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	Susanna HallHamnet ShakespeareJudith Quiney
relations	John Shakespeare (father)Mary Shakespeare (mother)
occupation	Playwright, poet, actor
signature	William Shakepeare Signature.svg
movement	English Renaissance theatre}}

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 raised 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, 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 curriculum was dictated by law throughout England, and the school would have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and the classics.

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 called 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 who 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 "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 murder of his daughter and the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester. 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 eighties, 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. However, over the centuries readers have pointed to Shakespeare's sonnets as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than sexual love. At the same time, 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

Wikipedia Books: William Shakespeare

Notes

References

Bibliography

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

Cercignani, Fausto, ''Shakespeare's Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation'', Oxford, University Press (Clarendon Press), 1981.

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

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 illustrated on sterling banknotes Category:People of the Tudor period Category:Sonneteers Category:People educated at King Edward VI School Stratford-upon-Avon

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name	Miranda Cosgrove
background	solo_singer
birth name	Miranda Taylor Cosgrove
birth date	May 14, 1993
origin	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
instrument	Vocals, guitar
genre	Pop rock, teen pop
occupation	Actress, singer, songwriter
years active	2001–present (actress)2007–present (singer)
label	ColumbiaEpic
website	www.mirandacosgroveofficial.com/
associated acts	Greyson Chance }}

Miranda Taylor Cosgrove (born May 14, 1993) is an American film and television actress and pop recording artist. Cosgrove played the roles of Megan Parker in ''Drake & Josh'' and title character in ''iCarly''. Her career started at the age of three, participating in television commercials. Cosgrove's film debut was in 2003, as Summer Hathaway in ''School of Rock''. After years of small television appearances, Cosgrove was cast into the hit show ''Drake & Josh'' and later in ''iCarly''. As of May 2010, Cosgrove earned US$180,000 per episode of ''iCarly'', making her the second highest paid child star on television.

Following the success of ''iCarly'', a soundtrack album was released in June 2008, in which she performed four songs. Cosgrove's debut album ''Sparks Fly'' was released on April 27, 2010.

Biography

Early life

Cosgrove was born in Los Angeles, to Tom, who owns a dry cleaning business, and Chris (née Casey), a stay-at-home mother. At the age of three, she was discovered by a talent agent while singing and dancing at the Los Angeles restaurant Taste of L.A. Cosgrove stated that when the agent walked up to her and her mom for modeling, she had "never really thought of being an [actress]" and "was lucky". After choosing to take the offer, she appeared in television commercials for McDonald's and Mello Yello, and also modeled. At the age of seven, Cosgrove decided that "[she] loved doing it" and auditioned for theater and television roles.

2001–2007: Rise to fame

Cosgrove's first television appearance was in 2001 as a 5-year old Lana Lang in the pilot of ''Smallville''. Cosgrove then made her film debut with the 2003 film ''School of Rock''. In the movie, she played Summer Hathaway, a young girl with great ambition and discipline who finds herself adjusting to the free-spirited nature of the new teacher by becoming band manager of classroom's rock band. ''School of Rock'' was both a box office hit, grossing over $131,282,949 worldwide, and critical success, receiving a 91 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Cosgrove's acting on the film was praised with David Ansen of ''Newsweek'' describing it as "spot on". She said of the experience of working with Jack Black: "The first week it was like, 'Oh, my God, that's Jack Black,' but two weeks later it was fine. He's really funny. Sometimes the director would say, 'Jack you can't make them laugh so much.'" She cited the scene as trying to sing wrong as very difficult. Cosgrove stated that "I got a 45-minute lesson from Jim O'Rourke of Sonic Youth on how to sing badly. I've been taking singing lessons for about five years, so getting to sing badly was new. The director kept saying, 'Try to sing even worse, Miranda,' so it was weird." She is grateful she was in ''School of Rock'', as it exposed her to classic rock songs she was unfamiliar with. "After the movie," said Cosgrove, "I discovered Led Zeppelin and I've taken up the electric guitar".

2004 saw Cosgrove breaking out into the television network. She guest starred in a special episode of the animated series ''What's New, Scooby-Doo?'', as well as guest starring in a season five episode of ''Grounded For Life'', portraying the character of Jessica. Cosgrove also got her first major role in a television series, when she was awarded a main role in the Nickelodeon series, ''Drake & Josh'', alongside Drake Bell and Josh Peck. In the series, she portrayed the mischievous sister of the title character, Megan Parker. The show made its debut on January 11, 2004 and drew positive responses in ratings. Cosgrove said this about show: "It's like a big family. We know each other so well, nothing is embarrassing anymore....It's really comfortable, and it's really fun." While on the show, she was able to develop a partnership with Dan Schneider, known for producing various Nickelodeon shows, such as ''Zoey 101'', ''The Amanda Show'', ''Kenan & Kel'', and ''All That''.

In 2005, Miranda was awarded the role of 'Munch' in the Disney channel film ''Here Comes Peter Cottontail: The Movie''. In the film, Miranda portrays a female mouse who is rescued from a hawk by Junior and Flutter, and subsequently comes along for the adventure that the characters must take. Cosgrove also guest-starred on two episodes of the animated comedy, ''Lilo & Stitch: The Series''. The television series, which aired on Disney, is a spin-off of the original film, ''Lilo & Stitch''. Cosgrove was also rewarded her second major role in a theatrical film, when she cast alongside ''Drake & Josh'' co-star Drake Bell in the comedy film ''Yours, Mine and Ours'', in which she portrayed the character Joni. The film was a minor success at the box office. ''Yours, Mine and Ours'' opened at number three, with an opening weekend of $17,461,108 in the US. Cosgrove later starred in her third theatrical release, ''Keeping Up with the Steins'', which was released to generally negative reviews from critics. The film was also a failure at the box office. She also earned a role in the straight to DVD film ''The Wild Stallion''.

2007–present: ''iCarly'' and music career

Cosgrove kicked off 2007 by appearing in several Nickelodeon television series. The first of these appearances was in ''Zoey 101'', which starred Jamie Lynn Spears and Victoria Justice. Cosgrove later guest starred on an episode of ''Unfabulous'', which starred Emma Roberts. In the episode, Cosgrove guest starred as a sweet girl named Cosmina. 2007 saw the end of ''Drake & Josh'', with the final episode airing on September 16, 2007. However, Cosgrove was already in the works of starring in her own series, titled ''iCarly''.

Schneider tailored ''iCarly'' around the interest young people have in the internet. A unique part of this show is the fact that viewers may submit their own videos and also be included in the show. Cosgrove said of the audience participation aspect, "When I first heard about the idea, I thought it was so cool. If I were home and watching TV, I'd want to send in a video." By the summer of 2008, the show was the third highest rated in the 9–14 demographic. The "iCarly Saves TV" special extended episode, became the most-viewed entertainment show on cable TV in June 2008.

Cosgrove's debut as a recording artist began with the ''iCarly'' theme song "Leave It All to Me". The song features her former ''Drake & Josh'' castmate Drake Bell and is written by Michael Corcoran, one of Bell's band members. It was released as a single in December 2007 through digital distribution and eventually peaked at number 100 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100. The album debuted at number one on the ''Billboard'' Kid Albums chart. In June 2008, Columbia Records released the ''iCarly'' soundtrack, which featured four songs performed by Cosgrove ("Leave It All to Me", "Stay My Baby", "About You Now", and "Headphones On"). Critical reception for her performance was positive. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic stated that Cosgrove proved "herself to be an appealingly spunky singer" and the "good tunes" she performed "[made] the most of her girlish talents". However, Erlewine noted that the "focus [was] not on her" because of other artists, she but rather "[blended] in the mix". The following promotional single "Stay My Baby" failed to reach the charts, but "About You Now" reached number 47 on the Hot 100 in January 2009, becoming her most successful single to date.

Cosgrove became one of MTV's Female Pop Rookies of 2009. In December 2008, a cover of the holiday song "Christmas Wrapping" was released to promote the hour-long special ''Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh''. On February 3, 2009, Cosgrove released her first solo recording, the extended play ''About You Now'', exclusively on the iTunes Store. The extended play featured the title track, a remix of it, and a remix of "Stay My Baby", as well as two new songs, "F.Y.I." and "Party Girl". To promote the 2009 animated film ''Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs'', Columbia Records released a single entitled "Raining Sunshine" with an accompanying music video in August 2009.

Since July 2008, plans for a debut album have been active. In an interview with MTV News, Cosgrove discussed the forthcoming album. Cosgrove reported to be "co-writing and getting really into" the album, as oppose to the ''iCarly'' soundtrack in which she "just picked songs that meant a lot to [her], that [she] really liked." She also described the album as "still pop rock fun" in comparison to her previous work on the ''iCarly'' soundtrack, though "a little more mature". Themes for the album are "love songs and just fun songs about hanging out with your girlfriends". When releasing ''About You Now'', Cosgrove further elaborated on the album's concepts. She described working with producers and songwriters The Matrix and Dr. Luke as "definitely different". Cosgrove also worked with songwriters Leah Haywood and Daniel James, and said that "most of the songs are fun, pop, rock-girl empowerment". She noted that "there's one ballad that's kind of sad" and that "it's called 'What Are You Waiting For?' It's about a girl who likes a guy [but he doesn't feel the same way]". She added it's something she's experienced in her own life: "I definitely have guys that I'm friends with that I have a crush on, and you don't want to ruin the friendship". The album was released in April 2010, and the first single from her album, "Kissin' U", was premiered on Ryan Seacrest's radio show on March 12, 2010, and released to iTunes on March 23, 2010. The album, titled ''Sparks Fly'', debuted and peaked at number 8 on the US ''Billboard'' 200 chart.

She signed with skin care and cosmetics company Neutrogena on February 12, 2010, as an ambassador. On March 17, 2010, it was reported that Cosgrove had signed a deal, reportedly in the "low- to mid-seven-figure range" to do 26 additional episodes of ''iCarly''. Cosgrove voiced a character in Universal Studios' 3-D computer animated feature ''Despicable Me'', released in July 2010. In January 2011, Cosgrove revealed that her new EP would be titled ''High Maintenance'', and also released the first single from the same. The song, titled "Dancing Crazy", was written by Max Martin, Shellback, and Avril Lavigne, and produced by Martin and Shellback. With three weeks of airplay, the song debuted at number 40 on the US ''Billboard'' Adult Pop Songs.

