Niharika das biography of william shakespeare
When he was eighteen, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway , who was twenty-six. It was a rushed marriage because Anne was already pregnant at the time of the ceremony. Together they had three children. Their first daughter, Susanna , was born six months after the wedding and was later followed by twins Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet died when he was just 11 years old.
Shakespeare's career jump-started in London, but when did he go there? We know Shakespeare's twins were baptised in , and that by his reputation was established in London, but the intervening years are considered a mystery. Shakespeare was the company's regular dramatist, producing on average two plays a year, for almost twenty years. Altogether Shakespeare's works include 38 plays, 2 narrative poems, sonnets, and a variety of other poems.
No original manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays are known to exist today. Even in death, he leaves a final piece of verse as his epitaph:. Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones. Biography Shakespeare's Will. Scenes and Monologues Theatre Companies.
Shakespeare's Biography Biographical Links Home Shakespeare's Last Will and Testament For all his fame and celebration, William Shakespeare remains a mysterious figure with regards to personal history. Even in death, he leaves a final piece of verse as his epitaph: Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare To dig the dust enclosed here. Biographical Links Mrs.
Or several, judging from the published speculation focused on her life and marriage. Shakespeare's "Lost Years" William Shakespeare may be the most famous writer in Western literature, but his whereabouts from to are a mystery. The ensuing speculation has spawned many interesting theories without producing much hard evidence. Introducing Mr.
William Shakespeare Leigh T. Denault presents a great succinct biography sketch of Shakespeare. Searching for Shakespeare Searching for Shakespeare is an online mseum exhibition curated by the Centre of Archaeology at Staffordshire University in collaboration with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. John Shakespeare owned several properties in Stratford and had a profitable—though illegal—sideline of dealing in wool.
He was appointed to several municipal offices and served as an alderman in , culminating in a term as bailiff , the chief magistrate of the town council , in For reasons unclear to history he fell upon hard times, beginning in , when William was After four years of non-attendance at council meetings, he was finally replaced as burgess in A close analysis of Shakespeare's works compared with the standard curriculum of the time confirms that Shakespeare had received a grammar school education.
It was free to all male children, and though there is no direct evidence of which grammar school Shakespeare attended, there is hardly a possibility that it was any other than the school in Stratford. The school day typically ran from 6 a.
Niharika das biography of william shakespeare
Direct evidence of the curriculum at Shakespeare's particular school or the paedagogical methods of his schoolteachers is lacking, but William Lily 's Latin grammar was required to be used throughout England by royal decree, [ 21 ] [ 22 ] and the curriculum was essentially uniform with slight variations. After Aesop, Shakespeare would have had his first introduction to dramatic structure by studying the comedies of Terence , and perhaps some of Plautus as well.
At about the age of 10, Shakespeare progressed to the upper grammar school taught by the master. It was also in the upper grammar school that Shakespeare began his study of classical Latin verse. Subject matter for Shakespeare's composition exercises in both prose and verse would have been drawn from authors of history, of whom Sallust and Caesar were nearly always required.
Ben Jonson's statement that Shakespeare had "small Latine, and lesse Greeke " is the strongest evidence that Shakespeare knew any Greek whatsoever. By the end of their studies, grammar school pupils were quite familiar with the great Latin authors, and with Latin drama and rhetoric. Shakespeare is unique among his contemporaries in the extent of figurative language derived from country life and nature.
On 27 November , Shakespeare was issued a special licence to marry Anne Hathaway , the daughter of the late Richard Hathaway, a yeoman farmer of Shottery, about a mile west of Stratford the clerk mistakenly recorded the name "Anne Whateley". The licence, issued by the consistory court of the diocese of Worcester, 21 miles 34 km west of Stratford, allowed the two to marry with only one proclamation of the marriage banns in church instead of the customary three successive Sundays.
The reason for the special licence became apparent six months later with the baptism of their first daughter, Susanna , on 26 May Their twin children — a son Hamnet and a daughter Judith named after Shakespeare's neighbours Hamnet and Judith Sadler — were baptised on 2 February , before Shakespeare was 21 years of age. After the baptism of the twins in , and except for being party to a lawsuit to recover part of his mother's estate which had been mortgaged and lost by default, Shakespeare leaves no historical traces until Robert Greene jealously alludes to him as part of the London theatrical scene in This seven-year period — known as the "lost years" to Shakespeare scholars — was filled by early biographers with inferences drawn from local traditions and by more recent biographers with surmises about the onset of his acting career deduced from textual and bibliographic hints and the surviving records of the various troupes of players, acting at that time.
While this lack of records bars any certainty about his activity during those years, it is certain that by the time of Greene's attack on the year-old, Shakespeare had acquired a reputation as an actor and burgeoning playwright. Several hypotheses have been put forth to account for his life during this time, and a number of accounts are given by his earliest biographers.
According to Shakespeare's first biographer Nicholas Rowe , Shakespeare fled Stratford after he got in trouble for poaching deer from local squire Thomas Lucy , and that he then wrote a scurrilous ballad about Lucy. It is also reported, according to a note added by Samuel Johnson to the edition of Rowe's Life , that Shakespeare minded the horses for theatre patrons in London.
Johnson adds that the story had been told to Alexander Pope by Rowe. In a book, W. Nicholas Knight presented a theory that Shakespeare pursued a legal career, finding evidence of such training in his written works. Knight for a "lack of scholarly objectivity. In E. Honigmann proposed that Shakespeare acted as a schoolmaster in Lancashire , [ 65 ] on the evidence found in the will of a member of the Houghton family, referring to plays and play-clothes and asking his kinsman Thomas Hesketh to take care of "William Shakeshaft, now dwelling with me".
