Early Life
Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, a small town in the middle of the English countryside. His father, John Shakespeare, was a glover and public servant with social ambitions, as suggested by his marriage to Mary Arden, the daughter of a well-to-do farmer. Though born to parents of good social standing, Shakespeare entered the world at a troubled time. In 1564 England was in the midst of an outbreak of plague. Owing to the Spanish interruption of the cloth market as well as an ongoing conflict between Protestants and Catholics, England also suffered economic hardship and religious upheaval. Despite these ongoing problems, John Shakespeare likely enrolled his son in the King’s New School in Stratford at the age of 7. In grammar school, Shakespeare would have been subjected to intensive training in Latin that lasted all day, six days a week. Grammar schools in Shakespeare’s time had an exclusive emphasis on drills, memorization, and imitation. Though the experience likely wasn’t a creative one, Shakespeare’s studies, and particularly his study of the Latin poet Ovid, influenced him deeply. Shakespeare’s schooling likely ended around age 15, when his father found himself in financial straits and required his eldest son’s help in the family glove-making business.
Marriage
On 1 December 1582, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a family friend who lived in the nearby village of Shottery. At the time of their marriage, Shakespeare was only 18 years old, whereas Anne was 26. Little is known about their courtship, though some scholars have drawn links between Shakespeare’s biography and his first published poem, Venus and Adonis, which features an experienced woman seducing a man. Shakespeare may have initially viewed the marriage as advantageous. Anne, who had been orphaned in her mid-twenties and was bequeathed significant resources in her father’s will, was “wholly at her own government,” which means that she had complete autonomy over her own affairs as well as control over family property. Despite the lack of concrete evidence regarding their courtship, however, the conditions leading to their wedding seem much clearer. It is highly probable that the couple were rushed into marriage because Anne was pregnant. This speculation appears to be confirmed by a baptismal record for their first child, Susanna, who was born just six months after their wedding. Three years later Anne gave birth to the twins Hamnet and Judith. After that, the Shakespeares would not have any more children.
Shakespeare’s Lost Years
Scholars use the phrase "lost years" to refer to the period between the baptism of the twins Hamnet and Judith and Shakespeare’s first-known appearance in the London theatre scene in 1592. No documentary evidence from this period has survived, and the silence in Shakespeare’s record has led biographers into speculation. Two key questions animate this speculation. First, why did Shakespeare leave Stratford? And second, how did Shakespeare find his way into the London theatre scene? In answer to the first question, scholars hypothesize that Shakespeare left Stratford due to some kind of conflict with the wealthy gentleman Sir Thomas Lucy. Seventeenth-century biographers such as Richard Davies and Nicholas Rowe believed it unlikely that Shakespeare would leave Stratford without provocation, and they speculated that Shakespeare got involved in deer poaching. Rowe claimed that Shakespeare got caught in Lucy’s deer park, that "he was prosecuted by that gentleman . . . somewhat too severely," and that the experience inspired Shakespeare’s departure. Modern scholars view this account with scepticism and instead posit that Shakespeare’s conflict with Lucy may have been related to the gentleman’s involvement in militant anti-Catholic activities. In the modern account, Shakespeare may have left Stratford in an attempt to conceal his Catholic loyalties.
Early work
Following Shakespeare’s lost years, the first record of his life appears in 1592, when the playwright Robert Greene published a sarcastic remark about a “Shake-scene” that erupted within the theatre community, centred on an upstart poet who wrote for the theatre but didn’t possess a formal university education like the so-called “university wits” who dominated the business at the time. By the time Shakespeare had arrived in London, most likely in the late 1580s, the production of plays in theatres built solely for that purpose had only recently taken off in London. In fact, around the time of his arrival, the demand for theatre was on the rise, and performances drew crowds of the working class and the privileged alike. Along with the growing popularity of the theatre came greater competition, and indeed the theatre world into which Shakespeare entered was increasingly unpredictable, cutthroat, and precarious. To keep people coming, companies needed to perform a constantly rotating repertoire of up to six different plays each week. Not only did this place extraordinary demands on actors, but it also required playwrights to write quickly and prolifically, often in collaboration with actors and with each other.
Shakespeare’s Sexuality
Generations of readers have wondered about Shakespeare’s romantic life and sexuality. Much of the speculation about Shakespeare’s romantic life has arisen in relation to his apparently strained marriage. After marrying Anne Hathaway and having three children with her, Shakespeare left his family for London. Although he returned to Stratford from time to time, Shakespeare spent the majority of his working life in the city. Many wonder whether Shakespeare had affairs during his time away. One story survives about Shakespeare and his leading man, Richard Burbage, competing for the affections of a noblewoman who was very taken with Richard III. But gossip about the sex lives of actors was commonplace, so we can’t know whether there’s any truth to this story. The most suggestive evidence that Shakespeare may have had a love life outside his marriage comes from his sonnets, and particularly from the later sonnets addressed to a mysterious dark lady. The sonnets depict this dark lady as unchaste and faithless, yet also as someone who elicits a strong desire in the poet. The identity of Shakespeare’s dark lady remains the subject of much speculation, but we don’t know whether she was real or a product of the poet’s imagination.
