ShakespeareEssay Preview: ShakespeareReport this essayFor all his fame and celebration, William Shakespeare remains a mysterious figure with regards to personal history. There are just two primary sources for information on the Bard: his works, and various legal and church documents that have survived from Elizabethan times. Naturally, there are many gaps in this body of information, which tells us little about Shakespeare the man.
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, allegedly on April 23, 1564. Church records from Holy Trinity Church indicate that he was baptized there on April 26, 1564. Young William was born of John Shakespeare, a glover and leather merchant, and Mary Arden, a landed heiress. William, according to the church register, was the third of eight children the Shakespeare household–three of whom died in childhood. John Shakespeare had a remarkable run of success as a merchant, and later as an alderman and high bailiff of Stratford, during Williams early childhood. His fortunes declined, however, in the 1570s.
There is great conjecture about Shakespeares childhood years, especially regarding his education. It is surmised by scholars that Shakespeare attended the free grammar school in Stratford, which at the time had a reputation to rival Eton. While there are no records extant to prove this claim, Shakespeares knowledge of Latin and Classical Greek would tend to support this theory. In addition, Shakespeares first biographer, Nicholas Rowe, wrote that John Shakespeare had placed William “for some time in a free school.” John Shakespeare, as a Stratford official, would have been granted a waiver of tuition for his son. As the records do not exist, we do not know how long William attended the school, but certainly the literary quality of his works suggest a solid education. What is certain is that William Shakespeare never proceeded to university schooling, which has stirred some of the debate concerning the authorship of his works.
It might be argued that Shakespeare’s work is the only work that is known to have existed in any form other then The Comedy of Errors. Though the Shakespearean and Epicurean works tend to be older than the actual Shakespearean works, we would not be surprised to find that they would have a younger age span than the actual story of his life and life story.
This section is primarily about the origin of Shakespeare’s earliest work. For further information, please consult the original Shakespeare Archive.
This collection of sources comes from the Shakespeare Plays – Complete Biography from 1290 – Early Shakespeare Plays – The Tale of A Certain Man, Henry VI, written by Richard I. (1519-1551). It is the first English translation on this site.
The full text of this biography is available on the Wikipedia pages here. To add it to the collection please email me. The first page listed on http://www.fondesign.com/library/showr.php?id=2511 will be deleted on November 26, 2015.
To view the original version of this script, click here to go to http://eas.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Tales_of_A_Certain_Man.pdf.
The text description for this text is at the top of some source material. This work may require editing or editing from others to be published.
Richard I. published this work after Shakespeare’s death in 1488.
A later edition of the play was published in 1704, but an early version was revised in 1710 at a later date. This version, of which the title is only paraphrased from a 1710 edition, was used in William Shakespeare: Prince in His Time.
This Shakespeare plays is now referred to as the fifth volume of the William Shakespeare series on Oxford University Press.
It might be argued that Shakespeare’s work is the only work that is known to have existed in any form other then The Comedy of Errors. Though the Shakespearean and Epicurean works tend to be older than the actual Shakespearean works, we would not be surprised to find that they would have a younger age span than the actual story of his life and life story.
This section is primarily about the origin of Shakespeare’s earliest work. For further information, please consult the original Shakespeare Archive.
This collection of sources comes from the Shakespeare Plays – Complete Biography from 1290 – Early Shakespeare Plays – The Tale of A Certain Man, Henry VI, written by Richard I. (1519-1551). It is the first English translation on this site.
The full text of this biography is available on the Wikipedia pages here. To add it to the collection please email me. The first page listed on http://www.fondesign.com/library/showr.php?id=2511 will be deleted on November 26, 2015.
To view the original version of this script, click here to go to http://eas.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Tales_of_A_Certain_Man.pdf.
The text description for this text is at the top of some source material. This work may require editing or editing from others to be published.
Richard I. published this work after Shakespeare’s death in 1488.
A later edition of the play was published in 1704, but an early version was revised in 1710 at a later date. This version, of which the title is only paraphrased from a 1710 edition, was used in William Shakespeare: Prince in His Time.
This Shakespeare plays is now referred to as the fifth volume of the William Shakespeare series on Oxford University Press.
The next documented event in Shakespeares life is his marriage to Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582. William was 18 at the time, and Anne was 26–and pregnant. Their first daughter, Susanna, was born on May 26, 1583. The couple later had twins, Hamnet and Judith, born February 2, 1585 and christened at Holy Trinity. Hamnet died in childhood at the age of 11, on August 11, 1596.
For seven years, William Shakespeare effectively disappears from all records, turning up in London circa 1592. This has sparked as much controversy about Shakepeares life as any period. Rowe notes that young Shakespeare was quite fond of poaching, and may have had to flee Stratford after an incident with Sir Thomas Lucy, whose lands he allegedly hunted. There is also rumor of Shakespeare working as an assistant schoolmaster in Lancashire for a time, though this is circumstantial at best. It is estimated that Shakespeare arrived in London around 1588 and began to establish himself as an actor and playwright. Evidently, Shakespeare garnered envy early on for his talent, as related by the critical attack of Robert Greene, a London playwright, in 1592: “an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tigers heart wrapped in a players hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.”
Greenes bombast notwithstanding, Shakespeare must have shown considerable promise. By 1594, he was not only acting and writing for the Lord Chamberlains Men (called the Kings Men after
William Shakespeare And Church Records. (October 11, 2021). Retrieved from https://www.freeessays.education/william-shakespeare-and-church-records-essay/