Bengt wiinblad biography of william shakespeare

Their first two children—daughters Joan and Margaret—died in infancy, so William was the oldest surviving offspring. Anne died at age 7, and Joan was the only sibling to outlive William. He attended until he was 14 or 15 and did not continue to university. The uncertainty regarding his education has led some people question the authorship of his work.

Hathaway was from Shottery, a small village a mile west of Stratford. Shakespeare was 18, and Anne was 26 and, as it turns out, pregnant. Their first child, a daughter they named Susanna, was born on May 26, Two years later, on February 2, , twins Hamnet and Judith were born. Hamnet died of unknown causes at age One theory is that he might have gone into hiding for poaching game from local landlord Sir Thomas Lucy.

Another possibility is that he might have been working as an assistant schoolmaster in Lancashire. By , there is evidence Shakespeare earned a living as an actor and a playwright in London and possibly had several plays produced. Early in his career, Shakespeare was able to attract the attention and patronage of Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, to whom he dedicated his first and second published poems: Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece Scholars broadly categorize the sonnets in groups based on two unknown subjects that Shakespeare addresses: the Fair Youth sonnets the first and the Dark Lady sonnets the last The identities of the aristocratic young man and vexing woman continue to be a source of speculation.

Some sources describe Shakespeare as a founding member of the company, but whatever the case, he became central to its success. Initially, he was an actor and eventually devoted more and more time to writing. Records show that Shakespeare, who was also a company shareholder, had works published and sold as popular literature. They were printed in in quarto, an eight-page pamphlet-like book.

By the end of , Shakespeare had likely written 16 of his 37 plays and amassed some wealth. At this time, civil records show Shakespeare purchased one of the largest houses in Stratford, called New Place, for his family. However, Shakespeare expert and professor Sir Stanley Wells posits that the playwright might have spent more time at home in Stratford than previously believed, only commuting to London when he needed to for work.

Although the theater culture in 16 th century England was not greatly admired by people of high rank, some of the nobility were good patrons of the performing arts and friends of the actors. By , Shakespeare and several fellow actors built their own theater on the south bank of the Thames River, which they called the Globe Theater.

Julius Caesar is thought to be the first production at the new open-air theater. He continued to live principally in London where he wrote and acted in his plays. During periods such as Lent when theaters were closed and when outbreaks of the plague shut down the city, he likely spent time with his family in Stratford.. Shakespeare was not only writing scripts for his company, often based on stories from mythology, literature and historic accounts, but he was also acting in his own plays.

In , the acting troupe built The Globe from the ruins of The Theater, establishing their own playhouse, which opened in Early in the new century, the bard continued to produce great literature, penning such masterworks as "Troilus and Cressida," "Measure for Measure," "All's Well That Ends Well," and some of his most renowned tragedies, including "Hamlet," "Othello" and "King Lear.

Their first performance for the monarch was "As You Like It. The bard was growing artistically during this era, customizing his mastery of blank verse with wit and intention to enrich his characters' dialogue and enliven the action. He employed such techniques as run-on lines and inflected phrasing to breathe life into a poetic form that tended to the monotone if used within strict parameters of ten syllables per line and alternating stressed and unstressed syllables.

The dialogue of his play "Hamlet," for example, seems animated in comparison to the more strictly patterned lines of earlier works such as "Henry V. During the first decade of the 17th century, Shakespeare published his "Sonnets," a collection of line works that employed the same blank verse format as his plays but with the specific rhyme scheme of three quatrains and a concluding couplet.

Released as a printed collection in , Shakespeare's sonnets had likely been written individually over time, and those within his circle of friends were probably already familiar with some of them. The form the bard employed for his verses became known as the Shakespearean sonnet, as opposed to the traditional Petrarchan sonnet, which consists of an octet and a sestet.

In his last plays, "Cymbeline," "A Winter's Tale," and "The Tempest," the bard test-drove a hybrid genre, the tragicomedy, also known as the romance.

Bengt wiinblad biography of william shakespeare

While they take a more somber, serious tone than such comedies as "Twelfth Night," these tragicomedies end on a positive note, unlike such tragedies as "King Lear. By the time they reopened in , Shakespeare had already retired to his family home in Stratford where he died in at the age of While no verified version of the manner of his death exists today, one account, written by the vicar of Stratford 50 years later, attributes his untimely demise to drinking too hard with his friends John Drayton and Ben Johnson, and catching a fatal fever as a result.

His elevated status meant that he was even more likely to have sent his children, including William, to the local grammar school. William Shakespeare would have lived with his family in their house on Henley Street until he turned eighteen. When he was eighteen, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway , who was twenty-six. It was a rushed marriage because Anne was already pregnant at the time of the ceremony.

Together they had three children. Their first daughter, Susanna , was born six months after the wedding and was later followed by twins Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet died when he was just 11 years old. Shakespeare's career jump-started in London, but when did he go there? We know Shakespeare's twins were baptised in , and that by his reputation was established in London, but the intervening years are considered a mystery.

Shakespeare was the company's regular dramatist, producing on average two plays a year, for almost twenty years. It was about this time that he became a partner in the new Globe Theatre on Bankside just south of the Thames. This proved to be a risky but extremely successful investment. The Globe was bigger and better equipped than any of its rivals, with a huge stage that Shakespeare exploited to the full with productions like Henry V, Julius Caesar and Othello.

As the new king claimed ancestry from Banquo, to have shown him as a murderer of kings would perhaps not have endeared the playwright to James. Whilst most of his remaining days were to be spent in Stratford, William continued to visit London in order to look after his many business interests,. When William died at his home in Stratford on St.

William was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford two days later. Through his will William had sought to keep the estate he had created intact for the benefit of his descendants; unfortunately his direct line ended when his granddaughter died childless in