Memoir Of William Shakespeare

Of all the Elizabethan poets, William Shakespeare is the most famous. He was born in 1564 in the village of Stratford-on-Avon to an old and prominent family. His father, John Shakespeare, was a glover and wool dealer with a shop in Stratford.

Shakespeare entered grammar school in 1571 at the age of seven. Elizabethan education was based on learning by rote, and he had an excellent aural memory. His education in Latin left an unmistakable impression on his vocabulary. In the upper school, he studied logic and rhetoric, and excelled in dialectic argument, a skill he later put to use in his plays. Shakespeare learned Greek mythology and Roman history. When he began to write, he showed a marvelous ability to make a little knowledge go a longway.

Shakespeare married while he was still a minor and needed his parents' permission. His bride, Anne Hathaway, was twenty-six years old. A daughter, Susanna, was born to the young couple in 1583, followed by twins, Hamnet and Judith, twenty months later. Shakespeare supported his family by working in his father's shop and, according to some sources, as a schoolmaster in the countryside. However, in the late 1580s, he appeared in London. Tradition has it that he fled to London for fear of prosecution for stealing a deer from the park of a local nobleman. Another theory is that he abandoned his wife and children and escaped to London to seek his fortune. It seems likely, however, that Shakespeare did not abandon his family. In fact, his wife may have accompanied him to London.

In 1588 London was filled with martial activities and excitement, for it was the time of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The mood of national pride and self-confidence carried over into the theater. Drama was a popular national activity appreciated by everyone from Queen Elizabeth to the women of the street. The Queen was a clever, cultivated woman who encouraged Elizabeth an drama. It was an extraordinary time for a man of Shakespeare's talents to burst upon the scene. Shakespeare apprenticed as an actor, and soon the young man from Stratford, with his sharp ear for language, became a playwright as well.

Richard Field, a friend from Stratford, was apprenticed to one of the leading printers in London, and it was this firm that published Shakespeare's first poem, "Venus and Adonis," in 1593, followed by "Lucrece" in 1594. Shakespeare's plays had not brought him much recognition, but his poems caused a stir in the literary world.

As a member of a group of actors known as the Earl of Pembroke's Men, Shakespeare came under the influence of Christopher Marlowe, one of the greatest dramatists of the period. Marlowe's stormy personality made an impact on the young Shakespeare. There are echoes of Marlowe throughout his plays. Shakespeare has been described as a "magpie, an inveterate borrower." He borrowed names, phrases and images from other poets and dramatists, but he improved what he borrowed and adapted it to his own genius.

The theaters were closed between 1592 and 1594 because of a plague. With the reopening of the theaters in 1594, Shakespeare joined the Lord Chamberlain's Company (later called the King's Players) and remained with them until his retirement. When the Globe Theatre was built in 1599, Shakespeare was a shareholder. By this time, he apparently was making a good income.

Some of Shakespeare's sonnets were written during the period when the theaters were closed, and they present one of the great mysteries of literature: To what extent were the sonnets autobiographical? Some are addressed to a young man and some to a "Dark Lady." Although it is impossible to determine what is fact and what is fiction in this literary puzzle, there is no denying the genius of the sonnets. Read, for example, sonnet XXIX.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate:
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

By 1600, the political scene was changing. The Earl of Essex was executed in 1601 and the public mood was one of disillusionment. From 1601 to 1603, Shakespeare wrote his greatest works, the four tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Some of his friends thought that these plays were evidence of mental strain and exhaustion, but Shakespeare was prosperous, and he was free to explore his mind to its ultimate depths.

Shakespeare's literary work covers a period of twenty years.During that time he wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets. None of the plays was published and no manuscripts exist. Several years after Shakespeare's death in 1616, two of his friends collected his writings in the "First Folio." Although the authenticity of the text in the "First Folio" is somewhat doubtful, it remains the ultimate authority on Shakespeare's work. The inscription on the "First Folio" is by Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's contemporary. Jonson wrote of the greatest figure in English literature,

"He was not of an age but for all time!"


Chronology of the Plays:

1591-92
Henry VI

1592-93
Richard III
Comedy of Errors

1593-94
Titus Andronicus
Taming of the Shrew

1594-95
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Love's Labour's Lost
Romeo and Juliet

1595-96
Richard II
Midsummer Night's Dream

1596-97
King John
Merchant of Venice

1595-98
Henry IV

1598-1599
Much Ado About Nothing
Henry V

1599-1600
Julius Caesar
Merry Wives of Windsor
As You Like It

1600-01
Twelfth Night
Hamlet

1601-02
Troilus and Cressida

1602-03
All's Well That Ends Well

1604-05
Measure for Measure
Othello

1605-06
Macbeth
King Lear
1606-07
Antony and Cleopatra

1607-08
Coriolanus
Timon of Athens

1608-09
Pericles

1609-10
Cymbeline

1610-11
The Winter's Tale

1611-12
The Tempest

1612-13
Henry VIII
Two Noble Kinsmen