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North Warwickshire
—  Borough, Non-metropolitan district  —
Shown within Warwickshire
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Constituent country	England
Region	West Midlands
Administrative county	Warwickshire
Founded	1974
Admin. HQ	Atherstone
Government
• Type	Metropolitan borough
• Leadership:	Alternative - Section 31
• MPs:	Dan Byles
• Leader	Michael Stanley
Area
• Total	109.8 sq mi (284.3 km2)
Area rank	143rd
Population (2010 est.)
• Total	61,900
• Rank	Ranked 309th
• Density	560/sq mi (220/km2)
Time zone	Greenwich Mean Time (UTC+0)
• Summer (DST)	British Summer Time (UTC+1)
Postcode	B46 ,B78, CV7, CV9, CV10
ISO 3166-2
ONS code	44UB
OS grid reference
NUTS 3
Ethnicity	98.6% White
Website	northwarks.gov.uk

North Warwickshire is a local government district and borough in Warwickshire, England. The main town in the district is Atherstone where the council is based. Other significant places include Coleshill, Polesworth and Kingsbury.

The North Warwickshire district was created on 1 April 1974 by a merger of the Atherstone Rural District and parts of the Meriden Rural District (the rest of which was merged into the West Midlands county).

North Warwickshire is a mostly rural area with several small towns. The area historically had a large coal mining industry, but this has almost died out. The district is relatively remote from the rest of Warwickshire, as the county is almost split in two by the West Midlands.

The boundaries of North Warwickshire are almost the same as the North Warwickshire parliamentary constituency. However the constituency also includes the town of Bedworth. The local MP is Dan Byles.

In 2007 the Conservatives took overall control of the Borough Council for the first time since the creation of the council within its current boundaries. The Council was retaken by Labour in 2011.

It borders the Warwickshire district of Nuneaton and Bedworth to the east, the county of Leicestershire to the north-east, Staffordshire to the north-west, and the West Midlands to the south and south-west.

Parishes and settlements[link]

Settlements in North Warwickshire include:

• Ansley, Arley, Astley, Atherstone, Austrey
• Baddesley Ensor, Baxterley, Bentley, Birchmoor, Blythe End
• Caldecote, Coleshill, Corley, Curdworth
• Dordon
• Fillongley, Furnace End
• Gilson, Great Packington, Grendon, Warwickshire, Grendon, Atherstone
• Hartshill, Heath Whitacre, Hurley, Hurley Common
• Kingsbury
• Lea Marston, Little Packington
• Mancetter, Maxstoke, Merevale, Middleton, Moxhull
• Nether Whitacre, Newton Regis
• Over Whitacre
• Polesworth
• Seckington, Shustoke, Shuttington,
• Warton, Water Orton, Whitacre Heath, Wiggins Hill, Wishaw, Wood End (near Kingsbury), Wood End (Near Fillongley)

For a list of wards in North Warwickshire by population see here

Local election results 1973 - 2011[link]

As of March 2011, it was as follows^[1]-

1973: Labour 19, Conservatives 8, Independents 4, Ratepayers 2
1995: Labour 28, Conservatives 4, Independents 1
1999: Labour 22, Conservatives 9, Liberal Democrats 2, Independents 1
2003: Labour 16, Conservatives 15, Liberal Democrats 4 (Boundary Changes in effect)
2007: Conservatives 21, Labour 14
2011: Labour 18, Conservative 17

Parties[link]

The Borough is a very marginal seat between the Conservatives and Labour. Inside the Borough Polesworth, Dordon, Kingsbury, Wood End and Baddersley Ensor are considered Labour safe seats and Fillongley, Water Orton, Newton Regis and Curdworth considered safe Conservative seats.

