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chapter one
16/05/2009 16:22
I. Shakespeare’s biography:
Despite the fact that Shakespeare is one of the greatest poets and playwrights, very little is actually known about him.
“What we do know about his life comes from registrar records, court records, wills, marriage certificates and his tombstone”. <http://absoluteshakespeare.com/trivial/biography/shakespeare_biography.html>
Mackail (1934) states that “of the life of Shakespeare little is known. No biography of him was attempted until nearly a century after his death” (p. 6)
ƒæ William’s father:
Ajajam(1963) writes that Shakespeare’s father was John Shakespeare. The latter was said to be a town official of Stratford, and a local business man who dabbled in leatherwork. John also dealt in grain. He was an important and a respected tradesman. He received a series of honourable civic appointments. His fortunes underwent a gloomy change. Besieged at home by his creditors, he made desperate attempts to raise money. As a result, John was obliged to depend on his wife’s relations to get their living. He died in 1601 (p.18).
ƒæ William’s Mother:
She was Mary Arden who married John Shakespeare in 1557. Being the youngest daughter in her family, she inherited much of her father’s landowning and farming estate when he died.
<http://absoluteshakespeare.com/trivial/biography/shakespeare_biography.html>
Ajajam (1963) says that she was like” the possessive matriarch portrayed in sons and lovers, a decidedly superior soul; whose ancestors included a sheriff of Warwickshire. Mary Shakespeare may sometimes have approached her husband with his lack of social grace, and have reminded him of the privileges and the opportunities that, through her marriage, she had been obliged to forfeit (p.18).
What we may deduce from this is that the marriage of John and Mary was not that successful, supporting
“The idea that great artists, like William Shakespeare, are frequently the product of ill-balanced marriage” Ajajam (1963. p.17).
William Shakespeare was born on April 23rd, 1564. He was christened in Stratford church on the 26th. The records indicate that he was Mary and John’s third child. It is assumed that William died in 1616. Little is known about his childhood although it is generally assumed that he attended, nearly at the age of seven, the Local Grammar School, the king’s new school.
Shakespeare did not attend University, which was not at all unusual for the time. University education was reserved for the sons of the wealthy elite. The next fact of William’s life is the licence, issued November 27/28th, 1582, for his marriage to Anne Hathaway, a daughter of a yeoman farmer in the Hamlet of Shottery in the Parish of old Stratford.
<http://gradesaver.com/author/Shakespeare.>
Ajajam (1963) states that Anne was, if dates given on her tombstone are correct, eight years older than William (p.27)
ƒæ William’s Children, brothers and sisters:
Baptism records show that William’s first child, Susanna was baptized in May 26th, 1583. Baptism records again reveal that twins Hamnet and Judith were born in February 1592. Hamnet and Judith were named after William’s close friends, Judith and Hamnet Sadler.
William was the third child of John and Mary. The first two were daughters and William himself was followed by Gilbert who died in 1612 and Richard who died in 1613. Edmund (1582-1607), sixth in the line, was baptized on the third of May, 1580. William’s oldest living sister was Joan. Of William’s seven siblings only Judith and four of his brothers survived to adulthood.
<http://absoluteshakespeare.com/trivial/biography/shakespeare_biography.html>
ľ Did Shakespeare write the 37 plays and 154 sonnets credited to him?
Recently, some academics who call themselves the Oxfords argue that William did not write any of the plays and the sonnets attributed to him. They suggest that he was merely a business man and propose several contenders for authorship, namely an Edward de Vere.
<http://absoluteshakespeare.com/trivial/biography/shakespeare_biography.html>
ľ Evidence that William Shakespeare wrote his plays and sonnets:
The earliest proof that William did indeed write 37 plays was Robert Green’s criticism, Groathsworth of Wit (1592), in which he attacked Shakespeare for having the nerve to compete with him and other playwrights. Robert Green made this clear by calling William “an upstart crow”. This criticism was placed with the Stationers Registrar on the 20th of September, 1592. William’s reputation as a poet is again confirmed in 1598, when Francis Meres attacked him as being “mellifluous” and described his work as honey-tongued, “sugared sonnets among his private friends” in his own Palladis Tamia, 1592. Proof that William was an actor comes from his own performances before Queen Elizabeth herself in 1594 and evidence of William’s interest in theatre comes from his being listed in 1594 and 1595 as a shareholder of the Lord’s Chamberlain’s Company, a theatre company.
<http://absoluteshakespeare.com/trivial/biography/shakespeare_biography.html>
No one knows for certain how Shakespeare first started his career in the theatre, although several London players would visit Stratford regularly, and so, sometime between 1585 and 1592, it is probable that young Shakespeare could have been recruited by the Leicester's or Queen's men. Whether an acting troupe recruited Shakespeare in his hometown or he was forced on his own to travel to London to begin his career, he was nevertheless an established actor in the great city by the end of 1592.
< http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/>
Another proof that William Shakespeare authorized his plays was the first Folio (1623) in which Henry Condell and John Hemminges, who were actors in William’s theatre Company, claim in a dedicatory verse within the Folio that they recorded and collected his plays as a memorial to the late actor and playwright:
“…It is not our province, who only gather his works and give them to you, to praise him. It is yours that read him…read him, therefore; and again and again; and if you then don’t like him, surely you are in manifest danger not to understand him. And so we leave him to other of his friends, whom, if you need, can be your guides; if you need them not, you can lead yourselves and others, and such readers we wish him.”(Chute, 1951, p.114)
Their wish was answered because William got many readers and no other writer in the world’s history has been loved by so many people as William. All these evidence show clearly that W.Shakespeare was the author of his poetic and dramatic heritage.
Around 1589, Shakespeare wrote his first play, Henry VI, Part I. After writing Richard III (1592), Henry VI, The Comedy of Errors (1592) and Titus Andronicus (1593) Shakespeare became a popular playwright by 1590. The year 1593, however, marked a major leap forward in his career. By the same year (1593), he gained the Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated most of his sonnets, as his prominent patron, and Venus and Adonis was published. It remains one of the first of his known works to be printed and was a huge success. Next came The Rape of Lucrece, 1594. Concerning William’s sonnets, most scholars argue that the majority of them were probably written in 1590s. During the year he joined the Lord’s Chamberlain’s Men (1594), Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, along with Love’s Labour’s Lost, and the Taming of the Shrew and several other plays. Two of his greatest tragedies, Hamlet and Julius Caesar, followed around 1600. Othello was written around 1604.
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/keydates/playchron.html
http://gradesaver.com/author/Shakespeare
William Shakespeare lived until 1616. His wife died in 1623 at the age of 67. He was buried in the Chancel of his church at Stratford. The lines above his tomb-allegedly written by Shakespeare himself-read:
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here
Blessed be the man who spares these stones
And cursed be that who moves my bones.
http://gradesaver.com/author/Shakespeare
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