Top 10 Things You’ve Never Heard About William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare 

William Shakespeare (baptized, 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) [a] was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the most famous English-language writer and the most famous playwright in the world. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). narrative poems and some other verses, some by an uncertain writer. His plays are translated into every major living language and are performed more often than any other playwright. He remains the most influential writer in the English language and his works are studied and translated. Natawo Stratford-upon-Avon, England Baptized 26 April 1564 he died 23 April 1616 (age 52) Stratford-upon-Avon, England Landing Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon work Playful poet Active for years C. 1585-1613 Era Elizabethan Jacobean take English Renaissance husband(s) Anne Hathaway (d. 1582). Bern Susan Hall Hamnet Shakespeare Judith Kinne Parents John Shakespeare (father) Mary Arden (memory) signature William Shakespeare Signature. 

Early life 

Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, a councilor and successful glover (glove maker) of Snitterfield, Warwickshire, and Mary Arden, the daughter of a wealthy landed family He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptized on 26 April 1564. His date birth is unknown, but is traditionally observed on April 23, St. George's Day the same date in 1616. He was the third of eight children and the eldest son At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the diocese of Worcester issued a license for the marriage on 27 November 1582. The next day two of Hathaway's neighbors gave bonds guaranteeing that no legal claim would prevent the marriage. The ceremony could be arranged with some haste since the Chancellor of Worcester allowed the ban of marriage to be read once instead of the usual three times and six months after the wedding Anne gave birth to a child. wife Susanna was baptized. 26 May 1583.  Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed nearly two years later and were baptized on 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried on 11 August. , 1596 After the birth of the twin, Shakespeare left some historical traces until he was mentioned as part of the London theater scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the "complaints bill" of a law case before the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589. Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years". London and theatrical career It is not known definitively when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592. By then, he was sufficiently known in London to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit: Later years and death Shakespeare's funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated by Johnson, that Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years before his death". He was still working as an actor in London in 1608; in an answer to the sharers' petition in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage stated that after purchasing the lease of the Blackfriars Theatre in 1608 from Henry Evans, the King's Men "placed men players" there, "which were Heminges, Condell, Shakespeare, etc.". However, it is perhaps relevant that the bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609. The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed during extended outbreaks of the plague (a total of over 60 months closure between May 1603 and February 1610), which meant there was often no acting work. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time. Shakespeare continued to visit London during the years 1611–1614. In 1612, he was called as a witness in Bellott v Mountjoy, a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. In March 1613, he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory; and from November 1614, he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall. After 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613. His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house playwright of the King's Men. He retired in 1613, before the Globe Theatre burned down during the performance of Henry VIII on 29 June. Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52.[f] He died within a month of signing his will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in "perfect health"

  Performances

Shakespeare in performance It is not clear for which companies Shakespeare wrote his early plays. The title page of the 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus reveals that the play had been acted by three different troupes. After the plagues of 1592–93, Shakespeare's plays were performed by his own company at The Theatre and the Curtain in Shoreditch, north of the Thames. Londoners flocked there to see the first part of Henry IV, Leonard Digges recording, "Let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest ... and you rarely have room”. Text sources First Folio title page, 1623. Copperplate of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout. In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's friends from the King's Men, published the First Folio, a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It contains 36 texts, 18 of which were printed for the first time Many plays were already published in quarto versions – small books made of sheets of paper folded twice into four sheets. Poems In 1593 and 1594, when the theaters were closed due to the plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on sexual themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In Venus and Adonis, innocent Adonis rejects Venus's sexual advances; while in The Rape of Lucrece the virtuous woman Lucrece is raped by the greedy Tarquin Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses the poems show guilt and moral confusion due to uncontrollable lust [180] Both proved popular and became frequently reprinted in Shakespeare's time. The third poem in the account, Lover's Complaint, in which a young woman laments her seduction by a seductive lover, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. Shakespeare is now widely accepted by most scholars. . Critics argue that its beneficial properties are compromised by the effects of lead Sonnets Main article: Shakespeare's sonnets Title page of the 1609 edition of Shake-Speares sonnets The Sonnets, published in 1609, were the last non-dramatic works of Shakespeare to be printed. Scholars are not sure when each of the 154 sonnets was produced, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote his entire sonnet for a private reader.  Even before the two unauthorized sonnets appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599, Francis Meres was referring to Shakespeare's "sugreed sonnets" to private friends in 1598. style Main article: Shakespeare's writing style Shakespeare's first plays were written in the usual style of the time. He writes it in a language style that is not always natural to the needs of the characters or the drama. The poetry relies on elaborate, sometimes complicated metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical – written for actors to press rather than speak. The great speeches of Titus Andronicus, according to some critics, often emphasized action, for example; and the verse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona is described as silent Critical. 

 Reputation of William Shakespeare and Timeline of Shakespearean criticism "Not for an age, but for the ages." —Ben Jonson

Shakespeare was not respected in his lifetime, but he received great praise.  In 1598, it was selected by the clergyman and writer Francis Meres from a group of English dramatists as "the best" in comedy and tragedy  The writers of Parnassus played at St John's College, Cambridge, and were, along with Chaucer, Gower and Spenser.  In the First Folio, Ben Jonson calls Shakespeare "the soul of the age, the applause, the joy, the wonder of our stage", although elsewhere he says that "Shakespeare wants art" (no skill).  Classification of games Plays of William Shakespeare. Sir John Gilbert, 1849. Shakespeare's works include 36 plays published in the First Folio in 1623, named according to their folio classification as comedy, history, and tragedy.  Two plays not included in the First Folio, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, are now accepted as part of the canon, with scholars now agreeing that Shakespeare contributed significantly to the writing of both.  No poems by Shakespeare are included in the first folio. Faith Main article: Religious views of William Shakespeare Shakespeare agreed with the official religion of the state, [k] but his private views on religion became a matter of debate. Shakespeare's will uses the Protestant formula and he is a confirmed member of the Church of England, where he married, his children were baptized and wherewas buried. Some researchers claim that members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time when the practice of Catholicism was illegal in England. Shakespeare's mother Mary Arden actually came from a religious Catholic family. The strongest evidence would be a Catholic creed signed by his father, John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in the ruins of his former home on Henley Street. However, the document is now extinct and scholars disagree on its authenticity.  In 1591 the authorities announced that John Shakespeare could not attend church "for fear of a trial of guilt", a common Catholic excuse.