Zhou tiehai biography of william shakespeare

In his will, he left the bulk of his possessions to his eldest daughter, Susanna, who by then was married. However, there is very little evidence the two had a difficult marriage. He is credited with inventing or introducing more than 1, words to the English language, often as a result of combining words, changing usages, or blending in foreign root words.

It was published with the title Mr. In addition to its literary importance, the First Folio contains an original portrait of Shakespeare on the title page. The other is a memorial bust at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford.

Zhou tiehai biography of william shakespeare

Today, there are surviving copies of the First Folio that date back to , but experts estimate roughly First Folios were printed. Scholars and literary critics began to float names like Christopher Marlowe, Edward de Vere, and Francis Bacon —men of more known backgrounds, literary accreditation, or inspiration—as the true authors of the plays.

Official records from the Holy Trinity Church and the Stratford government record the existence of Shakespeare, but none of these attest to him being an actor or playwright. The most serious and intense skepticism began in the 19 th century when adoration for Shakespeare was at its highest. The detractors believed that the only hard evidence surrounding Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon described a man from modest beginnings who married young and became successful in real estate.

They contend that Shakespeare had neither the education nor the literary training to write such eloquent prose and create such rich characters. However, the vast majority of Shakespearean scholars contend that Shakespeare wrote all his own plays. They point out that other playwrights of the time also had sketchy histories and came from modest backgrounds.

They point to evidence that displays his name on the title pages of published poems and plays. There is also strong circumstantial evidence of personal relationships by contemporaries who interacted with Shakespeare as an actor and a playwright. What seems to be true is that Shakespeare was a respected man of the dramatic arts who wrote plays and acted in the late 16 th and early 17 th centuries.

Beginning with the Romantic period of the early s and continuing through the Victorian period, acclaim and reverence for Shakespeare and his work reached its height. In the 20 th century, new movements in scholarship and performance rediscovered and adopted his works. Today, his plays remain highly popular and are constantly studied and reinterpreted in performances with diverse cultural and political contexts.

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Adrienne directs the daily news operation and content production for Biography. Scholars are not certain when each of the sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership. It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial "I" who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart".

The edition was dedicated to a "Mr. It is not known whether this was written by Shakespeare himself or by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe , whose initials appear at the foot of the dedication page; nor is it known who Mr. Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in a stylised language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the drama.

The grand speeches in Titus Andronicus , in the view of some critics, often hold up the action, for example; and the verse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona has been described as stilted. However, Shakespeare soon began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. The opening soliloquy of Richard III has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama.

At the same time, Richard's vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soliloquies of Shakespeare's mature plays. Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself. Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse , composed in iambic pentameter.

In practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines , with the risk of monotony.

This technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet. Shakespeare uses it, for example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind: [ ]. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly— And prais'd be rashness for it—let us know Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well After Hamlet , Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies.

The literary critic A. Bradley described this style as "more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical". These included run-on lines , irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length. The listener is challenged to complete the sense. Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a practical sense of the theatre.

This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting, and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however. In Shakespeare's late romances , he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre.

Shakespeare's work has made a significant and lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation , plot, language , and genre. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success. Critic George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson as "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes.

His work has inspired several operas, among them Giuseppe Verdi 's Macbeth , Otello and Falstaff , whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays. In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling, and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now, [ ] and his use of language helped shape modern English. Shakespeare's influence extends far beyond his native England and the English language.

His reception in Germany was particularly significant; as early as the 18th century Shakespeare was widely translated and popularised in Germany, and gradually became a "classic of the German Weimar era ;" Christoph Martin Wieland was the first to produce complete translations of Shakespeare's plays in any language. Some of the most deeply affecting productions of Shakespeare have been non-English, and non-European.

He is that unique writer: he has something for everyone. According to Guinness World Records , Shakespeare remains the world's best-selling playwright, with sales of his plays and poetry believed to have achieved in excess of four billion copies in the almost years since his death. He is also the third most translated author in history. Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he received a large amount of praise.

Between the Restoration of the monarchy in and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. But during the 18th century, critics began to respond to Shakespeare on his own terms and, like Dryden, to acclaim what they termed his natural genius. A series of scholarly editions of his work, notably those of Samuel Johnson in and Edmond Malone in , added to his growing reputation.

During the Romantic era , Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge , and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German Romanticism. The modernist revolution in the arts during the early 20th century, far from discarding Shakespeare, eagerly enlisted his work in the service of the avant-garde.

The Expressionists in Germany and the Futurists in Moscow mounted productions of his plays. Marxist playwright and director Bertolt Brecht devised an epic theatre under the influence of Shakespeare. The poet and critic T. Eliot argued against Shaw that Shakespeare's "primitiveness" in fact made him truly modern. Wilson Knight and the school of New Criticism , led a movement towards a closer reading of Shakespeare's imagery.

In the s, a wave of new critical approaches replaced modernism and paved the way for post-modern studies of Shakespeare. He encloses us because we see with his fundamental perceptions. Around years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship of the works attributed to him. Shakespeare conformed to the official state religion, [ k ] but his private views on religion have been the subject of debate.

Shakespeare's will uses a Protestant formula, and he was a confirmed member of the Church of England , where he was married, his children were baptised, and where he is buried. Some scholars are of the view that members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time when practising Catholicism in England was against the law. The strongest evidence might be a Catholic statement of faith signed by his father, John Shakespeare , found in in the rafters of his former house in Henley Street.

