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KF5JRV > TODAY 23.04.19 12:31l 75 Lines 4271 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Apr 23
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Sent: 190423/1129Z 35042@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.18
According to tradition, the great English dramatist and poet William
Shakespeare is born in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 23, 1564. It is
impossible to be certain the exact day on which he was born, but church
records show that he was baptized on April 26, and three days was a
customary amount of time to wait before baptizing a newborn.
Shakespeare’s date of death is conclusively known, however: it was April
23, 1616. He was 52 years old and had retired to Stratford three years
before.
Although few plays have been performed or analyzed as extensively as the
38 plays ascribed to William Shakespeare, there are few surviving
details about the playwright’s life. This dearth of biographical
information is due primarily to his station in life; he was not a noble,
but the son of John Shakespeare, a leather trader and the town bailiff.
The events of William Shakespeare’s early life can only be gleaned from
official records, such as baptism and marriage records.
He probably attended the grammar school in Stratford, where he would
have studied Latin and read classical literature. He did not go to
university but at age 18 married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his
senior and pregnant at the time of the marriage. Their first daughter,
Susanna, was born six months later, and in 1585 William and Anne had
twins, Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died 11 years
later, and Anne Shakespeare outlived her husband, dying in 1623. Nothing
is known of the period between the birth of the twins and Shakespeare’s
emergence as a playwright in London in the early 1590s, but unfounded
stories have him stealing deer, joining a group of traveling players,
becoming a schoolteacher, or serving as a soldier in the Low Countries.
The first reference to Shakespeare as a London playwright came in 1592,
when a fellow dramatist, Robert Greene, wrote derogatorily of him on his
deathbed. It is believed that Shakespeare had written the three parts of
Henry VI by that point. In 1593, Venus and Adonis was Shakespeare’s
first published poem, and he dedicated it to the young Henry
Wriothesley, the 3rd earl of Southampton. In 1594, having probably
composed, among other plays, Richard III, The Comedy of Errors, and The
Taming of the Shrew, he became an actor and playwright for the Lord
Chamberlain’s Men, which became the King’s Men after James I’s ascension
in 1603. The company grew into England’s finest, in no small part
because of Shakespeare, who was its principal dramatist. It also had the
finest actor of the day, Richard Burbage, and the best theater, the
Globe, which was located on the Thames’ south bank. Shakespeare stayed
with the King’s Men until his retirement and often acted in small parts.
By 1596, the company had performed the classic Shakespeare plays Romeo
and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That year, John
Shakespeare was granted a coat of arms, a testament to his son’s growing
wealth and fame. In 1597, William Shakespeare bought a large house in
Stratford. In 1599, after producing his great historical series, the
first and second part of Henry IV and Henry V, he became a partner in
the ownership of the Globe Theatre.
The beginning of the 17th century saw the performance of the first of
his great tragedies, Hamlet. The next play, The Merry Wives of Windsor,
was written at the request of Queen Elizabeth I, who wanted to see
another play that included the popular character Falstaff. During the
next decade, Shakespeare produced such masterpieces as Othello, King
Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest. In 1609, his sonnets, probably written
during the 1590s, were published. The 154 sonnets are marked by the
recurring themes of the mutability of beauty and the transcendent power
of love and art.
Shakespeare died in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1616. Today, nearly
400 years later, his plays are performed and read more often and in more
nations than ever before. In a million words written over 20 years, he
captured the full range of human emotions and conflicts with a precision
that remains sharp today. As his great contemporary the poet and
dramatist Ben Jonson said, “He was not of an age, but for all time.ö
73 de Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
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