User talk:Mandel/Shakespeareedit
Note: This is a proposed edit of the current Shakespeare main page, by User:Mandel. For clarity I have bold and italicized my changes and additions.
William Shakespeare (baptised April 26 1564 – died April 23 1616)[1] was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. He is often considered England's national poet[2] and referred to as the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard")[3] or the "Swan of Avon", after Ben Jonson's dedication preface poem to the First Folio.[4]
At least 38 of Shakespeare's plays have survived, thanks largely to a posthumous 1623 publication known as the First Folio.'[5] Shakespeare also wrote a variety of long poems, with his famous sonnet sequence ranking alongside his dramatic masterpieces. Already a popular London playwright in his own lifetime, Shakespeare became increasingly celebrated by cultural figures and writers in England, throughout Europe and the world at large, as translations of his works increased.[6]
Shakespeare wrote in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean era. Orthodox scholars generally date his work between 1588 and 1614, although the exact chronology of his plays are under considerable debate—as is the authorship of the works attributed to him. Shakespeare's works have been translated into every major living language, and his plays are still continually performed all around the world. Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in the history of the English-speaking world,[7] and many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages. Many speculations about Shakespeare's life, including his sexuality and religious affiliation, continue to intrigue scholars and common readers alike.<not a very happy last line but accurate at least>
Life[edit]
No autobiographical writings of Shakespeare have been discovered. Like most of his contemporaries, his biographical details and evidences are sketchy, backed by brief anecdotal recollections by friends, and legal and property documents recording his movements and financial dealings in adult life.' …-------
Early life[edit]
William Shakespeare (also spelled Shakspere, Shakspear, Shakespere, Shakspere, Shaksper, Shaxper, and Shake-speare, as spelling in Elizabethan times was not fixed and absolute[8] was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, in April 1564, son of John Shakespeare, a successful glover and alderman from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, a daughter of the gentry. His birth should have occurred at the family house on Henley Street. He was their third child and eldest son. Shakespeare's christening record at the parish church Holy Trinity dates to April 26; it is traditionally assumed Shakespeare was born on April 23, partly as a convenient symmetry with his death date, April 23 (May 3 on the Gregorian calendar), 1616, but there is no clear evidence that he was born on April 23.
As a boy Shakespeare probably attended King Edward VI Grammar School in central Stratford,[9] where as the son of a prominent town official he was entitled to do so for free[10]; attendance records no longer exist. The standard curriculum provided an education of sorts in Latin grammar and literature. A long stretch ensued where there is no record of his life. At the age of 18, he married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582. One document identified her as being "of Temple Grafton", near Stratford. Two neighbours of Hathaway posted bond that there were no impediments to the marriage. There appears to have been some haste in arranging the ceremony; it was a shotgun marriage, as Shakespeare's first child, Susanna, was born in May that year, 7 months after their marriage.
After his marriage, Shakespeare left few traces in the historical record until he appeared on the London theatrical scene. Indeed, the late 1580s are known as Shakespeare's "lost years" because no evidence has survived to indicate his doings or whereabouts. Twin children, a son, Hamnet, and a daughter, Judith, were baptised on February 2, 1585. Hamnet died in 1596 and was buried on 11 August.
Numerous stories attempt to account for Shakespeare's life during this time, including one that Shakespeare got in trouble for poaching deer, one that he worked as a country school teacher, and one that he minded the horses of theatre patrons in London. However, there is no direct evidence to support these stories and most appear to have begun circulating after Shakespeare's death.[11]
London and theatrical career[edit]
By 1592, Shakespeare was a playwright in London; he had enough reputation for Robert Greene to denounce him, in the epilogue to a death-bed pamphlet, 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 being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey." (The italicised line parodies Shakespeare's line, "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" in Henry VI, part 3.) It is clear from this reference that Shakespeare was working concurrently an actor and a playwright.
By late 1594, Shakespeare was writer and part-owner of a playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men — like others of the period, the company took its name from its aristocratic sponsor, in this case the Lord Chamberlain. After the death of Elizabeth I and the coronation of James I (1603), the new monarch adopted the company and it was renamed the King's Men. [12]
In 1596, Shakespeare moved to the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and in 1598 he appeared at the top of a list of actors in Every Man in His Humour written by Ben Jonson. Also by 1598, his name began to appear on the title pages of his plays.
