William Shakespeare

Life and Works

 Biography
• Born at Stratford-on-Avon, on St. George’s Day, April 23, 1564
• Eldest son to John Shakespeare and his wife Arden.
• His family were “gentle” on both sides.
• Shakespeare was a good son as well genial and generous friend. His parents shared his
prosperity. He helped them with his influence and his purse.
• In 1596 great sorrow fell upon him. His only son, Hamnet died at the age of eleven years.
• It is supposed that Shakespeare quitted the stage finally in 1604. He had already attained
comfortable fortune at the age of 40.
• After quitting he cultivated his land and cherished his family.
• At the height of his prosperity he enjoyed the favour of the queen and other nobleman who
were also his friends. Some of his characters in his plays may have been inspired by the real
noblemen. Lord Southhampton-great from his personal qualities- styles him in a letter “my
special friend”. Queen Elizabeth had honoured him with personal notice and favour.
• Shakespeare expired on his birthday, April 23rd 1616, aged52, from an illness
 Childhood
• The boyhood of Shakespeare, till he was ten years old was spent, probably in a manner well
adopted to foster his genius. On his mother’s heritage of Asbyes-in his father’s nearer
meadows-the young poet must have revelled in the greenwood shades and amid the daisied
meads, of which he afterwards painted sweet sylvan pictures.
• The forest of Arden in As You Like It, the sheep shearing of Perdita in The Winter’s Tale, and
the fairy haunted woods were doubtless memories of his boyhood.
• From about the time Shakespeare completed his eleventh year, the prosperity of his family
waned.
• Shakespeare received his early education at free grammar school of Stratsford. Of the where
or how that education was completed we have no record.
 Adulthood/Marriage
• His youthful days of study ended early, as he married Anne Hathaway, a daughter of a
yeomen, at the age of eighteen.
• The bride was eight years older. Before Shakespeare was 21, he was father of three children,
Susanna-the darling of his after life, and a twin son and daughter Hamnet and Judith.
 Entry in The World of Theatre
• The rapid increase of his family and his father’s decaying circumstances led to the resolve of
the poet to seek a fortune in London.
• Another reason for leaving Warwickshire might have been an incident where Shakespeare
stole a deer from Sir Thomas Lucy’s grounds and thus had given annoyance to the Justice.
• In 1586 he went to London and it is supposed became an actor and adapter of plays for the
Blackfriars’ Theatre.
• In 1589 he was able to purchase a share in it and from that his fame and good fortune grew
rapidly.
• His dramas became known and appreciated and in the following year he was honoured by
the generous praise of Spenser, in the “The Tears of the Muses.”
 His intellectual and Theatrical
Background
• The date at which Shakespeare’s first drama appeared is uncertain. That he was a renowned
dramatist in 1591, Spenser’s praise of him, published in that year, proves.
• He grew up during a period of increasing stability and prosperity in England. Queen Elizabeth
was unifying the nation. Patriotic sentiment was increasing. Continental influences were
helping in the transmission of classical knowledge which we call the Renaissance.
• The years between Shakespeare’s birth and his emergence in London saw the appearance of
the first major translations of Ovid, Apuleius, Horace, Heliodorus, Plutarch, Homer, Seneca
and Virgil. Shakespeare seems to have known most of these, and those of Ovid and Plutarch,
at least had a profound influence on him.
• The beginnings of Shakespeare’s career as a writer are obscure. Problem of chronology
frustrates attempt to study his development. His plays were not printed in the order of
composition but were arranged into kinds: comedies, histories and tragedies.
• The chronology proposed by E.K. Chambers is still accepted, with slight modification as
orthodox. The plays are grouped by genre : Early Histories, Early Comedies, Early Tragedies,
The Poems, Later histories and Major Comedies, unromantic comedies and later tragedies.
 Early Histories
• One of the earliest theatrical projects in which Shakespeare was engaged was also one of the
most ambitious: to transfer Edward Hall’s narrative, in the last part of The Union of the two
Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548).
