name	William Shakespeare
birth date	Baptised 26 April 1564 (birth date unknown)
birth place	Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
death date	23 April 1616 (aged 52)
death place	Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
spouse
children
relations
occupation	Playwright, poet, actor
signature	William Shakespeare Signature.svg
period	English Renaissance}}

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. 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. 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 written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th century. 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. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues 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. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

Life

Early life

William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual birthdate remains unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, St George's Day. This date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholar's mistake, has proved appealing to biographers, since Shakespeare died 23 April 1616. He was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son.

Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford, a free school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but the grammar curriculum was standardised by royal decree throughout England, and the school would have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar based upon Latin classical authors.

At the age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence 27 November 1582. The next day two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage. The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste, since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times, and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596.

After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592, and scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years". Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare’s first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him. 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. No evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.

London and theatrical career

It is not known exactly when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592. He was well enough known in London by then to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene in his ''Groats-Worth of Wit'':

...there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his ''Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide'', supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute ''Johannes factotum'', is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.

Scholars differ on the exact meaning of these words, but most agree that Greene is accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match university-educated writers such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe and Greene himself (the "university wits"). The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's ''Henry VI, Part 3'', along with the pun "Shake-scene", identifies Shakespeare as Greene's target. Here ''Johannes Factotum''—"Jack of all trades"— means a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the more common "universal genius".

Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare’s career in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks. From 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new king, James I, and changed its name to the King's Men.

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.

Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions from 1594. By 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title pages. Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's ''Works'' names him on the cast lists for ''Every Man in His Humour'' (1598) and ''Sejanus His Fall'' (1603). The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for Jonson’s ''Volpone'' is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end. The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged after ''Volpone'', although we cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in ''As You Like It'' and the Chorus in ''Henry V'', though scholars doubt the sources of the information.

Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford during his career. In 1596, the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames. He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there. By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear.

Later years and death

Rowe was the first biographer to pass down the tradition that Shakespeare retired to Stratford some years before his death; but retirement from all work was uncommon at that time, and Shakespeare continued to visit London. In 1612 he was called as a witness in 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 1606–1607, 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 for the King’s Men.

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.

In his will, Shakespeare left the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna. The terms instructed that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body". The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying. The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare’s direct line. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one third of his estate automatically. He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation. Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been the matrimonial bed and therefore rich in significance.

Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death. The epitaph carved into the stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in 2008:

''Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,'' ''To digg the dvst encloased heare.'' ''Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones,'' ''And cvrst be he yt moves my bones.'' (Modern spelling: ''Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, | To dig the dust enclosed here. | Blessed be the man that spares these stones, | And cursed be he that moves my bones.'')

Sometime before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil. In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published.

Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Plays

Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, and critics agree that Shakespeare did the same, mostly early and late in his career. Some attributions, such as ''Titus Andronicus'' and the early history plays, remain controversial, while ''The Two Noble Kinsmen'' and the lost ''Cardenio'' have well-attested contemporary documentation. Textual evidence also supports the view that several of the plays were revised by other writers after their original composition.

The first recorded works of Shakespeare are ''Richard III'' and the three parts of ''Henry VI'', written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date, however, and studies of the texts suggest that ''Titus Andronicus'', ''The Comedy of Errors'', ''The Taming of the Shrew'' and ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'' may also belong to Shakespeare’s earliest period. His first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's ''Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland'', dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty. The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca. ''The Comedy of Errors'' was also based on classical models, but no source for ''The Taming of the Shrew'' has been found, though it is related to a separate play of the same name and may have derived from a folk story. Like ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'', in which two friends appear to approve of rape, the ''Shrew's'' story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics and directors.

Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his greatest comedies. ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic ''Merchant of Venice'', contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, which reflects Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences. The wit and wordplay of ''Much Ado About Nothing'', the charming rural setting of ''As You Like It'', and the lively merrymaking of ''Twelfth Night'' complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. After the lyrical ''Richard II'', written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, ''Henry IV, parts 1'' and ''2'', and ''Henry V''. His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his mature work. This period begins and ends with two tragedies: ''Romeo and Juliet'', the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death; and ''Julius Caesar''—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's ''Parallel Lives''—which introduced a new kind of drama. According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in ''Julius Caesar'' "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to infuse each other".

