51 Facts About Shakespeare

Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist.

Shakespeare is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" .

Shakespeare's plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.

Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613.

Related searches

Shakespeare's early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres.

Shakespeare then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language.

Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy in his lifetime.

Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield in Warwickshire, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning family.

Shakespeare was the third of eight children, and the eldest surviving son.

Shakespeare is supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him.

Scholars differ on the exact meaning of Greene's words, but most agree that Greene was accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match such university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Greene himself .

Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, beginning in 1594, and by 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title pages.

Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright.

In 1596, the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames.

Shakespeare moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the same year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there.

Shakespeare died within a month of signing his will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in "perfect health".

Shakespeare bequeathed the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna under stipulations that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body".

Shakespeare did make a point of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation.

Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death.

Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.

Actors in Shakespeare's company included the famous Richard Burbage, William Kempe, Henry Condell and John Heminges.

Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.

Shakespeare was replaced around 1600 by Robert Armin, who played roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It and the fool in King Lear.

Related searches

In some cases, for example, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, and Othello, Shakespeare could have revised the texts between the quarto and folio editions.

Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership.

Shakespeare seems to have planned two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a married woman of dark complexion, and one about conflicted love for a fair young man .

Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day.

Shakespeare wrote them in a stylised language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the drama.

However, Shakespeare soon began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes.

Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles.

Shakespeare increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself.

Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow.

Shakespeare uses it, for example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind:.

Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a practical sense of the theatre.

Shakespeare reshaped each plot to create several centres of interest and to show as many sides of a narrative to the audience as possible.

Shakespeare preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however.

Shakespeare's work has made a significant and lasting impression on later theatre and literature.

Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens.

The American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King Lear.

Shakespeare has inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites.

Shakespeare's influence extends far beyond his native England and the English language.

Shakespeare is that unique writer: he has something for everyone.

Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he received a large amount of praise.

Related searches

Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed according to their folio classification as comedies, histories, and tragedies.

Shakespeare conformed to the official state religion, but his private views on religion have been the subject of debate.

Shakespeare's will uses a Protestant formula, and he was a confirmed member of the Church of England, where he was married, his children were baptised, and where he is buried.

Some scholars claim that members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time when practising Catholicism in England was against the law.

The strongest evidence might be a Catholic statement of faith signed by his father, John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in the rafters of his former house in Henley Street.

In 1591, the authorities reported that John Shakespeare had missed church "for fear of process for debt", a common Catholic excuse.