placed a greater emphasis on poetic dialog but emphasized lengthy speechifying over physical stage action.

By the late 1500s the popularity of morality and academic plays waned as the English Renaissance took hold, and playwrights like Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe began to revolutionize theater. Their plays blended the old morality drama with academic theater to produce a new secular form. The new drama had the poetic grandeur and philosophical depth of the academic play and the bawdy populism of the moralities. However, it was more ambiguous and complex in its meanings, and less concerned with simple moral allegories. Inspired by this new style, Shakespeare took these changes to a new level, creating plays that not only resonated on an emotional level with audiences but also explored and debated the basic elements of what it meant to be human.

Reputation

Shakespeare's reputation has grown considerably through the years. During his lifetime and shortly after his death, Shakespeare was well-regarded but not considered the supreme poet of his age. He was included in some contemporary lists of leading poets, but he lacked the stature of Edmund Spenser or Philip Sidney. After the Interregnum stage ban of 1642–1660, the new Restoration theater companies had the previous generation of playwrights as the mainstay of their repertory, most of all the phenomenally popular Beaumont and Fletcher team, but also Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. As with other older playwrights, Shakespeare's plays were mercilessly adapted by later dramatists for the Restoration stage with little of the reverence that would later develop.

Beginning in the late seventeenth century, Shakespeare began to be considered the supreme English-language playwright and, to a lesser extent, poet. Initially this reputation focused on Shakespeare as a dramatic poet, to be studied on the printed page rather than in the theater. By the early nineteenth century, though, Shakespeare began hitting peaks of fame and popularity. During this time, theatrical productions of Shakespeare provided spectacle and melodrama for the masses and were extremely popular. Romantic critics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge then raised admiration for Shakespeare to adulation or 'bardolatry' (from bard + idolatry), in line with the Romantic reverence for the poet as prophet and genius. In the middle to late nineteenth century, Shakespeare also became an emblem of English pride and a "rallying-sign," as Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1841, for the whole British Empire.

This reverence has of course provoked a negative reaction. In the twenty-first century most inhabitants of the English-speaking world encounter Shakespeare at school at a young age, and there is a common association of his work with boredom and incomprehension. At the same time, Shakespeare's plays remain more frequently staged than the works of any other playwright and are frequently adapted into film.

Speculations about Shakespeare

Identity

Over the years such figures as Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Sigmund Freud have expressed disbelief that the man from Stratford-upon-Avon actually produced the works attributed to him. These claims are based on the lack of direct historical evidence. Many questions pertaining to his sudden wealth, lack of a library left to his family and lack of any correspondence or evidence of a literary life after he returns to Stratford, etc. also contribute to the speculation. The doggerel verse, over his grave, said to have been written by him, seems unworthy of him. There are also unanswered questions as to his portraits and to his signatures, all of which are different. His very name is called into doubt, Shake-a-speare, spelled more than one way, etc. The orthodox Stratfordians consider the arguments against him to be baseless, and attribute the debate to the scarcity and ambiguity of many of the historical records of Shakespeare's life. Still, many questions remain as to the education and knowledge of this writer and the greatest mystery in English literature remains unsolved.

Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, an English nobleman and intimate of Queen Elizabeth, became the most prominent alternative candidate for authorship of the Shakespeare canon, after having been identified in the 1920s. Oxford partisans note the similarities between the Earl's life, and events and sentiments depicted in the plays and sonnets. His proximity to the throne and the royal court, his broad and deep education, not to mention his talents in literature, seem to have given him more opportunity than most. A recent book, Shakespeare By Another Name, by Mark Anderson, seeks to solve the mystery. The principal hurdle for the Oxfordian theory is the evidence that many of the Shakespeare plays were written after their candidate's death, but well within the lifespan of William Shakespeare. This question is answered in this book. Christopher Marlowe is considered by some to be the most highly qualified to have written the works of Shakespeare. It has been speculated that Marlowe's recorded death in 1593 was faked for various reasons and that Marlowe went into hiding, subsequently writing under the name of William Shakespeare.

Other theories include Sir Francis Bacon as head of the twelve Rosicrucians, writing out the literature as the “medium” William Shakespeare dictated it. The authorship question has been debated by scholars, lawyers and fed through computers. So far, the results have been fifty-fifty, for and against. The Bard, whomever he may be, must be amused.

A related question in mainstream academia addresses whether Shakespeare himself wrote every word of his commonly accepted plays, given that collaboration between dramatists routinely occurred in the Elizabethan theater. Serious academic work continues to attempt to ascertain the authorship of plays and poems of the time, both those attributed to Shakespeare and others.

Sexuality

The content of Shakespeare's works has raised the question of whether he may have been bisexual. It should be noted that the question of whether an Elizabethan was "gay" in a modern sense is anachronistic. The concepts of homosexuality and bisexuality did not emerge until the nineteenth century; while sodomy was a crime in the period, there was no word for an exclusively homosexual identity. Elizabethans also frequently wrote about friendship in more intense language than is common today. The etiquette of chivalry and brotherly love was also in evidence at that time.

