Who is William Shakespeare ?

Who is William Shakespeare ?
IMAGE SOURCE-GOOGLE | IMAGE BYwww.Biography.com

William Shakespeare was the world’s greatest English playwright, actor poet. He was known as the ‘bard of Avon’ and recognized as England’s national poet.

William Shakespeare was born on April 26, 1564 in stratified to John Shakespeare and Marry Arden. Shakespeare attends the king’s New School, an excellent grammar school. He was taught Classics, Latin grammar, and Literature. Due to family’s poor financial situation, he discontinued his education. Shakespeare’s life, before 1592, is completely undocumented. Those are known as the ‘Lost Years’.

 Around 1592, Shakespeare play stated to get feature on the London stage. Shakespeare even went on to act in many of his play. His first published work was the First Folio in 1623, which started his literary journey.  

He was highly popular during the Romantic and Victorian period. George Bernard  Show coined the term “Bardolatry”, which meant an extreme admiration for Shakespeare’s works. Shakespeare, as a playwright and actor, grey by leaps and bounds. His name itself had become a strong selling point.

Shakespeare’s most famous poems are all of his 154 sonnets. These sonnets were published around 1609. Shakespeare’s short poems dealt mainly with the theme of lost love. His sonnet had a lasting charm due to his impressive writing and language skill.

Shakespeare used to write his plays based on historical accounts. His play Hamlet (1599-1602) was based on the well-known legend of Amleth.  Shakespeare’s play was separated into three main categories. First was Comedy: popular work based on this theme is All’s Well that Ends Well (1604-05) and Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99). Second was History which included Henry V (1599). The third and final was Tragedy which included Romeo and Juliet (1597) and Othello (1603). Shakespeare invented over hundred now commonly used words in English language like “madcap”’, “obscene”, “outbreak”, “watchdog”, “cold blooded”, “secure”, and “torture”.

Shakespeare writing style was entirely different from other playwrights of the time. In his poetry, he used metaphors and expressive language. Later on, he changed his writing style into something more traditional. Shakespeare capture the beauty of human emotions and conflict throughout his twenty year as a playwright. He treated his characters as human being and not just fictional characters. The audience felt more connected to Shakespeare’s characters. Compared to other playwright’s characters, who come could come off a little flat, Shakespeare’s characters were complex and human, and are relevant even today.

Some of his most notable works were hamlet, the taming of the Shrew, Henry IV, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, and more. He wrote a total of 37 plays in the early sixteenth century. The central themes of his plays were history, tragedy. Comedy and tragic comedy.

Shakespeare was also a great businessman. He bought his own theater in 1599 and named it the Globe. London theater, started by Shakespeare, was among the first businessman in the world which was stated with the sole purpose of entertainment. Shakespeare is often regarded as an Elizabethan playwright. After the death of Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare’s company was awarded a Royal patent by King James.

Several Shakespeare plays were published and sold as popular literature. Shakespeare was known as an actor, writer and co-owner of the drama company Lord Chamberlain’s Men, also known as king’s Men. Lord Chamberlain’s Men performed most of Shakespeare’s plays.

In his last few years as a writer, Shakespeare mixed tragedy and comedy and came up with tragic-comedies. Some of the notable tragic-comedy plays written by Shakespeare were Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale. Shakespeare’s The Tempest written between 1610-11 was his last play.

Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway in 1582, at the age of eighteen. They had three children. Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of 52.