There is a tradition that Shakespeare, in addition to writing and part-owner of the company, continued to act in various parts, such as the Ghost of Hamlet's father, Adam in As You Like It, and the Chorus in Henry V..[13]
Shakespeare moved across the Thames River to Southwark sometime around 1599. In 1604, he moved again, to north of the river, where he lodged with a Huguenot family surnamed Mountjoy, just north of St Paul's Cathedral. Shakespeare helped arrange a marriage between the Mountjoys' daughter and their apprentice Stephen Bellott. Bellott later sued his father-in-law for defaulting on part of the promised dowry, and Shakespeare was called as a witness.
Various documents recording legal affairs and commercial transactions show that Shakespeare grew rich enough to purchase a property in Blackfriars, London and own the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place.
Later years[edit]
Shakespeare's last two plays were written around 1613, after which he appears to have retired to Stratford. He died on April 23 1616 at the age of 52. He was survived by two daughters, Susanna and Judith, and wife Anne Hathaway. Susanna married Dr John Hall, but there are no direct descendants of the poet and playwright alive today.
Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was granted the honour 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). [14] A monument in the church, placed probably by his family, features his bust poised in the act of writing. Each year, on April 23rd, a new quill pen is placed in the writing hand of the poet's bust. The epitaph on his tombstone reads:'
| “ | Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
|
” |
His Works[edit]
Plays[edit]
Shakespeare's plays form the major part of his oeuvre, and they are widely regarded as among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature. His body of dramatic works is in many ways unique in world literature. Shakespeare was both an outstanding tragedian and comedian, with inspiration sustained for an uncommonly long period over his career. He also wrote histories and romances, though a number of his plays defy simple categorizations. As was normal in the period, Shakespeare based his plays' plots on the work of other playwrights and reworked earlier stories and historical material. For example, Hamlet (c. 1601) is probably a reworking of an older play now lost (the so-called Ur-Hamlet), and King Lear is an adaptation of an earlier play, Leir. For plays on historical subjects, Shakespeare relied heavily on two principal texts: Plutarch's Parallel Lives (in the 1579 English translation by Sir Thomas North[15]) for Roman subjects, and Raphael Holinshed's 1587 edition of The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland for English and Scottish ones. Shakespeare was also likely influenced by contemporary playwrights like Christopher Marlowe, mostly in his use of blank verse, the verse form of his language.[16]
Shakespeare's plays tend to be placed into three main chronological periods:
- early comedies, tragedies and histories (such as Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and the Henry VI trilogy)
- middle period (which includes his most famous tragedies, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear, as well as "problem plays" such as Troilus and Cressida and Measure for Measure)
- later romances and collaborations (such as The Winter's Tale, The Tempest and Henry VIII).
The earlier plays range from broad comedy to historical nostalgia, while the middle-period plays, tragedies and problem plays, addressed thematic issues such issues as betrayal, corruption, jealousy, power, and ambition. By contrast, his late romances feature redemptive plotlines with ambiguous endings and the use of magic and other fantastical elements. However, the borders between these genres are sometimes blurred.
Some of Shakespeare's plays first appeared in print as a series of quartos, but most remained unpublished until 1623. The posthumous 1623 First Folio was published by two actors who had been in Shakespeare's company: John Heminges and Henry Condell. The traditional division of his plays into tragedies, comedies, and histories follows that of the First Folio, as do the traditional act and scene divisions. Modern criticism has labelled some of the plays categorized as "problem plays", as they elude easy categorization, or perhaps purposefully break generic conventions. The term "romances" has been preferred for the late plays once classified as comedies.
There are many controversies about the exact date and chronology of Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare did not produce an authoritative print version of his plays, and there is no evidence the playwright was involved in the production of any print versions - either the First Folio or the Quartos. This accounts for part of the textual problem. Textual corruptions from printers' errors, compositors' misreadings, or wrongly scanned lines lead to many cruxes, while modern scholars now also believe Shakespeare revised some of his plays, sometimes leading to two existing versions, the quarto (original first version) and folio (performance-adapted) ones.
Classifications[edit]
Shakespeare's plays are traditionally organised into three groups: Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories. The following list separates the plays according to their classification in the First Folio, the first published edition of Shakespeare's collected plays. Today, some of the comedies are usually considered as a separate subgenre, the 'romances' or tragicomedies; these plays are highlighted with an asterisk (*).
