As I declare our Poet, him
Whose insight makes all others dim.
A thousand poets pried at life
And only one amid the strife
Rose to be Shakespeare.
—Robert Browning, nineteenth-century English poet
For more than 400 years, the work of poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare has fascinated people from all walks of life, all over the world. In fact, many people the world over consider him to be the greatest dramatist ever. Johan Goethe, the great 19th-century German poet and novelist, considered Shakespeare to have expressed the German spirit perfectly. Akira Kurasawa, an acclaimed Japanese film director, based several of his epic Japanese films on the plays of Shakespeare. His works have been translated into every language on the planet (and those not of the planet—you can find a Klingon side-by-side translation of Hamlet).
Altogether, Shakespeare wrote more than three dozen plays, plays that include the finest examples of comedy, tragedy, and romance. Shakespeare’s many plays and poems reveal his talents as a writer and his keen understanding of human nature. The personalities of his main characters are often complex, revealing the ambiguities and personal conflicts found in all of us.
Little is known, however, about Shakespeare’s own personal life, because he left no diaries or letters. Records indicate that Shakespeare spent his youth in a small English village. His father was a glove maker and local political figure. His mother came from a family of wealthy landowners. It is believed that young Shakespeare attended the local grammar school, where he probably studied literature and Latin. Unlike many other writers of his time, he did not receive a formal education at a university.
In 1582 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a poem expressing her love for Shakespeare, Hathaway wrote:
For queens themselves might envy me,
Who scarce in palaces can find
My Willie’s form, with Willie’s mind.
Hathaway and Shakespeare had three children. Scholars believe that Shakespeare might have worked as a school teacher during the early years of his marriage.
In the late 1580s, Shakespeare moved to London and quickly became prominent in the theater. He joined Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the most popular troupe of actors in London. With this troupe, he acted in productions throughout the 1590s and gave two special performances for Queen Elizabeth I. While acting, writing plays, and earning recognition as one of the greatest playwrights in England, Shakespeare was also writing poetry (two lengthy, narrative poems and 154 sonnets. He was versatile in his ability to manipulate language, writing just as fluidly in an elevated, poetic style as in the diction of the ordinary people during his time; the characters and situations in his plays likewise presented the vices and virtues of a variety of people in English society—from kings and queens to peasants who could not read or write.
In the late 1590s and early 1600s, Shakespeare devoted more time to writing and produced many of his greatest comedies and tragedies, including Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Hamlet. In 1610 he retired and returned to Stratford, where his family had lived throughout his career. Despite the popularity of his work, Shakespeare never created a collection of his own plays for publication.
Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two and was buried under the floor of Stratford Church. Knowing that burial space in the church was limited and that graves were often moved after someone died, Shakespeare
used his epitaph as a warning:
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
The above has been modified by Mr. Ireland from a publication put out by Glencoe Educational Services, a part of McGraw-Hill Education.