In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem plays" ''Measure for Measure'', ''Troilus and Cressida'', and ''All's Well That Ends Well'' and a number of his best known tragedies. Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, ''Hamlet'', has probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which begins "To be or not to be; that is the question". Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, the heroes of the tragedies that followed, Othello and King Lear, are undone by hasty errors of judgement. The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves. In ''Othello'', the villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him. In ''King Lear'', the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia. According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty". In '' Macbeth'', the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies, uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful king and usurp the throne, until their own guilt destroys them in turn. In this play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic structure. His last major tragedies, ''Antony and Cleopatra'' and ''Coriolanus'', contain some of Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies by the poet and critic T. S. Eliot.

In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays: ''Cymbeline'', ''The Winter's Tale'' and ''The Tempest'', as well as the collaboration, ''Pericles, Prince of Tyre''. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Some commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day. Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, ''Henry VIII'' and ''The Two Noble Kinsmen'', probably with John Fletcher.

Performances

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 1592–3, 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 scarce shall have a room". When the company found themselves in dispute with their landlord, they pulled The Theatre down and used the timbers to construct the Globe Theatre, the first playhouse built by actors for actors, on the south bank of the Thames at Southwark. The Globe opened in autumn 1599, with ''Julius Caesar'' one of the first plays staged. Most of Shakespeare's greatest post-1599 plays were written for the Globe, including ''Hamlet'', ''Othello'' and ''King Lear''.

After the Lord Chamberlain's Men were renamed the King's Men in 1603, they entered a special relationship with the new King James. Although the performance records are patchy, the King's Men performed seven of Shakespeare's plays at court between 1 November 1604 and 31 October 1605, including two performances of ''The Merchant of Venice''. After 1608, they performed at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre during the winter and the Globe during the summer. The indoor setting, combined with the Jacobean fashion for lavishly staged masques, allowed Shakespeare to introduce more elaborate stage devices. In ''Cymbeline'', for example, Jupiter descends "in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. The ghosts fall on their knees."

The actors in Shakespeare's company included the famous Richard Burbage, William Kempe, Henry Condell and John Heminges. Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including ''Richard III'', ''Hamlet'', ''Othello'', and ''King Lear''. The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in ''Romeo and Juliet'' and Dogberry in ''Much Ado About Nothing'', among other characters. He was replaced around the turn of the 16th century by Robert Armin, who played roles such as Touchstone in ''As You Like It'' and the fool in ''King Lear''. In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that ''Henry VIII'' "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and ceremony". On 29 June, however, a cannon set fire to the thatch of the Globe and burned the theatre to the ground, an event which pinpoints the date of a Shakespeare play with rare precision.

Textual sources

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 contained 36 texts, including 18 printed for the first time. Many of the plays had already appeared in quarto versions—flimsy books made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves. No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies". Alfred Pollard termed some of them "bad quartos" because of their adapted, paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed from memory. Where several versions of a play survive, each differs from the other. The differences may stem from copying or printing errors, from notes by actors or audience members, or from Shakespeare's own papers. In some cases, for example ''Hamlet'', ''Troilus and Cressida'' and ''Othello'', Shakespeare could have revised the texts between the quarto and folio editions. In the case of King Lear, however, while most modern additions do conflate them, the 1623 folio version is so different from the 1608 quarto, that the ''Oxford Shakespeare'' prints them both, arguing that they cannot be conflated without confusion.

Poems

In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on erotic themes, ''Venus and Adonis'' and ''The Rape of Lucrece''. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In ''Venus and Adonis'', an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus; while in ''The Rape of Lucrece'', the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin. Influenced by Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'', the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust. Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, ''A Lover's Complaint'', in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the ''Sonnets'' in 1609. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote ''A Lover's Complaint''. Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects. ''The Phoenix and the Turtle'', printed in Robert Chester's 1601 ''Love's Martyr'', mourns the deaths of the legendary phoenix and his lover, the faithful turtle dove. In 1599, two early drafts of sonnets 138 and 144 appeared in ''The Passionate Pilgrim'', published under Shakespeare's name but without his permission.

Sonnets

Published in 1609, the ''Sonnets'' were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed. Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership. Even before the two unauthorised sonnets appeared in ''The Passionate Pilgrim'' in 1599, Francis Meres had referred in 1598 to Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets among his private friends". Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence. He seems to have planned two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a married woman of dark complexion (the "dark lady"), and one about conflicted love for a fair young man (the "fair youth"). It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial "I" who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart". The 1609 edition was dedicated to a "Mr. W.H.", credited as "the only begetter" of the poems. It is not known whether this was written by Shakespeare himself or by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, whose initials appear at the foot of the dedication page; nor is it known who Mr. W.H. was, despite numerous theories, or whether Shakespeare even authorised the publication. Critics praise the ''Sonnets'' as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time.

