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William Shakespeare was born in the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire , England . The date of his birth is unknown, but he was baptized on Wednesday April 26, 1564, and it is widely assumed he was born on April 23, as it was customary at that time to baptize children three days after their birth. It is also interesting to note that he died on April 23, 1616, exactly 52 years after his birth. He was the son of John and Mary Shakespeare. John Shakespeare was a glove maker and later bailiff (the modern equivalent of mayor) of Stratford-upon-Avon . When Shakespeare was about twelve years old, his father’s fortunes began to decline as he fell into debt and failed to pay tithes to the church. Some scholars speculate that John Shakespeare refused to contribute to the Church of England because he was a closet Catholic (as were many people in Henry VIII’s England ). Whether or not the Shakespeares were Catholic, or were Catholic sympathizers, is a mystery enveloped in speculation.
Shakespeare’s childhood is also somewhat vague because town records did not keep accounts of children, but considering the fact that his father was a prominent figure in town it is safe to assume he went to the grammar school in Stratford . At this school he would have undergone a rigorous education in the Latin language, and would also have become intimately familiar with the authors of antiquity. This is probably where Shakespeare first encountered the dramatic arts in the writings of Roman playwrights like Plautus and Terence, as these authors were used to make the learning of Latin enjoyable an interesting.
When Shakespeare was eighteen years old, he married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his elder. Six months after their marriage, Hathaway gave birth to their daughter Susana. This has led some scholars to assume Shakespeare never wanted to marry Hathaway, but was forced into because of her pregnancy. This may well be true, but it is no grounds to speculate that their marriage was an unhappy one, especially considering that they had more children. In 1585, according to Stratford church records, she gave birth to the twins Judith and Hamnet. It is thus safe to assume that Shakespeare resided and worked in Stratford until he was twenty-two years old.
The next seven years of Shakespeare’s life are a mystery and are thus referred to as “the lost years.” Guesswork abounds as to what Shakespeare may have been doing for these seven years. The next we hear of him is in London in 1592, on the eve of the heyday of English theatre, and that from an unsympathetic source. A fellow playwright Robert Greene voiced contempt for the newcomer and his dramatic prowess.
Greene was a Cambridge graduate who resented the fact that Shakespeare, a village bumpkin in Greene’s eyes, was writing for the stage. This indicates that Shakespeare must have been in London for some time, at least long enough to have acquired the envy of another writer. As he attracted the jealousy of Robert Greene, he attracted the admiration of other contemporaries. Another writer, Thomas Nash, refers to the success of the Henry VI plays, marking Shakespeare as one of the most promising playwrights in London . In 1593 Shakespeare published his long narrative poem Venus and Adonis, dedicated to the earl of Southampton , and a year later he published his second narrative poem, The Rape of Lucrece, under the patronage of the same earl . Shakespeare also wrote poetry these two years, and sought the patronage of the aristocracy, because the theaters were closed in an attempt to reduce the outbreak of the plague. Even with such precautions, 11,000 people (in a city of 200,000) died as a result of this outbreak.
The rest of the 1590s show the growth of Shakespeare the playwright and Shakespeare the businessman. He acquired shares of the acting company for which he wrote, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. These shares, and not the income he received from the publications of his plays, were the source of Shakespeare’s wealth and financial success. Perhaps this is why he had so little to do with the Quarto publications (small, inexpensive books roughly the size of paperback today) of his plays. The publication of the quartos also chronicle Shakespeare’s rising success as a playwright. In the early quartos, his name appears nowhere on the publication of his plays. As his reputation grew, we first find his initials on the quartos, then his first initial followed by his last name, then his full name, and by the 1600s Shakespeare’s name appears in large letters above the titles of his plays. From this we may surmise that the quarto’s sales success was attributable more to the author’s reputation than the plays themselves. In the 1590’s Shakespeare wrote primarily histories and comedies, and his first venture into the realm of tragedy was Titus Andronicus at around 1592. His largest and most ambitions literary endeavor, dubbed the Henriad—which shows the rise of King Henry V in the plays Henry IV part 1, Henry IV part II, and Henry V— which he concluded at around 1599. In 1609 Shakespeare’s sonnets were published, having been composed at various times throughout the 1590s. The period between 1600-1608 was Shakespeare’s most prolific period, and one in which he produced masterpiece after masterpiece. The great tragedies Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth were written one after another during these years. Some scholars try to make a connection between the writing of Hamlet and the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, at around the time of its composition.
The complicated history of Hamlet’s composition aside, during this same period Shakespeare wrote two of his greatest comedies As You Like It and Twelfth Night . Once again cautioning against too heavy a reliance on scant biographical information to expalin the motivation of Shakespeare’s creativity. As he progressed in his career, Shakespeare’s verse broke loose the end stopped lines and iambic pentameter that dominated his early writing. As his verse developed a relatively freer form, Shakespeare expanded into the genre of the romance. Romance is a term applied to his plays Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest and The Two Noble Kinsmen . Such a genre did not exist in Shakespeare’s time, and scholars have classified these plays as romances because of their striking difference from Shakespeare’s earlier plays.
The romances incorporate elements of tragedy and comedy as well as the supernatural and magic into their plot and structure. It is important that Renaissance society had no classification for these plays because it highlights the fact that Shakespeare was breaking new ground . In his later years, Shakespeare became more experimental not only with the verse, but also the structure and content of his plays. At the end of his career, Shakespeare also took the young playwright John Fletcher under his apprenticeship. It was with Fletcher that he co-wrote The Two Noble Kinsmen. In addition to being the most famous co-author of plays in the years following Shakespeare’s retirement (Fletcher co-wrote with Francis Beaumont, forming the famous play-wrighting duo Beaumont and Fletcher), Fletcher also wrote the sequel to Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew entitled The Tamer Tamed .
Shakespeare retired from the world of theater in 1614 a wealthy man, bought a coat of arms for his family name, bought a good amount of real estate in his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon , leaving his family well endowed when he died. Many scholars have tried to make something of the fact that Shakespeare only left his wife his “second best bed” in his will, arguing that this showed a strained and tumultuous married life. But one must remember that Anne Hathaway’s children would have probably have cared for her after Shakespeare’s death, and what he left them would have been understood to be for the support of their mother. Also, the best bed in the house was usually reserved for guests. So leaving a wife the second best bed is not necessarily pejorative (furniture was expensive in those days), and one certainly cannot draw any conclusions about the nature of the Shakespeare’s marriage from this single legal document.
We know very little indeed about Shakespeare’s life, and many blanks have been filled by the work of many scholars who have soured the most mundane and indirect sources in hope of uncovering some trace of William Shakespeare. The fact is that Shakespeare’s was not a very important man in his own time. He was a good businessman who made a prosperous life for himself in the theater, and his greatest legacy and evidence of his life is his writing. It is very hard to find Shakespeare the man in his plays, he had the ability to create characters with individual personalities distinct from one another, and also distinct from himself. John Keats pointed out Shakespeare’s versatile poetic genius in the range and distinctiveness of his characters, from the noble Imogen to the evil Iago. Although we know little about Shakespeare’s life, and nothing about his thoughts and opinions, we have his plays and poetry that are, quite fittingly, as open to interpretation and speculation as his life.