US English-Romeo & Juliet: William Shakespeare

Introducing Mr. William Shakespeare

Leigh T. Denault presents a great succinct biography sketch of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare Biography

From Absolute Shakespeare; describes all that is known about Shakespeare's life from available documentation including court and church records, marriage certificates and criticisms by Shakespeare's rivals.

Shakespeare's Biography (Shakespeare Online)

An in-depth and accurate biography of William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's Life (Folger Shakespeare Library)

From the website of the world-renowned Folger Shakespeare Library, the largest collection of Shakespeare materials and other Renaissance works.

Shakespeare's Life and Times

Who was William Shakespeare? What was life like in Stratford-upon-Avon and London when he was alive? Get the answers to these and other questions about Shakespeare's life from the venerable Royal Shakespeare Company.

The Shakespeare Paper Trail: The Early Years

The BBC presents Michael Wood's search through the limited historical record of Shakespeare's early life in Stratford.

William Shakespeare—Biography

The William Shakespeare page at Biography.com.

William Shakespeare—Biography and Works

An brief biography of William Shakespeare from The Literature Network.

William Shakspere Documentary Evidence

An online presentation of all the documentary evidence we have on Shakespeare.

William Shakespeare—English Author

Encyclopædia Britannica's biography page of William Shakespeare

Any English Renaissance playwright not named William Shakespeare tends to be overshadowed by the Bard's reputation. However, Elizabethan England was a place in which the live stage of theater was mass entertainment. Keeping the populace coming back to Southwark's numerous playhouses required a lot of material. Shakespeare was hardly the only working playwright in his day, nor was he the most prolific. He had plenty of competition.

Unfortunately for the reputations of his contemporaries, there are quite a few factors working against them. The plays of this era were not considered high art; more often than not they were viewed as disposable entertainment. Scripts were usually the property of the theater company, not the author. These companies had scant interest in printing copies that would only make it easier for someone to steal their material. Furthermore, many playwrights worked collaboratively on scripts for the various theaters and didn't always get proper credit for all their work.

The end result is that none of the other English playwrights has a canon of works to rival Shakespeare. The publication of the First Folio in 1623 ensured that Shakespeare—reputation and talent aside—had a posthumous advantage over his peers, whose works have been largely obscured or lost to history. This lack of context ultimately hampers our understanding of both English drama as a genre and Shakespeare's relation to his peers. That said, several of Shakespeare's fellow playwrights managed to achieve a measure of fame for posterity through their works.

Francis Beaumont (1584–1616): Beaumont was a playwright best known for his successful partnership with John Fletcher. He was also great friends with Ben Jonson, who reputedly used Beaumont as a sounding board when authoring his own plays. Beaumont is now generally credited as sole author on the comedy The Knight of the Burning Pestle. There are 50 plays historically ascribed to Beaumont and Fletcher, but only 13 exist today that show definite signs of their collaboration.

Thomas Dekker (?1570–1632): Dekker was a profuse writer that began his career in the 1590s. Like many of the era's playwrights, he was commissioned to write at least 40 plays for Philip Henslowe; Dekker personally claimed to have had a hand in 240 plays. Most of his work, however is lost, and only 20 of his plays are known to have been published in his lifetime. Despite his voluminous output, Dekker was consistently in debt throughout his career. His best known work is a comedy, The Shoemaker's Holiday.

John Fletcher (1579–1625): Fletcher is the only playwright on this list known to have partnered with Shakespeare (Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen). In fact, Fletcher basically took over as principal dramatist for the King's Men upon Shakespeare's retirement. Although only nine of his works were published during his lifetime, Fletcher is considered among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day. The majority of his work was collaborative; as sole author, he is best known for The Faithful Shepherdess and Valentinian.

Thomas Heywood (?1570–1641): We know little to nothing of Heywood's life other than he was most likely born in Lincolnshire and he graduated from Cambridge. He claimed to have written some 220 plays, most of which are lost; his surviving canon consists of 23 plays and eight masques. Heywood was a writer for Henslowe and a principal dramatist for the companies Queen Anne's Men and Lady Elizabeth's Men. He is chiefly remembered for the play A Woman Killed with Kindness, a tragicomedy notable for its treatment of marital infidelity.

Ben Jonson (1572–1637): Jonson's earliest notable work, Every Man in His Humour, was performed at The Globe featuring William Shakespeare among the cast members. He's acknowledged as the first unofficial poet laureate of England during the reign of James I, and his literary circle at the Mermaid Tavern included some of the foremost writers of his day. Jonson could also be prickly, as evidenced by his stinging satires of other London playwrights. His most renowned works are the comedies Volpone, or The Fox and The Alchemist. His reputation rivaled Shakespeare's until the eighteenth century, at which point his works became eclipsed by the Bard.

Thomas Kyd (1558–1594): A pioneering dramatist, Kyd is known for two important contributions to the Elizabethan stage: The Spanish Tragedy, one of the most popular plays of the period, and an early stage version of Hamlet, now lost. Both works heavily influenced Shakespeare's Hamlet, to say the least; some scholars claim that vestiges of Kyd's Hamlet can be found in Shakespeare's first quarto edition. Sadly, Kyd's friendship with Marlowe (and Marlowe's unorthodox views on religion) resulted in his imprisonment and torture. He died a destitute, broken man soon after being released.

John Lyly (?1554–1606): The Oxford-educated Lyly owes most of his fame to his two Euphues prose romances. His writing heavily influenced many London writers, creating a new style, Euphuism, which was widely popular in the 1580s. Shakespeare employs elements of this prose style in several plays, including Love's Labour's Lost and Much Ado About Nothing. Lyly's fortune and reputation both waned in his later years; eight of his plays survive today.

