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In this exclusive, detailed article, you will learn all the extant facts about the life of each member of the William Shakespeare family, starting with his great-grandfather and ending with his grandchildren and granddaughters. Also presented to your attention is the playwright's family tree. The article is written based on a reliable source of information. We hope you find it useful.

RELATIVES OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Shakespeare, Richard(date of life unknown) – William's grandfather on the paternal side. He was a farmer who lived in the village of Snitterfield and had two plots of land. The village was four miles from Stratford, the city in which William was born. Richard Shakespeare leased the land from the father of Mary Arden, the future bride of his son John and the mother of the famous playwright. Richard's second son was named Henry. Richard left in his will the sum of 38 pounds 17 shillings and 0 pence, which was considered a modest income for his position and age. From time to time he paid fines for failing to appear in the estate court and for being a poor steward of cattle and keeping a pig in a yoke, but in the small community of Snitterfield he had known weight. His friend from Stratford, Thomas Atwood, bequeathed him several bulls.

Robert Arden(date of life unknown) – William's grandfather on the maternal side. He was a wealthy landowner, owning two farms and more than 150 acres of land. Robert Arden was, in fact, the wealthiest farmer and largest landowner in Wilmcote (a place near Stratford-upon-Avon). An inventory of his possessions has been preserved. Among them is a farmhouse in Snitterfield, where Richard Shakespeare lived with his family, and a house in Wilmcote. Robert had seven daughters, including Mary.

Shakespeare, Henry(date of birth unknown) – William's uncle, younger brother of John Shakespeare. He continued the family business and remained a farmer in Snitterfield: he rented land for a farm in Snitterfield and in the neighboring parish. Little is known about him. Henry was fined for assaulting one of his close relatives, the husband of one of Mary Arden's sisters, and in his early eighties he was excommunicated for failure to pay tithes. He was also fined for violating the "Cap Law", in other words, he refused to wear a woolen cap on Sundays. He was fined many times for various offenses and repeatedly imprisoned for debts and offenses. Despite his reputation as an eternal insolvent debtor, Henry knew how to save money and take care of it. A witness who was present at his death testified that "there was a great deal of money in his chests"; the barns were also full of grain and hay "to a large sum."

Arden, Mary(Arden, Mary, 1608) - William's mother, youngest daughter of Robert Arden. She married John Shakespeare in 1557. Of all her relatives, she alone was left a certain plot of land according to her father’s will: “all the land in Wilmcote, called Esbys, and all the harvest from it after sowing and plowing.” Mary was healthy and strong, gave birth to many children and lived to be sixty-eight years old. Whether she knew how to read and write is unknown, but her signature is distinguished by clarity and even grace. In any case, she knew how to hold a pen in her hands. Mary Arden died in last days in the summer of 1608, when William Shakespeare had not yet finished Coriolanus, and on September 9 she was buried in the parish church. She survived her husband and four children.

Hathaway, Anna(Hathaway, Anne, 1555(1556)-1623) - William's wife, married him on November 27, 1582. During the marriage, she gave birth to three children - Suzanne and twins Hamnet and Judith. Anne was born into a family of landowners from Shottery, a settlement near Stratford-upon-Avon, but lived in Hewland, an Elizabethan farmhouse. This house was bought by her brother, with late XVIII V. it is known as Anne Hathaway Cottage. She was the eldest daughter in the family, and she was responsible for caring for the younger children. Anna was eight years older than William - in the year of his marriage he turned eighteen, she turned twenty-six. This union was unusual: in the sixteenth century, people married women younger than themselves. We don't know if Anne Hathaway could read or write. It is unlikely that anything could have pushed her to study; in any case, 90 percent of the female population of England at that time were illiterate. Anna was four months pregnant at the time of her marriage. At that time, premarital cohabitation was not something unusual; the main thing was to carry out the engagement ceremony, and the wedding could be postponed “for later.” Their Stratford neighbors married in the same way. Her father left Anne Hathaway 6 pounds 13 shillings and 4 pence - an amount equal to the annual earnings of a blacksmith or butcher, which was quite enough for a dowry. Almost nothing is known about Shakespeare's relationship with his wife. Anne appears to have lived in Stratford while William worked in London, although he remained active in his home town and probably visited home from time to time. William moved to London almost immediately after the birth of his twins, which prompted him to take such a step to leave his family unknown. In his will, he barely said a word about his wife, but Anna Shakespeare was already entitled to a third of his property, and therefore there was no particular reason to mention her in an official document; he was concerned with one detail. An afterthought added to the second version of the will is: “I leave my second best bed and other furniture to my wife.” This detail gave rise to numerous discussions, at the center of which was the burning question: why Shakespeare did not leave his “best” bed for his wife. In fact, the “best” bed in the house was usually reserved for guests. The "second best bed" was the one I used married couple, and it is most correct to consider it as evidence of their union. As one cultural historian puts it, the marriage bed represented “marriage, marital fidelity, self-perception” and was “an extremely important item in the home.” This bed, in fact, could be an heirloom from the Hathaway family farm in Shottery. The fact that he added this clause to the will after further thought indicates his good intentions. It is unlikely that he wanted to last minute humiliate his wife, although some of the playwright's biographers tend to view this as mockery. It is quite interesting, however, that when mentioning his wife, he did not feel the slightest need to use the traditional phrases of a will, “devoted” or “dearly beloved”; he did not need or like conventional sentimentality. He also did not appoint his wife as his executor and instead left everything in the hands of his daughter. Therefore, it can be assumed that Anne Shakespeare may have been incapacitated in some sense by that time. Anna died on August 6, 1623 and was buried in the Church of the Holy Trinity next to her husband. The inscription on the tombstone states that she died "at the age of 67 years." This is the only surviving indication of her date of birth.

Smarter than other women, but if only that!
The wisdom of good Mrs. Hall was worthy of heaven.
The first thing in it is from Shakespeare,
But the second one depends entirely on who she is with now.
is in bliss.
So really, passer-by, you feel sorry for the tears
Mourn the one who cried with everyone else?
She cried and still tried to cheer her up,
Heartily comforting.
Her love lives, her mercy lasts,
And you, passerby, will not shed a tear.

SHAKESPEARE'S GRANDCHILDREN

Both of Shakespeare's daughters had children. One granddaughter was given to Elizabeth by William's youngest daughter, Susanna Hall. Two grandchildren, Richard and Thomas, were given by the eldest, Judith Quiney, unfortunately her firstborn died in infancy (name unknown). Elizabeth was married twice, had no children, and died at the age of 68. Richard died at 21, Thomas at 19, the causes of their deaths are unknown.

