Bobbe sommer biography of william shakespeare
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While there are no records extant to prove this claim, Shakespeare's knowledge of Latin and Classical Greek would tend to support this theory.
Additional Shakespeare comedies include:
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona,
- The Comedy of Errors,
- Love’s Labour’s Lost,
- The Merry Wives of Windsor,
- Twelfth Night,
- Measure for Measure, and
- All’s Well That Ends Well
Troilus and Cressida is emblematic of the Shakespearean “problem play,” which defies genres.
Scholars surmise that Shakespeare attended the grammar school in Stratford.
This tragic loss later inspired Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning novel Hamnet (2020) and its 2025 film adaptation Hamnet, starring Paul Mescal as Shakespeare. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied English literature. (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.
He was an important member of the King’s Men theatrical company from roughly 1594 onward. At the same time, there are passages in all the plays that deviate from this and use forms of poetry or simple prose.
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Histories
Many of Shakespeare’s first plays were histories.
William was 18 at the time, and Anne was 26—and pregnant.
Located about 100 miles northwest of London, Stratford-upon-Avon was a bustling market town along the River Avon and bisected by a country road during Shakespeare’s time. Julius Caesar is thought to be the first production at the new open-air theater.
However, there is very little evidence the two had a difficult marriage.
William, according to the church register, was the third of eight children in the Shakespeare household—three of whom died in childhood. Some scholars believe he was in London, working as a horse attendant at some of London’s finer theaters before breaking on the scene. The ensuing speculation has spawned many interesting theories without producing much hard evidence.
William Shakespeare
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 deer and rabbits he allegedly poached. It is because of the First Folio that we know about 18 of Shakespeare’s plays, including Macbeth, Twelfth Night, and Julius Caesar. They point to evidence that displays his name on the title pages of published poems and plays.
Examples exist of authors and critics of the time acknowledging Shakespeare as the author of plays such as The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, and King John.
Royal records from 1601 show that Shakespeare was recognized as a member of the King’s Men theater company and a Groom of the Chamber by the court of King James I, where the company performed seven of Shakespeare’s plays.
Owning the playhouse proved to be a financial boon for Shakespeare and the other investors.
In 1613, the Globe caught fire during a performance of Henry VIII and burned to the ground. The story reimagines how the death of Shakespeare’s young son may have shaped the playwright’s later work and emotional world.
Family Life
A year after Hamnet’s death, Shakespeare purchased one of the largest houses in Stratford, called New Place, for his family in May 1597.
Get the answers to these and other questions about Shakespeare's life from the venerable Royal Shakespeare Company.
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Evidently Shakespeare garnered some envy early on, as related by the critical attack of Robert Greene, a London playwright, in 1592: "...an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a player's 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."Greene's bombast notwithstanding, Shakespeare must have shown considerable promise.
The September 20, 1592, edition of the Stationers’ Register, a guild publication, includes an article by London playwright Robert Greene that takes a few jabs at Shakespeare:
“...There is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger’s heart wrapped in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.”
Scholars differ on the interpretation of this criticism, but most agree that it was Greene’s way of saying Shakespeare was reaching above his rank, trying to match better known and educated playwrights like Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, or Greene, himself.
Poems and Sonnets
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 (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594).
William Shakespeare
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. They point out that other playwrights of the time also had sketchy histories and came from modest backgrounds.
They contend that King’s New School in Stratford had a curriculum of Latin and the classics could have provided a good foundation for literary writers.