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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

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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

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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.

Shakespeare's House in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Now home of the Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust

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

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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

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Shakespeare's funerary monument
Shakespeare's signature, from his will: By me William Shakespeare

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:'


His Works

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Plays

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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:

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.

Image of Shakespeare from the First Folio (1623), the first collected edition of his plays

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

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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 (*).