Biography
His birthday is most commonly celebrated on 23 April see When was Shakespeare born , which is also believed to be the date he died in Shakespeare was a prolific writer during the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages of British theatre sometimes called the English Renaissance or the Early Modern Period. John Shakespeare married Mary Arden , and together they had eight children.
John and Mary lost two daughters as infants, so William became their eldest child.
Anora lyn biography of william shakespeare pdf
John Shakespeare worked as a glove-maker, but he also became an important figure in the town of Stratford by fulfilling civic positions. His elevated status meant that he was even more likely to have sent his children, including William, to the local grammar school. William Shakespeare would have lived with his family in their house on Henley Street until he turned eighteen.
When he was eighteen, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway , who was twenty-six. It was a rushed marriage because Anne was already pregnant at the time of the ceremony. Together they had three children. Historians have speculated that he worked as a schoolteacher, studied law, traveled across continental Europe or joined an acting troupe that was passing through Stratford.
Whatever the answer, by Shakespeare had begun working as an actor, penned several plays and spent enough time in London to write about its geography, culture and diverse personalities with great authority. Even his earliest works evince knowledge of European affairs and foreign countries, familiarity with the royal court and general erudition that might seem unattainable to a young man raised in the provinces by parents who were probably illiterate.
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For this reason, some theorists have suggested that one or several authors wishing to conceal their true identity used the person of William Shakespeare as a front. Most scholars and literary historians dismiss this hypothesis, although many suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with other playwrights. Shakespeare was likely affiliated with several different theater companies when these early works debuted on the London stage.
His works weave together and reinvent theatrical conventions dating back to ancient Greece, featuring assorted casts of characters with complex psyches and profoundly human interpersonal conflicts. Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews. I have to say that as much as I'm an intellectual snob :- I do understand why some reviewers have said that this book is perhaps a little unnecessarily dull My reason for thinking that might be different than theirs, however.
Anora lyn biography of william shakespeare
Orlin sets out to document the little we actually know about Shakespeare, and challenge the "conventional wisdom" about those small facts that has been built up especially in the 19th and 20th centuries. We know very very little. By "private life" she doesn't mean a "Shakespeare In Love" sort of thing, she means our glimpses of Shakespeare managing his life away from the stage.
She has arguments to make about five points at which we can see Shakespeare's life where plays and playing are not involved. These are the life of his father, his marriage, his purchase of a house, his will, and his funerary monument. Because we know so little, one of her main methods is to provide a detailed look at lives of people in Stratford who were contemporaries of Shakespeare but left more documentary evidence, or to delve into the history of funerary monument styles in the early 17th century.
Some of this was more interesting and some less. On the faint chance that Shakespeare might have been intended to be apprenticed to a butcher, she spends a LONG time writing about the life of a Stratford butcher, which honestly I skipped. In other cases, that method produced a lot of interesting insight - the life of the mother-in-law of Shakespeare's daughter Judith shed a lot of light on what Anne Shakespeare might have been up to while her husband was working in London.
Biography of william shakespeare pdf: A new biography of William Shakespeare that explores his private life in Stratford-upon-Avon, his personal aspirations, his self-determination, and his relations with the members of his family and his neighbours.
A review of contemporary wills cleared away a lot of the mythology around the content of Shakespeare's will. Letters between other Stratford men not only indicated how much time they spent away from home but also suggested they saw Shakespeare as a man likely to be able to help them get loans. I did not read every detail of these because after awhile I lost interest, but I read enough to get the point and it's a good one.
For me the most interesting and useful chapter was the one about Shakespeare's marriage. Orlin effectively demolishes every single thing that has been previously suggested about Anne Hathaway, including the idea that she was significantly older than her husband. About all we can be pretty sure of is that she was pregnant at the wedding, but not only was that not unusual betrothal in those days often being treated as a pre-marriage of sorts , but it doesn't mean the wedding was forced or the marriage unhappy.
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Orlin looks through parish records to see if it's possible to establish who Anne Hathaway was, and the best possibility is NOT someone older than Shakespeare. Download our complete William Shakespeare Study Guide for free to explore the key themes and characters from three of his most important plays. Download Free Study Guide. Character in Othello , King Lear , and Macbeth present vivid impressions of human temperament that are timeless and universal.
Possibly the best known of these plays is Hamlet , which explores betrayal, retribution, incest, and moral failure. Shakespeare wrote comedies throughout his career, including his first play The Taming of the Shrew. Some of his comedies might be better described as tragicomedies. Although graver in tone than the comedies, they are not the dark tragedies of King Lear or Macbeth because they end with reconciliation and forgiveness.
Additional Shakespeare comedies include:. Shakespeare is known to have created plays with other writers, such as John Fletcher.
They also collaborated on Cardenio , a play which was not preserved. When including these works, Shakespeare has 41 plays to his name. Around the turn of the 17 th century, Shakespeare became a more extensive property owner in Stratford. When his father, John, died in , he inherited the family home. Then, in , he purchased about acres for pounds.
In , Shakespeare purchased leases of real estate near Stratford for pounds, which doubled in value and earned him 60 pounds a year. This made him an entrepreneur as well as an artist, and scholars believe these investments gave him uninterrupted time to write his plays. He likely spent the last three years of his life in Stratford. Tradition holds that Shakespeare died on his 52 nd birthday, April 23, , but some scholars believe this is a myth.
Church records show he was interred at Holy Trinity Church on April 25, In his will, he left the bulk of his possessions to his eldest daughter, Susanna, who by then was married.
However, there is very little evidence the two had a difficult marriage. He is credited with inventing or introducing more than 1, words to the English language, often as a result of combining words, changing usages, or blending in foreign root words. It was published with the title Mr. In addition to its literary importance, the First Folio contains an original portrait of Shakespeare on the title page.
The other is a memorial bust at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford.