William Shakespeare: The One and Only
Shakespeare was a cool guy. He's also known as pretty much the greatest writer in the human language, and that's quite an award. When in came to writing, Shakepseare did it all: narrative poems, sonnets, and plays that ranged from heart-wrenching tragedies to gun-holding comedies. In fact, if Shakespeare was alive today, he would probably be a comedian!
Before He Started Writing...
William Shakespeare was born in a town called Stratford-upon-Avon, in England. It was a market town, always bustling with middle-Renaissance travelers, so the young Shakespeare was exposed to all kinds of people, cultures, and ideas. His father, John Shakespeare, was a glover. His actual birthdate is unknown, but what we do know is that he was baptized on April 26, 1564. Many think that his real birthdate was on the 23rd, three days earlier, but we may never know.
Not much else is known about Shakespeare's early life (and trust me, biographers have been searching all over for info on him). At the age of eighteen, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who was twenty-six. Soon he had a daughter, Susanna, and two year later Anne gave birth to twins, Hamnet and Judith. Sadly, Hamnet never lived past childhood.
Although this picture on the left shows the stereotypical image of Shakespeare, goatee and all, the truth is that we really don't know what he actually looked like!
The Theatre Life
Shakespeare started writing his plays in the mid 1580s, and by 1592, they were on the London stage. Most of Shakespeare's first plays back then were histories, which were basically acting out the lives of famous kings from years gone past. These plays included "King John" and "Henry the Fourth", among many others. While Shakespeare was in the theater industry, Elizabeth I was the queen, and Shakespeare's acting group was called the "Lord Chamberlain's Men." After Elizabeth died and her heir, James, rose to the throne, the troupe was renamed to "The King's Men." And indeed, most of Shakespeare's plays were performed for the current king or queen!
Although many of Shakespeare's plays were histories, that wasn't all he wrote. He soon started writing comedies, such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream." It was actually only later in his life that Shakespeare started writing his most famous plays, tragedies, such as "Hamlet" and "Romeo and Juliet." Also worth noting is that everyone in Shakespeare's troupe was a man. The female parts were always given to the guy who was youngest and had the highest voice.
To see more info on Shakespeare's many plays (almost forty of them!), click here.
The Globe Theater
What's something every elite acting troupe needs? A theater! Shakespeare realized this, so he and his troupe started building the Globe Theater in 1599. Naturally, it was put in the center of the British Renaissance, which was London.
The thater was made out of timber from a number theater that had been taken down earlier that decade. Reportedly, it was finished being put up just in time for its first performance, which was Henry V (Henry the Fifth was an English King that ruled from the late 1300s to the early 1400s.)
The Globe Theater was also quite impressive; it was three stories high and could house 3,000 people. It had a stage over forty feet in length, along with a trap door for actors to spring up out of the ground. It also had a back room made for storing props and other equipment.
The Globe Theater was a huge hit, with royalty and poor folks alike! Unfortunately, it burned down on June 29, 1613, during a performance of another Shakespeare history, Henry VIII (See info on Horrible Henry here). Luckily, even though the theater was completely destroyed, nobody got hurt except for a man who's pants caught on fire and quickly put it out with a bottle of ale.
The Globe Theater was rebuilt less than a year later, and The Kings Men were soon continuing to perform their historical, hilarious, and tragic plays. But is was again, taken down, this time on purpose. Perhaps it was because all of the original owners of the theater were long dead (including William Shakespeare himself). Whatever the cause, the place where the Globe Theater stood was soon replaced by a residential lot.
But the work of Shakespeare isn't going down that easily! In 1997, a place called Shakespeare's Globe was finally open to the public. It was an almost-exact replica of teh original Globe Theater, and still stands today only 100 feet from where the original stood. It's now a tourist attraction for anyone who wants to know just how hard Shakespeare's troupe worked.
Top right: A sketch made for the designs of the original Globe Theater.
Bottom right: Shakespeare's Globe, an exact replica.
The Sonnets of Shakespeare
William Shakespeare wasn't just a playwright. He was also a poet! Shakespeare's sonnets are amazing speeches about love lost, love gained, war, hardships and nature. And all in fourteen lines as well! Shakespeare wrote Sonnets for fun pretty much all throughout his career, and by the timje he died he had written 154 of them!
There's a lot more I can write about his sonnets, so I'm not going to put them on this page. Instead, there's an entire page dedicated to Shakespeare's fascinating, heart-wrenching, sometimes satirical sonnets!
He Writes! He Acts!
Now, what's the fun of writing all these amazing plays if you never get to act in any of them? A little known fact is that Shakespeare sometimes performed in his own plays!
Before Shakespeare started his own troupe, Shakespeare would sometimes act in other people's plays, sometimes in theaters or sometimes out in the streets. Shakespeare's most famous performances in his own play was as Hamlet's ghostly father in "Hamlet." He would also play King Henry in Henry IV, and Adam in his early comedy, "As You Like It."
Later in his life, Shakespeare grew too tired to act in his own plays, though he definately continued writing them!
How Do You Spell His Name?
Shakespeare would always spell his name differently for performances, and this has confused historians for many years. Did he not know how to spell his own name, or did he just try to trick people?
Actually, spelling in the Elizabethan Era was quite erratic, with lots of other people spelling their names differently. Most people didn't care about exact spelling, as you could virtually always still tell who it was.
Over his many years, Shakespeare would spell his name as "Shakespear," "Shakspeare," "Shaxpere," "Shakespe", and many other ways! But as Juliet would always say, "What's in a name? A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet!"
Shakespeare's Later Life...
When his plays were at their most popular, Shakespeare was probably the most popular and well known person in England, not including King James himself. Atttending Shakespeare's plays at the theater was like a huge sporting event today: lots of looking forward to the performance and socializing, the having a snack, sitting down, and enjoying the show, which usually lasted between two and five hours. Each of his plays became a bigger and bigger hit, and Shakespeare and The King's Men grew quite rich off of it!
Shakespeare rented expensive rooms and took his spare time writing more plays and jotting down sonnets. In the last five years of his life, Shakespeare retired to Stratford with his wife, Anne. He lived there happily, and he had finaly stoped writing plays.
...And Death
William Shakespeare died the 23rd of April, 1616. It was exactly 52 years after he was born. He was survived by his wife, his elder daughter, and his younger daughter, who was marrieed just two weeks before his death.
But even in death, Shakespeare was funny: in his will, he left his wife his "second-best bed." What a joker! Most of the rest of his estate and belongings went to Susanna, his older daughter. Although his daughters had children, all of their children died, meaning that today Shakespeare has not had a living descendant for four-hundred years.
Story of Shakespeare
Today, everything we do bears the mark of Shakespeare. The words "puke" and "bedroom"? Yep, Shakespeare invented them. And what about stories like "West Side Story" and "The Lion King?" Well, think about it, they're basically seperate renditions of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet", respectively. Shakespeare's plays have been made into over 420 films, making him the most filmed author of ALL TIME.
William Shakepeare brought creativity and entertainment to the Renaissance, and delighted people the world over with his marvelous insight, dashing humor, and inexplicable way of knowing just how we as humans work. Most historians would agree that he's the greatest author ever.
To the left is a funerary monument of Shakespeare that lies in his hometown, Stratford-upon-Avon.