SHAKESPEARE'S GENEALOGICAL TREE

Sources: books “Shakespeare. Biography" by Peter Ackroyd and "Shakespeare Encyclopedia", edited by Stanley Wells with the participation of James Shaw (translated by A. Shulgat).

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Dozens of historical documents have been preserved about the life and work of William Shakespeare. He was well known to his contemporaries as a poet and playwright, whose works were repeatedly published and quoted in poetry and prose. Circumstances of his birth, education, lifestyle The overwhelming number of playwrights came from craft families (Shakespeare is the son of a glover, Marlowe is the son of a shoemaker, Ben Jonson is the son of a mason, etc.). Acting troupes were replenished from the children of artisans in England back in the 15th century (perhaps this is due to medieval tradition performances of mysteries in which craft guilds took part). In general, the theatrical profession presupposed a non-aristocratic origin. At the same time, Shakespeare's level of education was sufficient for this activity. He went through an ordinary grammar school (a type of English school where ancient languages ​​and literature were taught), but it gave everything for the profession of a playwright.- everything corresponded to the time when the profession of a playwright was still considered low, but theaters were already bringing considerable income to their owners. Finally, Shakespeare was an actor, an author of plays, and a shareholder in a theater troupe; he spent almost twenty years rehearsing and performing on stage. Despite all this, there is still debate whether William Shakespeare was the author of the plays, sonnets and poems published under his name. Doubts first arose in the mid-19th century. Since then, many hypotheses have emerged that attribute the authorship of Shakespeare's works to someone else.

The list of potential candidates for Shakespeare, of course, is not limited to the names of Bacon, Oxford, Rutland, Derby and Marlowe. There are several dozen of them in total, including such exotic ones as Queen Elizabeth, her successor King James I Stuart, the author of Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe or the English romantic poet George Gordon Byron. But, in essence, it doesn’t matter who exactly these or those “researchers” consider to be the original Shakespeare. It is more important to understand why Shakespeare is repeatedly denied the right to be called the author of his works.

The point is not that nothing is known reliably about Shakespeare’s life. On the contrary, after 200 years of research about Shakespeare, an amazing amount of evidence has been collected, and there is no doubt about the authorship of his works: there is absolutely no historical basis for this.

There are, however, grounds for doubt of an emotional nature. We are the heirs of the romantic turning point that occurred in European culture at the beginning of the 19th century, when new ideas about the work and figure of the poet arose, unknown to previous centuries (it is no coincidence that the first doubts about Shakespeare arose precisely in the 1840s). In the most general form, this new idea can be reduced to two interrelated features. First: the poet is a genius in everything, including ordinary life, and the existence of a poet is inseparable from his work; he is sharply different from the ordinary man in the street, his life is like a bright comet that flies quickly and burns out just as quickly; At first glance it is impossible to confuse him with a person of a non-poetic nature. And secondly: no matter what this poet writes, he will always talk about himself, about the uniqueness of his existence; any of his works will be a confession, any line will reflect his whole life, the body of his texts will be his poetic biography.

Shakespeare does not fit into such a view. In this he is similar to his contemporaries, but only he had the fortune to become, to paraphrase Erasmus, a playwright for all times. We do not demand that Racine, Moliere, Calderon or Lope de Vega live according to the laws of romantic art: we feel that there is a barrier between us and them. Shakespeare's work is able to overcome this barrier. Consequently, Shakespeare is in special demand: in the eyes of many, he must correspond to the norms (or rather, myths) of our time.

However, there is a reliable cure for this misconception - scientific historical knowledge, a critical approach to the popular ideas of the century. Shakespeare is no worse or better than its time, and it is no worse or better than others historical eras— they don’t need to be embellished or remade, you need to try to understand them.

Arzamas offers six of the longest-lived versions of who could write for Shakespeare.

Version No. 1

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) - philosopher, writer, statesman

Francis Bacon. Engraving by William Marshall. England, 1640

Delia Bacon. 1853 Wikimedia Commons

The daughter of a bankrupt settler from American state Connecticut Delia Bacon (1811-1859) was not the first to try to attribute Shakespeare's writings to Francis Bacon, but it was she who introduced this version to the general public. Her faith in her own discovery was so infectious that the famous writers to whom she turned for help - the Americans Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and the British Thomas Carlyle - could not refuse her. Thanks to their support, Delia Bacon came to England and in 1857 published the 675-page The True Philosophy of Shakespeare's Plays. This book said that William Shakespeare was just an illiterate actor and a greedy businessman, and plays and poems under his name were composed by a group of “high-ranking thinkers and poets” led by Bacon - supposedly in this way the author of the New Organon hoped to circumvent censorship restrictions, who did not allow him to openly express his innovative philosophy (Delia apparently knew nothing that plays were also censored in Elizabethan England).

However, the author of “Genuine Philosophy” did not provide any evidence in favor of her hypothesis: the evidence, Delia believed, lay either in the grave of Francis Bacon or in the grave of Shakespeare. Since then, many anti-Shakespeareans are confident that the real author ordered the manuscripts of “Shakespeare’s” plays to be buried with himself, and if they are found, the issue will be resolved once and for all At one time, this led to a veritable siege of historical burial sites throughout England. Delia was the first to apply for permission to open Bacon's grave in St. Albany, but without success..

Delia's ideas found many followers. As evidence, they presented minor literary parallels between the works of Bacon and Shakespeare, which are quite explainable by the unity written culture of that time - and also the fact that the author of Shakespeare's plays had a taste for philosophy and was aware of the life of a number of European royal houses For example, this is the Navarre court depicted in the comedy Love's Labour's Lost..

A significant development of the original hypothesis can be considered attempts to solve the “Bacon cipher”. The fact is that Francis Bacon worked on improving the methods of steganography - secret writing, which, to the eyes of an uninitiated person, looks like a full-fledged message with its own meaning In particular, he proposed a method for encrypting letters of the English alphabet, reminiscent of modern binary code.. Baconians are confident that their hero wrote plays under the guise of Shakespeare not at all for the sake of success with the public - “Romeo and Juliet”, “Hamlet” and “King Lear”, “Twelfth Night” and “The Tempest” served as a cover for some secret knowledge.

Version No. 2

Edward de Vere (1550-1604), 17th Earl of Oxford, courtier, poet, playwright, patron of the arts and sciences

A simple English teacher who called himself a descendant of the Earls of Derby, Thomas Lowney (1870-1944) did not believe that The Merchant of Venice Lowney read this play to his class year after year. could have been written by a person of ignoble origin who had never been to Italy. Having doubts about the authorship of the comedy about Shylock, Lawney picked up an anthology of Elizabethan poetry and discovered that Shakespeare's poem "Venus and Adonis" (1593) was written in the same stanza and the same meter as Edward de Vere's poem "Female Variability" ( 1587). De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, could boast of the antiquity of his family and good acquaintance with Italy, and was known to his contemporaries not only as a poet, but also as the author of comedies (not preserved).

