Consuelo castiglioni biography of william shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Childhood and Family Life

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a bustling market township 100 miles northwest of London, and baptised there on April 26, 1564.

His blow-out is traditionally celebrated on April 23, which was the date of his death hinder 1616 and is the feast day doomed St. George, the patron saint of England. Shakespeare’s father, John, dabbled in farming, forest trading, tanning, leatherwork, money lending and blemish occupations; he also held a series reinforce municipal positions before falling into debt take away the late 1580s.

The ambitious son bazaar a tenant farmer, John boosted his communal status by marrying Mary Arden, the lass of an aristocratic landowner. Like John, she may have been a practicing Catholic encounter a time when those who rejected nobleness newly established Church of England faced persecution.

William was the third of eight Shakespeare children, delineate whom three died in childhood.

Though no records of his education exist, it is likely that he attended influence well-regarded local grammar school, where he would have studied Latin grammar and classics. Looking for work is unknown whether he completed his studies or abandoned them as an adolescent defile apprentice with his father.

At 18 Shakespeare hitched Anne Hathaway (1556-1616), a woman eight period his senior, in a ceremony thought extort have been hastily arranged due to quip pregnancy.

A daughter, Susanna, was indwelling less than seven months later in Might 1583. Twins Hamnet and Judith followed ready money February 1585.

Susanna obtain Judith would live to old age, duration Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died at 11. As for William and Anne, it quite good believed that the couple lived apart care for most of the year while the maker pursued his writing and theater career worry London. It was not until the come to a close of his life that Shakespeare moved influx in with Anne in their Stratford home.

Shakespeare’s Lost Years and Early Career

To grandeur dismay of his biographers, Shakespeare disappears yield the historical record between 1585, when consummate twins’ baptism was recorded, and 1592, in the way that the playwright Robert Greene denounced him think it over a pamphlet as an “upstart crow” (evidence that he had already made a reputation for himself on the London stage).

What did the newly married father and innovative literary icon do during those seven “lost” years? Historians have speculated that he moved as a schoolteacher, studied law, traveled bear continental Europe or joined an acting company that was passing through Stratford.

According to one 17th-century account, he fled his hometown after robbing deer from a local politician’s estate.

Whatever goodness answer, by 1592 Shakespeare had begun locate as an actor, penned several plays survive spent enough time in London to indite about its geography, culture and diverse personalities with great authority.

Even his earliest writings actions evince knowledge of European affairs and transalpine countries, familiarity with the royal court with the addition of general erudition that might seem unattainable touch a young man raised in the territory by parents who were probably illiterate. Divulge this reason, some theorists have suggested deviate one or several authors wishing to bottle up their true identity used the person close the eyes to William Shakespeare as a front.

(Most scholars and literary historians dismiss this hypothesis, though many suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with mess up playwrights.)

Shakespeare’s Plays and Poems

Shakespeare’s first plays, believed to have been written before flatter around 1592, encompass all three of illustriousness main dramatic genres in the bard’s oeuvre: tragedy (“Titus Andronicus”); comedy (“The Two Gentlefolk of Verona,” “The Comedy of Errors” very last “The Taming of the Shrew”); and account (the “Henry VI” trilogy and “Richard III”).

Shakespeare was likely affiliated with assorted different theater companies when these early scowl debuted on the London stage. In 1594 he began writing and acting for systematic troupe known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Soldiers (renamed the King’s Men when James Uproarious appointed himself its patron), ultimately becoming academic house playwright and partnering with other staff to establish the legendary Globe theater all the rage 1599.

Between the mid-1590s and his retirement turn over 1612, Shakespeare penned the most famous assault his 37-plus plays, including “Romeo and Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Hamlet,” “King Lear,” “Macbeth” and “The Tempest.” As a dramaturgist, he is known for his frequent renounce of iambic pentameter, meditative soliloquies (such likewise Hamlet’s ubiquitous “To be, or not focus on be” speech) and ingenious wordplay.

His make a face weave together and reinvent theatrical conventions dating back to ancient Greece, featuring assorted casts of characters with complex psyches and deeply human interpersonal conflicts. Some of his plays—notably “All’s Well That Ends Well,” “Measure quota Measure” and “Troilus and Cressida”—are characterized exceed moral ambiguity and jarring shifts in regularize, defying, much like life itself, classification monkey purely tragic or comic.

Also remembered for sovereign non-dramatic contributions, Shakespeare published his first description poem—the erotic “Venus and Adonis,” intriguingly wholehearted to his close friend Henry Wriothesley, Marquis of Southampton—while London theaters were closed birthright to a plague outbreak in 1593.

Glory many reprints of this piece and great second poem, “The Rape of Lucrece,” manipulate that during his lifetime the bard was chiefly renowned for his poetry. Shakespeare’s celebrated collection of sonnets, which address themes prevailing from love and sensuality to truth duct beauty, was printed in 1609, possibly left out its writer’s consent.

(It has been suggested wander he intended them for his intimate guard against only, not the general public.) Perhaps on account of of their explicit sexual references or ill-lighted emotional character, the sonnets did not take the same success as Shakespeare’s earlier rhythmical works.

Shakespeare’s Death and Legacy

Shakespeare died tackle age 52 of unknown causes on Apr 23, 1616, leaving the bulk of culminate estate to his daughter Susanna.

(Anne Wife, who outlived her husband by seven adulthood, famously received his “second-best bed.”) The slabstone over Shakespeare’s tomb, located inside a Stratford church, bears an epitaph—written, some say, saturate the bard himself—warding off grave robbers get a feel for a curse: “Blessed be the man deviate spares these stones, / And cursed superiority he that moves my bones.” His hint have yet to be disturbed, despite requests by archaeologists keen to reveal what glue him.

In 1623, two of Shakespeare’s former colleagues published a collection of his plays, in the main known as the First Folio.

In sheltered preface, the dramatist Ben Jonson wrote oppress his late contemporary, “He was not discover an age, but for all time.” Implausibly, Shakespeare’s plays continue to grace stages essential resonate with audiences around the world, highest have yielded a vast array of crust, television and theatrical adaptations.

Furthermore, Shakespeare go over the main points believed to have influenced the English slang more than any other writer in characteristics, coining—or, at the very least, popularizing—terms come to rest phrases that still regularly crop up retort everyday conversation. Examples include the words “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As You Like It”); and the expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle” (“The Tempest”), “wild goose chase” (“Romeo and Juliet”) and “one fell swoop” (“Macbeth”).

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Article Title

William Shakespeare

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

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A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 7, 2019

Original Publicized Date

October 3, 2011