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Biography (1564-1616)
Although relatively little is known about William Shakespeare’s life, his writings reveal him to have been an extraordinary man. His vitality, compassion, and insights are evident in his broad range of characters, who have fascinated generations of audiences, and his powerful use of the English language, which has been celebrated since his death nearly four centuries ago. Ben Jonson, his contemporary, rightly claimed that "he was not of an age, but for all time!" Shakespeare’s plays have been produced so often and his writings read so widely that quotations from them have woven their way into our everyday conversations. If you have ever experienced "fear and trembling" because there was "something in the wind" or discovered that it was "a foregone conclusion" that you would "make a virtue of necessity," then it wouldn’t be quite accurate for you to say that Shakespeare "was Greek to me" because these phrases come, respectively, from his plays Much Ado about Nothing, Comedy of Errors, Othello, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Julius Caesar. Many more examples could be cited, but it is enough to say that Shakespeare’s art endures. His words may give us only an oblique glimpse of his life, but they continue to give us back the experience of our own lives. Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon on or about April 23, 1564. His father, an important citizen who held several town offices, married a woman from a prominent family; however, when their son was only a teenager, the family’s financial situation became precarious. Shakespeare probably attended the Stratford grammar school, but no records of either his schooling or his early youth exist. As limited as his education was, it is clear that he was for his time a learned man. At the age of eighteen, he struck out on his own and married the twenty-six-year-old Anne Hathaway, who bore him a daughter in 1583 and twins, a boy and a girl, in 1585. Before he was twenty-one, Shakespeare had a wife and three children to support. What his life was like for the next seven years is not known, but there is firm evidence that by 1592 he was in London enjoying some success as both an actor and a playwright. By 1594 he had also established himself as a poet with two lengthy poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. But it was in the theater that he made his living and his strongest reputation. He was well connected with a successful troupe first known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men; they built the famous Globe Theatre in 1599. Later this company, because of the patronage of King James, came to be known as the King’s Men. Writing plays for this company throughout his career, Shakespeare also became one of its principal shareholders, an arrangement that allowed him to prosper in London as well as in his native Stratford, where in 1597 he bought a fine house called New Place. About 1611 he retired there with his family, although he continued writing plays. He died on April 23, 1616, and was buried at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. The documented details of Shakespeare’s life provide barely enough information for a newspaper obituary. But if his activities remain largely unknown, his writings—among them thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets—more than compensate for that loss. Plenty of authors have produced more work, but no writer has created so much literature that has been so universally admired. Within twenty-five years Shakespeare’s dramatic works included Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Julius Caesar, Richard III, 1 Henry IV, Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, and Measure for Measure. These plays represent a broad range of characters and actions conveyed in poetic language that reveals human nature as well as the author’s genius.
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