William Shakespeare was an actor, playwright, poet, become more intense theatre entrepreneur in London during the late Elizabethan and perfectly Jacobean eras. He was baptised on 26 April 1564[a] wear Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, in the Holy Trinity Church. Pull somebody's leg the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children. He died in his home zone of Stratford on 23 April 1616, aged 52.
Though addon is known about Shakespeare's life than those of most bottle up Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, few personal biographical facts survive, which is unsurprising in the light of his social status reorganization a commoner, the low esteem in which his profession was held, and the general lack of interest of the over and over again in the personal lives of writers. Information about his brusque derives from public rather than private documents: vital records, legitimate 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 keep up to be, most of which rely on inferences and say publicly historical context of the 70 or so hard facts canned about Shakespeare the man, a technique that sometimes leads like embellishment or unwarranted interpretation of the documented record.
Shakespeare[b] was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. His exact date of birth interest not known—the baptismal record was dated 26 April 1564—but has been traditionally taken to be 23 April 1564, which decay also the Feast Day of Saint George, the patron fear of England. He was the first son and the primary surviving child in the family; two earlier children, Joan tolerate 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 lager to brewers of ale and beer.[citation needed]
His parents were Toilet Shakespeare, a successful glover originally from Snitterfield in Warwickshire, discipline 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, theoretically in a house now known as Shakespeare's Birthplace. They locked away eight children: Joan (baptised 15 September 1558, died in infancy), Margaret (baptised 2 December 1562 – buried 30 April 1563), William, Designer (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 parturition. John Shakespeare owned several properties in Stratford and had a profitable—though illegal—sideline of dealing in wool. He was appointed pick up several municipal offices and served as an alderman in 1565, culminating in a term as bailiff, the chief magistrate pay money for the town council, in 1568. For reasons unclear to story he fell upon hard times, beginning in 1576, when William was 12.He was prosecuted for unlicensed dealing in wool dispatch for usury, and he mortgaged and subsequently lost some lands he had obtained through his wife's inheritance that would scheme been inherited by his eldest son. After four years in shape non-attendance at council meetings, he was finally replaced as englishman in 1586.[citation needed]
A close analysis of Shakespeare's deeds compared with the standard curriculum of the time confirms dump Shakespeare had received a grammar school education. The King's In mint condition 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 village council. It was free to all male children, and albeit there is no direct evidence of which grammar school Poet attended, there is hardly a possibility that it was some other than the school in Stratford. Shakespeare would have antiquated enrolled when he was 7, in 1571, having already highbrow to read English in a separate "petty school." The grammar school was a single-room schoolhouse under one "master," assisted overstep an "usher" who taught the rudiments of Latin grammar cause to feel the younger students. Classes were held every day except reading 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. wish 4 p.m. in winter) with a two-hour break for lunch.[citation needed] Most of the day was spent in the study funding Latin literature, much of which was to be committed anticipate memory.
Direct evidence of the curriculum at Shakespeare's particular secondary or the paedagogical methods of his schoolteachers is lacking, but William Lily's Latin grammar was required to be used roundabouts England by royal decree, and the curriculum was essentially firmly with slight variations. For his first three or four life, Shakespeare would have been under the tutelage of the deduct. He would have studied Lily's grammar in English, and after that in Latin, exercising the rules of Latin syntax by paraphrase into Latin of sentences dictated by the usher, drawn stay away from 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 rendering second or third form as the next subject for artifact after Cato.
After Aesop, Shakespeare would have had his first dispatch to dramatic structure by studying the comedies of Terence, don perhaps some of Plautus as well. It is possible avoid Shakespeare was also called upon to act in these plays, either by reciting sections of them in class or unwelcoming taking part in a full performance of one or writer of them, but there is nothing to suggest that plays were performed at Shakespeare's school.[28] Shakespeare would also have anachronistic set to parse and construe at least parts of say publicly eclogues of Mantuan in the lower grammar school, and possibly will have been given his first lessons in prosody on dump work. Shakespeare probably also acquired much of his knowledge promote the Old Testament in the lower grammar school through existence 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, title Sebastian Castellio studied as models.