See also[link]

• Hurley and Wood End

References[link]

v t e Districts of the West Midlands Region Herefordshire Herefordshire Shropshire Shropshire Telford and Wrekin Staffordshire Cannock Chase East Staffordshire Lichfield Newcastle-under-Lyme South Staffordshire Stafford Staffordshire Moorlands Stoke-on-Trent Tamworth Warwickshire North Warwickshire Nuneaton and Bedworth Rugby Stratford-on-Avon Warwick West Midlands Birmingham Coventry Dudley Sandwell Solihull Walsall Wolverhampton Worcestershire Bromsgrove Malvern Hills Redditch Worcester Wychavon Wyre Forest

Coordinates: 52°34′34″N 1°32′43″W / 52.5760°N 1.5454°W / 52.5760; -1.5454

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2010)

Warwickshire
Flag
Geography
Status	Ceremonial and non-metropolitan county
Origin	Historic
Region	West Midlands
Area - Total - Admin. council	Ranked 31st 1,975 km2 (763 sq mi) Ranked 28th
Admin HQ	Warwick
ISO 3166-2	GB-WAR
ONS code	44
NUTS 3	UKG13
Demography
Population - Total (2010 est.) - Density - Admin. council - Admin. pop.	Ranked 40th 536,100 271 /km2 (700 /sq mi) Ranked 22nd 536,100N
Ethnicity	95.6% White 2.8% S. Asian
Politics
File:Warwickarms.JPG /Warwickshire County Council http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk
Executive	Conservative
Members of Parliament	Daniel Byles (C) Marcus Jones (C) Mark Pawsey (C) Chris White (C) Jeremy Wright (C) Nadhim Zahawi (C)
Districts
North Warwickshire Nuneaton and Bedworth Rugby Stratford-on-Avon Warwick

Warwickshire (ⁱ/ˈwɒrɨkʃər/ or /ˈwɒrɨkʃɪər/) is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare and George Elliot. Commonly used abbreviations for the county are Warks or Warwicks.

The five districts of North Warwickshire, Nuneaton & Bedworth, Rugby, Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon together form the Warwickshire County Council area, and are within the 1974 boundaries. The shape of the administrative area of Warwickshire differs considerably from that of the historic county, which also includes the now autonomous unitary authorities of Coventry and Solihull, as well as a small area around central and northeast Birmingham.

For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region (code UKG13) and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region.

Geography[link]

Warwickshire is bounded to the north-west by the West Midlands metropolitan county and Staffordshire, by Leicestershire to the north-east, Northamptonshire to the east, Worcestershire to the west, Oxfordshire to the south and Gloucestershire to the south-west. The northern tip of the county is only 3 miles (5 km) from the Derbyshire border. An average-sized English county covering an area of almost 2,000 km², it runs some 60 miles (97 km) north to south.

The majority of Warwickshire's population live in the north and centre of the county. The market towns of northern and eastern Warwickshire were industrialised in the 19th century, and include Atherstone, Bedworth, Nuneaton, and Rugby. Major industries included coal mining, textiles, engineering, and cement production, but heavy industry is in decline, being replaced by distribution centres, light to medium industry, and services. Of the northern and eastern towns, only Nuneaton and Rugby (as the birthplace of rugby football) are well-known outside of Warwickshire. The prosperous towns of central and western Warwickshire including Leamington Spa, Stratford-upon-Avon, Kenilworth, Alcester, and Warwick harbour light to medium industries, services and tourism as major employment sectors.

The south of the county is largely rural and sparsely populated, and includes a small area of the Cotswolds, at the border with northwest Gloucestershire. The only town in the south of Warwickshire is Shipston-on-Stour. The highest point in the county, at 261 m (856 ft), is Ebrington Hill, again on the border with Gloucestershire, grid reference SP187426 at the county's southwest extremity.

The north of the county, bordering Staffordshire and Leicestershire, is mildly undulating countryside and the northernmost village, No Man's Heath, is only 34 miles (55 km) south of the Peak District National Park's southernmost point.

There are no cities in Warwickshire since both Coventry and Birmingham were incorporated into the West Midlands county in 1974 and are now metropolitan authorities in themselves. The largest towns in Warwickshire as of 2004 are: Nuneaton (pop. 77,500), Rugby (62,700), Leamington Spa (45,300), and Bedworth (32,500). Stratford, Warwick, and Kenilworth all house 20,000-25,000 inhabitants, while the smaller towns of Atherstone, Alcester, Coleshill, Southam, Bulkington, Polesworth, Kingsbury, Henley-in-Arden, Studley, Shipston. Wellesbourne and Whitnash have populations between 5,000 and 12,000.