In addition to the temptations of the dark lady, the sonnets also depict intense homoerotic desire, which has inspired readers to conjecture about Shakespeare’s sexuality. The first 126 of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets address a beautiful young man. In Sonnet 20 the poet declares that he prefers this young man to any woman, calling him “the master-mistress of my passion,” but the final lines of the poem carefully deny a sexual relationship. Elizabethans acknowledged the existence of same-sex desire, and James’s court prized the ideal of intimate, even erotic male companionship. But regardless of how much leeway the contemporary culture allowed for men to desire other men, both the law and religious doctrine strictly prohibited sodomy. As with the dark lady, the young boy may not be a real person, but Shakespeare’s dedication of the sonnets to a “Mr W. H.” has created intrigue. Some scholars suggest that the dedicatee is William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, though the “W. H.” could also reverse the initials of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Both Herbert and Wriothesley represented possible patrons, in which case it would have made sense for Shakespeare to write about a friendship between men. But whether or not he had an erotic relationship with either man remains completely speculative.
The closure of the theatres
The plague had posed an ongoing danger in England since before the time of Shakespeare’s birth, but a particularly devastating outbreak of the disease swept the country in 1593 and 1594. During especially intense epidemics, the Privy Council would exercise its authority as the queen’s advisors to close all public theatres. The Privy Council viewed the theatres as crowded wellsprings of disease, especially lethal in times of plague, and it moved to shut down operations in the interest of public health. But players faced the threat of being shut down even in times when the plague waned. The Lord Mayor of London, for instance, saw the theatre as a base entertainment that drew crowds of vagabonds and outcasts. Aside from the city authorities, the chief enemies of the theatres were Puritan reformers, who believed that theatrical entertainment in itself represented a blight on the moral life of the city. One preacher, Thomas White, went so far as to make a direct link between plays and the plague: “The cause of the plague is sinne . . . and the cause of sinne are plays: therefore the cause of plagues are plays.”
Faced with the closure of theatres, many troupes of players would have returned to the life they led before public playhouses had been built. That is, they would have loaded wagons with their props and costumes and set out on the road, stopping in every town and staging plays wherever they received permission to do so. Shakespeare may have toured during this time, though we don’t know for certain. What we do know is that in addition to his work in the theatre, he also wrote poetry and sought out an alternative form of income via patronage. Shakespeare’s work appeared in print for the first time in 1593 when fellow Stratford native Richard Field printed an attractive edition of the poem Venus and Adonis. The edition sold well, and Shakespeare would go on to publish another poem, The Rape of Lucrece, the following year. Both poems included a dedication to Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. Though the details of how the two men met remain unknown, Wriothesley was a theatre enthusiast and may have made Shakespeare’s acquaintance backstage after a performance. Regardless of how they met, though, Shakespeare’s dedication to these poems indicates that he actively courted Wriothesley’s patronage.
The Lord Chamberlain’s Men
Shakespeare had his longest and most intimate relationship with the theatre company known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. This company began as far back as the 1560s but under a different name: Hunsdon’s Men. In the Elizabethan period, troupes of players were generally referred to by their patron’s noble title, and before 1585 the patron of this group, Henry Carey, was the first Lord Hunsdon. In 1585, however, he was appointed to the office of Lord Chamberlain, and by 1590 his troupe had become known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. It isn’t clear when Shakespeare joined the troupe, but we have records showing that by 1595 the playwright had a financial stake in the company. Henry Carey’s death in 1596 placed the company’s future in jeopardy. But Carey’s son George, the second Lord Hunsdon, adopted the company and saved it. The troupe was again known as Hunsdon’s Men until 1597 when George took office as Lord Chamberlain and the name changed yet back once more. It would remain the Lord Chamberlain’s Men until 1603 when the newly crowned King James I took the company under his royal patronage. From then on the Lord Chamberlain’s Men would be known as the King’s Men.
Despite the turmoil caused by Henry Carey’s death and the frequent changes of the company’s name, the core members of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men remained consistent over time. Aside from Shakespeare, who acted in the company and wrote exclusively for it, the most famous member was Richard Burbage. Burbage enjoyed a reputation for being the greatest actor of his day, and he almost certainly originated many of Shakespeare’s most iconic roles, from Romeo to King Lear. With Shakespeare penning many of the company’s plays, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men quickly rose to prominence as London’s most popular theatre troupe. Though Shakespeare’s repertoire helped make them famous, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men also performed works by prominent playwrights like Ben Jonson. In the late 1590s, the company played in a number of public theatres, including one known as the Theater, which had been built by Richard Burbage’s father. In 1596 the Theater closed because the landowner refused to renew the lease, and Burbage’s father built another theatre at Blackfriars. But the new theatre closed shortly after it opened due to complaints from neighbouring landowners. In dire financial straits, the company repurposed the materials from the Theater to construct the world’s most famous theatre, the Globe, which would remain the company’s home for years to come.