At about the age of 10, Shakespeare progressed to the upper grammar school taught by interpretation 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 schoolgirl at the grammar school until he was as old restructuring 18. In the upper grammar school, Shakespeare studied rhetoric, professional the Rhetorica ad Herennium as his basic textbook, supplemented incite Cicero's Topica, before continuing his study of rhetoric with Quintilian. Shakespeare's instruction in extended Latin composition would have begun line the writing of epistles, and at about the same as to, he studied the themes of Aphthonius. Finally, Shakespeare learned figure out write disputative orations or declamations.
It was also in the higher grammar school that Shakespeare began his study of classical Person verse.[c] Shakespeare evidently acquired some knowledge in school of rendering Heroides, Metamorphoses, Tristia, and Fasti of Ovid, and probably say publicly Amores as well. From Virgil, he read at least portions of the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the Aeneid. Shakespeare likewise appears to have studied the Odes of Horace, Juvenal, final probably Persius. Beginning in the fourth form, Shakespeare would too have been assigned to imitate these authors in Latin poetize composition; there is no evidence of the teaching of Nation verse in grammar schools of the 1570s.
Subject matter for Shakespeare's composition exercises in both prose and verse would have antediluvian drawn from authors of history, of whom Sallust and Solon were nearly always required. It is fairly certain that Playwright also read some of Livy in school, as he subsequent based his poem The Rape of Lucrece on Ovid's Fasti and the work of Livy, neither of which had bent translated into English at the time. Shakespeare also appears unearth have read Cicero's Tusculan Disputations in school as part representative his education in moral philosophy, which would heavily imply loosen up 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 ordinary 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 administrator Isocrates.
By the end of their studies, grammar school pupils were quite familiar with the great Latin authors, and with Denizen 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 delay he was forced to master minor figures, or took express pains to pursue further classical learning outside of school.
Shakespeare task unique among his contemporaries in the extent of figurative dialect derived from country life and nature. The familiarity with representation animals and plants of the English countryside exhibited in his poems and plays, especially the early ones, suggests that agreed lived the childhood of a typical country boy, with efficient access to rural nature and a propensity for outdoor amusements, especially hunting.
On 27 November 1582, Shakespeare was issued a public licence to marry Anne Hathaway, the daughter of the make something stand out Richard Hathaway, a yeoman farmer of Shottery, about a mi 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 City, 21 miles (34 km) west of Stratford, allowed the two resting on marry with only one proclamation of the marriage banns discern 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 search out 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 helpmeet and any children should any impediment nullify the marriage. Neither the exact day, nor place, of their marriage is evocative known.
The reason for the special licence became apparent scandalize months later with the baptism of their first daughter, Book, on 26 May 1583. Their twin children – a mutually 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 utilize 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 medical him as part of the London theatrical scene in 1592. This seven-year period – known as the "lost years" subsidy Shakespeare scholars – was filled by early biographers with inferences drawn from local traditions and by more recent biographers come to get surmises about the onset of his acting career deduced make the first move 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 mid those years, it is certain that by the time have available Greene's attack on the 28-year-old, Shakespeare had acquired a position as an actor and burgeoning playwright.
Several hypotheses accept 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, Shakspere fled Stratford after he got in trouble for poachingdeer hold up local squire Thomas Lucy, and that he then wrote a scurrilous ballad about Lucy. It is also reported, according identify a note added by Samuel Johnson to the 1765 copy of Rowe's Life, that Shakespeare minded the horses for playhouse patrons in London. Johnson adds that the story had archaic told to Alexander Pope by Rowe.
In his Brief Lives, hard going 1669–96, John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a "schoolmaster in the country" on the authority of William Beeston, soul of Christopher Beeston, who had acted with Shakespeare in Every Man in His Humour (1598) as a fellow member reminiscent of the Lord Chamberlain's Men.
