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The Life and Works of William Shakespeare

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The Life and Works Of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (baptised April 26, 1564 - died April 23, 1616) was an English poet and playwright widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language, and as the world's preeminent dramatist.

He wrote in all approximately 38 plays and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems. Already a popular writer in his own lifetime, Shakespeare became increasingly celebrated after his death and his work adulated by numerous prominent cultural figures through the centuries.

He is often considered to be England's national poet and is sometimes referred to as the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard") or the "Swan of Avon".

It is believed that Shakespeare produced most of his work between 1586 and 1612, although the exact dates and chronology of the plays attributed to him are under considerable debate, as is the authorship of the works attributed to him. He is counted among the very few playwrights who have excelled in both tragedy and comedy, and his plays combine popular appeal with complex characterisation, poetic grandeur and philosophical depth.

Shakespeare's works have been translated into every major living language,and his plays are continually performed all around the world. In addition, Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in the literature and history of the English-speaking world, and many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages.

William Shakespeare (also spelled Shakspere, Shaksper, Shaxper, and Shake-speare, due to the fact that spelling in Elizabethan times was not fixed and absolute]) was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, the son of John Shakespeare, a successful glover and alderman from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, a daughter of the gentry.

His birth is assumed to have occurred at the family house on Henley Street. Shakespeare's christening record dates to April 26 of that year. Because christenings were performed within a few days of birth, tradition has settled on April 23 as his birthday.

By 1592, Shakespeare was a playwright in London and by late 1594, Shakespeare was an actor, writer and part-owner of a playing company, known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

The group became popular enough that after the death of Elizabeth I and the coronation of James I (1603), the new monarch adopted the company and it became known as the King's Men. Shakespeare's writing shows him to indeed be an actor, with many phrases, words, and references to acting, but there isn't an academic approach to the art of theatre that might be expected.

By 1596, Shakespeare had moved to the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and by 1598 he appeared at the top of a list of actors in Every Man in His Humour written by Ben Jonson. Also by 1598, his name began to appear on the title pages of his plays, presumably as a selling point.

A number of Shakespeare's plays have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature. He wrote tragedies, histories, comedies and romances, which have been translated into every major living language,in addition to being continually performed around the world.

As was common in the period, Shakespeare based many of his plays on the work of other playwrights and reworked earlier stories and historical material. For example, Hamlet (c. 1601) is probably a reworking of an older, lost play (the so-called Ur-Hamlet), and King Lear is an adaptation of an earlier play, also called King Lear.

Shakespeare's plays tend to be placed into three main stylistic groups:

early romantic comedies and histories (such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and Henry IV, Part 1)
middle period romantic comedies and tragedies (including his most famous tragedies, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear, as well as "problem plays" such as Troilus and Cressida)
later romances (such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest).

There are many controversies about the exact chronology of Shakespeare's plays. In addition, the fact that Shakespeare did not produce an authoritative print version of his plays during his life accounts for part of the textual problem often noted with his plays, which means that for several of the plays there are different textual versions.

As a result, the problem of identifying what Shakespeare actually wrote became a major concern for most modern editions. Textual corruptions also stem from printers' errors, compositors' misreadings, or wrongly scanned lines from the source material.

Additionally, in an age before standardised spelling, Shakespeare often wrote a word several times in a different spelling, contributing further to the transcribers' confusions. Modern scholars also believe Shakespeare revised his plays throughout the years, sometimes leading to two existing versions of one play.

William Shakespeare Audio Books

William Shakespeare information supplied courtesy of wikipedia under the GNU Free Documentation License

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emedlin May 25, 2012 @ 11:39 am | delete

This is great, I love the links to the audio books!

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Edutopia Feb 14, 2012 @ 6:43 pm | delete

Funny to think that Shakespeare was one of the first big publishers of work in proper modern English (the very same English that we speak today) yet because even modern English has continued to evolve his works are not very accessible to a lot of people these days.

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Nov 7, 2010 @ 12:14 am | delete

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The Life and Works of William Shakespeare

The Life and Works Of William Shakespeare

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