Hamlet (c. 1600)
The Prince of Denmark avenges his father's murder by his uncle Claudius; 'To be, or not to be'
Literature · Playwrights
William Shakespeare
1564–1616 · English
Elizabethan and Jacobean drama; English Renaissance
William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was an actor, sharer and playwright with the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men), for whom he wrote tragedies, comedies, histories and romances staged at the Globe. He also wrote 154 sonnets and the narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. The First Folio of 1623 preserved half his plays, which would otherwise have been lost, and he is widely regarded as the greatest writer in English.
How to spot them
- ▸The Bard of Avon; born and buried in Stratford-upon-Avon (Holy Trinity Church)
- ▸The Globe on Bankside; the Lord Chamberlain's Men, renamed the King's Men under James I
- ▸The First Folio (1623), compiled by John Heminges and Henry Condell, with the Droeshout portrait
- ▸154 sonnets (1609), 'Mr. W. H.', the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady
- ▸Anne Hathaway, the 'second best bed', and his son Hamnet
Key works
Macbeth (c. 1606)
A Scottish thane, spurred by three witches and his wife, murders King Duncan; the 'Scottish play'
King Lear (c. 1605–1606)
An old king divides his kingdom between Goneril and Regan and disowns the faithful Cordelia
Othello (c. 1603–1604)
The Moor of Venice is driven by Iago to murder his innocent wife Desdemona
Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595)
Star-crossed lovers from the feuding Montagues and Capulets of Verona
A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595)
Lovers and 'rude mechanicals' in a wood near Athens, with Oberon, Titania, Puck and Bottom
Twelfth Night (c. 1601)
Shipwrecked Viola disguises herself as Cesario in Illyria; Malvolio's yellow cross-gartered stockings
The Tempest (c. 1610–1611)
The magician Prospero, with Ariel and Caliban, on his island; often seen as his farewell to the stage
Key ideas
- His plays are conventionally grouped as comedies, histories and tragedies (as in the First Folio), with the late romances or 'problem plays' as later categories
- Ben Jonson's First Folio tribute calls him 'not of an age, but for all time'
- He is credited with the first recorded use of many words and phrases in English
- The authorship question: rival candidates proposed include Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford and Christopher Marlowe, though scholars overwhelmingly accept Shakespeare
Quick-fire facts
- •Baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon on 26 April 1564; died on 23 April 1616
- •Married Anne Hathaway in 1582; their children were Susanna and the twins Hamnet and Judith; Hamnet died aged 11 in 1596
- •Robert Greene's pamphlet of 1592 attacked him as an 'upstart Crow'
- •The Globe was built on Bankside in 1599 using timber from The Theatre in Shoreditch; it burned down in 1613 when a cannon fired during Henry VIII set the thatch alight
- •The First Folio (1623) contains 36 plays, 18 of them printed for the first time, including Macbeth, The Tempest and Twelfth Night
- •The Sonnets were published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe, dedicated to the mysterious 'Mr. W. H.'
- •His will famously left his wife his 'second best bed'
- •The Winter's Tale contains the stage direction 'Exit, pursued by a bear'
- •Most of the moons of Uranus, such as Miranda, Ariel, Oberon and Titania, are named after his characters
- •The reconstructed Shakespeare's Globe, championed by Sam Wanamaker, opened near the original site in 1997
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — William Shakespeare
- Peter Ackroyd — Shakespeare: The Biography