• The resulting plays were printed in the First Folio as 1, 2, and 3 Henry VI and Richard III. The
first seem to have been written by 1592.
• The enormous cast lists of the Henry VI plays reflect the difficulty of concentrating and
focusing the mass of historical material. Some of the dynastic issues is laboured while some
of the actions are sketchy. Shakespeare’s powers of individual characterization through
language were not yet fully developed and in Henry VI he was saddled with a liability of a
passive hero.
• Nevertheless, these plays have many merits. They examine England’s past in the light of
present at a time of national self-consciousness.
 Early Comedies
• The mode of history play was new when Shakespeare began to work in it. He may have
originated it. Comedy however had a long ancestry. His early comedies draw heavily on
traditional modes and conventions, as if he were consciously experimenting, learning his craft
by a process that included both imitation and innovation.
• The Two Gentleman of Verona, is an early play. It derives partly from the prose romances
popular in the late 16th century. The simple plot comes from a Portuguese romance: Diana by
Jorge de Montemayor. Shakespeare’s craftsmanship in shaping it for the stage often falters as
thirteen of its twenty scenes rely exclusively on soliloquy.
• The Comedy of Errors was written by Christmas 1594 and draws heavily on the traditions of
Roman Comedy.
• The Taming of the Shrew is a robust play. It shows Shakespeare experimenting with
techniques of structure and language in order to integrate a variety of diverse materials. It
adopts to romantic conventions.
• Love’s Labour’s Lost is quite different and it seems that Shakespeare meant it for
sophisticated courtly audience.
 Early Tragedies
• Shakespeare was more tentative in his early explorations of tragic than of comic form.
Tragedies were conventionally based on history.
• Titus Andronicus is set forth in 4th Century B.C. but the story like that his other early tragedy,
Romeo and Juliet is fictitious. Shakespeare may have adapted it from an earlier version of The
History of Titus Andronicus.
• Shakespeare took the well known story of Romeo and Juliet from Arthur Brooke’s long poem
The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet published in 1562. The play is not set in antiquity
but in the 16th century. It has affinities with romantic comedies, telling of wooing and
marriage. The romance is offset by much witty and bawdy comedy. This play is early in the
sense it relies partly on formal verse structures.
 The Poems
• Because of the plague, London’s theatres were closed for almost two years between June
1592 and June 1594.
• Shakespeare turned to non-dramatic writing, perhaps because he feared that he might need
an alternative career.
• Venus and Adonis was printed in 1593 and was extraordinarily popular. It is a sophisticated
work drawing attention to its craftsmanship, demanding admiration rather than submission.
It will not be enjoyed if it’s read for its story alone. Shakespeare takes nearly 1200 lines where
Ovid took 75. It is a mythological poem.
• The Rape of Lucrece was printed in the following year and dedicated to Southhampton. It is
composed in the seven-line rhyme royal and is historical and its tone is of a tragedy.
• Shakespeare also wrote sonnets apart from public narrative poems. Sonnet sequences were
popular in 1590s and Shakepeare’s interest in the sonnet form is reflected in some of his early
plays, especially Romeo and Juliet, and Love’s Labour’s Lost. The fact that he did not publish
his sonnets may imply that he thought of them as personal.
 Later Histories
• After his wide-ranging earlier experiments, Shakespeare narrowed his scope and during
several prolific years after about 1594, wrote only comedies and history plays of which
Richard II alone is in tragic form.
• Richard II written in 1595 was of topical interest and is full of moral ambiguity. Richard takes
on the stature of tragic hero. Through him Shakespeare orchestrates, in melodious verse, all
resonances of the situation and the play expands from political drama into an exploration of
the sources of power.
• 2 Henry IV was written about 1598. It was unlike part one. At this stage in his career,
Shakespeare was using a higher proportion of prose over verse than at any other period and
was achieving with it some of his most complex and true poetical effects. The political scenes
of this play use verse.
• Shakespeare rounded off his second historical sequence with Henry V. From ‘civil broils’ of
the earlier plays, Shakespeare turns to portray a country united in war against France. There’s
more glory in such a war and the play is famous as an expression of patriotism.
