William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was born in 1564, the third of eight children. His parents were John Shakespeare, a successful glover and Alderman and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent farmer.
At the age of eighteen, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, a local farmer’s daughter eight years his senior. They had a daughter, Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet, his only son (who died aged 11). 1585-1591 is referred to as the ‘lost years’ as there are few historical records of Shakespeare’s life until his emergence on the London theatre scene. In 1592 London theatres closed because of the Plague. Shakespeare concentrated on writing narrative poetry, most notably, Venus and Adonis based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses and The Rape of Lucrece based on Ovid’s Fasti. Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare’s lifetime. In 1594 Shakespeare
wrote plays for Lord Chamberlain’s Men, London’s leading acting group, of which Shakespeare was a member. They were known as the King’s Men after the death of Queen Elizabeth I.
From 1594 – 1599 Shakespeare wrote most of his comedies and histories beginning with Romeo and Juliet and ending with Julius Caesar. He bought the second largest house in Stratford in 1597 indicating that the company had made him a wealthy man. Shakespeare became a partner in the newly built Globe Theatre in 1599, situated on the south bank of the Thames. During this year two of Shakespeare’s sonnets were also published. Early drafts of Sonnets 138 and 144 appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim but without Shakespeare’s consent.
In 1600 Shakespeare began his ‘tragic period’ which lasted until approximately 1608. Shakespeare’s prolific output began to slow down and no plays are attributed to him after 1613. His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house playwright for the King’s Men. On 20 May 1609 a quarto volume entitled Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Never Before Imprinted, went on sale, priced five pence. Henry VIII is written in 1616 and was Shakespeare’s final play.
William Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, aged 52.
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