Style

Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in a stylised language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the drama. The poetry depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical—written for actors to declaim rather than speak. The grand speeches in ''Titus Andronicus'', in the view of some critics, often hold up the action, for example; and the verse in ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'' has been described as stilted.

Soon, however, Shakespeare began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. The opening soliloquy of ''Richard III'' has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama. At the same time, Richard’s vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soliloquies of Shakespeare's mature plays. No single play marks a change from the traditional to the freer style. Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with ''Romeo and Juliet'' perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles. By the time of ''Romeo and Juliet'', ''Richard II'', and ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself.

Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter. In practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines, with the risk of monotony. Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as ''Julius Caesar'' and ''Hamlet''. Shakespeare uses it, for example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind:

:''Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting'' :''That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay'' :''Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly—'' :''And prais'd be rashness for it—let us know'' :''Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well...''

:''Hamlet'', Act 5, Scene 2, 4–8

After ''Hamlet'', Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies. The literary critic A. C. Bradley described this style as "more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical". In the last phase of his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve these effects. These included run-on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length. In ''Macbeth'', for example, the language darts from one unrelated metaphor or simile to another: "was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed yourself?" (1.7.35–38); "...pity, like a naked new-born babe/ Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air..." (1.7.21–25). The listener is challenged to complete the sense. The late romances, with their shifts in time and surprising turns of plot, inspired a last poetic style in which long and short sentences are set against one another, clauses are piled up, subject and object are reversed, and words are omitted, creating an effect of spontaneity.

Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a practical sense of the theatre. Like all playwrights of the time, he dramatised stories from sources such as Plutarch and Holinshed. He reshaped each plot to create several centres of interest and to show as many sides of a narrative to the audience as possible. This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama. As Shakespeare’s mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and distinctive patterns of speech. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however. In Shakespeare's late romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre.

Influence

Shakespeare's work has made a lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, and genre. Until ''Romeo and Juliet'', for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy. Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events; but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds. His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success. Critic George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson as "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes."

Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens. The American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in ''Moby-Dick'' is a classic tragic hero, inspired by ''King Lear''. Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare's works. These include two operas by Giuseppe Verdi, ''Otello'' and ''Falstaff'', whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays. Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites. The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a friend of William Blake, even translated ''Macbeth'' into German. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature.

In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now, and his use of language helped shape modern English. Samuel Johnson quoted him more often than any other author in his ''A Dictionary of the English Language'', the first serious work of its type. Expressions such as "with bated breath" (''Merchant of Venice'') and "a foregone conclusion" (''Othello'') have found their way into everyday English speech.

Critical reputation

.}} Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he received his share of praise. In 1598, the cleric and author Francis Meres singled him out from a group of English writers as "the most excellent" in both comedy and tragedy. And the authors of the ''Parnassus'' plays at St John's College, Cambridge, numbered him with Chaucer, Gower and Spenser. In the First Folio, Ben Jonson called Shakespeare the "Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage", though he had remarked elsewhere that "Shakespeare wanted art". Between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson. Thomas Rymer, for example, condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic with the tragic. Nevertheless, poet and critic John Dryden rated Shakespeare highly, saying of Jonson, "I admire him, but I love Shakespeare". For several decades, Rymer's view held sway; but during the 18th century, critics began to respond to Shakespeare on his own terms and acclaim what they termed his natural genius. A series of scholarly editions of his work, notably those of Samuel Johnson in 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790, added to his growing reputation. By 1800, he was firmly enshrined as the national poet. In the 18th and 19th centuries, his reputation also spread abroad. Among those who championed him were the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal and Victor Hugo.

During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge; and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German Romanticism. In the 19th century, critical admiration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered on adulation. "That King Shakespeare," the essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1840, "does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying signs; indestructible". The Victorians produced his plays as lavish spectacles on a grand scale. The playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw mocked the cult of Shakespeare worship as "bardolatry". He claimed that the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare obsolete.

