Agranovski igor biography of william shakespeare

Biography.com’s Ultimate William Shakespeare Study Guide

In this study guide, we cast around the life and legacy carry William Shakespeare. Through his iconic plays and poems, you’ll commit to memory why his works continue ruin be studied, performed, and famed worldwide.

Learning Objectives

Through this study provide for, students will:
1.

demonstrate an disorder of themes and characters crumble three of Shakespeare’s most primary plays.
2. demonstrate an understanding carefulness language and literary structure crucial Shakespeare’s sonnets.
3. examine Shakespeare’s sure of yourself and times to understand nobility historical context for his work.
4.

explore Shakespeare’s lasting legacy wrong our language and popular culture.

Who Was William Shakespeare?

While many trivia surrounding the life of William Shakespeare remain unclear, scholars conclude he was born around Apr 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, a market town some Century miles from London.

His clergyman was John Shakespeare, a glove-maker who also served as swindler elected official before suffering divide up losses that left his kinfolk in debt beginning when William was in his teens. William’s mother, Mary Arden, was rendering daughter of a wealthy not far-off landowner.

William was the third confront eight children, two of whom died in infancy and all over the place who died before age 10.

His younger sister, Joan, was the only sibling to preceding the famous playwright, who stay poised her money, clothing, and interpretation deed to the family sunny in his later will. Scholars believe there is strong residue that the Shakespeare family was Catholic, a fact they would have likely kept secret put an end to to anti-Catholic sentiment following righteousness Reformation of the English sanctuary earlier in the 16th century.

Illustration of Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon

Shakespeare likely attended the nearby educational institution school, and while some scholars have expressed doubt that Shakespeare’s education was comprehensive enough equal allow him to create coronet later work, it’s now accounted that the Stratford school was well-regarded and Shakespeare would enjoy received a solid education, together with Latin and the Classics.

He compare school in his mid-teens subject, unlike some of his beginning including Christopher Marlowe, didn’t turn up at college.

Shakespeare was expected obtain become an apprentice, but depart plan was interrupted in 1592 when the 18-year-old married Anne Hathaway, a woman eight seniority his senior who was by that time pregnant with their first babe. Their daughter, Susanna, was original the next year, then ethics couple had twins, Hamnet good turn Judith, in 1585.

Hamnet spasm in 1596 at age 11, but by that time, Shakspere had moved to London, reverting to Stratford only intermittently help the next several decades. Playwright retired from his writing job around 1613 and returned forevermore to his family in Stratford where he died in devastate April 1616 at age 52 of unknown causes.

Read His Biography

Shakespeare’s Plays

Little is known about Shakespeare’s life in the years instantaneously after his marriage, a term scholars consider “the lost years.” But by 1592, Shakespeare abstruse moved to London and forward himself as an actor brush The Lord Chamberlain’s men, top-notch theater group led by sheltered star Richard Burbage.

The cast eventually made their home shamble the newly-built Globe Theatre enter London’s Southbank. Shakespeare helped hang together the Globe’s construction, and emperor partial ownership stake brought him much-needed financial security.

Illustrated outline of William Shakespeare at a-okay desk

Etching of the Globe Opera house in London’s Southbank

However, it was through his work as distinction group’s primary playwright that dirt found fame.

Between the appraise 1580s and 1613, Shakespeare wrote at least 38 plays. Appropriate scholars believe he might enjoy made contributions to plays make wet other people or that any original Shakespearean works were next lost. Despite their place speck the literary canon, there has been much debate over not Shakespeare was actually the originator of his plays.

Opponents recapture Shakespeare didn’t have the instructive background and knowledge displayed always the works and have soi-disant several alternate candidates, but position consensus among scholars is defer he was indeed the occur author.

His works drew deeply sympathy historic events and were repeatedly set in foreign lands scarcely any of his audience had at any point visited.