Collaborations[edit]A question in mainstream academia addresses how often collaborations between dramatists routinely occurred in the Elizabethan theatre. Shakespeare is known to have collaborated with his successor at Globe theatre, John Fletcher, for his last two plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. His play Pericles is commonly believed to be a collaboration with George Wilkins, while a number of his other plays are proposed to be collaborations as well, such as Timon of Athens and Edward III. If Hand D of the Sir Thomas Moore manuscript is indeed Shakespeare's, then the apocryphal fragment is a precious piece of evidence demonstrating how Shakespeare and his contemporary Elizabethan playwrights worked with each other in manuscripts. [Note: more needed] Serious academic work continues to attempt to ascertain the extent of his authorship of plays and poems of the times, especially those not commonly attributed to him. Sonnets[edit]Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 poems that deal with themes such as love, beauty, 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 Sonnets were written over a number of years, probably beginning in the early 1590s. 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 in the dedication. It is unknown if this dedication was written by Shakespeare or Thomas Thorpe, the publisher. It is also unknown who this Mr. W.H. was, although there are many theories, including those who believe him the young man featured in the sonnets.[17] In addition, it is not known whether the publication of the sonnets was even authorised by Shakespeare. Nonetheless, the sonnet sequence has been prized throughout history for their rich counterpointing language, and for possibly providing an autobiographical background to the writer. Other poems[edit]In addition to his sonnets, Shakespeare also wrote a number of longer poems: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece and perhaps, 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, and appeared in 1593 and 1594 respectively. In addition, Shakespeare wrote the short allegorical poem The Phoenix and the Turtle. The anthology The Passionate Pilgrim was attributed to him upon its first publication in 1599, but the attribution was withdrawn in the second edition. It contains two Shakespearean sonnets later to be published in 1609, three lyric songs from Love's Labour's Lost, and other sixteen other poems, including two by Richard Barnfield and one each by Christopher Marlowe and Bartholomew Griffin. Influence and Style[edit] Shakespeare's works have been a major influence on subsequent theatre. Not only did Shakespeare create some of the most admired plays in Western literature, he also expanded about what could be accomplished through characterisation, plot, action, language and genre.[18] Theatre was changing when Shakespeare first arrived in London in the late 1580s or early 1590s. Previously, the most common forms of popular English theatre were the Tudor morality plays. These plays, which blend piety with farce and slapstick, were Christian allegories rather than realistic drama. As a child, Shakespeare would likely have been exposed to this type of play (along with mystery plays and miracle plays).[19] Meanwhile, at the universities, plays were being staged based on Roman closet dramas were written by the academia. These plays, often performed in Latin, used a more exact and academically respectable poetic style than the morality plays, but they were also more static, valuing lengthy speeches over physical action. By the late 16th century, the popularity of morality and academic plays waned as the English Renaissance took hold. Playwrights like Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe began to revolutionise theatre. The new plays combined old morality drama with academic theatre to produce a new secular form. The new drama had the poetry and philosophical engagement of the academic plays and the populism of the moralities. With Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Elizabethan theatre reached new heights. In particular Shakespeare used it to examine the dilemma of individuals in complex and morally ambiguous situations. Language[edit]Shakespeare wrote a large proportion of his plays and poems in blank verse, the verse line popularized by Christopher Marlowe. Blank verse is an extremely supple verse form which can reach poetic heights without sounding forced or over-regulated, and is especially suited for drama. The rhythm most used in blank verse is iambic pentameter, with each line having ten syllables, alternating unstressed with stressed syllables, but Shakespeare is flexible in his use, especially in his later plays, where he…. [Note: Add points on imagery, his flexible change of syntax and verb-noun forms] Reputation[edit]Shakespeare's reputation has grown considerably since his own time. During his lifetime and shortly after his death, Shakespeare was well-regarded, especially by theatre-goers, but not considered the supreme poet or playwright of his age. He was included in some contemporary lists of leading poets, but he lacked the stature of Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser or Philip Sidney, although Jonson himself predicted his friend, rival and contemporary will be adulated 'for all times' and that his plays were already being patronized by the aristocrats during their time. After the Interregnum stage ban of 1642–1660, the Restoration theatre companies staged most of the older playwrights, including the phenomenally popular Beaumont and Fletcher team, but also Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. As with all his contemporaries, Shakespeare's plays were