Shakespeare’s Adversities
Between 1595 and 1600 Shakespeare faced a series of adversities that no doubt affected him profoundly, even as he continued to produce first-rate plays at a blistering pace. Many of the adversities that arose during this time related to the precariousness of the theatre. In 1595 the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were preparing to move into a new theatre in the Blackfriars district of London when Countess Elizabeth intervened. Though a strict Puritan, the Countess’s objection to the Blackfriars theatre had less to do with morality than with her concern about ragged crowds flooding into an already cramped area of town. She used her connections among the nobility to ban the company from their new theatre, leaving them in serious financial trouble. The following year brought the death of Henry Carey, the patron of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. His death placed the company’s future in jeopardy, and it survived in part because another patron adopted the players, but also because the company underwent a restructuring that involved the actors themselves, Shakespeare included, taking a financial stake in the company. The construction of the famous Globe Theater in 1599 ensured the company’s survival into the next century.
Aside from the challenges of surviving as a theatre company in London, perhaps the greatest adversity Shakespeare faced during this period was the death of his only son, Hamnet. Shakespeare probably received word of his son’s illness sometime in the spring of 1596, and though we can’t know for certain, he most likely returned to Stratford to attend his son’s burial. But Shakespeare would not have been able to stay in Stratford for long. The death of Henry Carey came quickly on the heels of Hamnet’s passing, which means that Shakespeare probably returned to London to deal with the loss of his company’s patron. Scholars speculate that though Shakespeare no doubt grieved Hamnet’s death at the time, this grief would not find expression in his writing until around 1600 when he wrote the play that bears his dead son’s name—“Hamnet” and “Hamlet” were synonymous at the time. If this is true, then Shakespeare’s expression of grief takes an unexpected form in the play. Instead of the central grief being that of a beloved son’s death, the play centres on the murder of a cherished father.
Shakespeare’s Growing Success
During the decade-long period from roughly 1595 to 1605, Shakespeare’s art continued to mature, allowing him to produce some of the greatest plays in the English language. Between 1595 and 1600 Shakespeare experienced numerous adversities. Although he wrote two important tragedies during this time, namely Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar, more striking is the fact that this period of great difficulty produced several of Shakespeare’s funniest comedies, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, and As You Like It. He also wrote the strangely ambivalent comedy The Merchant of Venice during this time. Between 1600 and 1605 Shakespeare continued to produce comedies, including three of his very best: Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, and All’s Well That Ends Well. However, perhaps overshadowing these works are Shakespeare’s immense achievements in tragedy. In a stunning feat of creative production, Shakespeare wrote seven important tragedies, including most especially Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.
Several conditions enabled Shakespeare’s art to mature to such a considerable degree. For one thing, during this period he wrote exclusively for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Not only did he have personal relationships with his actors, but this situation also allowed him to develop his scripts in close collaboration with them. For another thing, competition with other theatre companies increased dramatically during this period. In addition to two splendid companies of boy actors, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men competed with the Lord Admiral’s Men. This competition required Shakespeare to keep pushing his art further and keep audiences coming. But what exactly changed in Shakespeare’s approach to his art during this time? One significant change involved his use of the soliloquy to develop rich characters. Whereas his use of this technique felt a bit mechanical in the early play Richard III, Shakespeare had perfected it by the time of Hamlet, a play dominated by the soliloquies of a single character. Another significant change found Shakespeare increasingly refusing to provide his characters—and especially his villains—with clear motives. Removal of a clear motive afforded Shakespeare new opportunities to explore the contradictions of human nature.
In addition to his refinement of the soliloquy and the removal of clear motives, Shakespeare’s most famous plays from this period also incorporate personal experiences and political happenings in more complex and unexpected ways. Hamlet, for instance, appears to express Shakespeare’s grief over the loss of his son, Hamnet, yet the play does so by telling a story about the death of a father. With regard to Macbeth, Shakespeare incorporated unsettling echoes of the Gunpowder Plot, in which Guy Fawkes conspired to blow up King James and the Parliament. Shakespeare’s treatment of the witches in this play also relates closely to known reports of King James’s anxiety about occult experiences. Perhaps the most complex of all is King Lear. The plot of this play comes from the old legend of King Leir, whose daughter Cordell saves him from the evil plotting of her sisters. But the details of the play also correspond to a real-life story of a man named Sir Brian Annesley, whose daughters, one of whom happened to be named Cordell, tried to get him certified insane. Yet King Lear also gives form to other personal and political anxieties, such as the problem of inheritance and royal succession, all without compromising the play’s central, dramatic force.
Courtesy: www.sparknotes.com
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