The modernist revolution in the arts during the early 20th century, far from discarding Shakespeare, eagerly enlisted his work in the service of the avant-garde. The Expressionists in Germany and the Futurists in Moscow mounted productions of his plays. Marxist playwright and director Bertolt Brecht devised an epic theatre under the influence of Shakespeare. The poet and critic T. S. Eliot argued against Shaw that Shakespeare's "primitiveness" in fact made him truly modern. Eliot, along with G. Wilson Knight and the school of New Criticism, led a movement towards a closer reading of Shakespeare's imagery. In the 1950s, a wave of new critical approaches replaced modernism and paved the way for "post-modern" studies of Shakespeare. By the 1980s, Shakespeare studies were open to movements such as structuralism, feminism, New Historicism, African American studies, and queer studies.

Speculation about Shakespeare

Authorship

Around 150 years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship of the works attributed to him. Proposed alternative candidates include Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Several "group theories" have also been proposed. Only a small minority of academics believe there is reason to question the traditional attribution, but interest in the subject, particularly the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, continues into the 21st century.

Religion

Some scholars claim that members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time when Catholic practice was against the law. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, certainly came from a pious Catholic family. The strongest evidence might be a Catholic statement of faith signed by John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in the rafters of his former house in Henley Street. The document is now lost, however, and scholars differ as to its authenticity. In 1591 the authorities reported that John Shakespeare had missed church "for fear of process for debt", a common Catholic excuse. In 1606 the name of William's daughter Susanna appears on a list of those who failed to attend Easter communion in Stratford. Scholars find evidence both for and against Shakespeare's Catholicism in his plays, but the truth may be impossible to prove either way.

Sexuality

Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 1583. Over the centuries some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical, and point to them as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than sexual love. The 26 so-called "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.

Portraiture

There is no written description of Shakespeare's physical appearance and no evidence that he ever commissioned a portrait, so the Droeshout engraving, which Ben Jonson approved of as a good likeness, and his Stratford monument provide the best evidence of his appearance. From the 18th century, the desire for authentic Shakespeare portraits fuelled claims that various surviving pictures depicted Shakespeare. That demand also led to the production of several fake portraits, as well as misattributions, repaintings and relabelling of portraits of other people.

List of works

Classification of the plays

Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed below according to their folio classification as comedies, histories and tragedies. 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 agreed that Shakespeare made a major contribution to their composition. No Shakespearean poems were included in the First Folio.

In the late 19th century, Edward Dowden classified four of the late comedies as romances, and though many scholars prefer to call them ''tragicomedies'', his term is often used. These plays and the associated ''Two Noble Kinsmen'' are marked with an asterisk (*) below. In 1896, Frederick S. Boas coined the term "problem plays" to describe four plays: ''All's Well That Ends Well'', ''Measure for Measure'', ''Troilus and Cressida'' and ''Hamlet''. "Dramas as singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies", he wrote. "We may therefore borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of today and class them together as Shakespeare's problem plays." The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use, though ''Hamlet'' is definitively classed as a tragedy. The other problem plays are marked below with a double dagger (‡).

Plays thought to be only partly written by Shakespeare are marked with a dagger (†) below. Other works occasionally attributed to him are listed as apocrypha.

Works

; Comedies

''All's Well That Ends Well'' ‡

''As You Like It''

''The Comedy of Errors''

''Love's Labour's Lost''

''Measure for Measure'' ‡

''The Merchant of Venice''

''The Merry Wives of Windsor''

''A Midsummer Night's Dream''

''Much Ado About Nothing''

''Pericles, Prince of Tyre'' *†

''The Taming of the Shrew''

''The Tempest'' *

''Twelfth Night''

''The Two Gentlemen of Verona''

''The Two Noble Kinsmen'' *†

''The Winter's Tale'' *

; Histories

''King John''

''Richard II''

''Henry IV, Part 1''

''Henry IV, Part 2''

''Henry V''

''Henry VI, Part 1'' †

''Henry VI, Part 2''

''Henry VI, Part 3''

''Richard III''

''Henry VIII'' †

; Tragedies

''Romeo and Juliet''

''Coriolanus''

''Titus Andronicus'' †

''Timon of Athens'' †

''Julius Caesar''

''Macbeth'' †

''Hamlet''

''Troilus and Cressida'' ‡

''King Lear''

''Othello''

''Antony and Cleopatra''

''Cymbeline'' *

; Poems

''Shakespeare's sonnets''

''Venus and Adonis''

''The Rape of Lucrece''

''The Passionate Pilgrim''

''The Phoenix and the Turtle''

''A Lover's Complaint''

