William Shakespeare

Growing up we have all heard about the famous poet William Shakespeare, his poem are known worldwide and is popular used especially in schools. Born on the 26th of April 1564 to parents John Shakespeare and Mary Arden in Stratford-upon-Avon, he died on the 2rd of April 1616. A famous poet, playwright and actor, his plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

 

Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later known as the King’s Men. In his poems and plays, Shakespeare invented thousands of words, often combining or contorting Latin, French, and native roots.

 

In 1599, a partnership of company members built their own theatre on the south bank of the River Thames, which they called the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre.

 

Records of Shakespeare’s property purchases and investments indicate that the company made him a wealthy man.In 1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, he invested in a share of the parish tithes in Stratford.

 

At 18 years old, he married Anne Hathaway, they share three children, and he appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later.

 

Few records of Shakespeare’s private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were actually written by others. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories and these works remain regarded as some the best work produced in these genres even today.

 

He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime.

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In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare’s.

 

Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the 19th century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare’s genius, and the Victorians worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called “bardolatry”.

 

In the 20th century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London. John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster.

 

Some 20th-century scholars have suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain “William Shakeshafte” in his will.

 

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare’s death.

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