mercilessly shortened or adapted for the Restoration stage. Beginning in the late 17th century, Shakespeare began to be considered the supreme English-language playwright (and, to a lesser extent, poet) by critics such as …. and Alexander Pope. Initially this reputation focused on Shakespeare as a dramatic poet, to be studied on the printed page than in the theatre. By the early 19th century, during the Romantic era, Shakespeare came to be exemplified as the ideal poet. Foreign citicisms from Goethe, Schiller and Schlegel locate him as the fountainhead of the Romantic movement. [1] Spectacular theatrical productions of Shakespeare provided melodrama for the masses and were extremely popular. Later Romantic critics like Samuel Taylor Coleridge raised admiration for Shakespeare to adulation or bardolatry (from bard + idolatry), in line with the Romantic reverence for a poet as prophet and genius. By the Victorian age, Shakespeare had became an emblem of English pride and a "rallying-sign", as Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1841, for the British Empire. By the 20th century Shakespeare was firmly established in the Western canon and his reputation has never been higher - regarded by most to be the supreme Englih-language writer and handful of ... His works were critically re-examined from an array of perspectives, and he appears more modern than ever. As Polish literary critic Jan Kott noted a 1965 work, Shakespeare is “our contemporary”. Shakespearean studies now thrive in every Western country and influential scholars such as Harold Bloom continue to raise bardolatry to new heights. This present-day reverence has provoked a negative reaction, especially amongst the youths. In the 20th and 21st century most inhabitants of the English-speaking world encounter Shakespeare as a compulsory subject at a young age; Shakespeare's vast vocabulary and early modern English provide a considerable hurdle for middle and high school students and is associated by some young students with boredom, incomprehension and "high art" and not popular culture, an ironic fate considering the social mix of Shakespeare's audience. At the same time, Shakespeare's plays remain more frequently staged than the works of any other playwright and are frequently adapted into film — including Hollywood movies specifically marketed to broad teenage audiences. Fortunately, Shakespeare's plays often transfer well to a different environ and medium, even without retaining the splendor of his dialogues. A good example is Akira Kurosawa's Ran, a Japanese film version of King Lear. On another level, many modern English words and phrases that are taken for granted were introduced by Shakespeare. Speculations about Shakespeare[edit]Authorship[edit]During Shakespeare's lifetime, there is no evidence anyone doubted his works were authentic. All identify William Shakespeare, the Straford man, son of a glover, as the author to the body of dramatic literature attributed to him and frequently staged in England since the 1590s. Richard Barnfield (1598) speaks of Shakespeare as " honey-flowing," and says that his Venus and Lucrece have placed his name " in Fame's immortal book." John Weever (1599) speaks of " honeytongued Shakespeare," admired for " rose-cheeked Adonis," and " Romeo, Richard, more whose names I know not." John Davies of Hereford (1610) calls him " our English Terence, Mr Will Shakespeare." Thomas Freeman (1614) writes " to Master W. Shakespeare: " - " Who loves chaste life, there's Lucrece for a teacher Who list read lust there's Venus and Adonis I ... I Besides in plays thy wit winds like Meander." Around one hundred and fifty years after Shakespeare's death in 1616, doubts began to arise about the authorship of these attributed plays and poetry. The terms Shakespearean authorship and the Shakespeare Authorship Question refer to debates inspired by these skeptics, who consider these works to be by another hand. Many Shakespeare doubters are disappointed by the lack of available information about the Stratfordian writer. In Who Wrote Shakespeare (1996), John Mitchell notes "The known facts about Shakespeare's life ... can be written down on one side of a sheet of notepaper." He cites Mark Twain's satirical expression of the same point in the section "Facts" in "Is Shakespeare Dead?" (1909). These skeptics believe the Stratford actor incapable of producing such great literature owing to his schooling and humble background and refer to him derisively as "William Shakspere" or the hyphenated "Shake-speare". They maintain the real author must be someone else contemporaneous, even perhaps a group of playwrights rather than one individual. Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, an English nobleman and intimate of Queen Elizabeth, remains the most prominent 20th alternative candidate for authorship of the Shakespeare canon. Oxford is first identified in the 1920s by John Thomas Looney and further researched in the 1980s by Charlton Ogburn. Oxford partisans note his literary reputation, his classical education and travels, as well as alleged similarities between the Earl's life and the events depicted in the plays and sonnets. The principal hurdle for the Oxfordian theory is that many of the plays were dated after Oxford's death (1604), but well within the lifespan of William Shakespeare, the Stratford actor. Oxfordians counter this argument by noting that the conventional dating scheme was developed by Stratfordian researchers, and cite research that suggests the last plays in the Canon were written in 1604, the same year regular publication of Shakespeare's plays stopped. However these theories were not accepted by Stratfordians as they generally ignore the numerous number of topical allusions after 1604 in the plays. Christopher Marlowe is considered by some to be a second candidate. See Marlovian theory.