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593): Marlowe was indisputably the foremost English playwright preceding Shakespeare. The son of a cobbler, Marlowe excelled at Cambridge and became well known in London during a relatively short-lived literary career between 1587 and his death in 1593 in a tavern brawl. He penned seven surviving plays, among which Doctor Faustus and Tamurlaine stand above the rest. His influence on Shakespeare seems as personal as it was professional; Shakespeare pays tribute to him in As You Like It when Rosalind quotes a line from Marlowe's unfinished poem, Hero and Leander.

Thomas Middleton (1580–1627): Middleton was a versatile, prolific writer who collaborated with many playwrights during his career. Some scholars even attribute parts of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens to Middleton. His early success was in comedy, but his lasting reputation rests on two of his late tragedies: The Changeling and Women Beware Women. Middleton also published verse, prose, masques, and pageants during his career.

John Webster (c.1578–c.1632): Webster was one of the bleakest authors of the Elizabethan or Jacobean periods. Although his verse receives high critical praise, his plays were grounded in malevolence, violence, and anguish. Many of his earliest writings were never published, but his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi are considered masterpieces of Jacobean drama.

Sources: Elizabethan Drama (John Gassner and William Greene, 1990), The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 4th Edition (David Bevington, 1997), The Oxford History of English Literature (G.K. Hunter, et al, 1997)

Visit "Find a Grave" for more information.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Shakespeare_1609.jpg

The UTSA College of Liberal and Fine Arts, Fall 2013
​Four hundred years have passed since William Shakespeare penned his last play. Yet his prose, plots and characters are as alive today as they were when the plays were originally staged during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Shakespearean works are required reading for high school English students and a course or two for college students who study writing or literature. The plays have been performed in almost every language, on stage and screen and at popular festivals around the world. Even in prisons, teachers find that Shakespeare offers contemporary connections that open pathways to learning for some of society’s most marginalized.

For two of UTSA’s eminent literary scholars, the bard of Avon’s enduring appeal is an enduring topic as well. Alan Craven and Mark Bayer are frequently asked to explain Shakespeare’s staying power in the lore of literature. What is it about a long-dead poet and playwright that makes him such an important element of contemporary culture?

The answer is simple for Craven, a professor emeritus at UTSA who taught his first Shakespeare course back in 1965.

“He is the greatest dramatist, the greatest poet and the greatest prose writer in the history of the language,” said Craven, who teaches undergraduate courses in Shakespeare and has seen all of his plays performed at least once. “He has a presence like Lincoln or Washington in American history.”

The language is rich, the characters are complex and many of his basic themes – love, treachery, honor, bravery and political intrigue – still resonate today, said Craven.

Mark Bayer, an associate professor and chair of the Department of English at UTSA, agreed.

“There are two poles of debate about Shakespeare’s longevity,” said Bayer. “One is intrinsic to the plays’ universal appeal. But also, one could plausibly argue Shakespeare has been manufactured into what he is today through popular culture.”

Academia has helped fuel Shakespeare’s mystique by thoroughly incorporating his works into the standard curriculum for high school and college students, Bayer noted. High school students typically read one play each year. At least one class in Shakespeare is required for college English majors, which is one of the most popular academic programs on the UTSA campus, said Bayer. Outside of the classroom, there are movies, ballets, live theater and Shakespearean festivals. Even popular music and television commercials have been built around notable Shakespearean characters like Romeo and Juliet, Bayer added.

“A certain amount of Shakespeare’s notoriety is predicated on hype,” Bayer said.

To read the full interview, click HERE.

• Shakespeare in Delaware Park

  News on productions, history, and upcoming plays at Delaware Park. These events are free and open to the public
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  Shakespeare.com

  Information on the open web on Shakespeare, his history, his works and links to other useful websites
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  Folger Digital Texts (Shakespeare)

  Full texts of Shakespearen Plays through the Folger Library
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  Shakespeare Uncovered (PBS)

  Produced by Blakeway Productions, 116 Films and THIRTEEN Productions LLC for WNET in association with PBS, Sky Arts and Shakespeare’s Globe, each episode reveals the extraordinary world and works of William Shakespeare and the still-potent impact his plays have today. The films combine interviews with actors, directors and scholars, along with visits to key locations, clips from some of the most-celebrated film and television adaptations, and illustrative excerpts from the plays staged specially for the series at Shakespeare’s Globe in London.
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  Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust

  The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is the independent charity that cares for the world’s greatest Shakespeare heritage sites in Stratford-upon-Avon, and promotes the enjoyment and understanding of his works, life and times all over the world
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  Shakespeare Quartos Archive

  The earliest Shakespeare quartos are over four hundred years old and constitute the rarest, most fragile body of printed literature available to Shakespeare scholars. Sold unbound and often read to pieces, they are among the most ephemeral books of the age and survive in relatively low numbers. In the absence of surviving manuscripts, the quartos offer the earliest known evidence of what Shakespeare might actually have written, and what appeared on the early modern English stage. Only about half of Shakespeare’s plays were printed in quarto during his lifetime (1564–1616), and before the first printed collection of his plays, the First Folio of 1623. They are living artifacts telling the story of how Shakespeare's Hamlet, Henry V, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet, to name just a few, first circulated in print. Scholars, teachers, editors, and theatre directors, therefore, seek to examine these books for historical evidence and for significant variations in text. Over the centuries, generations of collectors have held these unassuming treasures in private collections, then donated or sold them to public institutions, rare book libraries, or other individuals. This pattern of trade over four centuries has dispersed the body of Shakespeare quartos all over the world. Due to their rarity and fragility, the earliest quartos are often not accessible to those who need to study them.
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  Luminarium - 16th Century Renaissance Literature

  Information, Background, and excerpts from a wide array of English Writers and Playwrights from Luminarium.