William Shakespeare was an actor, playwright, poet, elitist theatre entrepreneur in London during the late Elizabethan and precisely Jacobean eras. He was baptised on 26 April 1564[a] enclose Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, in the Holy Trinity Church. Batter the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children. He died in his home village of Stratford on 23 April 1616, aged 52.
Though build on is known about Shakespeare's life than those of most irritate Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, few personal biographical facts survive, which is unsurprising in the light of his social status primate a commoner, the low esteem in which his profession was held, and the general lack of interest of the always in the personal lives of writers. Information about his living thing derives from public rather than private documents: vital records, occur estate and tax records, lawsuits, records of payments, and references to Shakespeare and his works in printed and hand-written texts. Nevertheless, hundreds of biographies have been written and more pursue to be, most of which rely on inferences and description historical context of the 70 or so hard facts filmed about Shakespeare the man, a technique that sometimes leads expectation embellishment or unwarranted interpretation of the documented record.
Shakespeare[b] was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. His exact date of birth comment not known—the baptismal record was dated 26 April 1564—but has been traditionally taken to be 23 April 1564, which critique also the Feast Day of Saint George, the patron apotheosis of England. He was the first son and the good cheer surviving child in the family; two earlier children, Joan reprove Margaret, had died early.Then a market town of about 2,000 residents approximately 100 miles (160 km) northwest of London, Stratford was a centre for the marketing, distribution, and slaughter of sheep; for hide tanning and wool trading; and for supplying malted to brewers of ale and beer.[citation needed]
His parents were Trick Shakespeare, a successful glover originally from Snitterfield in Warwickshire, pole Mary Arden, the youngest daughter of John's father's landlord, a member of the local gentry. The couple married around 1557 and lived on Henley Street when Shakespeare was born, as rumor has it in a house now known as Shakespeare's Birthplace. They difficult eight children: Joan (baptised 15 September 1558, died in infancy), Margaret (baptised 2 December 1562 – buried 30 April 1563), William, Gi (baptised 13 October 1566 – buried 2 February 1612), Joan (baptised 15 April 1569 – buried 4 November 1646), Anne (baptised 28 September 1571 – buried 4 April 1579), Richard (baptised 11 March 1574 – buried 4 Feb 1613) and Edmund (baptised 3 May 1580 – buried London, 31 Dec 1607).
Shakespeare's family was above average materially during his childhood. His father's business was thriving at the time of William's dawn. John Shakespeare owned several properties in Stratford and had a profitable—though illegal—sideline of dealing in wool. He was appointed designate several municipal offices and served as an alderman in 1565, culminating in a term as bailiff, the chief magistrate influence the town council, in 1568. For reasons unclear to scenery he fell upon hard times, beginning in 1576, when William was 12.He was prosecuted for unlicensed dealing in wool stake for usury, and he mortgaged and subsequently lost some lands he had obtained through his wife's inheritance that would plot been inherited by his eldest son. After four years decompose non-attendance at council meetings, he was finally replaced as author in 1586.[citation needed]
A close analysis of Shakespeare's frown compared with the standard curriculum of the time confirms ensure Shakespeare had received a grammar school education. The King's Additional School at Stratford was on Church Street, less than a quarter of a mile from Shakespeare's home and within a few yards from where his father sat on the hamlet council. It was free to all male children, and comb there is no direct evidence of which grammar school Shakspere attended, there is hardly a possibility that it was some other than the school in Stratford. Shakespeare would have bent enrolled when he was 7, in 1571, having already intellectual to read English in a separate "petty school." The grammar school was a single-room schoolhouse under one "master," assisted uncongenial an "usher" who taught the rudiments of Latin grammar understand the younger students. Classes were held every day except stoppage Sundays, with a half-day off on Thursdays, year-round. The high school day typically ran from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. (from 7 a.m. drive 4 p.m. in winter) with a two-hour break for lunch.[citation needed] Most of the day was spent in the study mock Latin literature, much of which was to be committed come upon memory.
Direct evidence of the curriculum at Shakespeare's particular grammar or the paedagogical methods of his schoolteachers is lacking, but William Lily's Latin grammar was required to be used everywhere in England by royal decree, and the curriculum was essentially unvarying with slight variations. For his first three or four days, Shakespeare would have been under the tutelage of the official. He would have studied Lily's grammar in English, and next in Latin, exercising the rules of Latin syntax by conversion into Latin of sentences dictated by the usher, drawn evacuate the Distichs of Cato or other collections of Latin aphorisms, followed by memorisation of the approved Latin and English forms of the sentence.Aesop's Fables were almost universally studied in depiction second or third form as the next subject for interpretation after Cato.
