William Shakespeare born on or about April 23, 1564

Jack Rabbit

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Sat Apr-23-05 01:46 PM
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William Shakespeare born on or about April 23, 1564

Edited on Sat Apr-23-05 02:17 PM by Jack Rabbit

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William Shakespeare, actor, dramatist and poet, was born in Stratford, Warwickshire, on or about April 23, 1564 and baptized into the Church of England on April 26. Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, a glove maker and local official, and his wife, Mary, who came from a Roman Catholic family.

As the son of a prominent Stratford family, Shakespeare attended grammar school. Reversals of the family fortunes may have caused young Will to leave school early, but this is not certain. What is known is that grammar schools in Shakespeare's England had a rigorous classical curriculum; even if he only completed six years of school, Shakespeare would have been far more familiar with classical works than most college graduates are today.

At the age of 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who was several years older than he; she was delivered of their first child about six months later. Although his own education may have been cut short by circumstances, it appears he taught school in Stratford for a time. It was when he was in his early twenties that we first hear of Shakespeare as an actor in London. In those days, London theater troupes would do a tour of the countryside from time to time. My personal speculation is that Shakespeare showed a theater troupe rudimentary forms of Titus Andronicus and The Comedy of Errors, the most rigidly classical of his very early work, and was asked to accompany the troupe back to London.

In addition to the two plays just named, Shakespeare's early dramatic work in London includes the three Henry VI plays and Richard III, which were probably all coauthored to some extent with other leading dramatists of the time, including Christopher Marlowe, and The Taming of the Shrew. An outbreak of plague closed the theaters in 1593 and Shakespeare was taken under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, probably at the behest of Lord Southampton's mother, who was looking for a poet to write works that would persuade her son to take a wife. It was for Lord Southampton that Shakespeare wrote the narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece most of the sonnets; those sonnets not addressed to Southampton were addressed to a "dark lady", whose identity has been the subject of much scholarly speculation over the years. It appears from the Dark Lady Sonnets that she and Shakespeare carried on a stormy affair. While under Southampton's patronage, Shakespeare came under the influence of several other members of Southampton's circle of friends and courtiers; this included Southampton's tutor, John Florio, an Italian who may have introduced Shakespeare to popular continental romances that became the source of several of Shakespeare's dramas, starting with The Two Gentlemen of Verona, written at this time. Also written during this time was A Midsummer Night's Dream which Shakespearean scholar A. L. Rowse believes may have been first performed at the wedding of the Countess of Southampton's wedding to Sir Thomas Heneage in May of 1594; one might speculate that Romeo and Juliet, also written at this time, might have been performed on the same evening. Also written in this period was Love's Labour's Lost.

As the theaters began to reopen in 1595, Shakespeare and several fellow actors formed a new theater troupe under the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain; the Lord Chamberlain's Men included Richard Burgage, a leading actor of his day and the first actor to play many of Shakespeare's tragic heroes; Agustine Phillips, another leadeing actor who may have played villains like Iago; and Will Kempe, a leading clown. Kempe, who played bawdy, physical clowns like Bottom the Weaver in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Dogberry in Much Ado about Nothing, left the troupe several years later and was replaced by Robert Armin, a more sophicated clown who played Feste in Twelfth Night and the Fool in King Lear. Shakespeare's first plays for the new troupe were a series of comedies, often called the "Golden Comedies" -- The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing and As You Like It and the historical dramas King John, Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V.

In 1599, the Lord Chamberlain's Men moved into a new theater, The Globe. Shakespeare's tastes, possibly dictated by that of theater goers, changed to dark comedy and tragedy. The first play to be performed at The Globe is believed to be Julius Caesar, which was followed by Twelfth Night, The Merry Wives of Windsor, the dark comedies Troilus and Cressida, All's Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure and the great tragedies Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. The tragic period was rounded out with Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus and Timon of Athens. Many scholars believe Timon is an unfinished play that was never actually performed in Shakespeare's lifetime.

During this time, the Lord Chamberlain's Men came under the direct patronage of King James, who was crowned in 1603. Thereafter, the troupe was known as the King's Men.

In 1608, the King's Men purchased an indoor theater in the Blackfriars' district in order to stage dramas for a more elite audience. Shakespeare's Blackfriars' plays were Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. The last of these ends with a speech that many believe was Shakespeare's farewell to the theater, although it could easily have been the farewell of Richard Burbage, who probably played the part of Prospero:

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

Shakespeare rounded out his dramatic career with Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, the former probably and the latter definitely written with a younger dramatist, John Fletcher. Shakespeare returned to Stratford and retired. He passed away on April 23, 1616, which might have been his 52nd birthday.

"Chandos" portrait, often attributed to Shakespeare's fellow actor and King's Men shareholder Richard Burgage, from the University of Minnesota