Biography Of William Shakespeare – Free PDF Download

EARLY LIFE

• No birth records exist, but an old church record indicates that a William Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564.
• From this, it is believed he was born on or near April 23, 1564, and this is the date scholars acknowledge as Shakespeare’s birthday.
• Shakespeare was the third child of John Shakespeare, a leather merchant, and Mary Arden, a local landed heiress. Shakespeare had two older sisters, Joan and Judith, and three younger brothers, Gilbert, Richard and Edmund.

EARLY LIFE

• Before Shakespeare’s birth, his father became a successful merchant and held official positions as alderman and bailiff, an office resembling a mayor.
• Scant records exist of Shakespeare’s childhood and virtually none regarding his education. Scholars have surmised that he most likely attended the King’s New School, in Stratford, which taught reading, writing and the classics.
• Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582, in Worcester, in Canterbury Province.

LOST YEARS

• There are seven years of Shakespeare’s life where no records exist after the birth of his twins in 1585. in Scholars call this period the “lost years,“.
• It’s generally believed he arrived in London in the midto late 1580s and may have found work as a horse attendant at some of London’s finer theaters.
• By the early 1590s, documents show Shakespeare was a managing partner in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, an acting company in London with which he was connected for most of his career.

CAREER

• Considered the most important troupe of its time, the company changed its name to the King’s Men following the crowning of King James I in 1603.
• Although the theater culture in 16th century England was not highly admired by people of high rank.
• By 1592, there is evidence Shakespeare earned a living as an actor and a playwright in London and possibly had several plays produced.
• By 1597, Shakespeare had already written and published 15 of his 37 plays. Civil records show that at this time he purchased the second-largest house

CAREER

• Shakespeare spent most of his time in the city writing and acting and came home once a year during the 40- day Lenten period, when the theaters were closed.
• By 1599, Shakespeare and his business partners built their own theater on the south bank of the Thames River, which they called the Globe Theater.
• In 1605, Shakespeare purchased leases of real estate near Stratford for 440 pounds, which doubled in value and earned him 60 pounds a year. This made him an entrepreneur as well as an artist. WORKS
• While it’s difficult to determine the exact chronology of Shakespeare’s plays, over the course of two decades, from about 1590 to 1613, he wrote a total of 37 plays revolving around several main themes: histories, tragedies, comedies and tragicomedies.
• With the exception of the tragic love story Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s first plays were mostly histories. Henry VI (Parts I, II and III), Richard II and Henry V dramatize the destructive results of weak or corrupt rulers.
• Julius Caesar portrays upheaval in Roman politics that may have resonated with viewers at a time WORKS
• Shakespeare also wrote several comedies during his early period: the whimsical A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the romantic Merchant of Venice, the wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing and the charming As You Like It and Twelfth Night.
• Other plays written before 1600 include Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, Love’s Labour’s Lost, King John, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry V. WORKS
• It was in Shakespeare’s later period, after 1600, that he wrote the tragedies Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. In these, Shakespeare’s characters present vivid impressions of human temperament that are timeless and universal.
• In Shakespeare’s final period, he wrote several tragicomedies. Among these are Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest. Though graver in tone than the comedies, they are not the dark tragedies of King Lear or Macbeth because they end with reconciliation and forgiveness.

STYLE

•  Shakespeare’s early plays were written in the conventional style of the day, with elaborate metaphors and rhetorical phrases that didn’t always align naturally with the story’s plot or characters.
• However, Shakespeare was very innovative, adapting the traditional style to his own purposes and creating a freer flow of words.
• With only small degrees of variation, Shakespeare primarily used a metrical pattern consisting of lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse, to compose his plays. At the same time, there are passages in all the plays that deviate from this and use forms of poetry or simple prose

 DEATH

• Tradition holds that Shakespeare died on his 52nd birthday, April 23, 1616, but some scholars believe this is a myth. Church records show he was interred at Trinity Church on April 25, 1616.
• The exact cause of Shakespeare’s death is unknown, though many believe he died following a brief illness.

Biography Free PDF

Sharing is caring!