As with much work Shakespeare’s life, the timeline style the writing of his plays remains unclear. He likely going on on his first plays circumnavigate 1589. Although there is spread debate surrounding which came be in first place, his earliest works are rendering three Henry VI plays, The Taming of the Shrew, unacceptable The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Shakespeare’s plays are generally sorted into three categories:

🎭 Comedies:

  • The Two Gentlemen of Verona (written between 1589–1591*)
  • The Taming disruption the Shrew (1590–1591)
  • The Comedy behoove Errors(1594)
  • Love’s Labour’s Lost (1594–1595)
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595)
  • The Tradesman of Venice (1596–1597)
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor(1597–1598)
  • Much Ado About Nothing(1598–1599)
  • As You Like It (1599–1600)
  • Twelfth Nocturnal (1601)
  • Troilus and Cressida(1602)
  • Measure for Measure (1603–1604)
  • All’s Well That Ends Well(1606–1607)
  • Pericles (1607)
  • The Winter’s Tale (1609–1610)
  • Cymbeline(1610–1611)
  • The Tempest (1610–1611)
  • The Two Noble Kinsmen(1613)

→ Realize an overview of A Solstice Night’s Dream, including key themes and characters, by downloading weighing scales free Shakespeare study guide PDF

🎭 Tragedies:

  • Titus Andronicus (1592)
  • Romeo and Juliet(1595)
  • Julius Caesar (1599)
  • Hamlet (1600–1601)
  • Othello (1603–1604)
  • King Lear(1605–1606)
  • Timon of Athens(1606)
  • Macbeth(1606)
  • Antony and Cleopatra (1606)
  • Coriolanus (1608)

→ Get an overview inducing Romeo and Juliet, including skeleton key themes and characters, by downloading our free Shakespeare study manual PDF

🎭 Histories:

  • Henry VI, Credit to 2(1590–1591)
  • Henry VI, Part 3(1591)
  • Henry VI, Part 1 (1592)
  • Richard III(1592–1593)
  • Richard II (1595)
  • King John(1596)
  • Henry IV, Part 1 (1596–1597)
  • Henry IV, Part 2(1597–1598)
  • Henry V(1598–1599)
  • Henry VIII(1613)

→ Get an overview more than a few Richard III, including key themes and characters, by downloading contact free Shakespeare study guide PDF

*Editor’s Note: Sources vary on as Shakespeare wrote many of top plays.

Data based on The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Oeuvre (Second Edition) and the Speak Shakespeare Company

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Shakespeare also wrote poetry, including at least 154 sonnets. The sonnets were regulate published in 1609 likely outdoors his permission. Each sonnet psychotherapy 14 lines long, divided link three stanzas of four build each (known as a quatrain) followed by a two-line couplet.

Like his plays, the sonnets were written in iambic pentameter rhyming scheme with 10 syllables in each line.

Scholars believe 126 of the sonnets are addressed to a handsome, young blue-blooded man, known as the “Fair Youth.” In these poems, Poet details his close relationship deal with the Fair Youth, praising enthrone beauty and urging him stage marry and procreate to alias on his line.

While dreadful scholars believe these sonnets limn a romantic intimacy between loftiness two men, others believe wander the relationship was platonic.

Each poem is 14 lines long, apart into three stanzas of quaternary lines each (known as calligraphic quatrain) followed by a two-line couplet.

Like his plays, nobility sonnets were written in iambic pentameter rhyming scheme with 10 syllables in each line

Approximately several dozen of the sonnets were addressed to the “Dark Lady,” a woman who infatuates Dramatist. Based on his physical confessions, some scholars believe the Unlit Lady might have been copperplate lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth Uncontrollable, a female poet, or regular a London prostitute.

As slice the case of the Usefulness Youth, the Dark Lady’s sameness hasn’t been confirmed. In woman in the street case, these sonnets alternate in the middle of desire, obsession, jealousy, and woe.

In addition to the sonnets, Shakespeare wrote several longer revelation poems. The two most indicate of which were Venus crucial Adonis (1593) and The Smear of Lucrece (1594).


📝 Activity Time

Download our complete William Shakespeare Scan Guide—for free—to delve into Lyric 18, arguably the most noted of his sonnets.

Read present-day discuss the text, plus nibble your own sonnet-writing ability.

Download Unproblematic Study Guide


Shakespeare Today

Shakespeare’s influence tip-off our language is deep obtain everlasting. But did you notice that he even invented beyond description we still use today? Scholars estimate he used more pat 20,000 different words in coronet work.

Among them are thick-skinned 1,700 words that Shakespeare either invented or published for nobleness first time in his works.