However, the document is now lost and scholars differ as to its authenticity. Other authors argue that there is a lack of evidence about Shakespeare's religious beliefs. Scholars find evidence both for and against Shakespeare's Catholicism, Protestantism, or lack of belief in his plays, but the truth may be impossible to prove. Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known.

At 18, he married year-old Anne Hathaway , who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May Over the centuries, some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical, [ ] and point to them as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than romantic love.

No written contemporary description of Shakespeare's physical appearance survives, and no evidence suggests that he ever commissioned a portrait. From the 18th century, the desire for authentic Shakespeare portraits fuelled claims that various surviving pictures depicted Shakespeare. Some scholars suggest that the Droeshout portrait , which Ben Jonson approved of as a good likeness, [ ] and his Stratford monument provide perhaps the best evidence of his appearance.

After a three-year study supported by the National Portrait Gallery, London , the portrait's owners, Cooper contended that its composition date, contemporary with Shakespeare, its subsequent provenance, and the sitter's attire, all supported the attribution. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools.

Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. English playwright and poet — For other uses, see Shakespeare disambiguation and William Shakespeare disambiguation. The Chandos portrait , likely depicting Shakespeare, c. Stratford-upon-Avon , Warwickshire, England. Elizabethan Jacobean. Lord Chamberlain's Men King's Men. Anne Hathaway.

John Shakespeare Mary Arden. Play comedy history tragedy. Poetry sonnet narrative poem epitaph. Main article: Life of William Shakespeare. London and theatrical career. Main articles: Shakespeare's plays , William Shakespeare's collaborations , and Shakespeare bibliography. Further information: Chronology of Shakespeare's plays. Main article: Shakespeare in performance.

Main article: Shakespeare's sonnets. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate Main article: Shakespeare's writing style. Main article: Shakespeare's influence. He was not of an age, but for all time. Main article: Shakespeare authorship question. Main article: Religious views of William Shakespeare.

Main article: Sexuality of William Shakespeare. Main article: Portraits of Shakespeare. He was baptised 26 April. Under the Gregorian calendar , adopted in Catholic countries in , Shakespeare died on 3 May. This motto is still used by Warwickshire County Council , in reference to Shakespeare. In addition to presenting the town with a statue of Shakespeare, Garrick composed a doggerel verse, lampooned in the London newspapers, naming the banks of the Avon as the birthplace of the "matchless Bard".

Rowse , the 20th-century Shakespeare scholar, was emphatic: "He died, as he had lived, a conforming member of the Church of England. His will made that perfectly clear—in facts, puts it beyond dispute, for it uses the Protestant formula. Archived from the original on 8 February Retrieved 8 February Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent.

Archived from the original on 7 May Retrieved 7 May Poetry Foundation. Archived from the original on 6 January Retrieved 6 January The Oxford Handbook of the Georgian Theatre — Oxford University Press. The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 3 February Retrieved 3 February Broadcast 18 May Archived from the original on 3 March Retrieved 29 November The Local Germany.

Well, William Shakespeare was the greatest after all Archived from the original on 14 April Retrieved 2 September Guinness World Records. Beaumont and Fletcher. Ben Jonson. Seventeenth Century. Henry Craik, ed. English Prose". Archived from the original on 20 July Retrieved 20 July May Metropolitan Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 10 September Retrieved 16 April CBS News.

Archived from the original on 19 April The Guardian. Retrieved 15 April Ackroyd, Peter Shakespeare: The Biography. London: Vintage. ISBN OCLC Adams, Joseph Quincy A Life of William Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Baldwin, T. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Archived from the original on 5 May Retrieved 5 May John Ward, the local vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford where Shakespeare is buried , writes in a diary account that:.

The average life expectancy of someone born in London, England in the Sixteenth Century was about 35 years old, Shakespeare died age They contend Shakespeare was actually just a successful businessman, and for authorship suggest names such as Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Arguments have also been made for Francis Bacon. The argument that Shakespeare was actually the Earl of Oxford relies on circumstantial evidence and similarities in his writing style and relationships between his life and the play of Shakespeare.

However, there is no hard evidence tying the Earl of Oxford to the theatre or writing the scripts. By contrast, there is evidence of William Shakespeare working in theatres and he received a variety of criticism from people such as Ben Johnson and Robert Greene. Also, the Earl of Oxford died in , and it is generally agreed there were 12 plays published after this date.

Oxfords contend these plays were finished by other writers. It is also hard to believe the vain Earl of Oxford who killed one of his own servants would write such amazing scripts and then be happy with anonymity. Also, to maintain anonymity, it would also require the co-operation of numerous family members and other figures in the theatre world.

The theory of other writers to Shakespeare only emerged centuries after the publishing of the First Folio. In his later years, he may have spent more time in Stratford-upon-Avon than scholars previously thought. On his father's death in , William Shakespeare inherited the old family home in Henley Street part of which was then leased to tenants.

Further property investments in Stratford followed, including the purchase of acres of land in Shakespeare died in Stratford-upon-Avon on 23 April at the age of He is buried in the sanctuary of the parish church, Holy Trinity. This means there is the possibility of you seeing more adverts from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust on other websites that you visit.

An Introduction William Shakespeare was a renowned English poet, playwright, and actor born in in Stratford-upon-Avon. For more about Shakespeare's patrons and his work in London see; Shakespeare's Career Shakespeare's Works Altogether Shakespeare's works include 38 plays, 2 narrative poems, sonnets, and a variety of other poems. Watch our video for more about Shakespeare as a literary commuter:.

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