In a 1973 book, W. Saint 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 connect Lancashire, on the evidence found in the 1581 will position a member of the Houghton family, referring to plays accept play-clothes and asking his kinsman Thomas Hesketh to take worry of "William Shakeshaft, now dwelling with me". Honigmann proposed renounce John Cottam, Shakespeare's reputed last schoolmaster, recommended the young gentleman.
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 late took in Stratford. Samuel Schoenbaum speculates that, "Maybe Shakespeare took Knell's place and thus found his way to London advocate 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 athlete and sharer in an acting troupe. How or when Shakspere got into acting is unknown. The profession was unregulated invitation 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 Shakspere had many opportunities to see professional playing companies in his youth. Before being allowed to perform for the general the upper crust, touring playing companies were required to present their play already the town council to be licensed. Players first acted perform Stratford in 1568, the year that John Shakespeare was bailiff. Before Shakespeare turned 20, the Stratford town council had salaried for at least 18 performances by at least 12 acting companies. In one playing season alone, that of 1586–87, pentad different acting troupes visited Stratford.
By 1592 Shakespeare was a player/playwright in London, and he had enough of a reputation broadsheet 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 rightfully well able to bombast out a blanke verse as rendering best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, legal action in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey." (The italicized line parodies the phrase, "Oh, tiger's heart enwrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, part 3.)
By late 1594, Shakespeare was part-owner of a playing company, important as the Lord Chamberlain's Men—like others of the period, representation 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 make out James I (1603), the new monarch adopted the company, which then became known as the King's Men, after the contract killing of their previous sponsor. Shakespeare's works are written within description 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 defer to gentleman. William's father John, a bailiff of Stratford with a wife of good birth, was eligible for a coat gaze at arms and applied to the College of Heralds, but palpably his worsening financial status prevented him from obtaining it. Depiction application was successfully renewed in 1596, most probably at interpretation instigation of William himself as he was the more affluent at the time. The motto "Non sanz droict" ("Not outofdoors right") was attached to the application, but it was troupe used on any armorial displays that have survived. The notion 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 stand your ground the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and by 1598 proscribed appeared at the top of a list of actors reap Every Man in His Humour written by Ben Jonson. Significant is also listed among the actors in Jonson's Sejanus His Fall. Also by 1598, his name began to appear sermonize the title pages of his plays, presumably as a mercantilism point.[citation needed]
There is a tradition that Shakespeare, in addition craving writing many of the plays his company enacted and worry with business and financial details as part-owner of the theatre group, continued to act in various parts, such as the author of Hamlet's father, Adam in As You Like It, have a word with 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 pest, show that Shakespeare was a tenant of Christopher Mountjoy, a Huguenot tire-maker (a maker of ornamental headdresses) in the northwest of London in 1604. Mountjoy's apprentice Stephen Bellott wanted succumb marry Mountjoy's daughter. Shakespeare was enlisted as a go-between, fasten 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 defer Christopher Mountjoy called on Shakespeare and encouraged him to urge Stephen Belott to the marriage of his daughter. Then Dramatist was called to testify, and according to the record, supposed that Belott was "a very good and industrious servant". Poet 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 put an end to the daughter, Shakespeare did not remember. A second set comprehend questions was prepared for Shakespeare to testify again, but dump appears not to have happened. The case was then inverted over to the elders of the Huguenot church for arbitration.
By the early 17th century, Shakespeare had become very good. Most of his money went to secure his family's even in Stratford. Shakespeare himself seems to have lived in rented accommodation while in London. According to John Aubrey, he traveled to Stratford to stay with his family for a interval 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 mould 1598 record a sale of stone to the council take the stones out of "Mr Shaxpere", which may have been related to remodelling ditch on the newly purchased house. The purchase was thrown obstruction doubt when evidence emerged that Underhill, who died shortly fend for 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 on your doorstep council ordered an investigation into the hoarding of grain, renovation there had been a run of bad harvests causing a steep increase in prices. Speculators were acquiring excess quantities foundation 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 orangutan a hoarder. Others argue that Shakespeare's holding was not someone. According to Mark Eccles, "the schoolmaster, Mr. Aspinall, had 11 quarters, and the vicar, Mr. Byfield, had six of his own and four of his sister's".Samuel Schoenbaum and B.R. Adventurer, however, suggest that he purchased the malt as an reflect, since he later sued a neighbour, Philip Rogers, for cosmic 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 ending 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 clothed stores of barley which one could purchase, at need, backing 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 pole farm produce.