Arden and Felden[link]

Much of western Warwickshire, including that area now forming part of Coventry, Solihull and Birmingham, was covered by the ancient Forest of Arden (most of which was cut down to provide fuel for industrialisation). Thus the names of a number of places in the northwestern part of Warwickshire end with the phrase "-in-Arden", such as Henley-in-Arden, Hampton-in-Arden and Tanworth-in-Arden. The remaining area, not part of the forest, was called the Felden - from fielden.

Historic boundaries[link]

Areas historically part of Warwickshire include Coventry, Solihull, Sutton Coldfield and most of Birmingham including Aston and Edgbaston. These became part of the metropolitan county of West Midlands (and Sutton Coldfield became part of Birmingham) following local government re-organisation in 1974.

In 1986 the West Midlands County Council was abolished and Birmingham, Coventry, and Solihull became effective unitary authorities, however the West Midlands county name has not been altogether abolished, and still exists for ceremonial purposes, and so the town and two cities remain outside Warwickshire.

Some organisations, such as Warwickshire County Cricket Club, which is based in Edgbaston, in Birmingham, still observe the historic county boundaries.

Coventry is effectively in the centre of the Warwickshire area, and still has strong ties with the county. Coventry and Warwickshire are sometimes treated as a single area and share a single Chamber of Commerce and BBC Local Radio Station (BBC Coventry & Warwickshire).

Coventry has been a part of Warwickshire for only some of its history. In 1451 Coventry was separated from Warwickshire and made a county corporate in its own right, called the County of the City of Coventry. In 1842 the county of Coventry was abolished and Coventry was remerged with Warwickshire. In recent times, there have been calls to formally re-introduce Coventry into Warwickshire, although nothing has yet come of this. The county's population would increase by almost a third-of-a-million overnight should this occur, Coventry being the UK's 11th largest city.

The town of Tamworth was historically divided between Warwickshire and Staffordshire, but since 1888 has been fully in Staffordshire.

In 1931, Warwickshire gained the town of Shipston-on-Stour from Worcestershire and several villages, including Long Marston and Welford-on-Avon, from Gloucestershire.

Settlements[link]

A list of the main settlements in Warwickshire, including towns, or villages with a population of over 5,000.

History[link]

A detailed map

Stratford-upon-Avon

Kenilworth Castle

Warwickshire came into being as a division of the kingdom of Mercia in the early 11th century. The first reference to Warwickshire was in 1001, as Wæringscīr named after Warwick (meaning "dwellings by the weir").

During the Middle Ages Warwickshire was dominated by Coventry, which was at the time one of the most important cities in England due to its textiles trade in the heart of England. Warwickshire played a key part in the English Civil War, with the Battle of Edgehill and other skirmishes taking place in the county. During the Industrial Revolution Warwickshire became one of Britain's foremost industrial counties, with the large industrial cities of Birmingham and Coventry within its boundaries.

Boundary changes[link]

• 1844: The Counties (Detached Parts) Act transferred a township to, and two parishes from, the county.
• 1888: Those parts of the town of Tamworth lying in Warwickshire were ceded to Staffordshire.
• 1891: Harborne became part of the County Borough of Birmingham and thus was transferred from Staffordshire to Warwickshire by the Local Govt. Bd.'s Prov. Orders Conf. (No. 13) Act, 54 & 55 Vic. c. 161 (local act).
• 1891: The district of Balsall Heath, which had originally constituted the most northerly part of the Parish of King's Norton in Worcestershire, was added to the County Borough of Birmingham, and therefore Warwickshire, on 1 October 1891.
• 1909: Quinton was formally removed from Worcestershire and incorporated into the County Borough of Birmingham, then in Warwickshire, on 9 November 1909.
• 1911: The Urban District of Handsworth, in Staffordshire, and the Rural District of Yardley along with the greater part of the Urban District of King's Norton and Northfield, both in Worcestershire, were absorbed into Birmingham, and thus Warwickshire, as part of the Greater Birmingham Scheme on 9 November 1911.
• 1928: Perry Barr Urban District was ceded to Birmingham from Staffordshire.
• 1931: The boundaries between Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire were adjusted by the Provisional Order Confirmation (Gloucestershire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire) Act which transferred 26 parishes between the three counties, largely to eliminate exclaves. The town of Shipston-on-Stour was gained from Worcestershire and several villages, including Long Marston and Welford-on-Avon, from Gloucestershire.
• 1974: Under The Local Government Act 1972, Birmingham, Coventry, Solihull and Sutton Coldfield were ceded to the new West Midlands county, with Sutton Coldfield becoming part of Birmingham.