Lowney did not hide the amateurish nature of his research and was even proud of it: “Probably, the problem is still not solved precisely because,” he wrote in the preface to “Shakespeare Identified,” “that until now scientists have been studying it.” Later Oxfordians That is, followers of Lowney's version. The name was taken from the title of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. decided to call on lawyers for help: in 1987 and 1988, in the presence of judges of the US Supreme Court and the London Middle Temple, respectively, followers of Lowney's hypothesis entered into an open debate with Shakespeare scholars (in London, in particular, they were opposed by the most venerable living Shakespeare specialist, Professor Stanley Wells). Unfortunately for the organizers, the judges awarded the victory to the scientists both times. But the Oxfordians managed to oust the Baconians - today the Oxfordian version of anti-Shakespeareanism is the most popular.

Among Lowney's most famous followers was the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, who in his youth leaned towards Baconianism and in 1923, after encountering Shakespeare Identified, converted to Oxfordianism. Thus, in the 1930s, Freud began to develop parallels between the fate of King Lear and the biography of the Earl of Oxford: both had three daughters, and if English count did not care about his own at all, then the legendary British king, by contrast, gave his daughters everything he had. Having fled from the Nazis to London in 1938, Freud wrote Lowney a warm letter and called him the author of a “wonderful book”, and shortly before his death, on the basis that Oxford had lost his beloved father in childhood and allegedly hated his mother for her next marriage, he attributed Hamlet Oedipus complex.

Version No. 3

Roger Manners (1576-1612), 5th Earl of Rutland - courtier, patron of the arts

Belgian socialist politician, teacher French literature and the symbolist writer Célestin Damblon (1859-1924) became interested in the Shakespearean question after learning about a document discovered in one of the family archives in 1908. It showed that in 1613 the butler of Francis Manners, 6th Earl of Rutland, paid a large sum to "Mr. Shakespeare" and his fellow actor Richard Burbage, who designed and painted a witty emblem on the earl's shield to ensure that Manners would make a worthy appearance at the knight's tournament. This discovery alarmed Damblon: he noticed that Francis's elder brother, Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland, died in 1612 - almost the same time that Shakespeare stopped writing for the stage. In addition, Roger Manners was on friendly terms with the Earl of Southampton (the aristocrat to whom Shakespeare dedicated two of his poems and who is considered the main addressee of Shakespeare's sonnets), as well as with the Earl of Essex, whose fall in 1601 indirectly affected the actors of the Globe Theater. In February 1601, Essex attempted to rebel against the queen. The day before, the count's supporters persuaded the actors to stage Shakespeare's old chronicle "Richard II", which dealt with the overthrow of the monarch. The uprising failed, Essex was executed (his accuser was Francis Bacon). Southampton went to prison for a long time. The Globe actors were called for explanations, but this had no consequences for them.. Manners traveled to the countries that served as the setting for many of Shakespeare's plays (France, Italy, Denmark), and even studied in Padua with two Danes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (widespread Danish surnames that time). In 1913, Dumbleon summarized these and other arguments in a book written in French, Lord Rutland is Shakespeare.

Damblon's version also has followers in Russia: for example, Ilya Gililov Ilya Gililov(1924-2007) - literary critic, writer, scientific secretary of the Shakespeare Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences for almost three decades., author of The Play of William Shakespeare, or the Mystery of the Great Phoenix (1997), argued that Shakespeare was written by a group of authors led by the young wife of the Earl of Rutland, Elizabeth, the daughter of the famous courtier, writer and poet Philip Sidney. In this case, Gililov was based on a completely arbitrary adaptation of the Chester collection, which included Shakespeare’s poem “The Phoenix and the Dove” (1601, according to Gililov - 1613). He argued that Rutland, Elizabeth and others composed plays and sonnets for purely conspiracy purposes - to perpetuate their close circle, in which some rituals known only to them were performed. The scientific world, with the exception of a few sharp rebuke, ignored Gililov’s book.

Version No. 4

William Stanley (1561-1642), 6th Earl of Derby, playwright, statesman

William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby. Portrait by William Derby. England, 19th centuryThe Right Hon. Earl of Derby/Bridgeman Images/Fotodom

Abel Lefranc. Circa 1910s Library of Congress

The historian of French literature and specialist on François Rabelais Abel Lefranc (1863-1952) first thought about the chances of William Stanley becoming a candidate for the “real Shakespeare” after the publication of a book by the respected English scholar James Greenstreet entitled “The Previously Unknown Noble Author of the Elizabethan Comedies” (1891). Greenstreet managed to discover a letter dated 1599 signed by George Fenner, a secret agent catholic church, which said that the Earl of Derby could not be useful to Catholics, since he was “busy writing plays for common actors.”

In 1918, Lefranc published the book “Under the Mask of William Shakespeare,” in which he recognized Derby as a much more suitable candidate for Shakespeare than previous contenders, if only because the count’s name was William and his initials coincided with Shakespeare’s. In addition, in private letters he signed the same way as lyrical hero Sonnet 135 - Will, and not Wm and not Willm, as Stratford Shakespeare himself did on surviving documents. Further, Derby was an experienced traveler, in particular closely acquainted with the Navarrese court.

It is not surprising, Lefranc believed, that Henry V contains several extensive inserts in French, which Derby had a good command of. In addition, the specialist on Rabelais believed, the famous image of Falstaff was created under the influence of “Gargantua and Pantagruel,” which had not yet been translated into English in Shakespeare’s time.

For all the ingenuity of these arguments, the Derbyan version had little chance of standing on a par with the Oxfordian one: Lefranc's book was written in French, and by the time it was published, Thomas Lowney (by the way, who called himself a descendant of the Earl of Derby) had already put forward his arguments in favor of Edward de Vere.

Version No. 5

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) - playwright, poet

The son of a shoemaker, born in the same year as Shakespeare and who managed to graduate from Cambridge only thanks to the generosity of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Christopher Marlowe turned out to be almost the only candidate for Shakespeare of ignoble origin. However, Calvin Hoffman (1906-1986), an American advertising agent, poet and playwright, who published the book “The Murder of the Man Who Was Shakespeare” in 1955, attributed Marlowe love affair with the noble Thomas Walsingham, patron of poets and younger brother of the powerful Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State and Chief of the Secret Service. According to Hoffman, it was Thomas Walsingham, who learned that Marlowe was facing arrest on charges of atheism and blasphemy, and decided to save his lover by simulating his murder. Accordingly, in a tavern quarrel in Deptford in 1593, it was not Marlowe who was killed, but some tramp, whose corpse was passed off as the disfigured body of the playwright (he was killed by a dagger in the eye). Marlowe himself, under an assumed name, hastily sailed to France, hid in Italy, but soon returned to England, settling secluded near Scedbury, the estate of Thomas Walsingham in Kent. There he composed “Shakespearean” works, handing over the manuscripts to his patron. He sent them first to a copyist, and then, for production on stage, to the London actor William Shakespeare - a man completely devoid of imagination, but faithful and silent.

