Biography of William Shakespeare Essay

William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-in Avon, England. From the year 1594 onward he was an important member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men members of theatrical players. Written records give little information of the way in which Shakespeare’s professional life was his artistry. All that can be said is that over the course of 20 years, Shakespeare wrote plays that intensify the range of human emotion and conflict. Even though birth records don’t exist, church records were found that a William Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity Church on April 26, 1564. From this, it is believed he was born on April 23, 1564, and this is the date known as William Shakespeare’s birthday. William was the third child of John Shakespeare, a leather merchant and Mary Arden. William had two older sisters Joan and Judith, and three younger brothers, Gilbert, Richard and Edmund. Before William’s birth, his father became a successful merchant and held official positions as alderman, an office resembling a mayor. there is no record of Shakespeare attending schools, students have written that he most likely attended the King’s New School in Stratford, which taught reading, writing and the classics. Being a public official’s child, he could have had free tuition if he wanted too ,. But misbelieve regarding his education has led some to raise questions about the authorship of his work and even to wonder if he even was real or a made up character of a great writer whom just made up the name to hide behind the name and keep people wondering . William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582, in Worcester. William was 18 and Anne was 26 she got pregnant of Their first a girl they named Susanna, was born on May 26, 1583. Two years later, on February 2, 1585, twins Hamlet and Judith were born,. Hamlet later died of unknown causes at age 11. By 1592, there is evidence William Shakespeare earned a living as an actor and a playwright in London . In the September 20, 1592 edition of the Stationers’ Register there is an article by London playwright Robert Greene that takes a few jabs at William Shakespeare: â€Å"†¦ there [William Shakespeare] is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers that with his tigers heart wrapped in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene . Students differ on the interpretation of this criticism, but most agree that it was Greene’s way of saying Shakespeare was reaching above his rank, trying to match better known and educated playwrights like Christopher Marlowe . Thomas Nash or Greene himself. In the 1590s, documents show William Shakespeare was a managing partner in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a acting company in London. After the crowning of King James the 1 in 1603, the company changed its name to the King’s Men. the King’s Men company was very popular, and records show that Shakespeare had works published and sold as popular literature. The theater culture in 16th-century in England he was not highly admired by people of high rank. However, many of the nobility were good patrons of the performing arts and friends of the actors. Early in his career, Shakespeare was able to attract the attention of Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, to who he dedicated his first published poems â€Å"Venus and Adonis† (1593) and â€Å"The Rape of Lucrece† (1594). It was a four-day ride by horse from Stratford to London, so it is believed that Shakespeare spent most of his time in the city writing and acting and came home once a year during the 40-day Lenten period, when the theaters were closed. By 1599, William Shakespeare and his business partners built their own theater on the south bank of the Thames River, which they called the globe . Shakespeare was very innovative, adapting the traditional style to his own purposes and creating a freer flow of words. With only small degrees of variation, Shakespeare usually used a metrical pattern consisting of lines of unrhymed words , or blank verse, to compose his plays. At the same time, there are passages in all the plays that come from this and use forms of poetry or simple phrase . With the exception of Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare’s first plays were mostly histories written in the early 1590s. Richard II and † parts 1, 2 and 3 and Henry v dramatize the destructive results of weak or corrupt rulers and have been interpreted by drama historians . Shakespeare also wrote several comedies during his early period: the witty romance A and Much Ado About Nothing,† the charming â€Å"As You Like It,† and Twelfth Night. Other plays, possibly written before 1600, were â€Å"Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors The Taming of the Shrew† and â€Å"The Two Gentlemen of Verona. † DEATH Tradition has it that William Shakespeare died on his birthday, April 23, 1616, though many students believe this is a myth. Church records show he was interred at Trinity Church on April 5, 1616. In his will, he left the bulk of his possessions to his eldest daughter, Susanna. Though entitled to a third of his estate, little seems to have gone to his wife, Anne, whom he didnt seem to care much for This has drawn speculation that she had fallen out of favor, or that the couple was not close.