Economy[link]

This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Warwickshire at current basic prices published (pp. 240–253) by Office for National Statistics with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.

Video game developing company Codemasters is based in Warwickshire.

Local government[link]

Like most English shire counties, Warwickshire has a two-tier structure of local government. Warwickshire is divided into five districts each with their own district councils. These districts are: North Warwickshire, Nuneaton and Bedworth, Rugby, Stratford, and Warwick (see map). The county and district councils are responsible for providing different services.

Atherstone is the headquarters of the North Warwickshire district, Nuneaton is headquarters of the Nuneaton and Bedworth District and Leamington Spa is the headquarters of the Warwick district.

In addition many small towns and villages have their own parish councils although these have only limited powers.

Warwickshire is policed by the Warwickshire Police.

The 2009 County Council elections resulted in a win for the Conservatives.

County council[link]

The county also has a county council based in Warwick which is elected every four years (the last election was held on 4 June 2009 the same day as the European Elections), is currently controlled by the Conservative Party and operates a cabinet-style council. The county council is made of 62 councillors, who decide upon the budget and appoints the council leader. The council leader selects 2 to 9 councillors and together they form the cabinet. The Leader assigns portfolios on which cabinet members make decisions. Key decisions are made by the whole cabinet while others are made only by the portfolio holders for relevant areas.^[1]

Education[link]

In the state sector, children start school in the school year in which they turn five. They stay at primary school for seven years (although this varies even within the county, as some people have previously gone for four years and then spent another four years at a 'middle school') until they are eleven. Warwickshire is one of the few local authorities in England to still maintain the Grammar school system in two districts: Stratford on Avon and Rugby, although Southam claims to have a comprehensive school. In the final year of primary school, children are given the opportunity of sitting the eleven plus exam in order to compete for a place at one of the Grammar schools, with two in Stratford and Rugby and one in Alcester (including Stratford-upon-Avon Grammar School for Girls; King Edward VI School, a boys school; and Alcester Grammar School (mixed)). The exam is sat on three different days and consists of two verbal reasoning and mathematics papers and one extended writing paper. In order to maintain standards, there is a bank of papers that are used in rotation. In 2006, it was revealed in a local newspaper, the Stratford Herald, that some private eleven plus tutors had copies of the exam papers and that they were using them as practice papers for their pupils. This meant that, in some cases, pupils sitting the exam had seen the paper in advance.^{[citation needed]}

It should be noted that Warwickshire contains 3 Further Education Colleges and 1 6th Form College, North Warwickshire & Hinckley College which has main colleges based in Nuneaton and the Leicestershire Town of Hinckley with smaller colleges based around North Warwickshire, King Edward VI Sixth Form College (K.E.G.S) in Nuneaton, Stratford Upon Avon College and Warwickshire College, an institution made up of six main separate colleges that have merged together (Leamington Centre, Rugby Centre, Moreton Morrell Centre, Pershore College, Henley-in-Arden Centre, and the Trident Centre in Warwick).

There are also five independent schools within the county, namely; Rugby School, Warwick School, Princethorpe College, Kingsley School in Leamington Spa, and The King's High School For Girls, Warwick.

Ashlawn School, King Edward VI School Stratford-upon-Avon, Rugby School and Warwick School are arguably the four most notable schools within Warwickshire,^{[by whom?]} with King Edward VI School Stratford-upon-Avon still using 13th century school buildings and being the likely school of William Shakespeare, Rugby School being founded in 1567 and Warwick School originally being founded c.914 AD, which makes it the oldest surviving boys school in the country. All four schools achieve very impressive exam results and benefit from exceptional facilities. Rugby School is one of nine schools that were defined as the "great" English public schools by the Public Schools Act 1868, and is a member of the Rugby Group. Both Rugby School and Warwick School are HMC schools, with the Headmaster from each school attending the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference.