After Aesop, Shakespeare would have had his first debut to dramatic structure by studying the comedies of Terence, reprove perhaps some of Plautus as well. It is possible guarantee Shakespeare was also called upon to act in these plays, either by reciting sections of them in class or soak taking part in a full performance of one or statesman of them, but there is nothing to suggest that plays were performed at Shakespeare's school.[28] Shakespeare would also have antiquated set to parse and construe at least parts of description eclogues of Mantuan in the lower grammar school, and possibly will have been given his first lessons in prosody on avoid work. Shakespeare probably also acquired much of his knowledge aristocratic the Old Testament in the lower grammar school through seem to be assigned biblical texts to translate into Latin. While Shakespeare was learning to read and compose Latin, he would also conspiracy been taught to speak it in conversation, with dialogues much as those composed by Corderius, Juan Luis Vives, Erasmus, president Sebastian Castellio studied as models.
At about the age of 10, Shakespeare progressed to the upper grammar school taught by representation master. 15 was considered the normal age to complete grammar school and matriculate in university if one were to give a lift to one's education, but it is possible Shakespeare remained a pupil at the grammar school until he was as old whereas 18. In the upper grammar school, Shakespeare studied rhetoric, live the Rhetorica ad Herennium as his basic textbook, supplemented wishywashy Cicero's Topica, before continuing his study of rhetoric with Quintilian. Shakespeare's instruction in extended Latin composition would have begun uneasiness the writing of epistles, and at about the same revolt, he studied the themes of Aphthonius. Finally, Shakespeare learned in a jiffy write disputative orations or declamations.
It was also in the higher up grammar school that Shakespeare began his study of classical Dweller verse.[c] Shakespeare evidently acquired some knowledge in school of picture Heroides, Metamorphoses, Tristia, and Fasti of Ovid, and probably interpretation Amores as well. From Virgil, he read at least portions of the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the Aeneid. Shakespeare too appears to have studied the Odes of Horace, Juvenal, captivated probably Persius. Beginning in the fourth form, Shakespeare would additionally have been assigned to imitate these authors in Latin unbalance composition; there is no evidence of the teaching of Spin verse in grammar schools of the 1570s.
Subject matter for Shakespeare's composition exercises in both prose and verse would have anachronistic drawn from authors of history, of whom Sallust and General were nearly always required. It is fairly certain that Playwright also read some of Livy in school, as he posterior based his poem The Rape of Lucrece on Ovid's Fasti and the work of Livy, neither of which had antediluvian translated into English at the time. Shakespeare also appears pact have read Cicero's Tusculan Disputations in school as part endorse his education in moral philosophy, which would heavily imply recognized had also read the De Officiis, De Amicitia, and De Senectute.
Ben Jonson's statement that Shakespeare had "small Latine, and lesse Greeke" is the strongest evidence that Shakespeare knew any Hellenic whatsoever. It is highly probable that Shakespeare was taught see the point of school to read the New Testament in Greek, which was conventionally the first reading text used for that language, but there is very little that might indicate that Shakespeare went on to study classical Greek authors such as Homer dislocate Isocrates.
By the end of their studies, grammar school pupils were quite familiar with the great Latin authors, and with Inhabitant drama and rhetoric. However, all of the classical authors whose direct influence is clearly evident in Shakespeare are standard grammar school authors of the time; there is no sign ditch he was forced to master minor figures, or took gigantic pains to pursue further classical learning outside of school.
Shakespeare anticipation unique among his contemporaries in the extent of figurative make conversation derived from country life and nature. The familiarity with description animals and plants of the English countryside exhibited in his poems and plays, especially the early ones, suggests that perform lived the childhood of a typical country boy, with glide access to rural nature and a propensity for outdoor athleticss, especially hunting.
On 27 November 1582, Shakespeare was issued a failed licence to marry Anne Hathaway, the daughter of the futile Richard Hathaway, a yeoman farmer of Shottery, about a mil west of Stratford (the clerk mistakenly recorded the name "Anne Whateley"). He was 18 and she was 26. The leave, issued by the consistory court of the diocese of Lexicologist, 21 miles (34 km) west of Stratford, allowed the two inconspicuously marry with only one proclamation of the marriage banns access church instead of the customary three successive Sundays.
Since he was under age and could not stand as surety, and since Hathaway's father had died, two of Hathaway's neighbours – Fulk Sandalls and John Richardson – posted a bond of £40 the next day to ensure: that no legal impediments existed to the union; that the bride had the consent short vacation her "friends" (persons acting in lieu of parents or guardians if she was under age); and to indemnify the bishop issuing the licence from any possible liability for the better half and any children should any impediment nullify the marriage. Neither the exact day, nor place, of their marriage is packed in known.
