William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright and actor of the Renaissance era. He was an important member of the King’s Men company of theatrical players from roughly 1594 onward.
Known throughout the world, Shakespeare's writings capture the range of human emotion and conflict and have been celebrated for more than 400 years. And yet, the personal life of William Shakespeare is somewhat a mystery.
There are two primary sources that provide historians with an outline of his life. One is his work — the plays, poems and sonnets — and the other is official documentation such as church and court records. However, these provide only brief sketches of specific events in his life and yield little insight into the man himself.
- When Was Shakespeare Born?
No birth records exist, but an old church record indicates that a William Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564. From this, it is believed he was born on or near April 23, 1564, and this is the date scholars acknowledge as Shakespeare's birthday.
Located about 100 miles northwest of London, during Shakespeare's time Stratford-upon-Avon was a bustling market town along the River Avon and bisected by a country road.
Shakespeare was the third child of John Shakespeare, a leather merchant, and Mary Arden, a local landed heiress. Shakespeare had two older sisters, Joan and Judith, and three younger brothers, Gilbert, Richard and Edmund.
Before Shakespeare's birth, his father became a successful merchant and held official positions as alderman and bailiff, an office resembling a mayor. However, records indicate John's fortunes declined sometime in the late 1570s.
Scant records exist of Shakespeare's childhood and virtually none regarding his education. Scholars have surmised that he most likely attended the King's New School, in Stratford, which taught reading, writing and the classics.
Their first child, a daughter they named Susanna, was born on May 26, 1583. Two years later, on February 2, 1585, twins Hamnet and Judith were born. Hamnet later died of unknown causes at age 11.
There are seven years of Shakespeare's life where no records exist after the birth of his twins in 1585. Scholars call this period the "lost years," and there is wide speculation on what he was doing during this period.
One theory is that he might have gone into hiding for poaching game from the local landlord, Sir Thomas Lucy. Another possibility is that he might have been working as an assistant schoolmaster in Lancashire.
It's generally believed he arrived in London in the mid- to late 1580s and may have found work as a horse attendant at some of London's finer theaters, a scenario updated centuries later by the countless aspiring actors and playwrights in Hollywood and Broadway.
By the early 1590s, documents show
William Shakespeare was a managing partner in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, an acting company in London with which he was connected for most of his career.
Considered the most important troupe of its time, the company changed its name to the King's Men following the crowning of King James I in 1603. From all accounts, the King's Men company was very popular. Records show that Shakespeare had works published and sold as popular literature.
Although the theater culture in 16th century England was not highly admired by people of high rank, some of the nobility were good patrons of the performing arts and friends of the actors.
- Was Shakespeare successful in his lifetime?
By 1592, Shakespeare was well-known enough as a writer and actor to be criticised by jealous rival Robert Greene as an ‘upstart crow’ and ‘Johannes Factotum’ (a ‘Johnny do-it-all’) in his pamphlet Groats-worth of Wit (a groat being a small coin). Although it is difficult to determine the chronology of Shakespeare’s works, it is likely that by 1592 he had authored 11 plays, including Romeo and Juliet, Richard III and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His plays were successful: the box office takings from the first performance of Henry VI, Part 1 at the Rose in 1592 were £3 16s. 8d., the highest recorded for the season.
For much of the period from September 1592 to June 1594, the London playhouses were shut because of the plague. Shakespeare published two epic poems during this time, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
Shakespeare’s success grew through the 1590s. He joined and became a shareholder of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men who performed before Queen Elizabeth on numerous occasions, and as well as writing more plays, he published several poems and circulated his sonnet sequence in manuscript. His successes enabled him in 1597 to buy New Place, the second largest house in Stratford. This success was not untainted by tragedy however: in 1596 his 11 year old son Hamnet, died.
- Where were Shakespeare’s plays performed?
In 1599,
Wiilliam Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men took up residence in the newly built Globe. Julius Caesar was one of the first plays performed there. Performances at the Globe were divided into three seasons with breaks around Christmas when the players performed at court; Lent, when playing was intermittent; and summer when the players toured the provinces escaping the infection and infestation of the city.
When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, her successor, King James I, announced that the Lord Chamberlain’s Men would now be the King’s Men. This patronage was a huge coup for the troupe, but Shakespeare was by no means a puppet playwright and he continued to write plays that posed difficult questions about kingship. The Jacobean works of 1604–08 were darker and include the mature tragedies Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.
In 1608 the King’s Men took on a second theatre, a candlelit indoor venue at Blackfriars, whose expensive seats catered to a more elite audience and whose lighting may have influenced the atmosphere of late plays such as The Tempest.
Shakespeare’s plays began
to be printed in 1594, probably with his tragedy Titus Andronicus. This appeared as a small, cheap pamphlet called a quarto because of the way it was printed. 18 of Shakespeare’s plays had appeared in quarto editions by the time of his death in 1616. Another three plays were printed in quarto before 1642.
As only one literary manuscript fragment in Shakespeare’s hand survives, the earliest printed editions are our only source for what he actually wrote. The quarto editions are the texts closest to Shakespeare’s time. Some are thought to preserve either his working drafts (his foul papers) or his fair copies. Others are thought to record versions remembered by actors who performed the plays, providing information about staging practices in Shakespeare’s day.
- When did Shakespeare die?
In 1613 the Globe burned down and the same year
William Shakespeare retired from the London theatre world and returned to Stratford. He died on 23 April 1616 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, where he had been baptised 52 years earlier.
The first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, the First Folio, was collated and published in 1623, seven years after the playwright’s death. Of the 36 plays in the First Folio, 18 had not yet been printed at all. It is this fact that makes the First Folio so important; without it, many of Shakespeare’s plays, including Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Julius Caesar and The Tempest, might never have survived.
The text was collated by two of
William Shakespeare fellow actors and friends, John Heminge and Henry Condell, who edited it and supervised the printing. They divided the plays into comedies, tragedies and histories, an editorial decision that has come to shape our idea of the Shakespearean canon.
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