William Shakespeare (
baptised 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616)
[a] was an
English poet and
playwright, widely
regarded as the greatest writer in the
English language and the world's preeminent dramatist.
[1] He is often called
England's
national poet and the "
Bard of
Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38
plays,
[b] 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.
[2]Shakespeare was born and raised in
Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married
Anne Hathaway, who bore
him three children:
Susanna, and twins
Hamnet and
Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career
in
London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a
playing company called the
Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known
as the
King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records
of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his
sexuality,
religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were
written by others.
[3]Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly
comedies and
histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. He then wrote
mainly
tragedies until about 1608, including
Hamlet,
King Lear, and
Macbeth, considered some of the finest
examples 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 nineteenth century. The
Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the
Victorians hero-
worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that
George Bernard Shaw called "
bardolatry".
[4] In the twentieth
century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His
plays remain highly popular today and are constantly performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political
contexts throughout the world.