In 2011, Warwickshire members of the union NUT supported action by staff at Coventry's Tile Hill Wood School, in opposition to the government's programme of Academies.^[2][3]

Transport[link]

Roads[link]

Several major motorways run through Warwickshire. These include:

• The M40 motorway which connects London to Birmingham, runs through the centre of the county, and serves Leamington Spa, Warwick, and Stratford.
• The M6 motorway, which connects northwestern England and the West Midlands to the M1 motorway (and then on to London), runs through the north of Warwickshire, and serves Rugby, Nuneaton, and Bedworth on its way to Birmingham.
• The M69 Coventry to Leicester motorway which serves Nuneaton.
• Other motorways pass briefly through Warwickshire including the M45 (a short spur south of Rugby connecting to the M1), the southern end of the M6 Toll, and the M42 which passes through the county at several points.

Other major trunk routes in Warwickshire includes the A45 (Rugby-Coventry-Birmingham and east into Northamptonshire route). The A46 (connects the M40 to the M6 via Warwick, Kenilworth and Coventry), the A452 (Leamington to Birmingham route) and the A5 runs through Warwickshire passing Nuneaton between Tamworth and Hinckley (at Atherstone).

Rail[link]

Two major railway lines pass through Warwickshire.

• The Chiltern Main Line, the former Great Western route from London to Birmingham passes through the centre of Warwickshire on a route similar to the M40 motorway, and has stations at Leamington Spa, Warwick, (and Warwick Parkway) and Hatton. Rail services are provided by Chiltern Railways and London Midland (Birmingham to Leamington only). There are also two branches off the Chiltern line, one from Leamington to Coventry, and another from Hatton near Warwick to Stratford.

The WCML at Rugby

• The West Coast Main Line (WCML) runs through Warwickshire. At Rugby the WCML splits into two parts, one runs west through to Coventry and Birmingham, and the other the "Trent Valley Line" runs north-west towards Stafford and the north-west of England. This section has stations at Nuneaton, Atherstone, and Polesworth (North bound services only). There is one branch off the WCML from Nuneaton to Coventry, and there is a station at Bedworth on this branch.

Other railway lines in Warwickshire include the Birmingham-Nuneaton section of the Birmingham to Peterborough Line, which continues east of Nuneaton towards Leicester and Peterborough. Nuneaton has direct services to Birmingham and Leicester on this line, and there is one intermediate station at Water Orton near Coleshill in the extreme north-west of the county.

There is also a branch line from Birmingham to Stratford-upon-Avon. This line used to continue southwards to Cheltenham but is now a dead-end branch. There are several stations on this line at Henley-in-Arden and at several small villages. Stratford also has direct rail services to London via the branch line to Warwick (mentioned earlier).

The only major town in Warwickshire not to have a station is Kenilworth. Although the Leamington to Coventry line passes through the town, its station was closed in the 1960s as part of the Beeching Axe. There is a concerted campaign to re-open the station, although currently there are no local services operating on the line, as it is used only by CrossCountry services.

Air[link]

Coventry Airport is located in the Warwickshire village of Baginton.

Canals and waterways[link]

The Oxford Canal at Napton-on-the-Hill

Canals in Warwickshire include:

• The Grand Union Canal, which runs through Leamington and Warwick and onwards to Birmingham.

The restored Saltisford Canal Arm is close to the centre of Warwick, and is now a short branch of the Grand Union Canal. The arm is the remains of the original terminus of the Warwick and Birmingham Canal and dates back to 1799. The Saltisford Canal Trust have restored most of the surviving canal, which is now the mooring for colourful narrowboats and a waterside park open to the public. Over 800 visiting narrowboats come by water to Warwick each year and moor on the arm.Saltisford Canal Trust

• The Coventry Canal which runs through the north of the county from Coventry through Bedworth, Nuneaton, Atherstone, and Polesworth, and then onwards to Tamworth.
• The Stratford-upon-Avon Canal which runs from the Grand Union west of Warwick to Stratford.
• The Ashby-de-la-Zouch Canal passes briefly through Warwickshire from a junction with the Coventry Canal at Bedworth.
• The Oxford Canal, which runs from near Coventry and then eastwards around Rugby, and then through the rural south of the county towards Oxford.

