William Shakespeare
(1564 – 1616)
Life and Work:
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright. He was born on April 23, 1564 in Stratford – upon – Avon and baptised on April 26, 1564. He was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway. Shortly they were blessed with three children: Susanna, twins Hamnet and Judith. His works include 37 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems along with some collaborators, a few other verses the authorship of some of which is uncertain.
Shakespeare produced most of his known words between 1589 – 1613. His early plays mainly comedies and histories. He raised genres to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies also known as romances and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quantity and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, published the First Folio, a colleted edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare’s.
Shakespeare was a poet and playwright of repute in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the 19th century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare’s genuine, and the Victorians worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called bardolatry. In the 20th 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 culturel and political contexts throughout the world.
The greatness of Shakespeare is evident from a hist of utterance Worldwide. Ben Johnson rightly says, Shakespeare is not of an age, but of all ages, not of one country but of all countries. In the words of Legouis, Shakespeare surpasses all his rivals. According to E. Albert, Shakespeare is unrivalled in literature. From King to clown, from lunatic and semi- devil to saint and seer, from lover to misanthrope, all are revealed with the hand of a master. Dryden says, He was the man, who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poet’s, had the largest and the most comprehensive soul.
Truth and Beauty are perfectly blended in his works. His mature style is something incomparable. Shakespearean felicity of expression has become proverbial. The wrestling match in As You Like It, the rapier duels in Romeo and Juliet and in Hamlet, the sword fight in Macbeth- all these were real displayes of skill by practiced combatants. Shakespeare was not a philosopher but a dramatic poet.
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List of Shakespeare’s plays:
COMEDIES –
• All’s Well That Ends Well • As You Like It • Comedy Of Errors • Love’s Labour’s Lost • Measure For Measure • Midsummer Night’s Dream • Much Ado about Nothing • Taming of the Shrew • Tempest • Twelfth Night • Winter’s Tale • Two Gentlemen of Verona.
HISTORIES –
•Henry IV (Part I) • Henry IV (Part II) • Henry V • Henry VI (Part I) • Henry VI (Part II) • Henry VI (Part III) • Henry VIII •King John • Pericles • Richard II • Richard III
TRAGEDIES –
• Antony and Cleopatra • Coriolanus • Cymbeline • Hamlet • Julius Caesar • King Lear • Othello • Macbeth • Romeo and Juliet • Timon of Athens • Titus Andronicus • Troilus and Cressida
List of Shakespeare’s Poems:
• Lover’s Complaint (1609) • Passionate Pilgrim (1598) • Phoenix and the Turtle (1601) • Rape of the Lucrece (1594) • Venus and Adonis (1593)