1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as
the greatest writer in the English language and the world's
pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national
poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard").
His surviving
works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative
poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated
into every major living language, and are performed
more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare
was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18
he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children:
Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and
1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor,
writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord
Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears
to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died
three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life
survive, and there has been considerable speculation about
such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the
works attributed to him were written by others. Shakespeare
produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His
early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he
raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of
the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until
about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered
some of the finest examples in the English language. In
his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances,
and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his
plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy
during his lifetime, and in 1623 two of his former theatrical
colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his
dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised
as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare was a respected poet
and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise
to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics,
in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and
the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence
that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the twentieth
century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by
2
new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain
highly popular today and are consistently performed and
reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts
throughout the world. Source: Wikipedia
Also available on Feedbooks for Shakespeare:
• Hamlet (1599)
• Macbeth (1606)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (1596)
• Julius Caesar (1599)
• Othello (1603)
• The Merchant of Venice (1598)
• Much Ado About Nothing (1600)
• King Lear (1606)
• The Taming of the Shrew (1594)
• The Comedy of Errors (1594)
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