Hoffman began his research by counting phraseological parallelisms in the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare, and later became acquainted with the works of the American professor Thomas Mendenhall, who compiled “dictionary profiles” different writers(with the help of a whole team of women who hardworkingly counted millions of words and letters in words). Based on these investigations, Hoffman declared the complete similarity of the styles of Marlowe and Shakespeare. However, most of all these “parallelisms” were not actually such, the other part related to commonly used words and constructions, and a certain layer of obvious parallels testified to a well-known fact: young Shakespeare was inspired by the tragedies of Marlowe, having learned a lot from the author of “Tamerlane the Great,” “ The Jew of Malta" and "Doctor Faustus" Today one can only guess what the creative rivalry between the two Elizabethan geniuses would have resulted in if not for the death of Marlowe in 1593 - by the way, recorded in detail by the royal coroner, whose findings were witnessed by a jury of 16 people..

Attempts to discover a whole group of authors behind Shakespeare’s works have been made more than once, although supporters of this version cannot agree on a specific composition. Here are some examples.

In 1923, H. T. S. Forrest, a British administration official in India, published a book entitled The Five Writers of Shakespeare's Sonnets, in which he spoke about a poetry tournament organized by the Earl of Southampton. For the award announced by the earl in the art of composing sonnets, according to Forrest, five major poets of the Elizabethan era competed at once: Samuel Daniel, Barnaby Barnes, William Warner, John Donne and William Shakespeare. Accordingly, all five are the authors of the sonnets, which, Forrest believed, have since been erroneously attributed to Shakespeare alone. It is characteristic that one of this company, the author of the epic poem "Albion's England" Warner, did not write sonnets at all, and the other, John Donne, resorted to the sonnet form only for composing religious poetry.

In 1931, Gilbert Slater, an economist and historian, published the book “The Seven Shakespeares,” in which he combined the names of almost all the contenders most popular among anti-Shakespeareans. According to his version, the following people participated in the composition of Shakespeare's works: Francis Bacon, the Earls of Oxford, Rutland and Derby, Christopher Marlowe Slater believed that Marlowe was "reborn" to life in 1594 under the name of Shakespeare., as well as Sir Walter Raleigh and Mary, Countess of Pembroke (literary writer and sister of Sir Philip Sidney). Women were not often proposed and proposed for the role of Shakespeare, but for the Countess of Pembroke Slater made an exception: in his opinion, the clear presence of female intuition is marked by “Julius Caesar” and “Antony and Cleopatra”, and also, especially, “As You Like It” which Mary not only wrote, but also portrayed herself in the image of Rosalind.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: daughter Suzanne and twins Hamnet and Judith. Shakespeare's career began between 1585 and 1592, when he moved to London. He soon became a successful actor, playwright, and co-owner of a theater company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. Around 1613, aged 49, he returned to Stratford, where he died three years later. Little historical evidence of Shakespeare's life has been preserved, and theories about his life are created on the basis of official documents and testimonies of his contemporaries, so questions regarding his appearance and religious views are still discussed in the scientific community, and there is also a point of view that the works attributed to him were created by whom something else; it is popular in culture, although rejected by the vast majority of Shakespeare scholars.

Most of Shakespeare's works were written between 1589 and 1613. His early plays are mainly comedies and chronicles, in which Shakespeare excelled considerably. Then came a period of tragedy in his work, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbeth, which are considered among the best in the English language. At the end of his career, Shakespeare wrote several tragicomedies and also collaborated with other writers.

Already during his lifetime, Shakespeare received praise for his works, but he truly became popular only in the 19th century. In particular, the Romantics and Victorians worshiped Shakespeare so much that Bernard Shaw called it "bardolatry." Shakespeare's works remain popular today and are constantly being studied and reinterpreted to suit political and cultural conditions.

His father, John Shakespeare (1530-1601), was a wealthy artisan (glover) who was often elected to various significant public positions. In 1565, John Shakespeare was an alderman, and in 1568 he was a bailiff (head of the city council). He did not attend church services, for which he paid large fines (it is possible that he was a secret Catholic).

Shakespeare's mother, born Mary Arden (1537-1608), belonged to one of the oldest Saxon families. The couple had 8 children in total, William was born third.

It is believed that Shakespeare studied at the Stratford “grammar school”, where he was supposed to gain good knowledge of Latin: the Stratford teacher of Latin language and literature wrote poetry in Latin. Some scholars claim that Shakespeare attended King Edward VI's school in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he studied the works of poets such as Ovid and Plautus, but the school's journals have not survived and nothing can be said for sure.

In 1582, at the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a local landowner, who was 8 years his senior. At the time of their marriage, Anne was pregnant. In 1583, the couple had a daughter, Susan (baptized on May 23), and in 1585, twins: a son, Hamnet, who died at age 11 in August 1596, and a daughter, Judith (baptized on February 2).

There are only assumptions about the further (over seven years) events in Shakespeare's life. The first mention of a London theatrical career dates back to 1592, and the period between 1585 and 1592 is what scholars call Shakespeare's "lost years." Attempts by biographers to learn about Shakespeare's actions during this period have resulted in many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, believed that he left Stratford to avoid prosecution for poaching the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. It is also assumed that Shakespeare took revenge on Lucy by writing several obscene ballads about him. According to another version of the 18th century, Shakespeare began theater career, looking after the horses of London theater patrons. John Aubrey wrote that Shakespeare was a schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars believed that Shakespeare was the teacher of Alexander Naughton from Lancashire, since this Catholic landowner had a certain “William Shakeshaft.” There is little basis for this theory, other than rumors that spread after Shakespeare's death, and, furthermore, "Shakeshaft" is a fairly common surname in Lancashire.

London and theatrical career

It is not known exactly when Shakespeare began writing theatrical works and also moved to London, but the first sources that have reached us that speak about this date back to 1592. This year in the diary of entrepreneur Philip Henslow (English) Russian. mention is made of Shakespeare's historical chronicle Henry VI, which was shown at Henslowe's Rose Theatre. In the same year, a pamphlet by playwright and prose writer Robert Greene was published posthumously, where the latter angrily attacked Shakespeare, without naming his last name, but ironically playing with it - “shake-scene,” paraphrasing a line from the third part of “Henry VI” “ Oh, the heart of a tiger in this woman’s skin!” like “the heart of a tiger in the skin of a performer.” Scholars disagree as to the exact meaning of these words, but it is generally accepted that Greene accused Shakespeare of trying to catch up with highly educated writers ("university minds") such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nash, and Greene himself.