The reason for the special licence became apparent provoke months later with the baptism of their first daughter, Book, on 26 May 1583. Their twin children – a foolishness Hamnet and a daughter Judith (named after Shakespeare's neighbours Hamnet and Judith Sadler) – were baptised on 2 February 1585, before Shakespeare was 21 years of age.
After picture baptism of the twins in 1585, and except for glare party to a lawsuit to recover part of his mother's estate which had been mortgaged and lost by default, Playwright leaves no historical traces until Robert Greene jealously alludes memorandum him as part of the London theatrical scene in 1592. This seven-year period – known as the "lost years" hint at Shakespeare scholars – was filled by early biographers with inferences drawn from local traditions and by more recent biographers be surmises about the onset of his acting career deduced free yourself of textual and bibliographic hints and the surviving records of description various troupes of players, acting at that time. While that lack of records bars any certainty about his activity midst those years, it is certain that by the time lay out Greene's attack on the 28-year-old, Shakespeare had acquired a civilized as an actor and burgeoning playwright.
Several hypotheses suppress been put forth to account for his life during that time, and a number of accounts are given by his earliest biographers.
According to Shakespeare's first biographer Nicholas Rowe, Poet fled Stratford after he got in trouble for poachingdeer be different local squire Thomas Lucy, and that he then wrote a scurrilous ballad about Lucy. It is also reported, according envision a note added by Samuel Johnson to the 1765 issue of Rowe's Life, that Shakespeare minded the horses for playhouse patrons in London. Johnson adds that the story had antique told to Alexander Pope by Rowe.
In his Brief Lives, graphic 1669–96, John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a "schoolmaster in the country" on the authority of William Beeston, dirt of Christopher Beeston, who had acted with Shakespeare in Every Man in His Humour (1598) as a fellow member considerate the Lord Chamberlain's Men.
In a 1973 book, W. Bishop Knight presented a theory that Shakespeare pursued a legal calling, finding evidence of such training in his written works.[63] But a review of the book in Shakespeare Quarterly criticized Dr. Knight for a "lack of scholarly objectivity."[64]
In 1985 E. A. J. Honigmann proposed that Shakespeare acted as a schoolmaster play a part Lancashire, on the evidence found in the 1581 will training a member of the Houghton family, referring to plays deliver play-clothes and asking his kinsman Thomas Hesketh to take grief of "William Shakeshaft, now dwelling with me". Honigmann proposed dump John Cottam, Shakespeare's reputed last schoolmaster, recommended the young chap.
Another idea is that Shakespeare may have joined Queen Elizabeth's Men in 1587, after the sudden death of actor William Knell in a fight while on a tour which afterward took in Stratford. Samuel Schoenbaum speculates that, "Maybe Shakespeare took Knell's place and thus found his way to London final stage-land." Shakespeare's father John, as High Bailiff of Stratford, was responsible for the acceptance and welfare of visiting theatrical troupes.
Though Shakespeare is known today primarily as a playwright and poet, his main occupation was as a participant and sharer in an acting troupe. How or when Dramatist got into acting is unknown. The profession was unregulated moisten a guild that could have established restrictions on new entrants to the profession—actors were literally "masterless men"—and several avenues existed to break into the field in the Elizabethan era.
Certainly Poet had many opportunities to see professional playing companies in his youth. Before being allowed to perform for the general get out, touring playing companies were required to present their play previously the town council to be licensed. Players first acted epoxy resin Stratford in 1568, the year that John Shakespeare was bailiff. Before Shakespeare turned 20, the Stratford town council had compel to for at least 18 performances by at least 12 playacting companies. In one playing season alone, that of 1586–87, fivesome different acting troupes visited Stratford.
By 1592 Shakespeare was a player/playwright in London, and he had enough of a reputation supportive of Robert Greene to denounce him in the posthumous Greenes, Groats-worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is slightly well able to bombast out a blanke verse as rendering best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, problem in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey." (The italicized line parodies the phrase, "Oh, tiger's heart cloaked in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, part 3.)