Dancing Crazy Tour

The Dancing Crazy Tour was the debut solo tour by American entertainer, Miranda Cosgrove. visiting North America, the trek will support her first studio album, ''Sparks Fly''. The tour began in Missouri and travel throughout the United States and ended in Ohio. Cosgrove continued the tour into the summer to promote her second EP, ''High Maintenance''. Dubbed the Dancing Crazy Summer Tour, the singer will travel the United States and Canada, performing at music festivals and state fairs. In November, Cosgrove will headline six concerts in Brazil, giving the singer in first performances in South America.

On August 11, 2011, Cosgrove broke her ankle in a tour bus accident in Illinois forcing the postponement of her U.S. tour dates. The remainder of the tour has since been canceled.

Filmography

+ List of film performances
! Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
2003	''School of Rock''	Summer Hathaway
2005		Joni North
2006	''Keeping Up with the Steins''	Karen Sussman
2010	''Despicable Me''	Margo	Voice-only

+ List of films made for television or video performances
! Year	! Title	! Role	! Distributor
2005	''Here Comes Peter Cottontail: The Movie''	Munch	Classic Media
2006	''''	Hannah Mills	Myriad Pictures
2008	''Merry Christmas Drake & Josh''	Megan Parker

+ List of television performances
! Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
2001	''Smallville''	Young Lana Lang
2004	''Grounded for Life''	Jessica	"You Better You Bet" (Season 5, Episode 5)
2004	''What's New, Scooby-Doo?''	Mirand Wright	Voice
2004–07	''Drake & Josh''		Main Role
2005	''Lilo & Stitch: The Series''	Girl / Sarah	2 Episodes – ''Shush: Experiment'' (S2E34) & ''Morpholomew: Experiment'' (S3E16)
2007	''Zoey 101''	Paige Howard	"Paige at PCA" (Season 3, Episode 13)
2007	''Just Jordan''	Lindsey Chandler	"Piano Stressin" (Season 1, Episode 13)
2007	''Unfabulous''	Cosmina	"The Talent Show" (Season 3, Episode 1)
2007–present	''iCarly''		Lead Role
2008	''''	Herself
2010	''7 Secrets with Miranda Cosgrove''	Herself	Nickelodeon Special (Apr. 24, 2010)
2010	''''	Sloan Burchfield	''Bad Girls'' (Season 2, Episode 7)
2010	''Big Time Rush''	Herself	''Big Time Christmas''

Discography

Albums

''Sparks Fly'' (2010)

Extended plays

''About You Now'' (2009)

''High Maintenance'' (2011)

Tours

Dancing Crazy Tour (2011)

Awards and nominations

{| class= wikitable |- ! Year ! Award ! Category ! Nominated work ! Result |- | rowspan="2"|2004 | Young Artist Award | Best Young Ensemble in a Feature Film | rowspan="2"|''School of Rock'' | |- | MTV Movie Awards | Best On-Screen Team'' | |- | 2006 | rowspan="3"|Young Artist Awards | Best Performance in a Feature Film – Young Ensemble Cast | ''Yours, Mine and Ours'' | |- | 2007 | Best Performance in a TV Series (Comedy or Drama) – Supporting Young Actress | ''Drake & Josh'' | |- | rowspan="3"|2008 | Best Performance in a TV Series – Leading Young Actress | rowspan="2"|''iCarly'' | |- | rowspan="4"|Kids' Choice Awards | rowspan="2"|Favorite TV Show | |- | ''Drake and Josh'' | |- | rowspan="5"|2009 | Favorite Television Actress | rowspan="10"|''iCarly'' | |- | Favorite TV Show (Shared with cast of iCarly) | |- | rowspan="2"|Young Artist Awards | Outstanding Young Performers in a TV Series | |- | Best Performance in a TV Series (Comedy or Drama) – Leading Young Actress | |- | Teen Choice Awards | Choice TV Actress: Comedy | |- | rowspan="9"|2010 | rowspan="2"| Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards | Favorite Television Actress | |- | Favorite TV Show (shared with the cast of iCarly) | |- | rowspan="2"|Young Artist Awards | Outstanding Young Performers in a TV Series | |- | Best Performance in a TV Series (Comedy or Drama) – Leading Young Actress | |- | rowspan="3"|Teen Choice Awards | Choice TV Actress: Comedy | |- | Choice Smile | Herself | |- | Choice Music: Breakout Artist—Female | ''Sparks Fly'' | |- | Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards México | Favorite International Character of Series: Female | Carly Shay | |- | Nickelodeon Australian Kids' Choice Award | Favorite TV Star || ''iCarly'' | |- | rowspan="5"|2011 | Producers Guild of America Awards 2010 | Favorite Animated Feature || ''Despicable Me'' | |- | rowspan="2"| Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards | Favorite Television Actress | rowspan="4"| ''iCarly'' | |- | Favorite TV Show (shared with the cast of iCarly) | |- ||Young Artist Awards | Best Performance in a TV Series (Comedy or Drama) – Leading Young Actress | |- | Teen Choice Awards | Choice TV Actress: Comedy | |}

References

External links

Category:1993 births Category:Actors from California Category:American child actors Category:American child singers Category:American female singers Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:American voice actors Category:Columbia Records artists Category:American pop singers Category:Living people Category:Musicians from California Category:People from Los Angeles, California

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name	Dr. Seuss
pseudonym	Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg, Rosetta Stone, Theophrastus Seuss
birth name	Theodor Seuss Geisel
birth date	March 02, 1904
birth place	Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.
death date	September 24, 1991
death place	San Diego, California, U.S.
alma mater	Dartmouth College
occupation	Writer, cartoonist, animator, book publisher, artist
nationality	American
genre	Children's literature
notableworks	''The Cat in the Hat''''Green Eggs and Ham''''One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish''''How the Grinch Stole Christmas!''''Fox in Socks''''Horton Hears a Who!''
spouse	Helen Palmer Geisel (1927–1967)Audrey Stone Dimond (1968–1991)
website	http://www.seussville.com/
signature	Dr Seuss signature.svg }}

Theodor Seuss Geisel (; March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991) was an American writer, poet, and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg and, in one case, Rosetta Stone.

He published 46 children's books, which were often characterized by imaginative characters, rhyme, and frequent use of trisyllabic meter. His most celebrated books include the bestselling ''Green Eggs and Ham'', ''The Cat in the Hat'', ''One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish'', ''Horton Hatches the Egg'', ''Horton Hears a Who!'', and ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas!''. Numerous adaptations of his work have been created, including 11 television specials, three feature films, a Broadway musical and four television series. He won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958 for ''Horton Hatches the Egg'' and again in 1961 for ''And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street''.

Geisel also worked as an illustrator for advertising campaigns, most notably for Flit and Standard Oil, and as a political cartoonist for ''PM'', a New York City newspaper. During World War II, he worked in an animation department of the U.S Army, where he wrote ''Design for Death'', a film that later won the 1947 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.

Geisel's birthday, March 2, has been adopted as the annual date for National Read Across America Day, an initiative on reading created by the National Education Association.

Life and career

Theodor Seuss Geisel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Theodor Robert and Henrietta (Seuss) Geisel. His father, the son of German immigrant parents, managed the family brewery and later supervised (1931–1960) Springfield's public park system. Mulberry Street in Springfield, made famous in Dr. Seuss' first children's book ''And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street!'' is less than a mile southwest of his boyhood home on Fairfield Street.

College

Geisel attended Springfield's Classical High School, and entered Dartmouth College in fall 1921 as a member of the Class of 1925. At Dartmouth, he joined the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and the humor magazine ''Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern,'' eventually rising to the rank of editor-in-chief.

While at Dartmouth, Geisel was caught drinking gin with nine friends in his room. As a result, Dean Craven Laycock insisted that he resign from all extracurricular activities, including the college humor magazine. To continue work on the ''Jack-O-Lantern'' without the administration's knowledge, Geisel began signing his work with the pen name "Seuss". His first work signed as "Dr. Seuss" appeared after he graduated, six months into his work for ''The Judge'' where his weekly feature ''Birdsies and Beasties'' appeared. Geisel was encouraged in his writing by professor of rhetoric W. Benfield Pressey, whom he described as his "big inspiration for writing" at Dartmouth.

After Dartmouth, he entered Lincoln College, Oxford, intending to earn a Doctor of Philosophy in English literature. At Oxford, he met his future wife, Helen Palmer; he married her in 1927, and returned to the United States without earning a degree.

Earliest post-college publications

He began submitting humorous articles and illustrations to ''Judge,'' ''Life,'' ''Vanity Fair,'' and ''Liberty.'' One notable "Technocracy Number" made fun of the technocracy movement and featured satirical rhymes at the expense of Frederick Soddy. The July 16, 1927 issue of the ''The Saturday Evening Post'' published his first cartoon under the name Seuss. He became nationally famous from his advertisements for Flit, a common insecticide at the time. His slogan, "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" became a popular catchphrase. Geisel supported himself and his wife through the Great Depression by drawing advertising for General Electric, NBC, Standard Oil, and many other companies. In 1935, he wrote and drew a short-lived comic strip called ''Hejji.''

In 1937, while Geisel was returning from an ocean voyage to Europe, the rhythm of the ship's engines inspired the poem that became his first book, ''And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street!''. It was rejected 27 times (numbers will vary). Geisel wrote three more children's books before World War II, two of which are, atypically for him, in prose.

World War II-era work

As World War II began, Geisel turned to political cartoons, drawing over 400 in two years as editorial cartoonist for the left-leaning New York City daily newspaper, ''PM.'' Geisel's political cartoons, later published in ''Dr. Seuss Goes to War,'' denounced Hitler and Mussolini and were highly critical of non-interventionists ("isolationists"), most notably Charles Lindbergh, who opposed US entry into the war. One cartoon depicted all Japanese Americans as latent traitors or fifth-columnists, while at the same time other cartoons deplored the racism at home against Jews and blacks that harmed the war effort. His cartoons were strongly supportive of President Roosevelt's handling of the war, combining the usual exhortations to ration and contribute to the war effort with frequent attacks on Congress (especially the Republican Party), parts of the press (such as the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Washington Times-Herald), and others for criticism of Roosevelt, criticism of aid to the Soviet Union, investigation of suspected Communists, and other offenses that he depicted as leading to disunity and helping the Nazis, intentionally or inadvertently.