Biographers believe that Shakespeare's career could have begun at any time from the mid-1580s. Since 1594, Shakespeare's plays have only been performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Men. This troupe also included Shakespeare, who at the end of the same 1594 became its co-owner. The troupe soon became one of the leading theater groups in London. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the troupe received a royal patent from the new ruler, James I, and became known as the King's Men.

In 1599, a partnership of group members built a new theater on the south bank of the Thames, called the Globe. In 1608 they also purchased the Blackfriars closed theatre. Records of Shakespeare's real estate purchases and investments indicate that the company made him a wealthy man. In 1597 he bought the second largest house in Stratford, New Place.

Globus theatre"

Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto in 1594. In 1598, his name began to appear on the title pages of publications. But even after Shakespeare became famous as a playwright, he continued to play in theaters. In the 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's works, Shakespeare's name is included in the list of actors who performed the plays Every One Has His Folly (1598) and The Fall of Sejanus (1603). However, his name was absent from the cast lists of Jonson's 1605 play Volpone, which some scholars perceive as a sign of the end of Shakespeare's London career. However, the First Folio of 1623 names Shakespeare as "the chief actor in all these plays", and some of them were first performed after Volpone, although it is not known for certain what roles Shakespeare played in them. In 1610, John Davis wrote that "good Will" played "royal" roles. In 1709, in his work, Rowe recorded the already established opinion that Shakespeare was playing the shadow of Hamlet's father. It was also later claimed that he played the roles of Adam in As You Like It and the Chorus in Henry V, although scholars doubt the veracity of this information.

During his acting and dramatic career, Shakespeare lived in London, but also spent some of his time in Stratford. In 1596, the year after purchasing New Place, he was residing in the parish of St Helena, Bishopgate, on the north side of the Thames. After the Globe Theater was built in 1599, Shakespeare moved to the other side of the river - to Southwark, where the theater was located. In 1604 he moved across the river again, this time to the area north of St Paul's Cathedral, where there were a large number of good houses. He rented rooms from a Huguenot Frenchman named Christopher Mountjoy, a manufacturer of women's wigs and hats.

Last years and death

There is a traditional belief that Shakespeare moved to Stratford a few years before his death. The first Shakespeare biographer to convey this opinion was Rowe. One reason for this may be that London's public theaters were repeatedly closed due to outbreaks of plague, and actors did not have enough work. Complete retirement was rare in those days, and Shakespeare continued to visit London. In 1612, Shakespeare testified in the case of Bellot v. Mountjoy, a trial over the wedding dowry of Mountjoy's daughter Mary. In March 1613 he bought a house in the former parish of Blackfriar; in November 1614 he spent several weeks with his brother-in-law, John Hall.

After 1606-1607, Shakespeare wrote only a few plays, and after 1613 he stopped writing them altogether. He wrote his last three plays with another playwright, possibly John Fletcher, who succeeded Shakespeare as chief playwright of the King's Men.

All of Shakespeare's surviving signatures on documents (1612-1613) are distinguished by very poor handwriting, on the basis of which some researchers believe that he was seriously ill at that time.

Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616. It is traditionally believed that he died on his birthday, but there is no certainty that Shakespeare was born on April 23. Shakespeare was survived by his widow, Anne (d. 1623), and two daughters. Susan Shakespeare had been married to John Hall since 1607, and Judith Shakespeare married winemaker Thomas Quiney two months after Shakespeare's death.

In his will, Shakespeare left most of his real estate his eldest daughter Susan. After her, it was to be inherited by her direct descendants. Judith had three children, all of whom died without marrying. Susan had one daughter, Elizabeth, who married twice but died childless in 1670. She was the last direct descendant of Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's will, his wife is mentioned only briefly, but she was already supposed to receive a third of her husband's entire estate. However, it indicated that he was leaving her “my second best bed,” and this fact led to many different assumptions. Some scholars consider this an insult to Anne, while others argue that the second best bed is the marital bed, and therefore there is nothing offensive about it.

Three days later, Shakespeare's body was buried in Stratford's St. Trinity.

Some time before 1623, a painted bust of Shakespeare was erected in the church, showing him in the act of writing. Epitaphs in English and Latin compare Shakespeare to the wise King of Pylos, Nestor, Socrates and Virgil.

There are many statues of Shakespeare around the world, including funerary monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.

Creation

Shakespeare's literary heritage is divided into two unequal parts: poetic (poems and sonnets) and dramatic. V. G. Belinsky wrote that “it would be too bold and strange to give Shakespeare a decisive advantage over all the poets of mankind, as a poet himself, but as a playwright he is now left without a rival whose name could be placed next to his name.”

The question of periodization

Researchers of Shakespeare's work (Danish literary critic G. Brandes, publisher of the Russian complete works of Shakespeare S. A. Vengerov) at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, based on the chronology of the works, presented his spiritual evolution from a “cheerful mood”, faith in the triumph of justice , humanistic ideals at the beginning of the journey until disappointment and the destruction of all illusions at the end. However, in recent years, an opinion has emerged that inferring the identity of an author from his works is a mistake.

In 1930, Shakespeare scholar E. C. Chambers proposed a chronology of Shakespeare's work according to genre criteria; it was later corrected by J. McManway. Four periods were distinguished: first (1590-1594) - early: chronicles, Renaissance comedies, “tragedy of horror” (“Titus Andronicus”), two poems; the second (1594-1600) - Renaissance comedies, the first mature tragedy (Romeo and Juliet), chronicles with elements of tragedy, ancient tragedy (Julius Caesar), sonnets; third (1601-1608) - great tragedies, ancient tragedies, “dark comedies”; fourth (1609-1613) - drama-fairy tales with a tragic beginning and happy ending. Some Shakespeare scholars, including A. A. Smirnov, combined the first and second periods into one early one.

Dramaturgy

Most playwrights of the period co-authored their works, and critics believe that Shakespeare also co-wrote some of his plays; This mainly applies to early and late works. Some works, such as Titus Andronicus and the early history plays, are not clearly co-authored, while The Two Noble Kinsmen and the lost play Cardenio are. Evidence obtained from the texts also suggests that some works were reworked by other writers in relation to the original text.

