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History of William Shakespeare
Considered the greatest
English-speaking writer in history and known as England’s national poet,
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) has had more theatrical works performed than
any other playwright. To this day, countless theater festivals around the world
honor his work, students memorize his eloquent poems and scholars reinterpret
the million words of text he composed. They also hunt for clues about the life
of the man who inspires such “bardolatry” (as George Bernard Shaw derisively
called it), much of which remains shrouded in mystery. Born into a family of
modest means in Elizabethan England, the “Bard of Avon” wrote at least 37 plays
and a collection of sonnets, established the legendary Globe theater and helped
transform the English language.
Shakespeare’s
Childhood and Family Life
William Shakespeare was born in
Stratford-upon-Avon, a bustling market town 100 miles northwest of London, and
baptized there on April 26, 1564. His birthday is traditionally celebrated on
April 23, which was the date of his death in 1616 and is the feast day of St.
George, the patron saint of England. Shakespeare’s father, John, dabbled in
farming, wood trading, tanning, leatherwork, money lending and other
occupations; he also held a series of municipal positions before falling into
debt in the late 1580s. The ambitious son of a tenant farmer, John boosted his
social status by marrying Mary Arden, the daughter of an aristocratic
landowner. Like John, she may have been a practicing Catholic at a time when
those who rejected the newly established Church of England faced persecution.
Did
You Know?
Sources from William Shakespeare's
lifetime spell his last name in more than 80 different ways, ranging from
“Shappere” to “Shaxberd.” In the handful of signatures that have survived, he
himself never spelled his name “William Shakespeare,” using variations such as
“Willm Shakspere” and “William Shakspeare” instead.
William was the third of eight
Shakespeare children, of whom three died in childhood. Though no records of his
education survive, it is likely that he attended the well-regarded local
grammar school, where he would have studied Latin grammar and classics. It is
unknown whether he completed his studies or abandoned them as an adolescent to
apprentice with his father.
At 18 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway
(1556-1616), a woman eight years his senior, in a ceremony thought to have been
hastily arranged due to her pregnancy. A daughter, Susanna, was born less than
seven months later in May 1583. Twins Hamnet and Judith followed in February
1585. Susanna and Judith would live to old age, while Hamnet, Shakespeare’s
only son, died at 11. As for William and Anne, it is believed that the couple
lived apart for most of the year while the bard pursued his writing and theater
career in London. It was not until the end of his life that Shakespeare moved
back in with Anne in their Stratford home.
Shakespeare’s
Lost Years and Early Career
To the dismay of his biographers,
Shakespeare disappears from the historical record between 1585, when his twins’
baptism was recorded, and 1592, when the playwright Robert Greene denounced him
in a pamphlet as an “upstart crow” (evidence that he had already made a name
for himself on the London stage). What did the newly married father and future
literary icon do during those seven “lost” years? Historians have speculated
that he worked as a schoolteacher, studied law, traveled across continental
Europe or joined an acting troupe that was passing through Stratford. According
to one 17th-century account, he fled his hometown after poaching deer from a
local politician’s estate.
Whatever the answer, by 1592
Shakespeare had begun working as an actor, penned several plays and spent
enough time in London to write about its geography, culture and diverse
personalities with great authority. Even his earliest works evince knowledge of
European affairs and foreign countries, familiarity with the royal court and
general erudition that might seem unattainable to a young man raised in the
provinces by parents who were probably illiterate. For this reason, some
theorists have suggested that one or several authors wishing to conceal their
true identity used the person of William Shakespeare as a front. (Most scholars
and literary historians dismiss this hypothesis, although many suspect
Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with other playwrights.)
Shakespeare’s
Plays and Poems
Shakespeare’s first plays, believed
to have been written before or around 1592, encompass all three of the main
dramatic genres in the bard’s oeuvre: tragedy (“Titus Andronicus”); comedy
(“The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” “The Comedy of Errors” and “The Taming of the
Shrew”); and history (the “Henry VI” trilogy and “Richard III”). Shakespeare
was likely affiliated with several different theater companies when these early
works debuted on the London stage. In 1594 he began writing and acting for a
troupe known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (renamed the King’s Men when James I
appointed himself its patron), ultimately becoming its house playwright and
partnering with other members to establish the legendary Globe theater in 1599.
Between the mid-1590s and his
retirement around 1612, Shakespeare penned the most famous of his 37-plus
plays, including “Romeo and Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Hamlet,”
“King Lear,” “Macbeth” and “The Tempest.” As a dramatist, he is known for his
frequent use of iambic pentameter, meditative soliloquies (such as Hamlet’s
ubiquitous “To be, or not to be” speech) and ingenious wordplay. His works
weave together and reinvent theatrical conventions dating back to ancient
Greece, featuring assorted casts of characters with complex psyches and
profoundly human interpersonal conflicts. Some of his plays—notably “All’s Well
That Ends Well,” “Measure for Measure” and “Troilus and Cressida”—are
characterized by moral ambiguity and jarring shifts in tone, defying, much like
life itself, classification as purely tragic or comic.
Also remembered for his non-dramatic
contributions, Shakespeare published his first narrative poem—the erotic “Venus
and Adonis,” intriguingly dedicated to his close friend Henry Wriothesley, Earl
of Southampton—while London theaters were closed due to a plague outbreak in
1593. The many reprints of this piece and a second poem, “The Rape of Lucrece,”
hint that during his lifetime the bard was chiefly renowned for his poetry.
Shakespeare’s famed collection of sonnets, which address themes ranging from
love and sensuality to truth and beauty, was printed in 1609, possibly without
its writer’s consent. (It has been suggested that he intended them for his
intimate circle only, not the general public.) Perhaps because of their
explicit sexual references or dark emotional character, the sonnets did not
enjoy the same success as Shakespeare’s earlier lyrical works.
Shakespeare’s
Death and Legacy
Shakespeare died at age 52 of
unknown causes on April 23, 1616, leaving the bulk of his estate to his
daughter Susanna. (Anne Hathaway, who outlived her husband by seven years,
famously received his “second-best bed.”) The slabstone over Shakespeare’s
tomb, located inside a Stratford church, bears an epitaph—written, some say, by
the bard himself—warding off grave robbers with a curse: “Blessed be the man
that spares these stones, / And cursed be he that moves my bones.” His remains
have yet to be disturbed, despite requests by archaeologists keen to reveal
what killed him.
In 1623, two of Shakespeare’s former
colleagues published a collection of his plays, commonly known as the First
Folio. In its preface, the dramatist Ben Jonson wrote of his late contemporary,
“He was not of an age, but for all time.” Indeed, Shakespeare’s plays continue
to grace stages and resonate with audiences around the world, and have yielded
a vast array of film, television and theatrical adaptations. Furthermore,
Shakespeare is believed to have influenced the English language more than any
other writer in history, coining—or, at the very least, popularizing—terms and
phrases that still regularly crop up in everyday conversation. Examples include
the words “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for
Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As You
Like It”); and the expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle”
(“The Tempest”), “wild goose chase” (“Romeo and Juliet”) and “one fell swoop”
(“Macbeth”).
Itulah tadi beberapa poin poin dari sejarah shakespeare yang bisa saya bagikan untuk anda.
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assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh
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