In 1942, Geisel turned his energies to direct support of the U.S. war effort. First, he worked drawing posters for the Treasury Department and the War Production Board. Then, in 1943, he joined the Army and was commander of the Animation Dept of the First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces, where he wrote films that included ''Your Job in Germany,'' a 1945 propaganda film about peace in Europe after World War II, ''Our Job in Japan,'' and the ''Private Snafu'' series of adult army training films. While in the Army, he was awarded the Legion of Merit. ''Our Job in Japan'' became the basis for the commercially released film, ''Design for Death'' (1947), a study of Japanese culture that won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. ''Gerald McBoing-Boing'' (1950), which was based on an original story by Seuss, won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film.

Later years

After the war, Geisel and his wife moved to La Jolla, California. Returning to children's books, he wrote many works, including such favorites as ''If I Ran the Zoo'', (1950), ''Horton Hears a Who!'' (1954), ''Horton Hatches the Egg'' (1954), ''If I Ran the Circus'' (1956),''The Cat in the Hat'' (1957), ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas'' (1957) and ''Green Eggs and Ham'' (1960). Although he received numerous awards throughout his career, Geisel won neither the Caldecott Medal nor the Newbery Medal. Three of his titles from this period were, however, chosen as Caldecott runners-up (now referred to as Caldecott Honor books): ''McElligot's Pool'' (1937), ''Bartholomew and the Oobleck'' (1939), and ''If I Ran the Zoo'' (1950). Dr Seuss also wrote the musical and fantasy film ''The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T,'' which was released in 1953. The movie was a critical and financial failure, and Geisel never attempted another feature film. During the 1950s he also published a number of illustrated short stories, mostly in RedBook Magazine. Some of these were later collected (in volumes such as ''The Sneetches and Other Stories'' or reworked into independent books (''If I Ran the Zoo''). A number have never been reprinted since their original appearances.

In May 1954, ''Life'' magazine published a report on illiteracy among school children, which concluded that children were not learning to read because their books were boring. Accordingly, William Ellsworth Spaulding, the director of the education division at Houghton Mifflin who later became its Chairman, compiled a list of 348 words he felt were important for first-graders to recognize and asked Geisel to cut the list to 250 words and write a book using only those words. Spaulding challenged Geisel to "bring back a book children can't put down." Nine months later, Geisel, using 236 of the words given to him, completed ''The Cat in the Hat.'' It was described as a ''tour de force'' by some reviewers-—it retained the drawing style, verse rhythms, and all the imaginative power of Geisel's earlier works, but because of its simplified vocabulary could be read by beginning readers. ''The Cat in the Hat'' and subsequent books written for young children achieved significant international success and they remain very popular today. In 2009 ''Green Eggs and Ham'' sold 540,366 copies, ''The Cat in the Hat'' sold 452,258 copies, and ''One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish'' (1960) sold 409,068 copies—outselling the majority of newly published children's books.

Geisel went on to write many other children's books, both in his new simplified-vocabulary manner (sold as Beginner Books) and in his older, more elaborate style. The Beginner Books were not easy for Geisel and reportedly took him months to complete.

On October 23, 1967, suffering from a long struggle with illnesses including cancer, as well as emotional pain over her husband's affair with Audrey Stone Dimond, Geisel's wife, Helen Palmer Geisel, committed suicide. Geisel married Dimond on June 21, 1968. Though he devoted most of his life to writing children's books, Geisel had no children of his own. He would say, when asked about this, "You have 'em; I'll entertain 'em."

Death and posthumous honors

Geisel died of throat cancer on September 24, 1991, after several years of poor health, in San Diego, California. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered. On December 1, 1995, four years after his death, UCSD's University Library Building was renamed Geisel Library in honor of Geisel and Audrey for the generous contributions they made to the library and their devotion to improving literacy.

While living in La Jolla, the United States Postal Service and others frequently confused Geisel with another La Jolla resident, Dr. Hans Suess. Their names have been linked together posthumously: the personal papers of Hans Suess are housed in the Geisel Library at UC San Diego.

In 2002, the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden opened in his birthplace of Springfield, Massachusetts; it features sculptures of Geisel and of many of his characters. On May 28, 2008, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver announced that Geisel would be inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. The induction ceremony took place December 15 and his widow Audrey accepted the honor in his place. On March 2, 2009, the web search engine Google temporarily changed its logo to commemorate Geisel's birthday (a practice it often follows for various holidays and events). At his alma mater, Dartmouth, where over 90% of incoming first-year students participate in pre-registration Dartmouth Outing Club trips into the New Hampshire wilderness, it is traditional for students returning from the trips to overnight at Dartmouth's Moosilauke Ravine Lodge, where they are served green eggs and ham for breakfast in honor of Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss's honors include two Academy awards, two Emmy awards, a Peabody award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, and the Pulitzer Prize.

Pen names and pronunciations

Geisel's pen name is regularly pronounced , an anglicized pronunciation inconsistent with his German surname. He himself noted that it rhymed with "voice" (his own pronunciation being ) and Alexander Liang (his collaborator on the Dartmouth ''Jack-O-Lantern'') wrote of him:

:You’re wrong as the deuce :And you shouldn’t rejoice :If you’re calling him Seuss. :He pronounces it Soice.

Geisel switched to the anglicized pronunciation because it "evoked a figure advantageous for an author of children’s books to be associated with—Mother Goose" and because most people used this pronunciation.

For books that Geisel wrote and others illustrated, he used the pen name "Theo LeSieg" ("LeSieg" is "Geisel" spelled backward).

Political views

Geisel was a liberal Democrat and a supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. His early political cartoons show a passionate opposition to fascism, and he urged to oppose it, both before and after the entry of the United States into World War II. His cartoons tended to regard the fear of communism as overstated, finding the greater threat in the Dies Committee and those who threatened to cut the US' "life line" to Stalin and Soviet Russia, the ones carrying "our war load".

Geisel's cartoons also called attention to the early stages of the Holocaust and denounced discrimination in the USA against African Americans and Jews. Geisel himself experienced anti-Semitism: in his college days, he was mistaken for a Jew and denied entry into conservative social circles, although he was actually of German ancestry and a practicing Christian.

Geisel supported the Japanese American internment during World War II. His treatment of the Japanese and of Japanese Americans, whom he often failed to differentiate between, has struck many readers as a moral blind spot. On the issue of the Japanese, he is quoted as saying:

After the war, though, Geisel overcame his feelings of animosity, using his book ''Horton Hears a Who!'' (1954) as an allegory for the Hiroshima bombing and the American post-war occupation of Japan, as well as dedicating the book to a Japanese friend.

In 1948, after living and working in Hollywood for years, Geisel moved to La Jolla, California. It is said that when he went to register to vote in La Jolla, some Republican friends called him over to where they were registering voters, but Geisel said, "You, my friends, are over there, but I am going over here [to the Democratic registration]."

In his books

Though Geisel made a point of not beginning the writing of his stories with a moral in mind, stating that "kids can see a moral coming a mile off," he was not against writing about issues; he said that "there's an inherent moral in any story," and he remarked that he was "subversive as hell."

Many of Geisel's books express his views on a remarkable variety of social and political issues: ''The Lorax'' (1971), about environmentalism and anti-consumerism; ''The Sneetches'' (1961), about racial equality; ''The Butter Battle Book'' (1984), about the arms race; ''Yertle the Turtle'' (1958), about Hitler and anti-authoritarianism; ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas'' (1957), criticizing the materialism and consumerism of the Christmas season; and ''Horton Hears a Who!'' (1950), about anti-isolationism and internationalism. Shortly before the end of the 1972–1974 Watergate scandal, in which United States president Richard Nixon resigned, Geisel converted one of his famous children's books into a polemic. "Richard M. Nixon, Will You Please Go Now!" was published in major newspapers through the column of his friend Art Buchwald.

The line "A person's a person, no matter how small!!" from ''Horton Hears a Who!'' has grown, despite the objections of Geisel's widow, into widespread use on the pro-life side of the issue. While Geisel preferred to let his work speak for itself, in 1986 when the line first started being used by the pro-life movement, Geisel, who would speak out to protect his characters from exploitation, demanded a retraction and received one. In its original context it is unrelated to abortion issues.

Although Geisel's books teach children about so many social problems, his works for children do not speak to feminist issues. His longer children's stories included few important female characters, and it is difficult for them to be called positive portrayals. The most prominent female characters are Gertrude McFuzz (who is vanity personified, although she does learn her lesson at the end of the story) and Mayzie, the very irresponsible bird who laid the egg in Horton Hatches the Egg. The most positive female character in the works is probably Sally in The Cat in the Hat, but she says few words.

==Poetic meters== Geisel wrote most of his books in anapestic tetrameter, a poetic meter employed by many poets of the English literary canon. This is often suggested as one of the reasons that Geisel's writing was so well-received.

Anapestic tetrameter consists of four rhythmic units, anapests, each composed of two weak beats followed by one strong beat; often, the first weak syllable is omitted, or an additional weak syllable is added at the end. An example of this meter can be found in Geisel's "Yertle the Turtle", from ''Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories'':

:"And today the Great Yertle, that Marvelous he :Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see."

The consistency of his meter was one of his hallmarks; the many imitators and parodists of Geisel are often unable to write in strict anapestic tetrameter, or are unaware that they should, and thus sound clumsy in comparison.

Some books by Geisel that are written mainly in anapestic tetrameter also contain many lines written in amphibrachic tetrameter, such as these from ''If I Ran the Circus'':

:"All ready to put up the tents for my circus. :I think I will call it the Circus McGurkus.

:"And NOW comes an act of Enormous Enormance! :No former performers performed this performance!"

Geisel also wrote verse in trochaic tetrameter, an arrangement of a strong beat followed by a weak beat, with four units per line (for example, the title of ''One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish''). The formula for trochaic meter permits the final weak position in the line to be omitted, which facilitates the construction of rhymes.

Geisel generally maintained trochaic meter only for brief passages, and for longer stretches typically mixed it with iambic tetrameter, which consists of a weak beat followed by a strong, and is generally considered easier to write. Thus, for example, the magicians in ''Bartholomew and the Oobleck'' make their first appearance chanting in trochees (thus resembling the witches of Shakespeare's ''Macbeth''):

:"Shuffle, duffle, muzzle, muff"

then switch to iambs for the oobleck spell:

:"Go make the Oobleck tumble down :On every street, in every town!"