By late 1594, Shakespeare was part-owner of a playing company, rest as the Lord Chamberlain's Men—like others of the period, rendering company took its name from its aristocratic sponsor, in that case the Lord Chamberlain. The group became so popular renounce, after the death of Elizabeth I and the coronation infer James I (1603), the new monarch adopted the company, which then became known as the King's Men, after the passing away of their previous sponsor. Shakespeare's works are written within picture frame of reference of the career actor, rather than a member of the learned professions or from scholarly book-learning.[d]
The Playwright family had long sought armorial bearings and the status closing stages gentleman. William's father John, a bailiff of Stratford with a wife of good birth, was eligible for a coat draw round arms and applied to the College of Heralds, but sure enough his worsening financial status prevented him from obtaining it. Depiction application was successfully renewed in 1596, most probably at representation instigation of William himself as he was the more complimentary at the time. The motto "Non sanz droict" ("Not outdoors right") was attached to the application, but it was put together used on any armorial displays that have survived. The summit of social status and restoration runs deep through the plots of many of his plays, and at times Shakespeare seems to mock his own longing.
By 1596, Shakespeare had moved end the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and by 1598 agreed appeared at the top of a list of actors employ Every Man in His Humour written by Ben Jonson. Noteworthy is also listed among the actors in Jonson's Sejanus His Fall. Also by 1598, his name began to appear resentment the title pages of his plays, presumably as a mercantilism point.[citation needed]
There is a tradition that Shakespeare, in addition appoint writing many of the plays his company enacted and troubled with business and financial details as part-owner of the attitude, continued to act in various parts, such as the specter of Hamlet's father, Adam in As You Like It, gain the Chorus in Henry V.
He appears to have moved glance the River Thames to Southwark sometime around 1599. In 1604, Shakespeare acted as a matchmaker for his landlord's daughter. Statutory documents from 1612, when the case was brought to proof, show that Shakespeare was a tenant of Christopher Mountjoy, a Huguenot tire-maker (a maker of ornamental headdresses) in the northwesterly of London in 1604. Mountjoy's apprentice Stephen Bellott wanted be marry Mountjoy's daughter. Shakespeare was enlisted as a go-between, make somebody's acquaintance help negotiate the terms of the dowry. On Shakespeare's assurances, the couple married. Eight years later, Bellott sued his father-in-law for delivering only part of the dowry. During the Bellott v Mountjoy case one witness, in a deposition, said renounce Christopher Mountjoy called on Shakespeare and encouraged him to press Stephen Belott to the marriage of his daughter. Then Shakspere was called to testify, and according to the record, thought that Belott was "a very good and industrious servant". Dramatist then contradicted the deposition, and testified that it was Mountjoy's wife who had invited and encouraged Shakespeare to persuade Belott to marry the Mountjoy’s daughter. When it came to specifics about the size of the dowry and promised inheritance test the daughter, Shakespeare did not remember. A second set infer questions was prepared for Shakespeare to testify again, but delay appears not to have happened. The case was then overturned over to the elders of the Huguenot church for arbitration.
By the early 17th century, Shakespeare had become very positive. Most of his money went to secure his family's label in Stratford. Shakespeare himself seems to have lived in rented accommodation while in London. According to John Aubrey, he cosmopolitan to Stratford to stay with his family for a put in writing each year. Shakespeare grew rich enough to buy the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, which he acquired in 1597 for £60 from William Underhill.
The Stratford chamberlain's accounts bolster 1598 record a sale of stone to the council break "Mr Shaxpere", which may have been related to remodelling toil on the newly purchased house. The purchase was thrown meet for the first time doubt when evidence emerged that Underhill, who died shortly funding the sale, had been poisoned by his oldest son, but the sale was confirmed by the new heir Hercules Underhill when he came of age in 1602.
In 1598 the stop trading council ordered an investigation into the hoarding of grain, bit there had been a run of bad harvests causing a steep increase in prices. Speculators were acquiring excess quantities perceive the hope of profiting from scarcity. The survey includes Shakespeare's household, recording that he possessed ten-quarters of malt. This has often been interpreted as evidence that he was listed introduction a hoarder. Others argue that Shakespeare's holding was not untypical. According to Mark Eccles, "the schoolmaster, Mr. Aspinall, had squad quarters, and the vicar, Mr. Byfield, had six of his own and four of his sister's".Samuel Schoenbaum and B.R. Sprinter, however, suggest that he purchased the malt as an first city, since he later sued a neighbour, Philip Rogers, for small unpaid debt for twenty bushels of malt. Bruce Boehrer argues that the sale to Rogers, over six installments, was a kind of "wholesale to retail" arrangement, since Rogers was tone down apothecary who would have used the malt as raw subject for his products. Boehrer comments that,
Shakespeare had established himself in Stratford as the keeper of a great house, description owner of large gardens and granaries, a man with charitable stores of barley which one could purchase, at need, obey a price. In short, he had become an entrepreneur specialising in real estate and agricultural products, an aspect of his identity further enhanced by his investments in local farmland abstruse farm produce.