Some of Shakespeare's earliest works are Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI, written in the early 1590s, a period when historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date, but textual scholars suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona also date back to Shakespeare's early career. His first chronicles, most likely based on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, presented the destructive results of the rule of weak and corrupt rulers and served to some extent to justify the rise of the Tudor dynasty. Shakespeare's early plays were influenced by the work of other Elizabethan playwrights, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, the tradition of medieval drama, and the plays of Seneca. The Comedy of Errors is also based on a classical model; no sources have been found for The Taming of the Shrew, although it is related to another play of a similar name played in London theaters in the 1590s and may have folkloric roots.

In the mid-1590s, Shakespeare made a transition from comedies that were mocking and farcical in style to romantic works. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty blend of romance, fairytale magic and low-class life. Shakespeare's next romantic comedy, The Merchant of Venice, features a portrait of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, which reflects the racial prejudices of the Elizabethan English. The witty play Much Ado About Nothing, the beautiful depiction of provincial life As You Like It, and the lively hilarity of Twelfth Night (a play) complement Shakespeare's range of comedies. After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy in his chronicles Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. His characters become more complex and tender, he switches very deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, so that his mature works achieve narrative diversity. This period began and ended with tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous story of love and death of a girl and a boy, and Julius Caesar, based on Plutarch's Comparative Lives.

At the beginning of the 17th century, Shakespeare wrote several so-called "problem plays": "Measure for Measure", "Troilus and Cressida" and "All's Well That Ends Well", as well as a number of the most famous tragedies. Many critics believe that the tragedies of this period represent the peak of Shakespeare's work. Hamlet, the title character of one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, is perhaps the playwright's most explored character; This is especially true of the famous soliloquy, which begins “To be or not to be, that is the question.” Unlike the introverted Hamlet, the hesitant hero, the heroes of subsequent tragedies, King Lear and Othello, suffer from too hasty decisions. Often Shakespeare's tragedy is built on the shortcomings or fatal actions of the heroes that destroy him and his loved ones. In Othello, the villain Iago brings the title character's jealousy to a point, and he kills his innocent wife. In King Lear, the old king makes the fatal mistake of abandoning his right to rule, which leads to horrific events such as the murder of Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia. In Macbeth, Shakespeare's shortest and most condensed tragedy, uncontrolled ambition drives Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful king and usurp the throne, and are ultimately destroyed by the realization of their guilt. In this play, Shakespeare adds an element of the supernatural to the tragic structure. His last major tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, are considered by some critics to contain some of his finest poetry.

In the final period of his work, Shakespeare turned to the genre of romance or tragicomedy and completed three major plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, as well as, together with another playwright, the play Pericles. The works of this period are less gloomy than the tragedies that preceded them, but more serious than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and deliverance from troubles. Some researchers believe that these changes arose from Shakespeare's changing outlook on life, which became more relaxed, but perhaps the plays simply reflected the theatrical fashion of the time. Shakespeare's two other surviving plays were written by him in collaboration, possibly with John Fletcher: Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen.

Lifetime productions

It is not yet known exactly for which theater companies Shakespeare wrote his early plays. Thus, on the title page of the 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus it is indicated that the play was staged by three various groups. After the plague of 1592-1593, Shakespeare's plays were already staged by him own company at the Theater and Curtain in Shoreditch north of the Thames. The first part of Henry IV was staged there. After a quarrel with its owner, the company left the Playhouse and built the Globe Theater on the south side of the Thames, in Southwark, the first theater built by actors for actors. The Globe opened in the fall of 1599, and one of the first plays staged there was Julius Caesar. Most most famous plays Shakespeare's works written after 1599 were produced for the Globe, including Hamlet, Othello and King Lear.

Shakespeare's troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, had a special relationship with King James I, especially after it was renamed the King's Men in 1603. Although records of productions are sparse, it is possible to speak of 7 productions of Shakespeare's plays at court between 1 November 1604 and 31 October 1605, including two productions of The Merchant of Venice. After 1608 they began performing at the Blackfriars indoor theater in the winter and working at the Globe in the summer. Good premises, combined with royal patronage, allowed Shakespeare to introduce more complex devices into the props of his plays. For example, in Cymbeline, Jupiter descends “with thunder and lightning, sitting on an eagle: He throws lightning. Ghosts fall to their knees."

Shakespeare's troupe included such famous actors as Richard Burbage, William Kemp, Neri Condell and John Heminges. Burbage was the original leading actor in many of Shakespeare's plays, including Richard III, Hamlet, Othello and King Lear. Popular comic actor William Kemp played Pietro in Romeo and Juliet and Dogwood in Much Ado About Nothing, among other characters. At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, he was replaced by Robert Armin, who played such roles as Touchstone from As You Like It and the Fool from King Lear. In 1613, Henry Wotton reported on the production of the play Henry VIII. On June 29, during the production of this performance, the cannon misfired and set fire to the thatched roof of the building, so that the entire theater burned down. This fact allows us to establish with good accuracy the time when the play was written.

First publications

It is believed that half (18) of Shakespeare's plays were published in one way or another during the playwright's lifetime. The most important publication of Shakespeare's heritage is rightfully considered the 1623 folio (the so-called “First Folio”), published by Edward Blount and William Jaggard as part of the so-called “Chester Collection”; printers Worrall and Col. This edition includes 36 plays by Shakespeare - all except Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen. It is this publication that underlies all research in the field of Shakespearean studies.

This project was made possible thanks to the efforts of John Heminge and Henry Condell, friends and colleagues of Shakespeare. The book is preceded by a message to readers on behalf of Heminge and Condell, as well as a poetic dedication to Shakespeare by playwright Ben Jonson, who also contributed to the publication of the First Folio.

Poems

In 1593 and 1594, when theaters were closed due to the plague, Shakespeare wrote two erotic poems, Venus and Adonis and Lucretia Dishonored. These poems were dedicated to Henry Risley, Earl of Southampton. In Venus and Adonis, the innocent Adonis rejects Venus's sexual advances; whereas in Lucretia Dishonored the virtuous wife Lucretia is raped by Tarquin. Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses, the poems show guilt and the terrible consequences of uncontrolled love. Both poems were popular and were republished several times during Shakespeare's lifetime. The third poem, “A Lover's Complaint,” in which a girl complains about a seductive deceiver, was published in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. Currently, most scholars accept that Shakespeare wrote “A Lover's Complaint.” The poem "The Phoenix and the Dove", published in 1601 by Robert Chester in Love's Martyr, tells the story of the sad death of the mythological phoenix and his beloved, the faithful dove. In 1599, two sonnets by Shakespeare in Shakespeare's name, but without his consent, in The Passionate Pilgrim.

Sonnets

A sonnet is a poem of 14 lines. In Shakespeare's sonnets, the following rhyme scheme is adopted: abab cdcd efef gg, that is, three quatrains with cross rhymes, and one couplet (a type introduced by the poet Earl of Surrey, executed under Henry VIII).