Artwork

Geisel's earlier artwork often employed the shaded texture of pencil drawings or watercolors, but in children's books of the postwar period he generally employed the starker medium of pen and ink, normally using just black, white, and one or two colors. Later books such as ''The Lorax'' used more colors.

Geisel's figures are often rounded and somewhat droopy. This is true, for instance, of the faces of the Grinch and of the Cat in the Hat. It is also true of virtually all buildings and machinery that Geisel drew: although these objects abound in straight lines in real life, for buildings, this could be accomplished in part through choice of architecture. For machines, for example, ''If I Ran the Circus'' includes a droopy hoisting crane and a droopy steam calliope.

Geisel evidently enjoyed drawing architecturally elaborate objects. His endlessly varied (but never rectilinear) palaces, ramps, platforms, and free-standing stairways are among his most evocative creations. Geisel also drew elaborate imaginary machines, of which the Audio-Telly-O-Tally-O-Count, from ''Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book'', is one example. Geisel also liked drawing outlandish arrangements of feathers or fur, for example, the 500th hat of ''Bartholomew Cubbins'', the tail of ''Gertrude McFuzz'', and the pet for girls who like to brush and comb, in ''One Fish Two Fish''.

Geisel's images often convey motion vividly. He was fond of a sort of ''voilà'' gesture, in which the hand flips outward, spreading the fingers slightly backward with the thumb up; this is done by Ish, for instance, in ''One Fish Two Fish'' when he creates fish (who perform the gesture themselves with their fins), in the introduction of the various acts of ''If I Ran the Circus'', and in the introduction of the Little Cats in ''The Cat in the Hat Comes Back''. He was also fond of drawing hands with interlocked fingers, which looked as though the characters were twiddling their thumbs.

Geisel also follows the cartoon tradition of showing motion with lines, for instance in the sweeping lines that accompany Sneelock's final dive in ''If I Ran the Circus''. Cartoonist's lines are also used to illustrate the action of the senses (sight, smell, and hearing) in ''The Big Brag'' and even of thought, as in the moment when the Grinch conceives his awful idea.

For over 60 years, Dr. Seuss’s illustrations brought a visual realization to his fantastic and imaginary worlds. However, his artistic talent went far beyond the printed page, as in his Secret Art works – the paintings and sculptures he did at night for himself that he rarely exhibited during his lifetime. Seuss always dreamed of sharing these works with his fans and had entrusted his wife, Audrey, to carry out his wishes once he was gone. Audrey, too, believed the work deserved further recognition and that Ted himself would one day be evaluated not only as an author, but also as an artist in his own right. In 1997, this dream was realized when The Art of Dr. Seuss project was launched. For the first time in history, collectors were able to see and acquire lithographs, serigraphs and sculptures reproduced from Geisel’s original drawings and paintings. In her introduction to the collection Audrey Geisel wrote, “I remember telling Ted that there would come a day when many of his paintings would be seen and he would thus share with his fans another facet of himself – his private self. That day has come. I am glad.” This historic project has opened the world’s eyes to the unique artistic talent of Dr. Seuss and, as such, galleries, museums and collectors have helped make Audrey Geisel’s promise, and Dr. Seuss’s dream, a reality. Now, just 15 years after Ted passed away, these artworks have toured to leading galleries and museums across the world, establishing Seuss as a significant artist of the 20th century. Today limited edition prints and sculptures of Dr. Seuss artworks can now be found at galleries along side the works of Rembrandt, Picasso and Miro.

Recurring images

Geisel's early work in advertising and editorial cartooning produced sketches that received more perfect realization later in the children's books. Often, the expressive use to which Geisel put an image later on was quite different from the original.

An editorial cartoon of July 16, 1941 depicts a whale resting on the top of a mountain, as a parody of American isolationists, especially Charles Lindbergh. This was later rendered (with no apparent political content) as the Wumbus of ''On Beyond Zebra'' (1955). Seussian whales (cheerful and balloon-shaped, with long eyelashes) also occur in ''McElligot's Pool'', ''If I Ran the Circus'', and other books. Another editorial cartoon from 1941 shows a long cow with many legs and udders, representing the conquered nations of Europe being milked by Adolf Hitler. This later became the Umbus of ''On Beyond Zebra.'' The tower of turtles in a 1942 editorial cartoon prefigures a similar tower in ''Yertle the Turtle.'' This theme also appeared in a ''Judge'' cartoon as one letter of a hieroglyphic message, and in Geisel's short-lived comic strip ''Hejji.'' Geisel once stated that Yertle the Turtle ''was'' Adolf Hitler.

Little cats A B and C (as well as the rest of the alphabet) who spring from each other's hats appeared in a Ford ad.

The connected beards in ''Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?'' appear frequently in Geisel's work, most notably in ''Hejji,'' which featured two goats joined at the beard, ''The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T,'' which featured two roller-skating guards joined at the beard, and a political cartoon in which Nazism and the America First movement are portrayed as "the men with the Siamese Beard."

Geisel's earliest elephants were for advertising and had somewhat wrinkly ears, much as real elephants do. With ''And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street!'' (1937) and ''Horton Hatches the Egg'' (1940), the ears became more stylized, somewhat like angel wings and thus appropriate to the saintly Horton. During World War II, the elephant image appeared as an emblem for India in four editorial cartoons. Horton and similar elephants appear frequently in the postwar children's books. While drawing advertisements for Flit, Geisel became adept at drawing insects with huge stingers, shaped like a gentle S-curve and with a sharp end that included a rearward-pointing barb on its lower side. Their facial expressions depict gleeful malevolence. These insects were later rendered in an editorial cartoon as a swarm of Allied aircraft (1942), and again as the Sneedle of ''On Beyond Zebra,'' and yet again as the Skritz in ''I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew.''

There are many examples of creatures who arrange themselves in repeating patterns, such as the "Two and fro walkers, who march in five layers", and the Through-Horns Jumping Deer in ''If I Ran the Circus'', and the arrangement of birds which the protagonist of ''Oh, The Places You'll Go!'' walks through, as the narrator admonishes him to "...always be detrous and deft, and never mix up your right foot with your left."

Publications

Over the course of his long career, Geisel wrote over 60 books. Though most were published under his well-known pseudonym, Dr. Seuss, he also authored over a dozen books as Theo LeSieg and one as Rosetta Stone. As one of the most popular children's authors of all time, Geisel's books have topped many bestseller lists, sold over 222 million copies, and been translated into more than 15 languages. In 2000, ''Publishers Weekly'' compiled a list of the best-selling children's books of all time; of the top 100 hardcover books, 16 were written by Geisel, including ''Green Eggs and Ham'', at number 4, ''The Cat in the Hat'', at number 9, and ''One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish'', at number 13. In the years after his death in 1991, two additional books were published based on his sketches and notes: ''Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!'' and ''Daisy-Head Mayzie''. ''My Many Colored Days'', originally written in 1973, was posthumously published in 1996. More recently, seven stories originally published in magazines during 1950 and 1951 will be released in a collection entitled ''The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories'' in September 2011.

At various times Geisel also wrote books for adults that used the same style of verse and pictures: ''The Seven Lady Godivas'' (1937; reprinted 1985), which included nude depictions; ''You're Only Old Once!'' (written in 1987 when Geisel was 83) which chronicles an old man's journey through a clinic, a satire of the inefficiency of clinics and his last book (written a year before his death) ''Oh, The Places You'll Go!'', a popular gift for graduating students.

Adaptations

For most of his career, Geisel was reluctant to have his characters marketed in contexts outside of his own books. However, he did allow for the creation of several animated cartoons, an art form in which he himself had gained experience during the Second World War, and gradually relaxed his policy as he aged.

The first adaptation of one of Geisel's works was a cartoon version of ''Horton Hatches the Egg'', animated at Warner Brothers in 1942. Directed by Robert Clampett, it was presented as part of the Looney Tunes series, and included a number of gags not present in the original narrative, including a fish committing suicide and a Katharine Hepburn imitation by Maisie.

In 1959, Geisel authorized Revell, the well-known plastic model-making company, to make a series of "animals" that snapped together rather than being glued together, and could be assembled, disassembled and re-assembled "in thousands" of ways. The series was called the "Dr. Seuss Zoo" and included Gowdy the Dowdy Grackle, Norval the Bashful Blinket, Tingo the Noodle Topped Stroodle and Roscoe the Many Footed Lion. The basic body parts were the same and all were interchangeable, and so it was possible for children to combine parts from various characters in essentially unlimited ways in creating their own animal characters (Revell encouraged this by selling Gowdy, Norval and Tingo together in a "Gift Set" as well as individually). Revell also made a conventional glue-together "beginner's kit" of The Cat in the Hat.

In 1966, Geisel authorized the eminent cartoon artist Chuck Jones, his friend and former colleague from the war, to make a cartoon version of ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas''; Geisel was credited as a co-producer, along with Jones, under his real name, "Ted Geisel." The cartoon, narrated by Boris Karloff, who also provided the voice of the Grinch, was very faithful to the original book, and is considered a classic by many to this day; it is often broadcast as an annual Christmas television special. In 1970, an adaptation of ''Horton Hears a Who!'' was directed by Chuck Jones for Warner Bros. Pictures.

From 1971 to 1983, Geisel wrote seven Warner Bros. specials, which were produced by Warner Bros. Pictures and aired on CBS: ''Horton Hatches the Egg'' (1971), ''Dr. Seuss on the Loose'' (1977), and ''The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat'' (1983). Several of the specials were nominated for and won multiple Academy Awards.

A Soviet paint-on-glass-animated short film called ''Welcome'' (an adaptation of ''Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose'') was made in 1986. The last adaptation of Geisel's works before he died was ''The Butter Battle Book'', a television special based on the book of the same name, directed by adult animation legend Ralph Bakshi. Geisel himself called the special "the most faithful adaptation of his work."