The River Avon is navigable from just north of Stratford. In 1974, the Higher Avon Navigation Trust made a proposal to extend the navigation to Warwick and Leamington, where a junction with the Grand Union Canal would create a new cruising ring. Warwickshire County Council believed the scheme to be a catalyst for economic regeneration in the area, but after gauging public support in 2003, decided not to support the plans. The Stratford and Warwick Waterway Trust is still actively pursuing the proposals.^[4]

Places of interest[link]

Sports teams[link]

Cricket[link]

Warwickshire County Cricket Club play at Edgbaston. Notable players for Warwickshire have been Brian Lara, Bob Willis, Allan Donald, Geoff Humpage and Ian Bell.

Gaelic Sports[link]

The Warwickshire County Board of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) (or Warwickshire GAA) is one of the county boards outside Ireland and is responsible for Gaelic games in Warwickshire. The county board is also responsible for the Warwickshire inter-county teams. The play their home games at Páirc na hÉireann. Warwickshire Schools GAA Board was originally setup in September 2000. It has grown at a very healthy rate such that as of May 2007 WSGAA now work in partnership with 28 primary schools, 15 Secondary schools, 2 HE/FE Colleges and 5 local GAA clubs and in total an estimated 2385 young people. The aims of the WSGAA include competition by their elite team in the All-Ireland underage championships. This initiative is a remarkable departure from the traditional way in which British GAA clubs have been organised.

Hockey[link]

Warwickshire has more Clubs than any other County within the Midlands, and has good representation at all levels of the game, and within the Administrative and Officiating Worlds as well. Old Silhillians Hockey Club is the Home of Warwickshire hockey, with many fixtures being played on the site, as well as the County Club Minis being played, Junior Academy Centres being coached, and meetings/County Officials being based at the Silhillians Sports Ground. There are 3 clubs who include the word "Warwickshire" within their names: Olton & West Warwickshire, Coventry & North Warwickshire, and Rugby & East Warwickshire, though it is not certain where these claims to regional areas within the County came from. Warwickshire as a hockey County is recognised by the England Hockey Board as the region normally associated with Greater Warwickshire, since the West Midlands is not a hockey region within the EHB world, and hence includes Solihull and Coventry as well as the standard regions.

People[link]

Warwickshire is perhaps best known for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon. Even today, road signs at the county boundary describe Warwickshire as "Shakespeare's County". The county has also produced other literary figures such as George Eliot (from Nuneaton), Rupert Brooke (from Rugby), and Michael Drayton from Hartshill. The poet Philip Larkin lived in Warwick (born in nearby Coventry), and Elizabeth Gaskell went to school in Barford and Stratford.

See also[link]

• List of Lord Lieutenants of Warwickshire
• List of High Sheriffs for Warwickshire
• Custos Rotulorum of Warwickshire - List of Keepers of the Rolls
• Warwickshire (UK Parliament constituency) - List of MPs for Warwickshire constituency
• 2007 Atherstone fire
• Warwickshire College
• W. W. Quatremain

References[link]

External links[link]

• Warwickshire County Council
• Warwickshire College Homepage
• Warwickshire County Football
• Warwickshire at the Open Directory Project

v t e Districts of the West Midlands Region Herefordshire Herefordshire Shropshire Shropshire Telford and Wrekin Staffordshire Cannock Chase East Staffordshire Lichfield Newcastle-under-Lyme South Staffordshire Stafford Staffordshire Moorlands Stoke-on-Trent Tamworth Warwickshire North Warwickshire Nuneaton and Bedworth Rugby Stratford-on-Avon Warwick West Midlands Birmingham Coventry Dudley Sandwell Solihull Walsall Wolverhampton Worcestershire Bromsgrove Malvern Hills Redditch Worcester Wychavon Wyre Forest