In total, Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, and most of them were created in the years 1592-1599. They were first printed without the author's knowledge in 1609. Two of them were published back in 1599 in the collection “The Passionate Pilgrim”. These are sonnets 138 and 144.

The entire cycle of sonnets falls into separate thematic groups:

Sonnets dedicated to a friend: 1-126

Chanting a Friend: 1-26

Trials of Friendship: 27-99

The bitterness of separation: 27-32

First disappointment in a friend: 33-42

Longing and fears: 43-55

Growing alienation and melancholy: 56-75

Rivalry and jealousy of other poets: 76-96

“Winter” of separation: 97-99

A Celebration of Renewed Friendship: 100-126

Sonnets dedicated to a dark-skinned lover: 127-152

Conclusion - the joy and beauty of love: 153-154

Sonnet 126 breaks canon - it has only 12 lines and a different rhyme pattern. Sometimes it is considered a division between two conventional parts of the cycle - sonnets dedicated to friendship (1-126) and addressed to the “dark lady” (127-154). Sonnet 145 is written in iambic tetrameter instead of pentameter and is different in style from the others; sometimes it is referred to as early period and identify its heroine with Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway (whose surname, perhaps as a pun on “hate away,” is presented in the sonnet).

Style

The language of Shakespeare's first plays is the language common to plays of this period. This stylized language does not always allow the playwright to reveal his characters. Poetry is often laden with complex metaphors and sentences, and the language is more conducive to recitation than to live acting. Eg, solemn speeches Titus Andronicus, according to some critics, often slows down the action; The language of the characters in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” seems unnatural.

Soon, however, Shakespeare begins to adapt the traditional style to his own purposes. The opening soliloquy of Richard III is derived from the self-talk of Vice, a traditional character in medieval drama. At the same time, Richard's powerful monologues would later develop into the monologues of Shakespeare's later plays. All plays mark the transition from a traditional style to a new one. Throughout his later career, Shakespeare combines them, and one of the most successful examples of mixing styles is Romeo and Juliet. By the mid-1590s, the time of the creation of Romeo and Juliet, Richard II and A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's style becomes more natural. Metaphors and figurative expressions are increasingly consistent with the needs of drama.

The standard poetic form used by Shakespeare is blank verse, written in iambic pentameter. The blank verse of the early and later plays differ significantly. The early one is often beautiful, but, as a rule, at the end of the line either the entire sentence or its semantic part ends, which creates monotony. After Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to modify it by breaking the sentence at the end of a line. The use of this technique gives poetry power and flexibility in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet. For example, Shakespeare uses it to convey Hamlet's shocked feelings:

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting

That wouldn't let me sleep. Methought I lay

Worse than the mutes in the bilboes. Rashly-

And prais’d be rashness for it-let us know

Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well…

It was as if there was a struggle in my soul,

Preventing me from sleeping; I had to lie down

Harder than a convict. Suddenly, -

Praise of surprise: we are reckless

Sometimes it helps where it dies

Deep intent...

Hamlet, act 5, scene 2, 4-8. Translation by T. Shchepkina-Kupernik.

In the plays that followed Hamlet, the poetic style continued to vary, especially in the emotional passages of his later tragedies. Literary critic Bradley described the style as "more concentrated, faster, more varied, with less repetition." Towards the end of his career, Shakespeare used a variety of techniques to achieve similar effects. He used techniques such as enjambment, unstructured pauses and stops, and various unusual variations in sentence construction and length. In many cases, the listener must figure out the meaning of the sentence himself. In late romantic plays, long and short sentences are contrasted with each other, the subject and object of the action are swapped, words are omitted, which creates a sense of spontaneity.

Shakespeare combined the art of poetry with an understanding of the practical details of theatrical production. Like all playwrights of the time, he dramatized stories from sources such as Plutarch and Holinshead. But the original source did not remain unchanged; Shakespeare introduced new and changed old plot lines so that the full complexity of the narrative was revealed to the audience. With the growth of Shakespeare's skill, his characters began to emerge more clearly and acquire distinctive features speech. However, his later plays are more reminiscent of his earlier creations. In his later romantic works, he deliberately returned to an artificial style in order to emphasize the illusory nature of the theater.

Influence

Shakespeare's works seriously influenced the theater and literature of the following years. In particular, he expanded the playwright's scope of work with characterization, plot, language, and genre. For example, before Romeo and Juliet, romance was never considered a worthy theme for tragedy. Soliloquies were primarily used to inform viewers of events that had occurred; Shakespeare began to use them to reveal the character of the character and his thoughts. His works greatly influenced subsequent poets. Poets of the Romantic era tried to revive Shakespeare's verse drama, but did not have great success. The critic George Steiner called all English drama from Coleridge to Tennyson "weak variations on Shakespearean themes."

Shakespeare influenced writers such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner and Charles Dickens. His influence also extended to Herman Melville; his Captain Ahab from Moby Dick is a classic tragic hero inspired by King Lear. Scientists estimate that 20,000 musical works associated with the works of Shakespeare. Among them are 2 operas by Giuseppe Verdi, “Othello” and “Falstaff,” the original sources of which are the plays of the same name. Shakespeare also inspired many artists, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites. The Swiss artist Henry Fuseli, a friend of William Blake, even translated the play Macbeth into German. The developer of the theory of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, relied on Shakespearean psychology, in particular on the image of Hamlet, in his theories about human nature.

In Shakespeare's time, english grammar, spelling and pronunciation were less standardized than they are today, and his language helped shape modern English. He is the most cited author by Samuel Johnson in A Dictionary of the English Language, the first work of its kind. Expressions such as “with bated breath” (“The Merchant of Venice”) and “a foregone conclusion” (“Othello”) have entered modern everyday English speech.

Reputation and criticism

Although Shakespeare was not considered a great playwright during his lifetime, he received praise for his works. In 1598, the clergyman writer Francis Merys singled him out among English writers as “the most excellent” in both comedy and tragedy. And the authors of the collection of plays "Parnassus" compared Shakespeare with Chaucer, Gower and Spenser. In the First Folio, Ben Jonson called Shakespeare: "The soul of the age, the applause-worthy, the delight, the wonder of our stage."

In the period between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, the ideas of classicism prevailed. Therefore, critics of the time generally ranked Shakespeare lower than John Fletcher and Ben Jonson. Thomas Riemer, for example, condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic and the tragic. However, the poet and critic John Dryden spoke highly of Shakespeare, saying of Jonson: "I admire him, but I love Shakespeare." Still, for several decades, Riemer's views dominated, but in the 18th century, critics began to admire him and call him a genius. This reputation was only strengthened by a number of published scientific works devoted to the work of Shakespeare, for example the work of Samuel Johnson in 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790. By 1800, he was firmly established as the national poet of England. In the XVIII and 19th centuries Shakespeare also received the name outside the British Isles. He was supported by such writers as Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal and Victor Hugo.

