Shakespeare

19th March 1990

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          Shakespeare. This name is not unkown for you my Dearest Reader. But even if his renowned cross centuries, we do not have the date exact of his birth but he should be born on 23 April 1564 at Staford-Upon-Avon and he died on 23 April 1616 in the same town. He was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English literature and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon".

         His extant works, including some collaborations consist of about 38 plays 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, the authorship of some of which is uncertain. His plays have been translated into every major lining language and are performed more often than those of any ohter playwright.

Shakespeare's funerary
monument

         At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of aplaying company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stafford around 1613 at age of 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

        Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of 16th century. Then he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including "Hamlet", "King Lear", "Othello" and "Macbeth", considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.

        Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, John Heminges and Henri Condell, two friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. It was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, prescently, as "not of an age, but for all time".

       Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise until the 19th century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry" in the 20th century. His work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by his new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world. He was known for his mastery of poetic and literary forms, as well as his ability to represent aspects of human nature.

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