"Shakespeare 's Life"

"Shakespeare's Life":

William Shakespeare was born possibly on 23 (rd) April, which is also said the day of his death, in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon , and he died in 1616. 

His father was a yeoman, a successful tradesman, until he met with financial problems. He was the eldest son and he studied the use of language and classical authors in the local grammar school. 

He married Anne Hathway when he was 18 years old and she was 26 years old and pregnant with their daughter.

•  In 1584 he went to London, he first experienced the playhouse and he was recognized not as a great actor but as an excellent writer.

•  In 1593 London theaters were closed because of the plague. He needed the support of a private patron, the Earl of Southampton, to whom his sonnets. Shakespeare became a shareholder and the main playwright of the most successful company actors, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

•  In 1599 his company built the Globe theater and between 1590 and 1596 he wrote historical dramas. 

• Than between 1593 and 1600 he wrote ten comedies but the best tragedies were written between 1595 and 1605. Shakespeare spent the latter part of his life in retirement in Stratford. He died when he was 52 years old and 7 years after some of his friends published an edition of 36 of his plays in one volume named: The First Folio.

•  In 1609 Shakespeare’s sonnets were published. This collection including 154 sonnets that were probably written in 1590.

 Sonnets:

Shakespeare was an actor, a playwright and a shareholder.

His sonnets were for anyone who could afford a penny for watch a play in the Globe theater, he understood how to take familiar story and created tragic or philosophical dramas. People all over the world continue to identify with his sonnets.

He combines love with hated or religion with policy, in fact in this plays often he confused them. Shakespeare combines painful scenes with comic scenes.

In his sonnets he not use the Italian form but sometimes he use the Petrarchan form. His sonnets are not chronological and they are divided in two parts:

1. The first part is called a “ Fair Youth”

2. The second part is called a “ Dark Lady”.

Plays:

His plays including: Mistake identity or frustrated love but they have in common the preoccupation with the journey of young woman or men. 

They traces the passage of young people out of their parent’s control. They are based with royalty story but don’t only deal with them. ( This, during the period when the idea of England as a “nation” was difficult to accept. His plays tell story of the civil wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster. 

 They are divided in two tetralogies.


Dramatic genre was attractive for London people therefore ( perciò) Shakespeare tell about many aspects of human life.