William Shakespeare Biography and List of Works

English poet, dramatist, and actor; considered by many to be the greatest dramatist of all time. A number of Shakespeare's plays, such as HAMLET and ROMEO AND JULIET, are among the most famous literary works in the world. Shakespeare was the most popular dramatist of his age and the first to appeal to and to meet with the full approval of a broad and mixed public, embracing almost all levels of society. He possessed a large vocabulary for his day, employing 29,066 different words in his plays. By comparison the average modern English-speaking person uses approximately 2,000 words in everyday speech.

"It may be that the essential thing with Shakespeare is his ease and authority and that you just have to accept him as he is if you are going to be able to admire him properly, in the way you accept nature, a piece of scenery for example, just as it is."
(Ludwig Wittgenstein in Culture and Value, 1980)

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a small country town. The black plague of 1564 killed one out of seven of the town's 1,500 inhabitants. Shakespeare was the eldest son of Mary Arden, the daughter of a local landowner, and her husband John Shakespeare (c. 1530-1601), a glover and wood dealer. John Aubrey (1626-1697) tells in Brief Lives that Shakespeare's father was a butcher and the young William exercised his father's trade, "but when he kill'd a Calfe he would do it in a high style, and make a speech." In 1568 John Shakespeare was made mayor of Stratford and a justice of the peace. His wool business failed in the 1570s, but the family's position was restored in the 1590s by the earnings of William Shakespeare, and in 1596 he was awarded a coat of arms.

Very little is known about Shakespeare early life. He is assumed to have been educated at Stratford Grammar School, and he may have spent the years 1580-82 as a teacher for the Roman Catholic Houghton family in Lancashire. When Shakespeare was 15 a woman from a nearby village drowned in the Avon. Her death was ruled accidental but it may have been a suicide. Later in Hamlet Shakespeare left open the question whether Ophelia died accidentally or by her own hand. At the age of 18, he married a local girl, Anne Hathaway (died 1623), who was eight years his senior. Their first child, Susannah, was born within six months, and twins Hamnet and Judith were born in 1585. Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died in 1596, at the age of 11.

Hamlet - first printed in 1603. Hamlet is Shakespeare's largest drama, based on a lost play known as the Ur-Hamlet. Prince Hamlet, an enigmatic intellectual, mourns both his father's death and his mother's remarriage. His father's ghost appears to him and tells that Claudius, married to Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, poisoned him. Hamlet, fascinated by cruelly witty games, swears revenge. "The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!" He arranges for an old play whose story has parallels to that of Claudius. Hamlet's behaviour is considered insane. He kills the eavesdropping Polonius, the court chamberlain, by thrusting his sword through a curtain. Polonius's son Laertes returns to Denmark to avenge his father's death. Polonius's daughter Ofelia loves Hamlet, but the prince's sadistically brutal behaviour drives her to madness. "Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?" he tells Ophelia who dies by drowning. Before the slaughter that ends the story, Hamlet says to his friend Horatio: "I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart." A duel takes place and ends with the death of Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, and Hamlet, whose final words are "the rest is silence."

According to legend, Shakespeare left Stratford for London to avoid a charge of poaching. After 1582 he probably joined one or several companies of players and became an actor. By 1584 he emerged as a rising playwright in London, and soon became a central figure in London's leading theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain's Company, renamed later as the King's Men. He wrote many great plays for the group. In 1599 a new theatre, called The Globe, was built.

Shakespeare was known in his day as a very rapid writer: "His mind and hand went together," his publishers Heminges and Condell reported, "and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers." Despite all the praise, some writer's were not enthusiastic about his plays. Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) called A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM "the most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life." Voltaire wrote: "Shakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays please only in London and Canada," "Shakespeare is the Corneille of London, but everywhere else he is a great fool..."

"My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late!"
(from Romeo and Juliet)

Romeo and Juliet is based on the lives of real lovers who lived in Verona, Italy, and died for each other in the year 1303. At that time the Capulets and Montagues were among the inhabitants of the town. Shakespeare found the tale in Arthur Brooke's poem 'The Tragical Historye of Romeus and Juliet' (1562). The play has inspired other works, such as Berlioz's dramatic symphony (1839), Tchaikovsky's fantasy-overture (1869-80), and Prokofiev's full-length ballet (1938).

About 1610 Shakespeare returned to his birthplace, where he had a house, called New Place, and lived as a country gentleman. A number of his plays were published during his lifetime, but none of the original dramatic manuscripts have survived. Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616. He bequeathed his "second-best bed" to his wife - at that time the best bed was the grand prize of a forfeited estate. Anne Shakespeare died seven years after her husband. In 1623 a folio edition of Shakespeare's collected works - known as the First Folio- was published.

On Shakespeare's gravestone are four lines of verse. It is not certain that the Bard of Avon wrote the famous epitaph:

Good friend, for Jesus´ sake forbeare
To digg the dust enclosed here!
Blest be ye man that spares thes stones
And curst be he that moves my bones.

