William Shakespeare. The traditional biography and his works. The dating of Shakespeare’s plays.

No household in the English – speaking world is properly furnished unless it contains copies of the works of William Shakespeare. It is not always thought necessary that these books should be read in mature years, but they must be present as symbols of Religion and Culture.

To those who have never studied Elizabethan records at first hand it may seem surprising and mysterious that there should be back of intimate information about Shakespeare: so famous an Englishman, and such an unsatisfactory biography! yet there is no mystery for even, in the lives of the greatest persons of the time there are amny gaps.

Nowadays it is comparatively easy to compile the biography of a modern writer or dramatist. The essential facts of his life are available in public records, issues of “who’s who”, newspapers and periodicals. But little of this material remains for the biographer of dramatists of the 17^th century. The parish registers may be lost, there were no newspapers yet, and the art of letter – writing was not well – developed.

Thus, many periods of Shakespeare’s life remain obscure to us. Subject – matter for his biography began to be collected only about a century after his death, and many of the facts gathered are very doubtful.

For the biography of an Elizabethan dramatist there are four sources of information:

1) his works;

2) the comments of contemporaries;

3) traditions and gossip;

4) documentary records.

Neither Shakespeare’s sonnets nor plays by themselves can serve as reliable material for a biographer. Shakespeare said so much it is impossible to know when he himself is speaking out of his own experience or creating experience proper to his characters; but it is generally true that no writer who portrays a wide variety of characters and shows acquaintance with so wide a range of human experience can have lived all his life in a narrow and confined environment. All great writers to some extent betrayed themselves in their works.

There are many early references to Shakespeare made even before his death: mentions of his plays, of characters, or obvious borrowings of lines; but they prove Shakespeare’s existence (or the existence of the plays signed by somebody called “Shakespeare”?) rather than give facts about the man himself.

The most important sources for the biographer of Shakespeare are official and documentary records: definite, reliable and usually dull. Of prime importance is the register of Stradford – on – Avon (Holy Trinity Church) which gives the date (and therefore fact) of the Baptism of William Shakespeare, his marriage, the baptism of his children, and his death.

William Shakespeare was born in 1564, in Stradford-on-Avon, and was christened in Holy Trinity Church on april, 26. Hence, his birthday is believed to be april, 23 St. George’s day, who is the holy patron of England. William’s father, John Shakespeare, was one of the wealthiest citizens, and his mother, Mary Arden, belonged to an ancient and distinguished Catholic family. William was their third child and the eldest son.

There are records of William’s boyhood (it would be surprising if there were, for who could have imagined that he was to become the pride of the nation?). He probably attended the Stradford Grammar school, where he acquired the knowledge of Latin. later Shakespeare satirized the school education of his time in his comedies “Love’s Labour’s Lost” and “The Merry Wives and Windsor”.

The next record of Shakespeare life is his marriage to Anne Hathaway, a daughter of a wealthy yeoman, in 1582. On 26 of May, 1583, their first child, Susanna, was baptized, followed in February of 1585 by the twins, Hamnet and Judith.

After the birth of the twins we know absolutely nothing about Shakespeare’s life for the next seven years. It can be stated with certainty that by 1592 Shakespeare had already settled in London and had started writing plays, because Robert Green, one of the University wits, published a pamphlet in which he made some insulting remarks about Shakespeare, who was growing to be a serous competitor of his more experienced colleagues.

In 1593 a very serous epidemic of the plague broke out, and all the theatres were temporarily closed down. During that time Shakespeare have written his two narrative poems, both of which were dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, “Venus and Adonis” (1593) and the “Rope of Lucrece”. These poems were the only ones in the publication of which Shakespeare took part himself.

At the same time William Shakespeare became closely allied to the theatre company headed by the great tragedian, Richard Burbage. In 1599 the company built and occupied the best- known Elizabethan theatres, the Globe, on the southern bank of the Thames, in London.