William Shakespeare
The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed. National Portrait Gallery, London.
Born	Baptised 26 April 1564 (birth date unknown) Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Died	23 April 1616 (aged 52) Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
Occupation	Playwright, poet, actor
Period	English Renaissance
Spouse(s)	Anne Hathaway (m. 1582–1616) «start: (1582)–end+1: (1617)»"Marriage: Anne Hathaway to William Shakespeare" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/William_Shakespeare)
Children	Susanna Hall Hamnet Shakespeare Judith Quiney
Relative(s)	John Shakespeare (father) Mary Shakespeare (mother)
Signature

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616)^{[nb 1]} was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.^[1] He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon".^{[2][nb 2]} His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays,^{[nb 3]} 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.^[3]

Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.^[4]

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613.^{[5][nb 4]} 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".^[6] 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[link]

Early life[link]

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.^[7] 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.^[8] 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.^[9] He was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son.^[10]

Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford,^[11] a free school chartered in 1553,^[12] about a quarter-mile from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but the grammar curriculum was standardised by royal decree throughout England,^[13] and the school would have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar based upon Latin classical authors.^[14]

John Shakespeare's house, believed to be Shakespeare's birthplace, in Stratford-upon-Avon.

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.^[15] 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,^[16] and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583.^[17] Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585.^[18] Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596.^[19]

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".^[20] 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.^[21] Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London.^[22] John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster.^[23] 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.^[24] Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.^[25]

London and theatrical career[link]

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.^[27] 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.^[28]

Scholars differ on the exact meaning of these words,^[29] 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").^[30] 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".^[29][31]

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.^[32] From 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed by only the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London.^[33] 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.^[34]

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.^[35] 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.^[36]

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.^[37] 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).^[38] 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.^[39] 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.^[40] In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles.^[41] In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father.^[42] Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It and the Chorus in Henry V,^[43] though scholars doubt the sources of the information.^[44]

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.^[45] He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there.^[46] By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear.^[47]

Later years and death[link]

Rowe was the first biographer to pass down the tradition that Shakespeare retired to Stratford some years before his death;^[48] but retirement from all work was uncommon at that time,^[49] and Shakespeare continued to visit London.^[48] In 1612 he was called as a witness in a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary.^[50] In March 1613 he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory;^[51] and from November 1614 he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall.^[52]

Shakespeare's funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon.

After 1606–1607, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613.^[53] His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher,^[54] who succeeded him as the house playwright for the King’s Men.^[55]

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616^[56] and was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607,^[57] and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare’s death.^[58]

In his will, Shakespeare left the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna.^[59] The terms instructed that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body".^[60] The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying.^[61] The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare’s direct line.^[62] Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one third of his estate automatically.^[63] He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation.^[64] 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.^[65]

Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death.^[66] 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:^[67]

Shakespeare's grave.

<poem>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.^[68] </poem> (Modern spelling: Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, | To dig the dust enclosed here. | Blessed be the man that spares these stones, | And cursed be he that moves my bones.)

Sometime before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil.^[69] In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published.^[70]

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[link]

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.^[71] 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,^[72] 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.^[73] His first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,^[74] dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty.^[75] 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.^[76] 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.^[77] Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve of rape,^[78] the Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics and directors.^[79]

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing. By William Blake, c. 1786. Tate Britain.

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.^[80] A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes.^[81] 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.^[82] The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing,^[83] the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies.^[84] 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.^[85] This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death;^[86] and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which introduced a new kind of drama.^[87] 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".^[88]

Hamlet, Horatio, Marcellus, and the Ghost of Hamlet's Father. Henry Fuseli, 1780–5. Kunsthaus Zürich.

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.^[89] Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, Hamlet, has probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which begins "To be or not to be; that is the question".^[90] 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.^[91] 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.^[92] In Othello, the villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him.^[93] In King Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia. According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty".^[94] In Macbeth, the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies,^[95] 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.^[96] 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.^[97]

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.^[98] 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.^[99] Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.^[100]

Performances[link]

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.^[101] 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.^[102] 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".^[103] 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.^[104] 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.^[105]

The reconstructed Globe Theatre, London.

