Project about Shakespeare

SHAKESPEARE

BIOGRAPHY

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a small country town, the son of John Shakespeare, a successful glover and alderman from Snitterfield, and ofMary Arden, a daughter of the gentry. They lived on Henley Street, having married around 1557.

On 29 November 1582, at Temple Grafton, near Stratford, the 18 year old Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway who was 26. Two neighbours of Hathaway, Fulk Sandalls and John Richardson, posted bond that there were no impediments to the marriage. There appears to have been some haste in arranging the ceremony: Hathaway was three months pregnant.

On 26 May 1583, Shakespeare's first child, Susanna, was baptised at Stratford. Twin children, a son, Hamnet, and a daughter, Judith, were baptised on 2 February 1585. Hamnet died in 1596, Susanna in 1649 and Judith in 1662.

The theory that Shakespeare acted as a schoolmaster in Lancashire was proposed by E. A. J. Honigmann in 1985, founded on evidence in the will of a member of the Hoghton family, referring to plays and play-clothes and asking his kinsman to take care of "...William Shakeshaft, now dwelling with me...". The asserted nexus was John Cottom, Shakespeare's reputed last schoolmaster, who was purported to have recommended the Bard. Michael Wood points out that Thomas Savage, Shakespeare's trustee at the Globe some twenty years later, was related by marriage to a neighbour to whom the will was also addressed. He allows, however, that Shakeshaft was a common name in Lancashire at the time. Ackoyd adds that study of the marginal notes in the Hoghton family copy of Edward Hall's Chronicles, an important source for Shakespeare's early histories, shows that they were in "probability" in Shakespeare's writing.

HIS PLAYS

Comedy:

· All's Well That Ends Well

· As You Like It

· The Comedy of Errors

· Cymbeline· Love's Labours Lost

· Measure for Measure

· The Merry Wives of Windsor

· The Merchant of Venice

· A Midsummer Night's Dream

· Much Ado About Nothing

· Pericles, Prince of Tyre

· Taming of the Shrew

· The Tempest

· Troilus and Cressida

· Twelfth Night

· Two Gentlemen of Verona

· Winter's Tale

History:
· Henry IV, part 1
· Henry IV, part 2
· Henry V
· Henry VI, part 1
· Henry VI, part 2
· Henry VI, part 3
· Henry VIII
· King John
· Richard II
· Richard III


Tragedy:
· Antony and Cleopatra
· Coriolanus
· Hamlet
· Julius Caesar
· King Lear
· Macbeth
· Othello
· Romeo and Juliet
· Timon of Athens
· Titus Andronicus

Poetry:
· The Sonnets
· A Lover's Complaint
· The Rape of Lucrece
· Venus and Adonis
· Funeral Elegy by W.S.


Poems:
· Shakespeare's Sonnets
· Venus and Adonis
· The Rape of Lucrece
· The Passionate Pilgrim
· The Phoenix and the Turtle
· A Lover's Complaint