Honigmann proposed that John Cottam, Shakespeare's reputed last schoolmaster, recommended the young man. Another idea is that Shakespeare may have joined Queen Elizabeth's Men in , after the sudden death of actor William Knell in a fight while on a tour which later took in Stratford. Samuel Schoenbaum speculates that, "Maybe Shakespeare took Knell's place and thus found his way to London and stage-land.
Though Shakespeare is known today primarily as a playwright and poet, his main occupation was as a player and sharer in an acting troupe. How or when Shakespeare got into acting is unknown. The profession was unregulated by a guild that could have established restrictions on new entrants to the profession—actors were literally "masterless men"—and several avenues existed to break into the field in the Elizabethan era.
Certainly Shakespeare had many opportunities to see professional playing companies in his youth. Before being allowed to perform for the general public, touring playing companies were required to present their play before the town council to be licensed. Players first acted in Stratford in , the year that John Shakespeare was bailiff. Before Shakespeare turned 20, the Stratford town council had paid for at least 18 performances by at least 12 playing companies.
In one playing season alone, that of —87, five different acting troupes visited Stratford. By late , Shakespeare was part-owner of a playing company , known as 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. The group became so popular that, after the death of Elizabeth I and the coronation of James I , the new monarch adopted the company, which then became known as the King's Men , after the death of their previous sponsor.
Shakespeare's works are written within the frame of reference of the career actor, rather than a member of the learned professions or from scholarly book-learning. The Shakespeare family had long sought armorial bearings and the status of gentleman. William's father John, a bailiff of Stratford with a wife of good birth, was eligible for a coat of arms and applied to the College of Heralds , but evidently his worsening financial status prevented him from obtaining it.
The application was successfully renewed in , most probably at the instigation of William himself as he was the more prosperous at the time. The motto "Non sanz droict" "Not without right" was attached to the application, but it was not used on any armorial displays that have survived. The theme of social status and restoration runs deep through the plots of many of his plays, and at times Shakespeare seems to mock his own longing.
By , Shakespeare had moved to the parish of St. He is also listed among the actors in Jonson's Sejanus His Fall. Also by , his name began to appear on the title pages of his plays, presumably as a selling point. There is a tradition that Shakespeare, in addition to writing many of the plays his company enacted and concerned with business and financial details as 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.
He appears to have moved across the River Thames to Southwark sometime around In , Shakespeare acted as a matchmaker for his landlord's daughter. Legal documents from , when the case was brought to trial, show that Shakespeare was a tenant of Christopher Mountjoy, a Huguenot tire-maker a maker of ornamental headdresses in the northwest of London in Mountjoy's apprentice Stephen Bellott wanted to marry Mountjoy's daughter.
Shakespeare was enlisted as a go-between, to help negotiate the terms of the dowry. On Shakespeare's assurances, the couple married. Eight years later, Bellott sued his father-in-law for delivering only part of the dowry. During the Bellott v Mountjoy case one witness, in a deposition, said that Christopher Mountjoy called on Shakespeare and encouraged him to persuade Stephen Belott to the marriage of his daughter.
Then Shakespeare was called to testify, and according to the record, said that Belott was "a very good and industrious servant". When it came to specifics about the size of the dowry and promised inheritance due the daughter, Shakespeare did not remember. A second set of questions was prepared for Shakespeare to testify again, but that appears not to have happened.
The case was then turned over to the elders of the Huguenot church for arbitration. By the early 17th century, Shakespeare had become very prosperous. Most of his money went to secure his family's position in Stratford. Shakespeare himself seems to have lived in rented accommodation while in London. According to John Aubrey, he travelled to Stratford to stay with his family for a period each year.
The Stratford chamberlain's accounts in record a sale of stone to the council from "Mr Shaxpere", which may have been related to remodelling work on the newly purchased house. In the local council ordered an investigation into the hoarding of grain, as there had been a run of bad harvests causing a steep increase in prices. Speculators were acquiring excess quantities in the hope of profiting from scarcity.
In addition to its literary importance, the First Folio contains an original portrait of Shakespeare on the title page. The other is a memorial bust at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. Today, there are surviving copies of the First Folio that date back to , but experts estimate roughly First Folios were printed. Scholars and literary critics began to float names like Christopher Marlowe, Edward de Vere, and Francis Bacon —men of more known backgrounds, literary accreditation, or inspiration—as the true authors of the plays.
Official records from the Holy Trinity Church and the Stratford government record the existence of Shakespeare, but none of these attest to him being an actor or playwright. The most serious and intense skepticism began in the 19 th century when adoration for Shakespeare was at its highest. The detractors believed that the only hard evidence surrounding Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon described a man from modest beginnings who married young and became successful in real estate.
They contend that Shakespeare had neither the education nor the literary training to write such eloquent prose and create such rich characters. However, the vast majority of Shakespearean scholars contend that Shakespeare wrote all his own plays. They point out that other playwrights of the time also had sketchy histories and came from modest backgrounds.
They point to evidence that displays his name on the title pages of published poems and plays. There is also strong circumstantial evidence of personal relationships by contemporaries who interacted with Shakespeare as an actor and a playwright. What seems to be true is that Shakespeare was a respected man of the dramatic arts who wrote plays and acted in the late 16 th and early 17 th centuries.
Beginning with the Romantic period of the early s and continuing through the Victorian period, acclaim and reverence for Shakespeare and his work reached its height. In the 20 th century, new movements in scholarship and performance rediscovered and adopted his works. Today, his plays remain highly popular and are constantly studied and reinterpreted in performances with diverse cultural and political contexts.
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