During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge; the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays into German in the spirit of German romanticism. In the 19th century, admiration for Shakespeare often bordered on adulation and adulation. “This King Shakespeare,” wrote the essayist Thomas Carlyle in 1840, “is above us all, noblest, gentlest, yet strong; indestructible." Bernard Shaw, however, criticized the romantic cult of Shakespeare, using the word “bardolatry.” He argued that Ibsen's naturalistic drama made Shakespeare obsolete.

Russian writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy in his critical essay “On Shakespeare and Drama”, based on a detailed analysis of some of the most popular works Shakespeare, in particular: “King Lear”, “Othello”, “Falstaff”, “Hamlet”, etc. - sharply criticized Shakespeare’s abilities as a playwright.

After the modernist revolution of art at the beginning of the 20th century, Shakespeare was enrolled in the ranks of the avant-garde. German expressionists and Moscow futurists staged his plays. Marxist playwright and director Bertolt Brecht developed epic theater under the influence of Shakespeare. The poet and critic T. S. Eliot opposed Shaw, saying that Shakespeare's "primitivism" made his work modern. Eliot led the movement of researchers to examine Shakespeare's characters in more detail. In the 1950s, a wave of new approaches replaced modernism and marked the beginning of “postmodern” Shakespeare studies. In the 1980s, Shakespeare's work began to be studied by representatives of such movements as structuralism, feminism, new historicism, African-American studies and queer studies.

Doubts surrounding Shakespeare's personality

Some 230 years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship of works attributed to him. Alternative candidates were proposed, mostly well-born and well-educated, such as Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Theories have also been proposed according to which a group of writers was hiding behind the pseudonym “Shakespeare”. However, the traditional theory is generally accepted in the academic community, and interest in the non-Stratfordian movement, especially the Oxfordian theory, continues into the 21st century.

Non-Strafordians consider one of the proofs of their theory that no evidence of Shakespeare’s education has survived, while the vocabulary of his works, according to various estimates, ranges from 17,500 to 29,000 words, and also reveals a deep knowledge of history and literature. Since not a single manuscript written by Shakespeare's hand has survived, opponents of the traditional version conclude that his literary career was falsified.

Religion

Some scholars believe that members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, although the Catholic religion was banned at the time. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, came from a Catholic family. The main evidence of Shakespeare's belonging to a Catholic family is considered to be the will of John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in the attic of his house. The original document has been lost, and scholars disagree on its authenticity. In 1591 the authorities reported that he did not appear in the church. In 1606, the name of Shakespeare's daughter Suzanne was included in the list of those who did not show up for Easter communion in Stratford. Scholars have found evidence in Shakespeare's plays both for and against his Catholicism, but the truth has not been established with absolute certainty.

Great English poet and playwright. His works have become classics of world literature and are still relevant today. He was able to introduce more than 2,000 new words into the speech of the English people. The life of this man is full of legends and mysteries, and scientists still cannot reveal the secret of his personality. Could a simple, poorly educated London theater actor write such brilliant works? Was this the right person hiding under the mask of this talented poet? Despite the fact that the answers have not yet been found, he is rightfully considered the best playwright in world history. William Shakespeare is a Stratford man.

Brief biography of William Shakespeare

As can be learned from church records, the future poet was born and baptized in 1564 in small town Stratford on the River Avon north of London. His family had many children and was considered one of the wealthiest in the city. The father was engaged in moneylending and was subsequently elected to public office, and the mother came from a noble Saxon family.

Historians believe that William attended a local grammar school, where he had the opportunity to study several languages, in particular Greek and Latin. Subsequently, his family goes bankrupt and the future poet will have to leave school and get a job. A few years later, he marries his beloved Anne Hathaway, who will bear him three children.

In 1587, leaving his family, he moved to London, joining one of the theater troupes. In the capital, he was offered various roles in the theater, but, according to researchers, there was no success in the acting field. Having started writing plays for the troupe, he gained popularity among the public. Even the royal nobility came to his plays at the theater.

Then William becomes one of the owners of the capital's Globus Theater, where his performances were staged. The theater subsequently burned down due to cannon fire during one of the productions.
In 1612, after 25 years of work in London, the playwright returned to his hometown and dies a few years later.

Creation

Today, it is rare that a person has not encountered the work of William Shakespeare in one way or another. “Romeo and Juliet”, “King Lear”, “Macbeth”, “Hamlet” - this is a small list of works that are rightfully considered masterpieces of world literature. One play, Macbeth, is performed every four hours around the world.

First period creative life glorified Shakespeare as a writer of comedies. They show optimism, human virtues and cheerfulness predominate. The plays end with a happy ending. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “The Taming of the Shrew”, “The Merchant of Venice” appeared from the poet’s pen in the 90s of the 16th century. Historical chronicles also appeared - “Julius Caesar”, “Henry V”. Even in them, Shakespeare managed to show the triumph of the main character and make the ending happy.

One of the most heartfelt works, Hamlet, appeared in the second period of Shakespeare's work. All the heroes of this tragedy suffer, deceive, expose, and the ending turns out to be the complete opposite of what the poet wrote in the first period of his creativity. But at the same time, Shakespeare manages to convey that in tragedy the heroes are able to live and fight. Life has the ability to convey meaning to anyone who seeks it.

In his last works, Shakespeare managed to skillfully combine elements of comedy and tragedy, as well as add fabulousness. Some of the most popular fantasy plays were Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. These plays were mostly written for an audience that wanted fun and entertainment.

1. For several centuries, historians have debated whether Shakespeare was the real author of his works. The only handwritten source was his will, in which not a word was mentioned about the works. Another reason was his lack of education. Many literary scholars agree that man could not live without higher education write such deep, versatile works that are still considered world masterpieces.

2. There is no autograph in any of Shakespeare's works. Scientists have to be content with only six signatures that they found in official documents - wills and mortgages on real estate.

3. Many historians believe that Shakespeare committed suicide. The theme of suicide is involved in many of his works. Lady Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Cleopatra, Hamlet - all these heroes either committed suicide or monologued about suicide.

4. Some biographers question his traditional sexuality because he dedicated several of his love poems and sonnets to an unknown man. He lived in London for a long time without a family, and his best friend was Count Henry Risley, who is depicted in many portraits in women's dresses and with makeup on his face.

5. It is believed that the playwright was afraid of his own exhumation and this was reflected in some of his works. That is why on his tombstone it is written: “Friend, for the Lord's sake, do not swarm the remains taken by this land; He who is untouched is blessed throughout the ages, And cursed is he who touches my ashes.”