"To be, or not to be: that is the question."
"Parting is such sweet sorrow."
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
These famous sayings have been quoted by English speakers for hundreds of years and are so well known that they have become part of everyday speech. What is remarkable is that these sayings and many more all come from the pen of one man: the playwright William Shakespeare. The man behind these words was born in England in 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon. While the exact date of his birth is not known, records indicate that he was baptized on April 26, so he was probably born a few days before. His father, John Shakespeare, was a noted tradesman and glove maker who also served as a city official. William Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden, was also of high social standing.
Shakespeare lived during the Elizabethan Age, when Queen Elizabeth I ruled England. Despite religious conflicts and wars with France and Spain, the country prospered under her rule. England became wealthier and more powerful, and as a result, the arts of the Elizabethan Age, including literature and theater, flourished.
In late November of 1582, when he was 18 years old, William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. Their first daughter, Susannah, was born a short while later. Two years after that, Anne gave birth to twins, a son named Hamnet and a daughter named Judith.
There is a gap in the historical record for William Shakespeare’s life during his early twenties. Many experts believe that soon after his marriage, Shakespeare left his family to join a group of traveling actors. It is probable that he worked as an actor for many years before his plays were performed. Undoubtedly this experience helped him in his writing. Scholars have difficulty determining when Shakespeare’s plays were first staged. However, it is generally believed that the first performance of one of his plays was Henry VI, Part One in 1592. He had quickly established himself as a leading actor, playwright, and poet; so much so that a rival referred to him as "an upstart crow," comparing him to the famously loud and annoying bird.
By 1594, at the age of 28, he had settled in London and was working for a theater troupe called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men performed most of Shakespeare’s plays, and the company was so successful that it was able to build its own theater nine years later. In 1599 it opened as the Globe Theater. When the troupe received the patronage of England’s new king, James I, in 1603, it changed its name to the King’s Men. Shakespeare eventually became one of the owners of the Globe Theater and its group of actors.
Shakespeare’s plays have had a profound influence on our culture. Among his 38 plays are some of the greatest works of English literature, and he created some of fiction’s most famous characters, including Hamlet, King Lear, and the star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. His plays generally fall into three categories: histories, comedies, and tragedies.
Many of Shakespeare’s earliest plays were histories, which focused on the lives of English kings. Shakespeare was writing after a significant civil war, called the War of the Roses, between two leading families. At the end of the war in 1485, the House of Tudor had prevailed over the House of York to claim the English throne and continue to control England during Shakespeare’s lifetime. As a result his histories show the Tudor kings in a good light, and kings from the House of York as villains. In Richard III Shakespeare even describes the last king of the House of York as "God’s enemy."
Not all Shakespeare’s plays, however, were based in fact; his comedies took a much more light-hearted approach to story-telling. Our modern understanding of what makes a comedy is very different from that of Shakespeare’s time. While Shakespearean comedies are, as you might expect, filled with humor, they follow certain other conventions as well. The plays typically introduce us to unmarried characters who, by the end of the play, are happily married. Disguises and mistaken identities are usually involved along the way, and confusion reigns for a large part of each work. Another trademark of a Shakespearean comedy is his frequent use of puns and insults to keep the dialogue interesting. However, Shakespeare’s comedies are satisfying not just for their humor. They reassure people that, despite their flaws and the mistakes they make, they can still find true love in a confusing world.
It is Shakespeare’s tragedies that are perhaps the most enduring of all his works. Plays like Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet are as appreciated by modern audiences as they were in Shakespeare’s day. While we sometimes refer to a terrible event or death as a "tragedy," the Shakespearean tragedy has a more specific meaning. In Shakespeare’s tragedies the hero always starts out in a position of prestige, but a flaw in his character leads to his downfall. Macbeth’s ruthless ambition helps him seize the throne of Scotland, but in the end, he is filled with guilt, surrounded by enemies, and beheaded by a rival. Othello’s doubt and jealousy lead to his tragic suicide after he learns that he has suffocated his faithful wife unjustly. In Shakespeare’s greatest play, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, the hero, Hamlet, is fatally poisoned in the process of trying to avenge his father’s murder. By the end of each tragedy, the hero realizes his mistake and dies a wiser person than he was at the beginning.
Shakespeare’s son Hamnet had died in 1596 for unexplained reasons, and his death may have been the inspiration for Hamlet, which was written four years later. The play examines love and grief, and in it, the young prince wrestles with the deepest questions of life. In the play’s most famous speech, Hamlet asks himself, "To be, or not to be: that is the question." Throughout all Shakespeare’s plays, his characters reveal their deepest thoughts in speeches like these, called soliloquies. Alone on stage, they struggle with their decisions and emotions out loud. As a result Shakespeare’s characters can seem as familiar and as vulnerable as the people we know in real life. Some scholars say that in his soliloquies, Shakespeare invented the language of the heart.
Shakespeare is not only known for his plays; his poems are considered equally powerful, particularly his sonnets. Although he didn’t invent this structure, many believe he perfected it. His collection of 154 sonnets was published in 1609 without his permission. Perhaps that’s because in many of these poems, Shakespeare professes his love for "a dark lady," who is never identified. His sonnets were widely read during his life, as they are today, and the rhyme scheme he used has become known as the Shakespearean sonnet.
Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, and was buried inside the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, near the house where he was born. His poetry is still read, and his plays have been translated into dozens of languages. Every year they are performed in many countries all over the world. They have inspired countless novels and been adapted for film and television hundreds of times. Many of the expressions he introduced, like "the mind’s eye" and "a spotless reputation," are included in most English dictionaries. But perhaps the best tribute to Shakespeare’s legacy is that, in 1997, the Globe Theatre was rebuilt so that audiences today could see his plays as they were originally performed. The ideas behind his words are timeless; the appeal of Shakespeare’s writing lies in its remarkable insights into human nature, which remains much the same in our day as it was in his.