After Geisel died of cancer at the age of 87 in 1991, his widow Audrey Geisel was placed in charge of all licensing matters. She approved a live-action feature film version of ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas'' starring Jim Carrey, as well as a Seuss-themed Broadway musical called ''Seussical,'' and both premiered in 2000. ''The Grinch'' has had limited engagement runs on Broadway during the Christmas season, after premiering in 1998 (under the title ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas'') at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, where it has become a Christmas tradition. In 2003, another live-action film was released, this time an adaptation of ''The Cat in the Hat'' that featured Mike Myers as the title character. Audrey Geisel was vocal in her dislike of the film, especially the casting of Myers as the Cat in the Hat, and stated that there would be no further live-action adaptations of Geisel's books. However, an animated CGI feature film adaptation of ''Horton Hears a Who!'' was approved, and was eventually released on March 14, 2008, to critical acclaim.

Four television series have been adapted from Geisel's work. The first, ''Gerald McBoing-Boing'', was an animated television adaptation of Geisel's 1951 cartoon of the same name and lasted three months between 1956 and 1957. The second, ''The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss,'' was a mix of live-action and puppetry by Jim Henson Television, the producers of The Muppets. It aired for one season on Nickelodeon in the United States, from 1996 to 1997. The third, ''Gerald McBoing-Boing,'' is a remake of the 1956 series. Produced in Canada by Cookie Jar Entertainment, it ran from 2005 to 2007. The fourth, ''The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!'', produced by Portfolio Entertainment Inc., began on August 7, 2010 in Canada and September 6, 2010 in the United States and is currently still showing.

Geisel's books and characters are also featured in Seuss Landing, one of many islands at the Islands of Adventure theme park in Orlando, Florida. In an attempt to match Geisel's visual style, there are reportedly "no straight lines" in Seuss Landing.

References

Further reading

Documentary aired on the Public Television System.

External links

Seussville site Random House

New York Times obituary

Dr. Seuss biography on Lambiek Comiclopedia

The Register of Dr. Seuss Collection UC San Diego

The Advertising Artwork of Dr. Seuss UC San Diego

''Dr. Seuss Went to War:'' A Catalog of Political Cartoons UC San Diego

Dr. Seuss' Commencement Speech Lake Forest College

Dr. Seuss / Theodor Geisel artwork can be viewed at American Art Archives web site

A Tale of Two Cartoonists, Hugh Turley, Hyattsville Life and Times, April 2009

Cartoon of John Haynes Holmes. By ''Dr.Seuss''

Category:1904 births Category:1991 deaths Category:American children's writers Category:American editorial cartoonists Category:American illustrators Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:American poets Category:American writers of German descent Category:Children's poets Category:First Motion Picture Unit personnel Category:Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal winners Category:People from Springfield, Massachusetts Category:Recipients of the Legion of Merit Category:Requests for audio pronunciation Category:United States Army Air Forces officers Category:Writers from California Category:Writers from Massachusetts Category:Writers who illustrated their own writing

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name	Sir Ian McKellen
birth name	Ian Murray McKellen
birth date	May 25, 1939
birth place	Burnley, Lancashire, England
occupation	Actor
years active	1959–present
partner	Brian Taylor (1964–1972)Sean Mathias (1978–1988)
website	http://www.mckellen.com/ }}

Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH, CBE (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. He has received a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. He is known to many for roles such as Sir Leigh Teabing in ''The Da Vinci Code'', Gandalf in the ''Lord of the Rings'' film trilogy and as Magneto in the ''X-Men'' films.

In 1988, McKellen came out and announced he was gay. He became a founding member of Stonewall, one of the United Kingdom's most influential LGBT rights groups, of which he remains a prominent spokesman. McKellen was knighted in 1991 for services to the performing arts.

Early life

McKellen was born in Burnley, Lancashire, England, though he spent most of his early life in Wigan. Born shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the experience had some lasting impact on him. In response to an interview question when an interviewer remarked that he seemed quite calm in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, he said: "Well, darling, you forget — I slept under a steel plate until I was four years old."

McKellen's father, Denis Murray McKellen, a civil engineer, was a lay preacher, and both of his grandfathers were preachers. At the time of Ian's birth, his parents already had a five-year-old daughter, Jean. His home environment was strongly Christian, but non-orthodox. "My upbringing was of low nonconformist Christians who felt that you led the Christian life in part by behaving in a Christian manner to everybody you met." When he was 12, his mother, Margery Lois (''née'' Sutcliffe), died; his father died when he was 24. When he came out of the closet to his stepmother, Gladys McKellen, who was a member of the Religious Society of Friends: "Not only was she not fazed, but as a member of a society which declared its indifference to people's sexuality years back, I think she was just glad for my sake that I wasn't lying anymore."

McKellen attended Bolton School (boys division), of which he is still a supporter, attending regularly to talk to pupils. McKellen's acting career started at Bolton Little Theatre, of which he is now the patron. An early fascination with the theatre was encouraged by his parents, who took him on a family outing to ''Peter Pan'' at the Manchester Opera House when he was three. When he was nine, his main Christmas present was a wood and bakelite, fold-away Victorian Theatre from Pollocks Toy Theatres, with cardboard scenery and wires to push on the cut-outs of Cinderella and of Laurence Olivier's Hamlet. His sister took him to his first Shakespeare play, ''Twelfth Night'', by the amateurs of Wigan's Little Theatre, shortly followed by their ''Macbeth'' and Wigan High School for Girls' production of ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' with music by Mendelssohn and with the role of Bottom played by Jean McKellen. (Jean continued to act, direct, and produce amateur theatre up to her death.)

He won a scholarship to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, when he was eighteen, where he developed an attraction to Derek Jacobi. He has characterised it as "a passion that was undeclared and unrequited".

Career

Theatre

While at Cambridge McKellen was a member of the Marlowe Society, appearing in ''Henry IV'' (as Shallow) alongside Trevor Nunn and Jacobi (March 1959), ''Cymbeline'' (as Posthumus, opposite Margaret Drabble as Imogen) and ''Doctor Faustus''. His first professional appearance was in 1961 at the Nottingham Playhouse, as Roper in ''A Man for All Seasons'', although an audio recording of the Marlowe Society's ''Cymbeline'' had gone on commercial sale as part of the Argo Shakespeare series. After four years in regional repertory theatres he made his first West End appearance, in ''A Scent of Flowers'', regarded as a "notable success". In 1965 he was a member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company at the Old Vic, which led to rôles at the Chichester Festival. In the 1970s and 1980s McKellen became a well-known figure in British theatre, performing frequently at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre, where he played several leading Shakespearean roles, including the titular part in ''Macbeth'' (which he had first assayed for Trevor Nunn in a "gripping...out of the ordinary" production, with Judi Dench, at Stratford in 1976), and Iago in ''Othello'', in award-winning productions directed by Nunn. Both of these productions were adapted into TV films, also directed by Nunn.

In 2007 he returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company, in productions of ''King Lear'' and ''The Seagull'', both directed by Trevor Nunn. In 2009 he appeared in a very popular revival of ''Waiting for Godot'' at London's Haymarket Theatre, directed by Sean Mathias and playing opposite Patrick Stewart.

Sir Ian is also President and Patron of the Little Theatre Guild of Great Britain, an association of amateur theatre organisations throughout the UK.

Popular success

McKellen had taken film roles throughout his career — beginning in 1969 with his role of George Matthews in ''A Touch of Love'', but it was not until the 1990s that he became more widely recognised in this medium, through several roles in blockbuster Hollywood movies.

In 1993, McKellen had a supporting role as a South African tycoon in the critically acclaimed ''Six Degrees of Separation'', in which he starred with Stockard Channing, Donald Sutherland, and Will Smith. In the same year, he appeared in minor roles in the television miniseries ''Tales of the City'' (based on the novel by his friend Armistead Maupin) and the film ''Last Action Hero'', in which he played Death. The same year, McKellen appeared in the TV movie ''And the Band Played On'', about the discovery of the AIDS virus, for which McKellen won a CableACE Award for Supporting Actor in a Movie or Miniseries and was nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie.

In 1995, he played the title role in the critical hit ''Richard III'', which transported the setting into an alternative 1930s wherein England is ruled by Fascists. McKellen co-produced and co-wrote the film, adapting the play for the screen based on a stage production of Shakespeare's play directed by Richard Eyre for the Royal National Theatre, in which McKellen had appeared. In McKellen's role as executive producer he returned his £50,000 fee in order to complete the filming of the final battle. In his review of the film, Hal Hinson of ''The Washington Post'', called McKellen's performance a "lethally flamboyant incarnation" and said his "florid mastery ... dominates everything". His performance in the title role garnered best actor nominations for the BAFTA Award and Golden Globe, and won the European Film Award for Best Actor. His screenplay was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

His breakthrough role among mainstream American audiences came with the modestly acclaimed ''Apt Pupil'', based on a story by Stephen King. McKellen portrayed an old Nazi officer, living under a false name in the U.S., who was befriended by a curious teenager (Brad Renfro) who threatened to expose him unless he told his story in detail. His casting was based partly on his performance in ''Cold Comfort Farm'', seen by ''Apt Pupil'' director Bryan Singer, despite the BBC's refusal to release it in cinemas. He was subsequently nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the 1998 film ''Gods and Monsters'', wherein he played James Whale, the director of ''Show Boat'' (1936) and ''Frankenstein''.

He reteamed with Bryan Singer to play the comic book character Magneto in ''X-Men'' and its sequels ''X2: X-Men United'' and ''X-Men: The Last Stand''. It was while filming ''X-Men'' that he was cast as the wizard Gandalf in Peter Jackson's three-film adaptation of ''The Lord of the Rings'' (consisting of ''The Fellowship of the Ring'', ''The Two Towers'', and ''The Return of the King''). McKellen received honors from the Screen Actors Guild for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for his work in ''The Fellowship of the Ring'' and was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the same role. He also voiced Gandalf in the video game adaptions of the film trilogy as well as in ''The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age''. On January 10, 2011 it was officially confirmed that Mckellen would reprise the role of Gandalf in the film adaptation of ''The Hobbit''. On 16 March 2002, he was the host on ''Saturday Night Live''. In 2003, McKellen made a guest appearance as himself on the American cartoon show ''The Simpsons'', in a special British-themed episode entitled "The Regina Monologues", along with Tony Blair and J. K. Rowling. In April and May 2005, he played the role of Mel Hutchwright in Granada Television's long running soap opera, ''Coronation Street'', fulfilling a lifelong ambition. He is also known for his voicework, having narrated Richard Bell's film ''Eighteen'', as a grandfather who leaves his World War II memoirs on audiocassette for his teenage grandson.