; Lost plays

''Love's Labour's Won''

''The History of Cardenio'' †

; Apocrypha

''Arden of Faversham''

''The Birth of Merlin''

''Edward III''

''Locrine''

''The London Prodigal''

''The Puritan''

''The Second Maiden's Tragedy''

''Sir John Oldcastle''

''Thomas Lord Cromwell''

''A Yorkshire Tragedy''

''Sir Thomas More''

See also

World Shakespeare Bibliography

Notes

References

Bibliography

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

External links

Open Source Shakespeare complete works, with search engine and concordance

Open Shakespeare complete works, search engine, stats and more all as open content/open source

Internet Shakespeare Editions

First Four Folios at Miami University Library, digital collection

Shakespeare's Will from The National Archives

William Shakespeare at Project Gutenberg

==Related information==

Category:1564 births Category:1616 deaths Category:16th-century actors Category:16th-century English people Category:17th-century English people Category:English dramatists and playwrights Category:English poets Category:English Renaissance dramatists Category:People from Stratford-upon-Avon Category:People of the Tudor period Category:Sonneteers Category:People educated at King Edward VI School Stratford-upon-Avon Category:Shakespeare family

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name	Matthew Macfadyen
alt	Matthew Macfadyen in London, 2007
birth date	October 17, 1974
birth place	Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
spouse	Keeley Hawes (2004–present)
occupation	Actor }}

David Matthew Macfadyen (born 17 October 1974) is an English actor, known for his role as MI5 intelligence officer Tom Quinn in the BBC television drama series ''Spooks'' (also known as ''MI-5'') and for starring as Fitzwilliam Darcy in ''Pride and Prejudice''.

Early life

Macfadyen was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, the son of Meinir (née Owen), a drama teacher and former actress, and Martin Macfadyen, an oil worker. His paternal grandparents were Scottish and his maternal grandparents were natives of Wales. Macfadyen was brought up in several locations, including Jakarta, Indonesia, because of his father's profession. He attended schools in England (including in Louth, Lincolnshire), Scotland and Indonesia, and went to Oakham School in Rutland, before being accepted to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at age 17.

Career

After having studied at the RADA from 1992 to 1995, Macfadyen quickly became a well-known actor in British theatre due primarily to his work with the stage company Cheek by Jowl, for whom he played Antonio in ''The Duchess of Malfi'', Charles Surface in ''The School for Scandal'', and Benedick in ''Much Ado About Nothing''. His Benedick was particularly memorable, played as an officer-class buffoon with a moustache and a braying laugh. In 2005, he played to further great acclaim the part of Prince Hal in ''Henry IV, Parts One'' and ''Two'' at the Royal National Theatre, with Michael Gambon in the role of Falstaff. In 2007, he returned to the stage, portraying an American, Clay, a stay at home father with a liberal attitude in the play ''The Pain and the Itch''.

Macfadyen's major TV breakthrough came when he appeared as Hareton Earnshaw in a television adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel ''Wuthering Heights'', screened on the ITV network in 1998. Further television drama work followed, including starring roles in the dramas ''Warriors'' (1999) and ''The Way We Live Now'' (2001), both for the BBC. Also in 2001, he earned much critical acclaim for his starring role in the BBC Two drama serial ''Perfect Strangers'', which was written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff. In 2002, he starred in ''The Project'', a BBC drama charting New Labour's rise to power, and he took his highest-profile role to date, when he was picked to star in ''Spooks'', which went on to become a huge popular and critical success when screened on BBC One. A longer second season was screened in 2003, and a third season was broadcast in the autumn of 2004, with him leaving the series in the second episode. The series also found a following on cable television in the United States, where it aired as ''MI-5'' on the A&E; Network. In 2007 he appeared in the one-off Channel 4 drama ''Secret Life'', which dealt with the controversial subject of paedophilia. Matthew was nominated and subsequently won the 'Best Actor' award at the Royal Television Society 2007 Awards for this part, and has been nominated for a BAFTA. He also appeared in a short sketch for Comic Relief as the groom in ''Mr Bean's Wedding'', alongside Rowan Atkinson and Michelle Ryan.

Macfadyen has appeared in several films including ''Enigma'' (released in 2001), in which he was cast as a battle-scarred submarine commander, and ''In My Father's Den'', for which he received the New Zealand Screen Award for Best Actor. Most notably, he stars as the romantic lead Fitzwilliam Darcy in a highly acclaimed adaptation of ''Pride and Prejudice'', released in the UK in September 2005. He starred in Frank Oz's ''Death at a Funeral'' with Rupert Graves, Alan Tudyk, Daisy Donovan and Keeley Hawes.