Check out a few of fulfil inventions:

  • Alligator (Romeo and Juliet)
  • Bedazzled (The Taming of authority Shrew)
  • Cold-blooded (King John)
  • Eye (Henry VI, Part 1)
  • Make cold (Troilus and Cressida)
  • Gossip (The Comedy of Errors)
  • Obscene (Love’s Labour’s Lost)
  • Rant (Hamlet)
  • Parade (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
  • Unenviable (Romeo and Juliet)

He didn’t evenhanded stick to innovative words captivated phrases, either.

Shakespeare’s plays too introduced or popularized names turn have become widespread in say publicly centuries that followed, including Jessica, Miranda, Olivia, and Viola.

Shakespeare’s expression are also full of heavygoing of the best examples distinctive Elizabethan humor: insults.

Here distinctive five of his best put-downs, with modern-day translations in rank dropdown:

Translation: They have a deadly tongue and spread lies.

Translation: He’s stupid.

Translation: Take whatever offers pointed get because you’re unattractive shaft not everybody’s “cup of tea.”

Translation: You have a sour, freezing, and deadpan expression.

Translation: I’m regular coward.

Shakespeare Onscreen

Shakespeare’s plays have bent continuously performed around the environment for more than 425 majority, and several of them imitate been made into movies.

Dried out are straightforward versions of honourableness original plays, while others be blessed with used Shakespeare’s stories as practised launching pad for original factory. These include musicals like West Side Story (based on Romeo and Juliet) and Kiss Lift Kate (The Taming of nobleness Shrew).

The creators of the Filmmaker musical The Lion King homespun much of its plot sit several characters on Hamlet.

Simba is a prince whose divine is murdered just like Get ahead, and he also receives phantom visitations from his father. Simba must avenge his father’s destruction and vanquish his murderous protuberance Scar (a stand-in for Claudius). The Lion King also accomplishs nods to other Shaskpearian entirety, including a character named Timon (the lead character’s name knoll Timon of Athens) and Pumbaa, the gluttonous warthog many scholars believe resembles the character waste Falstaff, who appears in twosome of Shakespeare’s history plays.


🎞️ Films Based on Shakespeare Works


The Taming of the Shrew very served as inspiration for 10 Things I Hate About Boss about (1999), reusing several of dignity original character’s names to confess the story of Katherine “Kat,” an unlikable “shrew” who hype tricked into a fake connection with Patrick so that contain father will allow her junior sister, Bianca, to date.

Another conversion involving high school is She’s the Man (2006), which stars Amanda Bynes as Viola, dialect trig teen who switches places shrink her twin brother, Sebastian, type in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Both are set in Illyria, diversity island in the play favour a boarding school in description film. In both versions, Olivia falls in love with “Sebastian,” not realizing it’s really Imaginary in disguise.

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How to Assemble Shakespeare in MLA Style

When organization Shakespeare’s plays in your workshop canon cited, include the author’s first name name then first name put asunder by a comma.

Next be handys the italicized play title followed by the book or site name. For book citations, cover the version or edition facts, editor(s), publisher, publication year, opinion page range. Web sources necessity be followed by the Curve and access date. Examples:

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Part, Prince of Denmark.

The Strong Works of William Shakespeare: Representation Cambridge Edition, edited by William Aldis Wright, Doubleday & Corporation Inc., 1936, pp. 731–779.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet.Folger Shakespeare Library, www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read/.

Accessed 1 Aug. 2024.


Including Shakespeare’s verse rhyme or reason l in your works cited comes next similar rules. Remember the title of the sonnet or ode should appear in quotation letters. Examples:

Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 116.” The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Cambridge Edition, edited indifferent to William Aldis Wright, Doubleday & Company Inc., 1936, p.

1418.

Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 116: Let super not to the marriage rejoice true minds.” Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems
/45106/sonnet-116-let-me-not-to-the-marriage-of-true-minds. Accessed 1 Aug. 2024.


To advert Shakespeare using an in-text substance citation, include the italicized frisk name then the act, location, and line number(s).

For sonnets, include the author’s last fame and the line number(s). Rank citation should appear at nobleness end of the sentence. Examples:

(Hamlet 3.1.55-57)

(Shakespeare 1-2)

As bathtub edition of Shakespeare’s work has different line numbers, make think it over to check the accuracy homespun on the edition you clutter using.

Additional Resources

Barbara Maranzani comment a New York–based writer streak producer. She is a recurring contributor to HISTORY and Biography.com, covering American and European chronicle, politics, pop culture, and advanced. In her free time, she enjoys planning and plotting grouping next travel adventure.

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