 Major Comedies
• Shakespeare wrote his later histories over the same period as his greatest comedies.
• Merchant of Venice dating from 1596 was printed in 1600. Much of the plot material is
implausible, deriving from folk tale and legend. A lost play The Jew, mentioned in 1579 may have
been a source. The plot’s sharp conflict between romantic and anti romantic values leads
Shakespeare to define, partly by contrast his first great romantic heroine and his first great comic
antagonist.
• Much Ado About Nothing is also based on a tradition tale. It places less emphasis on romance
and poetry and more on prose and wit.
• The Merry Wives of Windsor does not belong to the mainstream of Shakespearean comedy but it
is recognizably Shakespearean. It is neat, ingenious, witty, comedy of situation.
• Pastoralism, derived from classical models, exerted an important influence on the 16th century
literature. We have seen how Shakespeare’s kings envied the shepherd his life attuned to the
seasons and the natural processes. Shakespeare plays with pastoral conventions in A Midsummer
Night’s Dream and The Two Gentleman of Verona. But it is in As You Like It that Shakespeare
conducts his most searching examination of the pastoral ideal.
• In Twelfth Night which was written in about 1600 Shakespeare idealizes its characters and
heightens its romantic tone. It is based on a story from Barnaby Rich’s Farewell to Military
Profession.
Unromantic Comedies and Later Tragedies
• All’s Well That Ends Well, first printed in 1623, is usually dated 1602-03 because of its links
with Measure for Measure, which can more confidently assigned to 1604. Since about 1900,
these plays, along with Troilus and Cressida have frequently been classed as problem plays.
• The main plot of All’s Well That Ends Well is based on Boccaccio’s Decameron, which he
probably read in the English translation in William Painter’s Palace of Pleasure. He added
important characters, invented sub plot of Parolles, and elaborated both story and manner of
its telling.
• Measure for Measure is based on Promos and Cassandra, a two-part play by George
Whetstone. In his first three acts, Shakespeare involves us intimately in his character’s moral
dilemma.
• The genre of Troilus and Cressida remains questionable. The plays inspiration is partly
classical and partly medieval.
 Later Tragedies
• Julius Caesar (1599) is a play where Shakespeare again turns to politics. Drawing heavily on
Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (1579), he
turns history into drama, unerringly finding the right style for the subject.
• The language is classical in its lucidity and eloquence. And he succeeds once again in relating
the particular to the general. Characteristically the first scene sounds the basic theme. The
Romans were specially associated with rhetoric, it is also one of the dramatist’s instruments.
• With Hamlet, we may feel, Shakespeare’s return to tragic territory is complete, yet some critics
have classified this work as a problem play. Hamlet is exceptionally long and ambitious. It is far
ranging in linguistic effect. Shakespeare’s virtuosity enables him to create distinctive styles with
which to individualize characters such as Claudius, Polonius, The Gravediggers and Osric. The
play offers a wide variety of theatrical entertainment, including a play within the play, ghosts,
several death scenes, a mad scene, a duel. This is Shakespeare’s most humorous tragedy. Yet
the comedy is never incidental.
• Othello must have been written in 1602-03. Like Romeo and Juliet it is not based history or
legend but on a contemporary fiction. Whereas Hamlet is discursive and amplificatory, Othello
is swift concise and tautly constructed. Most of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are royal figures
whose fate is inextricably bound up with their nations and whose suffering has a metaphysical
dimension. All Shakespeare’s tragedies show evil at work.
 Later Tragedies
• Macbeth written in 1606 is Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy. To a greater extent, Shakespeare
is interested in general ideas than in historical accuracy or particularity of characterization in
this play. Many of the characters are purely functional. Duncan is primarily the symbol of
values that Macbeth is to overthrow.
• His remaining tragedies, Coriolanus and Anthony and Cleopatra both first published in
1623 are closely based on Plutarch’s concern with idiosyncrasies and oddities of human
character and with the way such characteristics shape national as well as human
destinies. Coriolanus is a great achievement of the intellect and historical imagination.