McKellen has appeared in limited release films, such as ''Emile'' (which was shot in a few days during the ''X2'' shoot), ''Neverwas'' and ''Asylum''. He appeared as Sir Leigh Teabing in ''The Da Vinci Code.'' During a 17 May 2006 interview on ''The Today Show'' with the ''Da Vinci Code'' cast and director, Matt Lauer posed a question to the group about how they would have felt if the film had borne a prominent disclaimer that it is a work of fiction, as some religious groups wanted. McKellen responded, "I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying 'This is fiction.' I mean, walking on water? It takes... an act of faith. And I have faith in this movie — not that it's true, not that it's factual, but that it's a jolly good story." He continued, "And I think audiences are clever enough and bright enough to separate out fact and fiction, and discuss the thing when they've seen it". McKellen appeared in the 2006 series of Ricky Gervais' comedy series ''Extras'', where he played himself directing Gervais' character Andy Millman in a play about gay lovers. McKellen received a 2007 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor - Comedy Series nomination for his performance. He also appeared in the 2009 remake of the 1967 The Prisoner, where he played the character Number Two.

Personal life

McKellen and his first serious partner, Brian Taylor, a history teacher from Bolton, began their relationship in 1964. It lasted for eight years, ending in 1972. They lived in London, where McKellen continued to pursue his career as an actor. For over a decade, he has lived in a five-story Victorian conversion in Narrow Street, Limehouse. In 1978 he met his second partner, Sean Mathias, at the Edinburgh Festival. This relationship lasted till 1988. According to Mathias, the ten-year love affair was tempestuous, with conflicts over McKellen's success in acting versus Mathias' somewhat less-successful career.

A friend of Ian Charleson and a great admirer of his work, McKellen contributed a chapter to the 1990 book, ''For Ian Charleson: A Tribute''.

In the late 1980s, McKellen lost his appetite for meat except for fish, and so mostly excludes it from his diet.

Activism

LGBT rights campaigning

While McKellen had made his sexual orientation known to his fellow actors early on in his stage career, it was not until 1988 that he came out to the general public, in a programme on BBC Radio 3. The context that prompted McKellen's decision — overriding any concerns about a possible negative effect on his career — was that the controversial Section 28 of the Local Government Bill, simply known as Section 28 was under consideration in the British Parliament. McKellen has stated that he was influenced in his decision by the advice and support of his friends, among them noted gay author Armistead Maupin.

In 2003, during an appearance on ''Have I Got News For You'', McKellen claimed that when he visited Michael Howard, then Environment Secretary (responsible for local government), in 1988 to lobby against Section 28, Howard refused to change his position but did ask him to leave an autograph for his children. McKellen agreed, but wrote "Fuck off, I'm gay." McKellen also described Howard's junior ministers, the Conservatives David Wilshire and Dame Jill Knight, who were the architects of Section 28, as the 'ugly sisters' of a political pantomime.

Section 28, which proposed to prohibit local authorities from "promoting homosexuality" 'as a kind of pretended family relationship', was ambiguous and the actual impact of the amendment was uncertain. McKellen became active in fighting the proposed law, and declared himself gay on a BBC Radio programme where he debated the subject of Section 28 with the conservative journalist Peregrine Worsthorne. He has said of this period: "My own participating in that campaign was a focus for people [to] take comfort that if Ian McKellen was on board for this, perhaps it would be all right for other people to be as well, gay and straight". Section 28 was, however, enacted and remained on the statute books until 2003.

McKellen has continued to be very active in LGBT rights efforts. In a statement on his website regarding his activism, the actor commented that: }}

McKellen is a co-founder of Stonewall, a LGB rights lobby group in the United Kingdom, named after the Stonewall riots. McKellen is also Patron of LGBT History Month, Pride London, GAY-GLOS and The Lesbian & Gay Foundation. and FFLAG where he appears in their video Parents Talking.

In 1994, at the closing ceremony of the Gay Games, he briefly took the stage to address the crowd, saying, "I'm Sir Ian McKellen, but you can call me Serena" (This nickname, originally given to him by Stephen Fry, had been circulating within the gay community since McKellen's knighthood was conferred). In 2002, he attended the Academy Awards with his then-boyfriend, New Zealander Nick Cuthell — possibly a first for a major nominee since Nigel Hawthorne, the first openly gay performer to be nominated for an Academy Award, who attended the ceremonies with his partner, Trevor Bentham, in 1995.

In 2006, McKellen spoke at the pre-launch of the 2007 LGBT History Month in the UK, lending his support to the organisation and its founder, Sue Sanders. In 2007 McKellen became a patron of The Albert Kennedy Trust, an organisation that provides support to young, homeless and troubled LGBT people.

In 2006, McKellen became a Patron of Oxford Pride. At the time he said:

}}

McKellen has taken his activism internationally, where it caused a major stir in Singapore. Invited to do an interview on a morning show, he shocked the interviewer by asking if they could recommend him a gay bar. The program immediately ended. In December 2008, he was named in ''Out'''s annual Out 100 list.

In May 2011, McKellen called Sergey Sobyanin, the Mayor of Moscow, a "coward" when he refused to allow gay parades in the city.

Charity work

In April 2010, along with Brian Cox and Eleanor Bron, appeared in a series of TV advertisements to support Age UK, the charity recently formed from the merger of Age Concern and Help the Aged. All three actors gave their time free of charge.

Selected stage and screen credits

Stage

''Much Ado About Nothing'', Royal National Theatre, Old Vic, London, 1965

''Trelawny of the 'Wells''', National Theatre, London & Chichester Festival, 1965

''The Promise'', West End; Broadway, 1967

''Edward II'' (in title role), Edinburgh Festival & West End, 1969

''Hamlet'' (title role), UK/European Tour, 1971

'''Tis Pity She's a Whore'', UK Tour, 1972

''Dr Faustus'' (title role), Royal Shakespeare Company, Edinburgh Festival & Aldwych Theatre (London), 1974

''King John'', RSC, 1975

''Romeo and Juliet'' (as Romeo), RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon & London, 1976

''The Winter's Tale'', RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1976

''Macbeth'' (title role), RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon & Young Vic (London), 1976–1977

''The Alchemist'', RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon & London, 1977

''Every Good Boy Deserves Favour'', RSC, Barbican Arts Centre (London), 1977

''Three Sisters'', RSC, UK Tour, 1978

''Bent'', (as Max) Royal Court and Criterion, London, 1979

''Amadeus'' (as Salieri), Broadway, 1980

''Coriolanus'' (title role), National Theatre, 1984

''Wild Honey'', National Theatre, 1984 (& Broadway, 1986)

''The Cherry Orchard'' (as Lopakhin), National Theatre, 1985

''The Duchess of Malfi'', National Theatre, 1985

''The Real Inspector Hound'', National Theatre, London & Paris, 1985

''Othello'' (as Iago), RSC, London & Stratford-upon-Avon, 1989

''Richard III'' (title role), National Theatre, world tour, 1990 & US tour, 1992

''Uncle Vanya'' (title role), National Theatre, 1992

''Peter Pan'' (as Mr. Darling/Captain Hook), National Theatre, 1997

''An Enemy of the People'', National Theatre, 1997 & Ahmanson Theatre (Los Angeles), 1998

''Present Laughter'', West Yorkshire Playhouse (Leeds, England), 1998

''Dance of Death'', at the Broadhurst Theatre (New York) in 2001. At the Lyric Theatre (London, England) in 2003

''Aladdin'', (as Widow Twankie) Old Vic, 2004 & 2005

''The Cut'', Donmar Warehouse, 2006

''King Lear'' by ''William Shakespeare'', (as Lear), Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2007; New Zealand, 2007; New York (Brooklyn Academy of Music), 2007, Minneapolis, 2007, New London Theatre (West End), 2007–8

''The Seagull'' by ''Anton Chekhov'', (as Sorin), Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2007; New York (Brooklyn Academy of Music), 2007 Minneapolis, 2007, New London Theatre (West End), 2007–8

''Waiting for Godot'' by ''Samuel Beckett'', (as Estragon), Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, 2009 and 2010; Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, Australia, 2010 and Fugard Theatre, Cape Town, South Africa, 2010

''The Syndicate'' by Eduardo de Filippo, Chichester Festival, 2011

Filmography

Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
1966			(TV)
		Leonidik
	Roger
	George Matthews
	''Priest of Love''	Lawrence
	Narrator
		Paul Chauvelin
	Walter
1983		Dr. Theodore Cuza
		Sir Andrew Charleson
	Arthur Kronfeld
1989		John Profumo
		Geoffrey Miller
''The Ballad of Little Jo''	Percy Corcoran
''Last Action Hero''	Death	(cameo appearance)
	Bill Kraus	CableACE Awards
		Quilt Documentary Narrator	(voice)
	Dr. Reinhardt Lane
''[[I'll Do Anything''	John Earl McAlpine
		Will Gates
		European Film Awards
''[[Jack and Sarah''	William
1996	''Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny''	Nicholas II
	''Swept from the Sea''	Dr. James Kennedy
	Uncle Freddie
		Kurt Dussander	Saturn Award for Best Supporting ActorBroadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor (also for ''Gods and Monsters'')Florida Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor (also for ''Gods and Monsters'')
''Gods and Monsters''	James Whale	British Independent Film Award for Best ActorBroadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor (also for ''Apt Pupil'')Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorChlotrudis Award for Best ActorFlorida Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor (also for ''Apt Pupil'')Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead MaleKansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best ActorLos Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorNational Board of Review Award for Best ActorOnline Film Critics Society Award for Best ActorSan Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best ActorSan Sebastián International Film Festival Award for Best ActorToronto Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorNominated—Academy Award for Best ActorNominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture DramaNominated—Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading RoleNominated—Satellite Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
1999		Mr. Creakle	(TV)
2000
2001	''The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring''		Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best CastSaturn Award for Best Supporting ActorScreen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting RoleNominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting ActorNominated—BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading RoleNominated—Empire Awards
	2002	''[[The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers''	Gandalf the White
	''The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King''	Gandalf the White
	Emile	Nominated—Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
''The Simpsons''	Himself	The Regina Monologues episode
2004		Jason Anders (in voice)
	''Neverwas''	Gabriel Finch
	Dr. Peter Cleave
	Zebedee	(voice)
''Coronation Street''	Mel Hutchwright	(10 episodes)
		Ian McKellen	Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series
''Flushed Away''	The Toad
''X-Men: The Last Stand''		Nominated—Irish Film & Television Award for Best International ActorNominated—Teen Choice Awards for Movies – Choice Sleazebag (also for ''The Da Vinci Code'')
	Sir Leigh Teabing
		Narrator	(voice)
	Iorek Byrnison	(voice)
2008		King Lear
2009
2012		Gandalf the Grey	Filming
2013		Gandalf the Grey	Filming

Music

Vampire in the music video "Heart" by Pet Shop Boys

The man who's "falling out of reach" in the music video "Falling Out of Reach" by Guillemots

Appears on the Scissor Sisters track "Invisible Light", from their 2010 album "Night Work", reciting a passage regarding the "Invisible Light" of the title.