Shakespeare eventually become a leading share-holder, the principal playwright and a second rate actor. Shakespeare wrote and staged comedies, tragedies, historical plays and dramas. With time he became rather rich, wrote less and less, and in 1613, after the Globe had been destroyed by fire, Shakespeare retired to Stradford, where he died three years later, on 23^rd of April, 1616, and was buried in the same Holy Trinity Church, where he was christened.

In 1623 Shakespeare’s plays were collected by his fellow-actors and published in a single volume, known as the First Folio. Sixteen plays in the collection were published for the first time.

Shakespeare’s literary work may be divided into several periods but it must be taken into account that the division is rather relative all in all there are 37 plays ascribed to William Shakespeare, and they fall into four periods:

The first period: includes the plays that were written under the influence of the University Wits:

1590/91 – “Henry VI Part II”

“Henry VI Part III”

1591/92 “Henry VI Part I”

1592/93 “Richard III”

“The Comedy of Errors”

1593/94 “Titus Andronicus”

“The taming of the shrew”.

During the second period Shakespeare mainly wrote histories (historical plays, or Chtonicles) and comedies:

1594/95 “The two Gentlemen of Verona”

“Love’s Labour Lost”

“Romeo and Juliet”

1595/96 “Richard II”

“A midsummer Night’s Dream”

1596/97 “King John”

“The merchant of Venice”

1597/98 Henry IV Part I

Henry IV Part II

1598/99 Much Ado about nothing

Henry V

1596/1600 Julius Caesar

As you like it

The Twelfth Night

The third period is marked by Shakespeare’s great tragedies that were the peak of his achievement, and made him truly immortal.

1600/01 Hamlet

The Merry Wives of Windsor

1601/02 Troilus and Cressida

1603/1604 All’s well that ends well

1604/1605 Measure for measure

Othello

1605/06 King Lear

Macbeth

1606/07 Antony and Cleopatra

1607/08 Coriolanus

Timon of Athens

The fourth period of Shakespeare creative activity is mainly constituted by the romantic dramas – plays written around a dramatic conflict, but the tension in them is not so great as in the tragedies; all of them have happy endings.

1608/09 Pericles

1609/10 Cymbeline

1610/11 The Winter’s Tale

1611/12 The Temptest

1612/13 Henry VIII

Shakespeare’s plays were conditioned by three main issues to be taken into account by the modern reader.

1) the historical and social events of his play;

2) the theatrical company for which he wrote;

3) the construction of the Globe theatre.

Queen Elizabeth was the last in her line, she had no certain heir, and it was only too likely that her death would be followed by another period of disputed succession, civil war, and general anarchy. This grim prospect was a constant anxiety of statesman through the reign; it is subtly present in each of Shakespeare’s History plays.

These plays meant far more to his first audiences than they can to us for they dealt with events which were still important. The London theatre was the only place where the common man could hear direct and honest comment on life. “Players (said Hamlet) are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time”). People therefore went to the theatre with his ears open and his wits keen to detect hidden meanings.

One more consideration to be taken into account when discussing Shakespeare’s plays is the company of actors for which he wrote. Shakespeare had to write for his company as it existed: he could not produce characters for which there was no physical representatives, he had to make use of the peculiarities of the actors, and it should also be remembered that in Shakespeare’s days there were no women actresses.

The construction of the Globe theatre considerably affected the form of Shakespeare’s plays as well. In the modern theatre the actor is separated from the audience by a certain which can either conceal or reveal the whole stage, he acts in bright light before spectators hidden in an darkened auditorium.

On the apron stage of the Elizabethan theatre the actor came forward in daylight into the midst of his audience. Apparently, there was practically no scenery, and the plays were acted in daylight. The actor was thus without lighting, scenery, sound effects, and other realistic or symbolic adjuncts of the modern stage. In their place he gained his effects by a direct assault on the emotions and the imagination of the spectators.

poetry was thus a natural medium for dramatic speech, and a good actor could carry his audience with him by the emotional force of rhetoric.