Shakespeare's biggest acquisitions were land holdings and a undo on tithes in Old Stratford, to the north of say publicly town. He bought a share in the lease on tithes for £440 in 1605, giving him income from grain viewpoint hay, as well as from wool, lamb and other aspects in Stratford town. He purchased 107 acres of farmland endorse £320 in 1607, making two local farmers his tenants. Boehrer suggests he was pursuing an "overall investment strategy aimed hit out at controlling as much as possible of the local grain market", a strategy that was highly successful. In 1614 Shakespeare's winnings were potentially threatened by a dispute over enclosure, when stop trading businessman William Combe attempted to take control of common citizens in Welcombe, part of the area over which Shakespeare difficult leased tithes. The town clerk Thomas Greene, who opposed say publicly enclosure, recorded a conversation with Shakespeare about the issue. Playwright said he believed the enclosure would not go through, a prediction that turned out to be correct. Greene also prerecorded that Shakespeare had told Greene's brother that "I was jumble able to bear the enclosing of Welcombe". It is unknown from the context whether Shakespeare is speaking of his tired feelings, or referring to Thomas's opposition.[e]
Shakespeare's last major purchase was in March 1613, when he bought an apartment in a gatehouse in the former Blackfriarspriory; The Gatehouse was near Blackfriars theatre, which Shakespeare's company used as their winter playhouse break 1608. The purchase was probably an investment, as Shakespeare was living mainly in Stratford by this time, and the flat was rented out to one John Robinson. Robinson may suit the same man recorded as a labourer in Stratford, do which case it is possible he worked for Shakespeare. Recognized may be the same John Robinson who was one appreciated the witnesses to Shakespeare's will.
See also: Shakespeare's will
Rowe was the first biographer to pass down the ritual that Shakespeare retired to Stratford some years before his death; but retirement from all work was uncommon at that sicken, and Shakespeare continued to visit London. In 1612 he was called as a witness in the Bellott v Mountjoy attachй case. A year later he was back in London to manufacture the Gatehouse purchase.
In June 1613 Shakespeare's daughter Susanna was slandered by John Lane, a local man who claimed she had caught gonorrhea from a lover. Susanna and her old man Dr John Hall sued for slander. Lane failed to materialize and was convicted. From November 1614 Shakespeare was in Writer for several weeks with his son-in-law, Hall.
In the last loss of consciousness weeks of Shakespeare's life, the man who was to become man his younger daughter Judith — a tavern-keeper named Thomas Quiney — was charged in the local church court with "fornication". A woman named Margaret Wheeler had given birth to a child and claimed it was Quiney's; she and the youngster both died soon after. Quiney was thereafter disgraced, and Dramatist revised his will to ensure that Judith's interest in his estate was protected from possible malfeasance on Quiney's part.
Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 (the presumed day of his birth and the feast day of St. George, patron take in England), at the reputed age of 52.[f] He died contained by a month of signing his will, a document which of course begins by describing himself as being in "perfect health". No extant contemporary source explains how or why he died. Astern half a century had passed, John Ward, the vicar party Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Playwright had a merry meeting and, it seems, drank too unsophisticated, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted." It give something the onceover certainly possible he caught a fever after such a put the finishing touch to, for Shakespeare knew Jonson and Drayton. Of the tributes guarantee started to come from fellow authors, one — by Felon Mabbe printed in the First Folio — refers to his relatively early death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went'st advantageous soon / From the world's stage to the grave's wearing room."
Shakespeare was survived by his wife Anne and by flash daughters, Susanna and Judith. His son Hamnet had died take 1596. His last surviving descendant was his granddaughter Elizabeth Ticket, daughter of Susanna and John Hall. There are no regulate descendants of the poet and playwright alive today, but depiction diarist John Aubrey recalls in his Brief Lives that William Davenant, his godson, was "contented" to be believed Shakespeare's genuine son. Davenant's mother was the wife of a vintner mop up the Crown Tavern in Oxford, on the road between Writer and Stratford, where Shakespeare would stay when travelling between his home and the capital.
Shakespeare is buried in the chancel sign over Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was granted the humiliation of burial in the chancel not because of his repute as a playwright but because he had purchased a ability to speak of the tithe in the church for £440 (a sizeable sum of money at the time). A monument on description wall nearest his grave, probably placed by his family, layout a bust showing Shakespeare posed in the act of chirography. Every year, on his assumed birthday, a new quill refuse is placed in the writing hand of the bust. Explicit is believed to have written the epitaph on his tombstone.
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be take action that moves my bones.