WillShakespeare

WillShakespeare.com

Biography

(The Flower Portrait)

Shakespeare was a playwright, an actor, a businessman, and a risk-taker. He was an entrepreneur. He wrote and acted when writers and actors were not admired. His writing single-handedly caused his acting troupe to operate under the patronage of England's monarchy. Today, Will is perhaps known as the greatest writer in the English language. In Will's own time, however, was he as popular? Robert Greene, an extremely popular contemporary of Shakespeare, who made enormous financial sums writing, had been educated at both Oxford and Cambridge. It came as a shock to him that an actor who had not been educated at University could be such a successful writer: Greene insulted Shakespeare in 1592 when he penned, "supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." Greene wouldn't have been jealous of an unsuccessful writer, showing that as early as 1592, when Shakespeare was only 28 years old, he was already an established, popular, and successful playwright in London.

As with any person, national events would highly affect Shakespeare's life, especially when the plague came to London in 1592 and the theatres closed their doors. So, with no audiences to watch his full-length plays, he wrote poems. The first from Shakespeare's pen was Venus and Adonis. This narrative poem was loved by the younger audiences and critics alike. Venus and Adonis went through no less than ten editions in Shakespeare's lifetime. The Rape of Lucrece followed, also with success. Then in 1594, Shakespeare joined a new acting company, Lord Chamberlain's Men, and the theatres reopened. For the remainder of his career, he stayed with the same troupe. Will Kempe and Richard Burbage were perhaps the two most famous actors of the time, and they both were part of the Lord Chamberlain's Men. John Heminges was the agent for the company, and Henry Condell was another actor. It was actually Heminges and Condell who, in 1623, published Shakespeare's works in the First Folio.

Shakespeare's acting troupe found success in a place called simply "The Theatre" which was owned by Richard Burbage. Although Burbage owned The Theatre, he didn't own the land. When the lease came up on the land where the theater was, the landowner wanted to demolish The Theatre. The acting troupe hired a salty group of men to help them actually dismantle the theatre overnight and move the wood and parts of the theatre off of the leased land. Thus, the new Globe Theatre was born. The Globe was owned by Shakespeare, Heminges, Kempe, Phillips, and Pope, along with the Burbage brothers, and construction was completed in 1599. From that time on, Shakespeare's plays were produced there.

Will's plays at times modeled after his own life experiences. Hamlet, one of Will's most famous plays, was first performed in 1600, and was first published in 1603. His son Hamnet died in 1596 at the age of 11. Will's father died in 1601. Those events no doubt played a role as Shakespeare wrote. In his book Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt points out "in Hamlet, it is the death not of a son but of a father that provokes the hero's spiritual crisis. If the tragedy swelled up from Shakespeare's own life-if it can be traced back to the death of Hamnet-something must have made the playwright link the loss of his child to the imagined loss of his father" (311). Shakespeare, a Catholic, would have been at the burial of his son; a Protestant minister would have given the ceremony at the burial service. The English monarchy had declared Catholicism illegal. But to Catholics, proper rituals needed to take place to save the soul. At the graveside of Hamnet in 1596, John Shakespeare and his son Will would have been very aware of the situation. John even signed his name to an illegal document, a "spiritual testament," as many Catholics did at the time, under pain of death if discovered, to beseech his family and friends to assist him at the time of his death with "satisfactory works" to deliver his soul from torments. Shakespeare lived during this impossible time; he wrote Hamlet while dwelling on the thoughts of his son's death and the imminent death of his father. (Greenblatt 317).

Shakespeare was only 33 years old when he bought New Place in 1597, a magnificent residence in Stratford. New Place had many bedrooms, at least 10 fireplaces, 2 barns, and beautiful gardens. It was the second largest house in Stratford. In the year following the death of his father, Will purchased more land in Stratford. In 1602, he paid £320 for over 100 acres in Old Stratford, (just north of Stratford-upon-Avon) and another quarter acre with a cottage and garden, which was located just across from New Place. Then in 1605, Will paid £440, a large sum of money, for interest in a grain lease in Stratford that would being him £60 per year. He was already thinking of his retirement and had just over 10 years left to his life.

Queen Elizabeth had loved the theatre during her life. When she passed away on March 24, 1603, the Chamberlain's Men had lost their patron. James VI King of Scotland was crowned King James I, King of England after her death. He too, was a fan of the theatre, and Shakespeare's troupe changed their name to The King's Men. They earned a fantastic living acting out the plays of Shakespeare. With their earnings, the troupe bought in 1608 the Blackfriars Theatre. In 1609, Shakespeare's Sonnets were published, probably without Will's consent. The King's Men were also the most successful acting troupe in the land, and kept a busy schedule operating out of both the Globe Theatre and Blackfriars. During a production of Henry VIII at The Globe on June 29, 1613, fire caught in the theatre (due to a cannon shot during a flourish in the play) and The Globe burned to the ground. It was rebuilt the following year, as Will turned 50 years old.

The marriage of Will's daughter Judith to Thomas Quiney in February of 1616 caused Will some consternation. One month after the wedding, March of 1616, an unmarried lady in Stratford died during childbirth. Quiney confessed to being the father, and escaped further punishment from the courts by paying 5 shillings to the poor. That same month, Will signed his last will and testament. Shakespeare passed away April 23, 1616, 52 years to the day of his birth, and was buried in a ceremony on April 25, 1616 in the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford, the same place he was baptised as a newborn baby under a registry dated April 26, 1564, "Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere."

1564 - 1616, April 23

This Biography written by WillShakespeare.com. Ideas and background for this abbreviated biography taken in part from the book Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt, published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2004. Apologies to Mr. Greenblatt for our inability to do justice to his brilliant work.