[20] Most reject this assertion, given that Marlowe was documented to have died in 1593. Marlovians speculate that Marlowe faked his death in 1593 for various reasons and that he went into hiding, subsequently writing under the pen-name of William Shakespeare. Sir Francis Bacon is a third proposed author. His supporters propose he is well travelled and vastly erudite: he could read Greek, Italian, Hebrew and French. Arguments against Bacon include the suggestion he had no time to write so many plays, and that his style - often dry, methodical and rational - is fundamentally at odds with Shakespeare's imaginative style. The twenty-first century continues to throw up new candidates for the authorship debate. It is doubtful that the debate can be conclusively settled to satisfy both sets of , Stratfordians and non-Stratfordians. Mainstream academia maintain the evidence for the Stratford man as author is more than sufficient to..... Religion[edit]Main article: Shakespeare's religion [There should be a separate article on this.] In 1559, five years before Shakespeare's birth, the Elizabethan Religious Settlement finally severed the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church after decades of uncertainty. In the ensuing years, extreme pressure was placed on England's Catholics to convert to the 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.[21] Some scholars, using both historical and literary evidence, have argued that Shakespeare was one of these recusants. There were propositions that Shakespeare's own family were recusant Catholics as well. A tract professing secret Catholicism signed by John Shakespeare, father of the poet, was supposedly discovered in the rafters of Shakespeare's birthplace in the 18th century, seen and described by scholar Edmond Malone. The tract has since been lost, and its authenticity cannot be proven. John Shakespeare was listed as one who did not attend church services "for feare of processe for Debtte", according to the commissioners.[22] Though avoiding creditors may be a convenient pretext for a recusant's avoiding the church's establishment, this possibility is speculative. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, was a member of a conspicuous and determinedly Catholic family in Warwickshire.[23] In 1606, William's daughter Susanna was listed as one of the residents of Stratford refusing to take Holy Communion.[24] Archdeacon Richard Davies, an 18th century Anglican cleric, allegedly wrote of Shakespeare: "He dyed a Papyst".[25] While none of this evidence proves Shakespeare's own Catholic sympathies, some have argued Catholic sympathies are detectable in his writings. [26] This debate is particularly lively in the late 20th and the 21st centuries. Sexuality, Marriage and Relationships[edit].jpg) Shakespeare's patron at 21 years of age, one candidate for the "Fair Lord" of the sonnets. As with many aspects of Shakespeare's life, there is little direct evidence with regards to Shakespeare's sexuality. He was married to Anne Hathaway and fathered three children, in a marriage that was clearly hasty due to a premarital pregnancy. It has been speculated that Shakespeare felt trapped by this marriage, supported by the fact he left his family and moved to London after three years of marriage.[27], but like most Shakespearean speculations, it is hard to prove this for certain as Shakespeare remained married to Anne Hathaway for the rest of his life. While in London, Shakespeare may have had affairs with different women. One anecdote along these lines is provided by a law student named John Manningham, who wrote in his commonplace book that Shakespeare had a brief fling with a woman during a performance of Richard III.[28] While this is one of the few surviving contemporary anecdotes about Shakespeare, scholars are skeptical of its validity[29] Still, the anecdote suggests that at least one of Shakespeare's contemporaries (Manningham) believed that Shakespeare had heterosexual affairs, and that he was not "averse to an occasional infidelity to his marriage vows."[30] Possible evidence of other affairs are that twenty-six of Shakespeare's Sonnets are love poems addressed to a married woman (the so-called "Dark Lady"). In recent decades some scholars have taken another view of Shakespeare's sexuality, stating that possible homoerotic allusions in a number of his works suggest that Shakespeare was bisexual.[31] While twenty-six of Shakespeare's Sonnets are addressed to his Dark Lady, one hundred and twenty-six are addressed to a young man (known as the "Fair '''''Youth'''''"). The amorous tone of the latter group, which focuses on the young man's beauty and the writer's devotion, has been interpreted as suggestive evidence for Shakespeare's being bisexual. 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."[32] Nonetheless, others interpret them as referring to intense platonic friendship rather than sexual love, and some scholars are not convinced the sonnets are autobiographical. (Shakespeare had friends, no? Jonson and who else?) See also[edit]
Bibliography[edit]Shakespeare's plays are traditionally organised into three groups: Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories. The following list separates the plays according to their classification in the First Folio, the first published edition of Shakespeare's plays. Today, some of the comedies are usually considered as a separate subgenre, the 'romances' or tragicomedies; these plays are highlighted with an asterisk (*).
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