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.^[106] After 1608, they performed at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre during the winter and the Globe during the summer.^[107] 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."^[108]

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.^[109] The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, among other characters.^[110] 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.^[111] In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that Henry VIII "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and ceremony".^[112] 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.^[112]

Textual sources[link]

Title page of the First Folio, 1623. Copper engraving of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout.

In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's friends from the King's Men, published the First Folio, a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It contained 36 texts, including 18 printed for the first time.^[113] Many of the plays had already appeared in quarto versions—flimsy books made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves.^[114] No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies".^[115] 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.^[116] 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.^[117] 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.^[118]

Poems[link]

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.^[119] Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses,^[120] the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust.^[121] 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.^[122] 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.^[123]

Sonnets[link]

Title page from 1609 edition of Shake-Speares 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.^[124] 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".^[125] Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence.^[126] 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".^[127]

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.^[129] Critics praise the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time.^[130]

Style[link]

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.^[131] 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.^[132]

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.^[133] 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.^[134] 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.^[135] 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:^[136]

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^[136]

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".^[137] 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.^[138] 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.^[138] 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.^[139]

Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a practical sense of the theatre.^[140] Like all playwrights of the time, he dramatised stories from sources such as Plutarch and Holinshed.^[141] 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.^[142] 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.^[143]

Influence[link]

Macbeth Consulting the Vision of the Armed Head. By Henry Fuseli, 1793–94. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington.

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.^[144] Until Romeo and Juliet, for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy.^[145] Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events; but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds.^[146] 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."^[147]

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.^[148] 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.^[149] 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.^[150] The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature.^[151]

In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now,^[152] and his use of language helped shape modern English.^[153] 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.^[154] Expressions such as "with bated breath" (Merchant of Venice) and "a foregone conclusion" (Othello) have found their way into everyday English speech.^[155]

Critical reputation[link]

Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he received his share of praise.^[157] 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.^[158] And the authors of the Parnassus plays at St John's College, Cambridge, numbered him with Chaucer, Gower and Spenser.^[159] 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".

A recently garlanded statue of William Shakespeare in Lincoln Park, Chicago, typical of many created in the 19th and early 20th century.

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.^[160] 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".^[161] 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.^[162] By 1800, he was firmly enshrined as the national poet.^[163] 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.^[164]

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.^[165] In the 19th century, critical admiration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered on adulation.^[166] "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".^[167] The Victorians produced his plays as lavish spectacles on a grand scale.^[168] 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.^[169]

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.^[170] 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.^[171] By the 1980s, Shakespeare studies were open to movements such as structuralism, feminism, New Historicism, African American studies, and queer studies.^[172][173]

Speculation about Shakespeare[link]

Authorship[link]

Around 230 years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship of the works attributed to him.^[174] Proposed alternative candidates include Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.^[175] Several "group theories" have also been proposed.^[176] Only a small minority of academics believe there is reason to question the traditional attribution,^[177] but interest in the subject, particularly the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, continues into the 21st century.^[178]

Religion[link]

Some scholars claim that members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time when Catholic practice was against the law.^[179] 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.^[180] In 1591 the authorities reported that John Shakespeare had missed church "for fear of process for debt", a common Catholic excuse.^[181] In 1606 the name of William's daughter Susanna appears on a list of those who failed to attend Easter communion in Stratford.^[181] Scholars find evidence both for and against Shakespeare's Catholicism in his plays, but the truth may be impossible to prove either way.^[182]

Sexuality[link]

Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 1583. Over the centuries some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical,^[183] and point to them as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than sexual love.^[184] The 26 so-called "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.^[185]

Portraiture[link]

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,^[186] 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.^[187]

List of works[link]

Classification of the plays[link]

The Plays of William Shakespeare. By Sir John Gilbert, 1849.

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.^[188] 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.^[189] 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.^[190] 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.^[191] "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."^[192] The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use, though Hamlet is definitively classed as a tragedy.^[193] 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[link]

See also[link]

	Book: William Shakespeare
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	Biography portal
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• World Shakespeare Bibliography

Notes[link]

References[link]

Bibliography[link]