Matthew also starred in ''Incendiary'', based on Chris Cleave's novel about a woman whose life is torn apart when her husband and infant son are killed in a suicide bombing at a football match whilst she was committing adultery. He played a senior anti-terrorist police officer alongside Michelle Williams and Ewan McGregor. He has also appeared in Ron Howard's film ''Frost/Nixon'', in which he played John Birt.

In 2008, he acted as the male lead Arthur Clennam in the BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens' ''Little Dorrit''. In 2009 Macfadyen appeared alongside Academy Award nominated actress Helena Bonham Carter in the BBC Four movie ''Enid'', based on the life of Enid Blyton, as Hugh Pollock, Blyton's publisher and first husband.

In 2010, he played The Sheriff of Nottingham in ''Robin Hood''. He also starred as Prior Philip in the TV miniseries ''The Pillars of the Earth'', and was the middle-aged Logan Mountstuart in ''Any Human Heart''.

In 2011 Macfadyen made a returning appearance in the BBC show ''Spooks'', but did not quote his name as Tom Quinn.

In June, 2010 Macfadyen won a British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in ''Criminal Justice''.

Personal life

In 2002, he began a relationship with his married ''Spooks'' co-star Keeley Hawes. They were married on 8 October 2004. Their first child, daughter Maggie, was born in December 2004. The couple announced the birth of a baby boy, Ralph, in September 2006. Macfadyen is stepfather to Keeley Hawes's son, Myles.

Theatre

1994 : ''The Crimson Island'', by Mikhail Bulgakov [ R.A.D.A. ] (Dymogatsky) 1994 : ''Lorca's Death'', by Ben Benison [ R.A.D.A. ] (Rafael/Intellect) 1994 : ''The Feigned Inconstancy'', by Marivaux [ R.A.D.A. ] (Chevalier) 1994 : ''The Beggar's Opera'', by John Gay [ R.A.D.A. ] (Macheath) 1995 : ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'', by Dale Wasserman [ R.A.D.A. ] (Chief Bromden)

1995 : ''The Libertine'', by Stephen Jeffreys [ R.A.D.A. ] (John Wilmot), with ''My Funny Valentine''

1995 : ''The Duchess of Malfi'', by John Webster [ Cheek by Jowl ] (Antonio Bologna) 1996 : ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', by Shakespeare [ Royal Shakespeare Company ] (Demetrius) 1998 : ''Much Ado About Nothing'', by Shakespeare [ Cheek by Jowl ] (Benedick) 1998 : ''The School for Scandal'', by Richard Brinsley Sheridan [ Royal Shakespeare Company ] (Charles Surface) 1999 : ''Battle Royal'', by Nick Stafford [ Royal National Theatre ] (Mr. Brougham) 2005 : ''Henry IV'', by Shakespeare [ Royal National Theatre ] (Prince Hal) 2006 : ''Total Eclipse'', by Christopher Hampton [ rehearsed reading at the Royal Court Theatre ] (Paul Verlaine) 2007 : ''The Pain and the Itch'', by Bruce Norris [ Royal Court Theatre ] (Clay) 2010 : ''Private Lives'', by Noël Coward [ Vaudeville Theatre ] (opposite Kim Cattrall)

Filmography

Television

1997 : ''Holding the Baby'', by Paul Jackson (Marcus) [ TV series on ITV ] 1998 : ''Wuthering Heights'', by David Skynner (Hareton Earnshaw) [ ITV ] – based on the novel by Emily Brontë 1999 : ''Warriors'', by Peter Kosminsky (Alan James) [ BBC ] 2000 : ''Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes'', by Paul Seed (Brian Waller) [ BBC ] 2001 : ''Perfect Strangers'', by Stephen Poliakoff (Daniel Symon) [ BBC Two ] 2001 : ''The Way We Live Now'', by David Yates (Sir Felix Carbury) [ BBC ] – based on the novel by Anthony Trollope 2002 : ''The Project'', by Peter Kosminsky (Paul Tibbenham) [ BBC ] 2002–2004,: ''Spooks'' (Tom Quinn) [ BBC ] 2007 : ''Mr Bean's Wedding'' (Daniel, the groom) [ sketch for the show ''The Big One'' for Comic Relief's Red Nose Day on 16 March 2007, BBC One ] 2007 : ''Secret Life'', by Rowan Joffe (Charlie Webb) [ Channel 4 ] 2008 : ''Ashes to Ashes'', by Bille Eltringham (Gil Hollis) [ BBC One ] 2008 : ''Little Dorrit'', by Adam Smith & Dearbhla Walsh (Arthur Clennam) [ BBC One ] 2008 : ''A Pocket Full of Rye'', by Charles Palmer (Inspector Neele) [ ITV ] 2009 : ''Enid Blyton'', by James Hawes (Hugh Pollock) [ BBC Four ] 2009 : ''Criminal Justice II'', by Yann Demange (Joe Miller) [ BBC One ] 2010 : ''The Pillars of the Earth'', by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan (Prior Philip) [ CBC ] 2010 : ''Any Human Heart'', by William Boyd (Logan Mountstuart) [ Channel Four ]