See also: Geoffrey Chaucer's drama Troilus and Criseyde, Alexander Pope, Anton Tammsaare, Isaiah Berlin, Eugenio Montale - For further information: William Shakespeare biographies ; The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - There is not much records of Shakespeare´s personal life. Rumours arise from time to time that he did not write his plays, but the real author was Christopher Marlowe, Queen Elizabeth or Edward De Vere (1550-1604), whom T.J. Looney identified in 1920 as the author of Shakespeare's plays. A large body of 'Oxfordians' have since built on this claim. According to some numerologists, Shakespeare wrote The King James Version of the Bible at the age of 46. Their "evidence": Shake is the 46th word of the 46th Psalm, Spear is the 46th word from the end in the 46th Psalm.

Shakespeare also wrote two heroic narrative poems: VENUS AND ADONIS (1593) and LUCRECE (1594)

His sonnets were written earliest by 1598 and published in 1609. The sonnets refer cryptically to several persons, among them a handsome young man, a woman called the 'Dark Lady', and a rival poet.

Film adaptations:

Shakespeare's plays have been adapted into screen some 300 times. Here are just some examples:

• The Taming of the Shrew, 1929, starring Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks
• A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1935, dir. by Max Reinhardt-William Dieterle
• Romea and Juliet, 1935, dir. by George Cukor
• As You Like It, 1936, dir. by Paul Czinner (script adaptation: J.M.Barrie and Robert Cullen)
• Henry V, 1945, dir. by Lawrence Olivier - Hamlet, 1948, dir. by Lawrence Olivier
• Macbeth, 1948, dir. by Orson Welles
• Othello, 1952, dir. by Orson Welles
• Julius Caesar, 1953, dir. by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
• Romeo and Juliet, 1954, dir. by Renato Castellani
• Richard III, 1955, dir. by Lawrence Olivier
• Othello, 1956, dir. by Sergei Jutkevitsh
• Forbidden Planet (based on The Tempest), 1956, dir. by Fred M. Wilcox
• Throne of Blood/The Castle of the Spider's Web/Cobweb Castle (based on Macbeth), 1957, dir. by Akira Kurosawa
• Hamlet, 1964, dir. by Grigori Kozintsev (translation of the play: Boris Pasternak)
• Falstraff, 1965, dir. by Orson Welles
• The Taming of the Shrew, 1967, dir. by Franco Zeffirelli, starring Elisabeth Taylor and Richard Burton
• Romeo and Juliet, 1968, dir. by Franco Zeffirelli
• King Lear, 1970, dir. by Peter Brook
• King Lear, 1970, dir. by Grigori Kozintsev
• Macbeth, 1972, dir. by Roman Polanski
• The Tempest, 1982, dir. by Paul Mazursky
• Ran (based on King Lear), 1985, dir. by Akira Kurosawa
• King Lear, 1987, dir. by Jean-Luc Godard
• Henry V, 1989, dir. by Kenneth Branagh
• Hamlet, 1991, dir. by Franco Zeffirelli
• Prospero's Books, 1991, dir. by Peter Greeneway
• As You Like It, 1992, dir. by Christine Edzard
• Much Ado about Nothing, 1993, dir. by Kenneth Branagh
• Othello, 1995, dir. by Oliver Parker
• Hamlet, 1996, dir. by Kenneth Branagh
• William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 1996, dir. by Baz Luhrman
• Twelfth Night, 1966, dir. by Trevor Nunn
• Looking for Richard, dir. by Al Pacino, 1996
• Shakespeare in Love, dir. by John Madden, 1998 partly based on Romeo and Juliet
• 10 Things I Hate About You, dir. by Gil Junger, 1999; based on The Taming of the Shrew
• William Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, dir. by Michael Hoffman, 1999
• Love's Labour Lost, dir. by Kenneth Branagh, 2000

HENRY VI, PART 1, (1589)
A Midsummer Night's Dream, (1935)
Romea and Juliet, (1935)
As You Like It, (1936)
Henry V, (1945)
Macbeth, (1948)
Othello, (1952)
Julius Caesar, (1953)
Romeo and Juliet, (1954)
Richard III, (1955)
Othello, (1956)
Forbidden Planet, (1956)
Throne of Blood/The Castle of the Spider's Web/Cobweb Castle, (1957)
Hamlet, (1964)
Falstraff, (1965)
The Taming of the Shrew, (1967)
Romeo and Juliet, (1968)
King Lear, (1970)
King Lear, (1970)
Macbeth, (1972)
The Tempest, (1982)
Ran, (1985)
King Lear, (1987)
Henry V, (1989)
Hamlet, (1991)
Prospero's Books, (1991)
As You Like It, (1992)
Much Ado about Nothing, (1993)
Othello, (1995)
Hamlet, (1996)
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, (1996)
Twelfth Night, (1966)
Looking for Richard, dir. by Al Pacino, (1996)
Shakespeare in Love, dir. by John Madden, (1998)
10 Things I Hate About You, dir. by Gil Junger, (1999)
William Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, dir. by Michael Hoffman, (1999)
Love's Labour Lost, dir. by Kenneth Branagh, (2000)