William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) was an English poet and playwright. Shakespeare is considered to be the greatest writer and author in the English language and the world's most important dramatist. William Shakespeare is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (also "The Bard").

His works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems and several other poems. William Shakespeare's plays have been translated into all important language and they are performed more often than plays of any other poet and playwright.

William Shakespeare Biography

William Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. When he was 18 years old, he married Anne Hathaway, togehter they had 3 children: Susanna, and the twins Hamnet and Judith.

From the age of 21, i.e. between 1585 and 1592, he began a career as actor in London, he also became a writer, and he was co-owner of a theatre company called "The Lord Chamberlain's Men", which was later known as "The King's Men".

Shakespeare then retired to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1613, where he also died in 1616. Very litte is know about Shakespeare's private life, and there has been considerable speculation about his physical appearance, sexuality and religious beliefs. To this day there are contoversies whether the works that are attributed to him were written by himself or by other writers. (Names of authors that some works are attributed to are: Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.)

William Shakespeare produced most of his work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century.

After these comedies it seems that he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608. Among them are the well known plays of Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, which are considered to be among the best works in the English language.

In his last productive phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and worked closely with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of very different quality and accuracy during his lifetime.

In 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.

Modern day recognition of William Shakespeare's works:

William Shakespeare suffered from lack of recognition, even though he was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. Quite specifically, the Romantics applauded Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry".

In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.