Audiobooks

Audiobook narrator of Michelle Paver's ''Chronicles of Ancient Darkness'' series ''Wolf Brother'', ''Spirit Walker'', ''Soul Eater'', ''Outcast'', "Oath Breaker", "Ghost Hunter"

Other work

A recording of McKellen's voice is heard before performances at the Royal Festival Hall, reminding patrons to ensure their mobile phones and watch alarms are switched off, and to keep coughing to a minimum.

Awards and honours

Honours

He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1979, and knighted in 1991 New Year Honours for his outstanding work and contributions to theatre. In the 2008 New Year Honours he was made a Companion of Honour (CH) for services to drama and to equality.

Honourary degrees

In 2004 McKellen was conferred an honourary Doctor of Letters by Lancaster University. He was praised for his diversity of roles, his "deeply considered dramatic technique" and his Lancastrian roots.

Awards

1981: New York Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play, for ''Amadeus''

1984: London Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Revival, for ''Wild Honey''

1984: London Evening Standard Award for Best Actor, for ''Coriolanus''

1989: London Evening Standard Award for Best Actor, for ''Othello''

1990: London Olivier Award for Best Actor, for ''Richard III''

1998: Back Stage West Garland Awards, for his one-man show ''A Knight Out in Los Angeles''

2004: Manila, Philippines Pride International Film Festival's Lifetime Achievement & Distinction Award''

2007: Annie Award for Best Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production, for ''Flushed Away''

In May 2007, he was named, by the Independent on Sunday Pink List, the fifth most influential gay person in Britain, down from the 1st place the previous year. 2009: San Sebastián International Film Festival Donostia Award in recognition of an extensive professional career. 2010: Empire Awards 2010: Empire Icon Award

References

External links

McKellen's home page

Interviews, blogs and clips

Good Morning (TVNZ) interview with McKellen - Waiting for Godot/The Hobbit

Interview and photoshoot factory-publishing.com

McKellen's personal pages on the Lord of the Rings movie, with a diary and answers to questions by fans

Interview at www.sci-fi-online.com

Podcast interview

Interview at AfterElton.com

Extended BBC interviews with McKellen as he prepares to play King Lear

"A conversation with Sir Ian": Interactive video interview with McKellen on Shakespeare, Richard III and Richard's opening speech

Emma Brockes, ''Every inch a king'' (interview) ''The Guardian'', November 2007

Ian McKellen: A Free Man The Telegraph, 15 December 2008

Category:2012 Summer Olympics cultural ambassadors Category:Actors awarded British knighthoods Category:Alumni of St Catharine's College, Cambridge Category:American Theatre Hall of Fame inductees Category:Annie Award winners Category:European Film Awards winners (people) Category:Back Stage West Garland Award recipients Category:Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe (television) winners Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:Drama Desk Award winners Category:English atheists Category:English film actors Category:English stage actors Category:English video game actors Category:English voice actors Category:Evening Standard Award for Best Actor Category:Gay actors Category:Independent Spirit Award winners Category:Knights Bachelor Category:LGBT people from England Category:LGBT rights activists from the United Kingdom Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Category:Old Boltonians Category:Olivier Award winners Category:Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:People from Burnley Category:People from Wigan Category:Royal National Theatre Company members Category:Royal Shakespeare Company members Category:Shakespearean actors Category:Tony Award winners Category:Audio book narrators Category:1939 births Category:Living people Category:GLAAD Media Awards winners

ar:إيان ماكيلين be:Іэн Маккелен ca:Ian McKellen cs:Ian McKellen cy:Ian McKellen da:Ian McKellen de:Ian McKellen es:Ian McKellen eo:Ian McKellen eu:Ian McKellen fa:ایان مک کالن fo:Ian McKellen fr:Ian McKellen ga:Ian McKellen gl:Ian McKellen id:Ian McKellen it:Ian McKellen he:איאן מק'קלן ka:იენ მაკ-კელენი la:Ioannes McKellen lv:Ians Makellens hu:Ian McKellen nl:Ian McKellen ja:イアン・マッケラン no:Ian McKellen pl:Ian McKellen pt:Ian McKellen ru:Маккеллен, Иэн sq:Ian McKellen simple:Ian McKellen sk:Ian McKellen sl:Ian McKellen sr:Ијан Макелен sh:Ian McKellen fi:Ian McKellen sv:Ian McKellen tl:Ian McKellen th:เอียน แม็กเคลเลน tr:Ian McKellen uk:Єн Маккеллен zh:伊恩·麦凯伦

name	Shakespeare in Love
director	John Madden
producer	David ParfittDonna GigliottiHarvey WeinsteinEdward ZwickMarc Norman
writer	Marc NormanTom Stoppard
starring	Gwyneth PaltrowJoseph FiennesColin FirthBen AffleckGeoffrey RushJudi DenchTom WilkinsonRupert EverettImelda Staunton
music	Stephen Warbeck
cinematography	Richard Greatrex
editing	David Gamble
distributor	Miramax Films Alliance Atlantis )Universal Studios
released
runtime	123 minutes
country
language	English
budget	$25 million
gross	$289,317,794 }}

''Shakespeare in Love'' is a 1998 British-American romantic comedy film directed by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard.

The film portrays playwright William Shakespeare's involvement in a love affair at the time that he was writing the play ''Romeo and Juliet''. The story is fiction, though several of the characters are based on real people. In addition, many of the characters, lines, and plot devices are references to Shakespeare's plays.

''Shakespeare in Love'' won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress (for Gwyneth Paltrow), and Best Supporting Actress (for Judi Dench).

Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth would later star together in ''The King's Speech'', for which Firth would win Best Actor. Rush would again co-star with Joseph Fiennes in ''Elizabeth'', a film which would also get nominated for Best Picture and Best Actress.

Plot

William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is a poor playwright for Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush), owner of The Rose Theatre, in 1593 London. After learning that his love was cheating on him with his patron, Shakespeare burns his new comedy, ''Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter'', rewriting it as the tragedy ''Romeo and Juliet''. Suffering from writer's block, he is unable to complete the play, but begins auditions for Romeo. A young man named Thomas Kent is cast in the role after impressing Shakespeare with his performance and his love of Shakespeare's previous work. Kent is actually Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), the daughter of a wealthy merchant who desires to act, but women are banned from the stage and she must disguise herself.

After Shakespeare discovers his star's true identity, he and Viola begin a passionate secret affair. Inspired by her, Shakespeare writes quickly, and benefits from the advice of playwright and friendly rival Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe (Rupert Everett). Shakespeare and Viola know, however, that their romance is doomed. He is married, albeit long separated from his wife, while Viola's parents have arranged her betrothal to Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), an aristocrat who needs money. When Viola is summoned to the court of Queen Elizabeth I (Judi Dench), Shakespeare dons a woman's disguise to accompany her as her cousin. At court, he persuades Wessex to bet £50 that a play cannot capture the nature of true love. If ''Romeo and Juliet'' is a success, Shakespeare as playwright will win the money. The Queen, who enjoys Shakespeare's plays, agrees to witness the wager.

Edmund Tilney (Simon Callow), the Master of the Revels, the Queen's official in charge of the theatres, learns that there is a woman in the theatre company at The Rose playhouse, and orders the theatre closed for violating morality and the law. Left without a stage or lead actor, it seems that ''Romeo and Juliet'' must close before it even opens, until Richard Burbage (Martin Clunes), the owner of a competing theatre, the Curtain, offers his stage to Shakespeare. Shakespeare assumes the lead role of Romeo, with a boy actor playing Juliet. Viola learns that the play will be performed on her wedding day, and after the ceremony secretly travels to the theatre. Shortly before the play begins, the boy playing Juliet starts experiencing the voice change of puberty. Viola replaces him and plays Juliet to Shakespeare's Romeo. Their passionate portrayal of two lovers inspires the entire audience.

Tilney arrives at the theatre with Wessex, who has deduced his new bride's location. Tilney plans to arrest the audience and cast for indecency, but the Queen is in attendance. Although she recognizes Viola, the Queen does not unmask her, instead declaring that the role of Juliet is being performed by Thomas Kent. However, even a queen is powerless to end a lawful marriage, so she orders "Kent" to fetch Viola so that she may sail with Wessex to the Colony of Virginia. The Queen also states that ''Romeo and Juliet'' has accurately portrayed true love so Wessex must pay Shakespeare £50, the exact amount Shakespeare requires to buy a share in the Lord Chamberlain's Men. The Queen then directs "Kent" to tell Shakespeare to write something "a little more cheerful next time, for Twelfth Night".

Viola and Shakespeare part, resigned to their fates. The film closes as Shakespeare begins to write ''Twelfth Night, Or What You Will'' imagining his love washed ashore in a strange land after a shipwreck and musing, "For she will be my heroine for all time, and her name will be...Viola", a strong young woman castaway who disguises herself as a young man.

Cast

Joseph Fiennes as William Shakespeare

:Other actors considered were Daniel Day-Lewis, who reportedly was asked by Julia Roberts but declined, and Kenneth Branagh.

Gwyneth Paltrow as Viola de Lesseps

:The role was originally to be played by Julia Roberts, who withdrew six weeks before filming. Kate Winslet turned down the role to star in ''Holy Smoke!''; Paltrow won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Viola.

Colin Firth as Lord Wessex

Ben Affleck as Ned Alleyn

:Affleck reportedly joined the cast to be close to then-girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow.