Although 26 of the sonnets are love poems addressed to a married woman (the "Dark Lady"), 126 are addressed to a young man (known as the "Fair Lord"). The amorous tone of the latter group, which focuses on the young man's beauty, has been interpreted as evidence for Shakespeare's bisexuality, although others interpret them as referring to intense friendship, not sexual love. Another explanation is that the poems are not autobiographical, but mere fiction, so that the "speaker" of the Sonnets should not be simplistically identified with Shakespeare himself. Despite these alternative interpretations, many readers have suspected otherwise. For example, in 1954 C. S. Lewis wrote that the sonnets are "too lover-like for ordinary male friendship" (although he added that they are not the poetry of "full-blown pederasty") and that he "found no real parallel to such language between friends in the sixteenth-century literature." [5]

Some readers have found similar evidence in the plays. The most commonly cited example is a number of comedies, such as Twelfth Night and As You Like It, which contain comic situations in which a woman poses as a man, a device that exploits the fact that in Shakespeare's day women's roles were played by boys. While the situations thus presented are heterosexual in terms of the story and while other dramatists occasionally used the same device, Shakespeare seems to have had an exceptional preference for it, using it in five of his plays.

Bibliography

Comedies

  • The Tempest
  • The Two Gentlemen of Verona
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor
  • Measure for Measure
  • The Comedy of Errors
  • Much Ado About Nothing
  • Love's Labour's Lost
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream
  • The Merchant of Venice'
  • As You Like It
  • Taming of the Shrew
  • All's Well That Ends Well
  • Twelfth Night or What You Will
  • The Winter's Tale
  • Pericles, Prince of Tyre
  • The Two Noble Kinsmen

Histories

  • King John
  • Richard II
  • Henry IV, Part I
  • Henry IV, Part II
  • Henry V
  • Henry VI, Part I
  • Henry VI, Part II
  • Henry VI, Part III
  • Richard III
  • Henry VIII

Tragedies

  • Troilus and Cressida
  • Coriolanus
  • Titus Andronicus
  • Romeo and Juliet
  • Timon of Athens
  • Julius Caesar
  • Macbeth
  • Hamlet
  • King Lear
  • Othello
  • Antony and Cleopatra
  • Cymbeline

Lost plays

  • Love's Labour's Won
  • Cardenio

Poems

  • Shakespeare's Sonnets
  • Venus and Adonis
  • The Rape of Lucrece
  • The Passionate Pilgrim
  • ”The Phoenix and the Turtle”
  • A Lover's Complaint

Apocrypha

  • Edward III
  • Sir Thomas More

Notes

  1. ^  The Spelling and Pronunciation of Shakespeare's Name by David Kathman. Access date: Dec. 22, 2006.
  2. ^  Plutarch's Parallel Lives. Access date: Dec. 22, 2006.
  3. ^  Miola, Robert S. Shakespeare's Reading. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0198711697
  4. ^  Miola.
  5. ^  Was Shakespeare gay? Sonnet 20 and the politics of pedagogy.

Further reading

  • Anderson, Mark. 2005. Shakespeare by Another Name: Biography of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, The Man Who Was Shakespeare. New York: Gotham Books. ISBN 1592401031
  • Burgess, Anthony. 1964. Nothing Like The Sun. Reissue edition, 1996. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 039331507X
Fictionalized biography.
  • Burgess, Anthony. 1970. Shakespeare. New edition, 2002. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0786709723
  • Durst, Mose. 2001. Shakespeare's Plays: A Study of Friendship and Love. Philadelphia, PA: Xlibris Corporation. ISBN 1401033652
  • Fields, Bertram. 2005. Players: The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0060775599
  • Greenblatt, Stephen. 2004. Will in the World. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0393050572
  • Pemble, John. 2005. Shakespeare Goes to Paris: How the Bard Conquered France. London: Hambledon & London. ISBN 1852854529

External links

Credits

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  1. Chambers, E.K. (1930). William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 287, 292. OCLC 353406.
  2. Greenblatt, 213.
  3. Greenblatt, 213.
    • Schoenbaum, 153.
  4. Ackroyd, 176.
  5. Schoenbaum, Compact, 151–52.
  6. Wells, Oxford, 666.
  7. Wells, Stanley (2006). Shakespeare & Co. New York: Pantheon, 28. ISBN 0375424946.
    • Schoenbaum, Compact, 144–46.
    • Chambers, William Shakespeare, Vol. 1, p. 59.
  8. Schoenbaum, Compact, 184.
  9. Chambers, E.K. (1923). The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 208–209. OCLC 336379.
  10. Chambers, William Shakespeare, Vol. 2, p. 67–71.
  11. Bentley, G. E (1961). Shakespeare: A Biographical Handbook. New Haven: Yale University Press, 36. OCLC 356416.
  12. Schoenbaum, Compact, 188.
    • Kastan, David Scott (1999). Shakespeare After Theory. London; New York: Routledge, 37. ISBN 041590112X.
    Knutson, Roslyn (2001). Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare's Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 17. ISBN 0521772427. 
  13. Adams, Joseph Quincy (1923). A Life of William Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 275. OCLC 1935264.
  14. Wells, Shakespeare & Co., 28.
  15. Schoenbaum, Compact, 200.
  16. Schoenbaum, Compact, 200–201.
  17. Rowe, N., Account.
  18. Ackroyd, 357.
    • Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xxii.
  19. Schoenbaum, Compact, 202–3.
  20. Honan, Park (1998). Shakespeare: A Life. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 121. ISBN 0198117922.
  21. Shapiro, 122.
  22. Honan, 325; Greenblatt, 405.