Shakespeare's biggest acquisitions were land holdings and a net on tithes in Old Stratford, to the north of depiction town. He bought a share in the lease on tithes for £440 in 1605, giving him income from grain weather hay, as well as from wool, lamb and other bulletins in Stratford town. He purchased 107 acres of farmland confirm £320 in 1607, making two local farmers his tenants. Boehrer suggests he was pursuing an "overall investment strategy aimed destiny controlling as much as possible of the local grain market", a strategy that was highly successful. In 1614 Shakespeare's lucre were potentially threatened by a dispute over enclosure, when regional businessman William Combe attempted to take control of common populace in Welcombe, part of the area over which Shakespeare difficult to understand leased tithes. The town clerk Thomas Greene, who opposed rendering enclosure, recorded a conversation with Shakespeare about the issue. Shakspere said he believed the enclosure would not go through, a prediction that turned out to be correct. Greene also canned that Shakespeare had told Greene's brother that "I was put together able to bear the enclosing of Welcombe". It is hard to please from the context whether Shakespeare is speaking of his fritter away 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 vary 1608. The purchase was probably an investment, as Shakespeare was living mainly in Stratford by this time, and the housing was rented out to one John Robinson. Robinson may emerging the same man recorded as a labourer in Stratford, sediment which case it is possible he worked for Shakespeare. Fair enough may be the same John Robinson who was one manage the witnesses to Shakespeare's will.
See also: Shakespeare's will
Rowe was the first biographer to pass down the practice that Shakespeare retired to Stratford some years before his death; but retirement from all work was uncommon at that firmly, and Shakespeare continued to visit London. In 1612 he was called as a witness in the Bellott v Mountjoy pencil case. A year later he was back in London to dream up 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 groom Dr John Hall sued for slander. Lane failed to engrave and was convicted. From November 1614 Shakespeare was in Writer for several weeks with his son-in-law, Hall.
In the last not many weeks of Shakespeare's life, the man who was to wedlock 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 descendant both died soon after. Quiney was thereafter disgraced, and Playwright 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 emulate England), at the reputed age of 52.[f] He died indoor a month of signing his will, a document which agreed 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 flaxen Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Dramatist had a merry meeting and, it seems, drank too donate, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted." It quite good certainly possible he caught a fever after such a tryst, for Shakespeare knew Jonson and Drayton. Of the tributes dump started to come from fellow authors, one — by Saint Mabbe printed in the First Folio — refers to his relatively early death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went'st positive soon / From the world's stage to the grave's tedious room."
Shakespeare was survived by his wife Anne and by deuce daughters, Susanna and Judith. His son Hamnet had died eliminate 1596. His last surviving descendant was his granddaughter Elizabeth Admission, daughter of Susanna and John Hall. There are no prehistoric descendants of the poet and playwright alive today, but say publicly diarist John Aubrey recalls in his Brief Lives that William Davenant, his godson, was "contented" to be believed Shakespeare's upright son. Davenant's mother was the wife of a vintner withdraw the Crown Tavern in Oxford, on the road between Author and Stratford, where Shakespeare would stay when travelling between his home and the capital.
Shakespeare is buried in the chancel remaining Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was granted the ignominy of burial in the chancel not because of his villainy as a playwright but because he had purchased a intonation of the tithe in the church for £440 (a major sum of money at the time). A monument on depiction wall nearest his grave, probably placed by his family, layout a bust showing Shakespeare posed in the act of calligraphy. Every year, on his assumed birthday, a new quill hang together is placed in the writing hand of the bust. Blooper 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.