Geoffrey Rush as Philip Henslowe

:Rush was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Philip, but lost to James Coburn.

Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth I

:Dench won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Queen Elizabeth. This is the second-shortest performance to win the Supporting Actress Oscar, with only six minutes of screen time. In the same year, Cate Blanchett was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in the same role in ''Elizabeth'' but lost to Gwyneth Paltrow.

Tom Wilkinson as Hugh Fennyman

Rupert Everett as Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe

Imelda Staunton as Nurse

Antony Sher as Dr. Moth

Martin Clunes as Richard Burbage

Simon Callow as Edmund Tilney

Jim Carter as Ralph Bashford

Jill Baker as Lady de Lesseps

Patrick Barlow as Will Kempe

Mark Williams as Wabash

Simon Day as First Boatsman

Joe Roberts as John Webster

Production

The original idea for ''Shakespeare in Love'' came to screenwriter Marc Norman in the late 1980s. He pitched a draft screenplay to director Edward Zwick. The screenplay attracted Julia Roberts who agreed to play Viola. However, Zwick disliked Norman's screenplay and hired the playwright Tom Stoppard to improve it (Stoppard's first major success had been with the Shakespeare-influenced play ''Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead'').

The film went into production in 1991 at Universal Pictures, with Zwick as director, but although sets and costumes were in construction, Shakespeare had not yet been cast, because Julia Roberts insisted that only Daniel Day-Lewis could play the role. Day-Lewis was uninterested, and when Roberts failed to persuade him, she withdrew from the film, six weeks before shooting was due to begin. The production went into turnaround, and Zwick was unable to persuade other studios to take up the screenplay.

Eventually, Zwick interested Miramax in the screenplay, but Miramax was not keen on him as director, and froze him out of the project, choosing John Madden instead. Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein acted as producer, and successfully persuaded Ben Affleck to take a small role as Ned Alleyn.

The film was considerably reworked after the first test screenings. The scene with Shakespeare and Viola in the punt was re-shot, to make it more emotional, and some lines were re-recorded to clarify the reasons why Viola had to marry Wessex. The ending was reshot several times, until Stoppard eventually came up with the idea of Viola suggesting to Shakespeare that their parting could inspire his next play.

References to Shakespeare's work

The main source for much of the action in the film is ''Romeo and Juliet.'' Will and Viola play out the famous balcony and bedroom scenes; like Juliet, Viola has a witty nurse, and is separated from Will by a gulf of duty (although not the family enmity of the play: the "two households" of ''Romeo and Juliet'' are supposedly inspired by the two rival playhouses). In addition, the two lovers are equally "star-crossed" — they are not ultimately destined to be together (since Viola is of rich and socially ambitious merchant stock and is promised to marry Lord Wessex, while Shakespeare himself is poor and already married). There is also a Rosaline, with whom Will is in love at the beginning of the film.

Many other plot devices used in the film are common in various Shakespearean comedies and in the works of the other playwrights of the Elizabethan era: the Queen disguised as a commoner, the cross-dressing disguises, mistaken identities, the sword fight, the suspicion of adultery (or, at least, cheating), the appearance of a "ghost" (cf. ''Macbeth''), and the "play within a play".

The film also has sequences in which Shakespeare and the other characters utter words that will later appear in his plays:

On the street, Shakespeare hears a Puritan preaching against the two London stages: "The Rose smells thusly rank, by any name! I say, a plague on both their houses!" Two references in one, both to ''Romeo and Juliet''; first, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" (Act II, scene ii, lines 1 and 2); second, "a plague on both your houses" (Act III, scene I, line 94).

Backstage of a performance of ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'', Shakespeare sees William Kempe in full make-up, silently contemplating a skull, a reference to ''Hamlet''.

Shakespeare utters the lines "Doubt thou the stars are fire, / Doubt that the sun doth move" (from ''Hamlet'') to Philip Henslowe.

As Shakespeare's writer's block is introduced, he is seen crumpling balls of paper and throwing them around his room. They land near props which represent scenes in his several plays: a skull (''Hamlet''), and an open chest (''The Merchant of Venice'').

Viola, as well as being Paltrow's character in the film, is the lead character in ''Twelfth Night'' who dresses as a man after the supposed death of her brother.

At the end of the film, Shakespeare imagines a shipwreck overtaking Viola on her way to America, inspiring the second scene of his next play, ''Twelfth Night'', and perhaps also ''The Tempest''.

Shakespeare writes a sonnet to Viola which begins: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" (from Sonnet 18).

Shakespeare tells Henslowe that he still owes him for "one gentleman of Verona", a reference to ''Two Gentlemen of Verona'', part of which we also see being acted before the Queen later in the film.

In the boat, when Shakespeare tells Viola, disguised as Thomas Kent, of his lady’s beauty and charms, she dismisses his praise, as no real woman could live up to the ideal. This is a set up for Sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”.

Christopher Marlowe appears in the film as the master playwright whom the characters within the film consider the greatest English dramatist of that time — this is accurate, yet also humorous, since everyone in the film's audience knows what will eventually happen to Shakespeare. Marlowe gives Shakespeare a plot for his next play, "Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter" ("Romeo is Italian...always in and out of love...until he meets...Ethel. The daughter of his enemy! His best friend is killed in a duel by Ethel's brother or something. His name is Mercutio.") Marlowe's ''Doctor Faustus'' is quoted repeatedly: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships/ And burned the topless towers of Ilium?"

The child John Webster who plays with mice is a reference to the leading figure in the Jacobean generation of playwrights. His plays (''The Duchess of Malfi'', ''The White Devil'') are known for their blood and gore, which is why he says that he enjoys ''Titus Andronicus'', and why he says of ''Romeo and Juliet'' when asked by the Queen "I liked it when she stabbed herself."

When the clown Will Kempe (Patrick Barlow) says to Shakespeare that he would like to play in a drama, he is told that "they would laugh at Seneca if you played it," a reference to the Roman tragedian renowned for his sombre and bloody plot lines which were a major influence on the development of English tragedy.

Will is shown signing a paper repeatedly, with many relatively illegible signatures visible. This is a reference to the fact that several versions of Shakespeare's signature exist, and in each one he spelled his name differently.

Impact on the British Royal Family

It has been reported by ''The Sunday Telegraph'' that the film had an impact on the British Royal Family in prompting the revival of the title of Earl of Wessex, which had been extinct since the 11th century. Prince Edward was originally to have been titled Duke of Cambridge following his marriage to Sophie Rhys-Jones in 1999, the year after the film's release. However, after watching ''Shakespeare in Love'', he reportedly became attracted to the title of the character played by Colin Firth, and asked Queen Elizabeth II to be given the title of Earl of Wessex instead.

Controversy

The writers of ''Shakespeare in Love'' were sued in 1999 by Faye Kellerman, author of the book ''The Quality of Mercy''. Kellerman claimed that the story was lifted from her book, a detective novel in which Shakespeare and a cross-dressing Jewish woman attempt to solve a murder. Miramax Films derided the claim of similarity as an "absurd...publicity stunt".

After the film's release, certain publications, including ''Private Eye'', noted strong similarities between the film and the 1941 novel ''No Bed for Bacon'', by Caryl Brahms and S J Simon, which also features Shakespeare falling in love and finding inspiration for his later plays. In a foreword to a subsequent edition of ''No Bed for Bacon'' (which traded on the association by declaring itself "A Story of Shakespeare and Lady Viola in Love") Ned Sherrin, ''Private Eye'' insider and former writing partner of Brahms', confirmed that he had lent a copy of the novel to Stoppard after he joined the writing team, but that the basic plot of the film had been independently developed by Marc Norman, who was unaware of the earlier work.

The film's plot also bears a resemblance to Alexandre Duval's "Shakespeare amoureux ou la Piece a l'Etude" (1804), in which Shakespeare falls in love with an actress who is playing Richard III.

Awards

Awards
! Award	! Category	! Name	! Outcome
		David Parfitt and Donna Gigliotti
	Gwyneth Paltrow
	Judi Dench
	Martin Childs and Jill Quertier
	Stephen Warbeck
	Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard
	Geoffrey Rush
	Richard Greatrex
	David Gamble
	Lisa Westcott and Veronica Brebner
	BAFTA Award for Best Film
BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role	Judi Dench
BAFTA Award for Best Editing	David Gamble
BAFTA Award for Best Direction	John Madden
BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role	Gwyneth Paltrow
BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role	Joseph Fiennes
BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role	Geoffrey Rush
BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role	Tom Wilkinson
BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography	Richard Greatrex
BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay	Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard
BAFTA Award for Best Makeup & Hair	Lisa Westcott
BAFTA Award for Best Sound	Robin O'Donoghue, Dominic Lester, Peter Glossop, and John Downer
	Stephen Warbeck
BAFTA Award for Best Costume Design
BAFTA Award for Best Production Design	Martin Childs
Directors Guild of America Award	Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures	John Madden
	Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy	Gwyneth Paltrow
Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay	Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard
Golden Globe Award for Best Director - Motion Picture	John Madden
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture	Geoffrey Rush
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture	Judi Dench
	Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
	Gwyneth Paltrow
Writers Guild of America Award	Best Original Screenplay	Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard

Cultural influence

''Shakespeare in Love'' has since been used as material in the VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education) in Australia.

The film was spoofed and homaged, along with ''Star Wars'', in the 1999 short film ''George Lucas in Love''.

The film was seen and frequently interrupted by Brenda Meeks in ''Scary Movie''.

References

External links

http://www.nextmovie.com/blog/oscars-academy-awards-biggest-mistakes-upsets/

Category:1998 films Category:1990s comedy-drama films Category:1990s romantic comedy films Category:British films Category:American films Category:British comedy-drama films Category:American comedy-drama films Category:British romantic comedy films Category:American romantic comedy films Category:English-language films Category:Films directed by John Madden Category:Best Musical or Comedy Picture Golden Globe winners Category:Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners Category:Best Picture Academy Award winners Category:Fictional versions of real people Category:Films about writers Category:Films featuring a Best Actress Academy Award winning performance Category:Films featuring a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winning performance Category:Films set in the 16th century Category:Films set in Tudor England Category:Films whose art director won the Best Art Direction Academy Award Category:Films whose writer won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award Category:Romeo and Juliet films Category:Universal Pictures films Category:Miramax Films films Category:Films about actors Category:Films set in London

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