Storybook of Shakespeare

Transcription

1 Storybook of Shakespeare

2 William Shakespeare was born on April 23rd, 1564 in Stratford upon Avon, England in the house shown below. Shakespeare was baptised in Holy Trinity Church on April 26th. Shakespeare was the third child and the first son to be born into the family. Even though he was born as the third child, he would be the oldest child in the family because the first two, both girls, died very young. He would end up having 5 siblings: Gilbert, Richard, Edmund, Anne (who died at the age of 7), and Joann. John and Mary Shakespeare were William Shakespeare s parents. John s family came from a family of yeomen and Mary, previously known as Mary Arden, came from one of gentry. In other words, the family of Shakespeare s father was a servant in a noble family, while his mother was from a noble family. Stratford was a village of only 1,500 inhabitants; however this wasn t so small back in Shakespeare s time. This, in fact, was one of the largest cities in England. His father, John Shakespeare, a leatherworker, was elected into many important town offices, including becoming mayor of Stratford. He was re elected on more than one occasion to be chamberlain and secretary treasurer. Going against the common belief, Shakespeare s dad was not illiterate, but instead was one of the smartest men in the world at that time. 1

3 For his secondary education, Shakespeare went to the Stratford Grammar School. He entered this school when he was about 6 or 7. Most of the classes were held in Latin, and classes were about learning famous poetic and writing works. Shakespeare often referenced many of these famous writers in his plays later on. He was educated for about 8 years, leaving the school at age 15. After this time, historians have not found any information about the five years after he left school. William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway on November 28, Anne Hathaway was 26 years old and William was 18 years old. Anne, shown on the left, was three months pregnant when they married. Hathaway spent her life outside of Stratford in a village called Shottery. After their marriage, the two spent their lives in Stratford. Susanna, their first daughter, was born on May 26, Two years later, on February 2, Anne bore twins. After the twins birth, Hamnet and Judith, there are seven years of Shakespeare s life where no records of his life exist, which is called the lost years by scholars. Hamnet died of unknown causes at 11 in On a side note, one theory of what he was doing during this time was that he went into hiding for a poaching game from the local landlord, Sir Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare s eldest daughter Susanna later married a well to do Stratford doctor, John Hall. Their daughter Elizabeth, Shakespeare's first grandchild, 2

4 was born in In 1616, just months before his death, Shakespeare's daughter Judith married Thomas Quiney, a Stratford vintner. During the lost years, Shakespeare went to london to work while Anne and the children were living in Stratford. Nobody knows when he moved, how he made a living, or how he made a start to his playwriting career. September 20, 1592 edition of the Stationer s Register was the first place where it mentioned Shakespeare as a playwright and actor. It included an article by London playwright Robert Greene, shown on the right, that takes a few jabs at Shakespeare, many interpretations suggest that this was Greene s way of saying Shakespeare was reaching too far above his rank/skill:...there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake scene in a country, Shakespeare s printed editions for his plays appeared in early Shakespeare wrote and acted for the Lord Chamberlain s Men, an acting company in London, for the next twenty 3

5 years. In the early 1590 s, it is also known that Shakespeare was managing partner for the company. Shakespeare invested much of his wealth in real estate purchases and purchased the second largest house, New Place, in Stratford for his family in However, it was a four day horse ride from Stratford to London, so he spent most of his time in the city writing and acting. By the end of the year, 15 of the 37 plays written by Shakespeare were published. Shakespeare and his business partners built their own theater, the Globe, seen on the left, on the Thames River by Shakespeare s early plays were written in the normal style of the time period with metaphors and rhetorical phrases that did not quite fit in with. He adapted this style to create a freer flow of words and primarily used a pattern consisting of unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare retired to Stratford upon Avon at some point between 1610 and Shakespeare supposedly died on his birthday April , though this is up to debate by many scholars on when he died. He left the majority of his possessions to his eldest daughter, Susanna. 4

6 Little went to his wife, Anne, and she was bequeathed his second best bed. He was buried at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford upon Avon. On his grave, it is written as shown in the picture below, Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones. 5