William Shakespeare is renowned as the English playwright and poet whose body of works is considered the greatest in history of English Literature.
Shakespeare's Life:
Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564 and it is assumed that he was born on April 23, 1564. We also know that in 1582 at age eighteen, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, an older women who was twenty six at the time. Shakespeare left Stratford for London to make his fortune roughly fours years later.
Shakespeare's works are often divided into four periods beginning with what is referred to as an experimental period starting around 1591 and ending around 1593 which includes Titus Andronicus, Love's Labour's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew.
The second period ending around 1601, marks the establishment of Shakespeare and includes the tragedy Romeo and Juliet, the comedies, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor and the history plays, Henry IV, Parts I and II, Henry V, Richard II, King John and Julius Caesar.
The third period ending around 1610 marks perhaps the apex of Shakespeare's work with the tragedies, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear but also comedies such as Twelfth Night, All's Well that Ends Well and the epic history play, Antony and Cleopatra.
The final period ends around 1611 with the plays, Cymbeline, Henry VIII and romances such as The Tempest and The Winter's Tale.
The Shakespeare we read today comes from The First Folio of 1623 written by fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell to preserve Shakespeare's legacy. Amazingly, no original manuscripts survive reflecting the fact that many of these manuscripts were written purely for performance and were not regarded as pieces of literary work. There is also no general consensus on when all the plays were first performed. It might surprise readers to know that many of Shakespeare's plays, especially in the experimental period were hardly original, borrowing plot features from earlier plays. Likewise with his history plays, Shakespeare compresses events and does not follow history too closely to add to the drama. However borrowing plots and taking liberties with historical facts was not uncommon in Shakespeare's time and his skill for language, imagery, pun and his creative adaption of myth and history have set Shakespeare apart as arguably the greatest playwright of all time.
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KING LEAR
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