2011 : Spooks, a one off appearance in the series finale.

Film

''Enigma (2001 film) ''The Reckoning (2003 film) ''In My Father's Den (film) ''Pride and Prejudice (2005 film) ''Middletown (film) ''Grindhouse (film) ''Death at a Funeral (2007 film) ''Incendiary (film) ''Frost/Nixon (film) ''Robin Hood (2010 film) ''The Three Musketeers (2011 film) ''Anna Karenina (2012 film)

Year	Notes
2000	Maybe Baby (2000 film)>Maybe Baby''	Nigel
2001	Enigma'' ||	Lt. Cave
2003	The Reckoning'' ||	King's Justice
2004	In My Father's Den'' ||	Paul Prior
2005	Pride & Prejudice'' ||	Fitzwilliam Darcy>Mr. Darcy	London Film Critics Circle Awards 2005>London Film Critics Circle Award for Best British Newcomer of the Year
2006	Middletown'' ||	Gabriel Hunter
2007	Grindhouse'' ||	Eye Gouging Victim	Don't (grindhouse film)>Don't''
2007	Death at a Funeral'' ||	Daniel Howells
2008	Incendiary'' ||	Terence Butcher
2008	Frost/Nixon'' ||	John Birt, Baron Birt>John Birt	Nominated – Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
2010	Robin Hood'' ||	Sheriff of Nottingham
2011	The Three Musketeers'' ||	Athos
2012	Anna Karenina'' ||	Oblonsky

Voice work

2000 : ''The Voyage of the Beagle'', by Charles Darwin [ Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 ] (reader) 2001 : ''Trampoline'', by Meredith Oakes [ Afternoon Play on BBC Radio 4 ] (Skeggs) 2003 : ''Essential Poems (To Fall In Love With)'' [ TV programme on BBC Two ] (actor/reader) 2004 : ''The Coma'', by Alex Garland [ audio book ] (reader) 2004 : ''Getting Away From It: The Island'', by Tim Pears [ Afternoon Reading on BBC Radio 4 ] (reader) 2004 : ''The Hungerford Massacre'' [ TV documentary on BBC One ] (narrator) 2005 : ''Stories We Could Tell'', by Tony Parsons [ audio book ] (reader) 2006 : ''The 9/11 Liars'' [ TV documentary on Channel 4 ] (narrator) 2006 : ''Nuremberg: Nazis On Trial'' [ 3-part TV documentary on BBC Two ] (narrator) 2007 : ''Robin Hood's Quest'' & ''The Quest for Aladdin's Treasure'' [ video games by Oxygen Games ] (narrator) 2007 : ''The Making of Music'' [ BBC Radio 4 ] (reader) 2007 : ''The Blair Years'' [ 3-part TV documentary on BBC One ] (narrator) 2007 : ''Last Party at the Palace'' [ TV documentary on Channel 4 ] (narrator) 2008 : ''Dangerous Jobs for Girls'' [ 4-part TV documentary on Channel 4 ] (narrator) 2008 : ''Words of War'' [ TV documentary on ITV1 ] (narrator) 2009 : ''Wine'' [ 3-part TV documentary on BBC Four ] (narrator)

2009 : ''Inside MI5'' [ TV documentary on ITV1 ] (narrator)

2011: M&S; food adverts

2011: Bupa healthcare adverts

References

External links

BBC Drama Faces: Matthew Macfadyen

Category:1974 births Category:Alumni of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:English film actors Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:English people of Welsh descent Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:Living people Category:People educated at Oakham School Category:People from Great Yarmouth

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