William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (c. 23[a] April 1564 – 23 April 1616)[b] was an English playwright, poet and
actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-
eminent dramatist.[4][5][6] He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or
simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154
sonnets, three long narrative poems and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His
plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than
those of any other playwright.[7] Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the
English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he
married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and
Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor,
writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later
known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI of Scotland to the English throne.
At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later.
Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation
about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs and even
certain fringe theories[8] as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.[9][10][11]

Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613.[12][13] His early plays
were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in
these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Othello, King Lear
and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in English.[4][5][6] In the last phase of
his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) such as The Winter's Tale and The
Tempest, and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during
his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends
of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous
collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was
a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, who hailed Shakespeare with
the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".[14]
Life William Shakespeare

Early life

John Shakespeare's house, believed

to be Shakespeare's birthplace, in
Stratford-upon-Avon

Shakespeare was the son of John

The Chandos portrait, likely depicting
Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful
Shakespeare, c. 1611
glover (glove-maker) originally from
Snitterfield in Warwickshire, and Mary Arden, Born c. 23 April 1564[1]
the daughter of an affluent landowning Stratford-upon-Avon,
family.[15] He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire,

where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His England

date of birth is unknown but is traditionally Died 23 April 1616

observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day.[2] (aged 52)
This date, which can be traced to William Stratford-upon-Avon,
Oldys and George Steevens, has proved Warwickshire,
appealing to biographers because England

Shakespeare died on the same date in

Resting place Church of the Holy
1616.[16][17] He was the third of eight children, Trinity, Stratford-
[18]
and the eldest surviving son. upon-Avon

Although no attendance records for the period Occupations Playwright · poet ·

survive, most biographers agree that actor

Shakespeare was probably educated at the

Years active c. 1585–1613
King's New School in Stratford,[19][20][21] a free
school chartered in 1553,[22] about a quarter- Era Elizabethan ·

mile (400 m) from his home. Grammar Jacobean

schools varied in quality during the Organisations Lord Chamberlain's

Elizabethan era, but grammar school curricula Men · King's Men
were largely similar: the basic Latin text was
Works Shakespeare
standardised by royal decree,[23][24] and the
bibliography
school would have provided an intensive
education in grammar based upon Latin Movement English Renaissance
[25]
classical authors.
Spouse Anne Hathaway ​(m. 1582)
At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-
Children Susanna Hall
old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of
Hamnet Shakespeare
the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage Judith Quiney
licence on 27 November 1582. The next day,
two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds Parents John Shakespeare
Mary Arden
guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded
the marriage.[26] The ceremony may have been Writing career
arranged in some haste since the Worcester
Language Early Modern English
chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be
read once instead of the usual three Genres Play (comedy ·
history · tragedy)
times,[27][28] and six months after the marriage
Poetry (sonnet ·
Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, narrative poem ·
baptised 26 May 1583.[29] Twins, son Hamnet epitaph)
and daughter Judith, followed almost two
Signature
years later and were baptised 2 February
1585.[30] Hamnet died of unknown causes at
the age of 11 and was buried 11 August
1596.[31]

Shakespeare's coat of arms,

from the 1602 book The book
of coates and creasts.
Promptuarium armorum. It
features spears as a pun on
the family name.[c]

After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of
the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the
"complaints bill" of a law case before the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas
Term 1588 and 9 October 1589.[32] Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as
Shakespeare's "lost years".[33] Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported
many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a Stratford
legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching in
the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge
on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him.[34][35] Another 18th-century story has
Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London.[36]
John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster.[37] Some 20th-century
scholars suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander
Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his
will.[38][39] Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death,
and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.[40][41]

London and theatrical career

It is not known definitively when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and
records of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592.[42] By
then, he was sufficiently known in London to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene
in his Groats-Worth of Wit from that year:

... 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.[43]

Scholars differ on the exact meaning of Greene's words,[43][44] but most agree that Greene was
accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match such university-educated
writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Greene himself (the so-called "University
Wits").[45] The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide"
from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, along with the pun "Shake-scene", clearly identify
Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used here, Johannes Factotum ("Jack of all trades") refers to
a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the more common "universal
genius".[43][46]

Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's work in the theatre.
Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before
Greene's remarks.[47][48][49] After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed at The Theatre, in
Shoreditch, only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players,
including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London.[50] After the
death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new King
James I, and changed its name to the King's Men.[51]

In 1599, a partnership of members of the

All the world's a stage,
company built their own theatre on the south
bank of the River Thames, which they named and all the men and women merely players:

the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took they have their exits and their entrances;
and one man in his time plays many parts ...
over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Extant
records of Shakespeare's property purchases
—As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7, 139–142[52]
and investments indicate that his association
with the company made him a wealthy man,[53]
and in 1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, invested in
a share of the parish tithes in Stratford.[54]

Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, beginning in 1594, and by 1598,
his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title pages.[55][56][57]
Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright. The
1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour
(1598) and Sejanus His Fall (1603).[58] The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for
Jonson's Volpone is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career was nearing its
end.[47] The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all
these Plays", some of which were first staged after Volpone, although one cannot know for
certain which roles he played.[59] In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played
"kingly" roles.[60] In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of
Hamlet's father.[61] Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It, and the
Chorus in Henry V,[62][63] though scholars doubt the sources of that information.[64]

Throughout his career, Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford. In 1596, the
year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the
parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames.[65][66] He moved across the river to
Southwark by 1599, the same year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there.[65][67] By
1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many
fine houses. There, he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a
maker of women's wigs and other headgear.[68][69]
Later years and death

Shakespeare's funerary
monument in Stratford-upon-
Avon

Nicholas Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated by Samuel Johnson, that
Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years before his death".[70][71] He was still working as an
actor in London in 1608; in an answer to the sharers' petition in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage stated
that after purchasing the lease of the Blackfriars Theatre in 1608 from Henry Evans, the King's
Men "placed men players" there, "which were Heminges, Condell, Shakespeare, etc.".[72] However,
it is perhaps relevant that the bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609.[73][74] The
London public playhouses were repeatedly closed during extended outbreaks of the plague (a
total of over 60 months closure between May 1603 and February 1610),[75] which meant there
was often no acting work. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time.[76] Shakespeare
continued to visit London during the years 1611–1614.[70] In 1612, he was called as a witness in
Bellott v Mountjoy, a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter,
Mary.[77][78] In March 1613, he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory;[79] and from
November 1614, he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall.[80] After
1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613.[81] His last three
plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher,[82] who succeeded him as the house
playwright of the King's Men. He retired in 1613, before the Globe Theatre burned down during
the performance of Henry VIII on 29 June.[81]

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52.[d] He died within a month of signing his will,
a document which he begins by describing himself as being in "perfect health". No extant
contemporary source explains how or why he died. Half a century later, John Ward, the vicar of
Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting
and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted",[84][85] not an
impossible scenario since Shakespeare knew Jonson and Drayton. Of the tributes from fellow
authors, one refers to his relatively sudden death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went'st
so soon / From the world's stage to the grave's tiring room."[86][e]

Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-

Avon, where Shakespeare was
baptised and is buried

He was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in
1607,[87] and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare's
death.[88] Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on 25 March 1616; the following day,
Thomas Quiney, his new son-in-law, was found guilty of fathering an illegitimate son by Margaret
Wheeler, both of whom had died during childbirth. Thomas was ordered by the church court to do
public penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment for the Shakespeare
family.[88]

Shakespeare bequeathed the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna[89] under
stipulations that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body".[90] The Quineys had three
children, all of whom died without marrying.[91][92] The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married
twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct line.[93][94] Shakespeare's will
scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one-third of his estate
automatically.[f] He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest
that has led to much speculation.[96][97][98] Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne,
whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been the matrimonial bed and
therefore rich in significance.[99]

Shakespeare's grave, next to those of

Anne Shakespeare, his wife, and
Thomas Nash, the husband of his
granddaughter
Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his
death.[100][101] The epitaph carved into the stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against
moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in 2008:[102]

Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To digg the dvst encloased heare. To dig the dust enclosed here.
Bleste be yͤ man yͭ spares thes stones, Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cvrst be he yͭ moves my bones.[103][g] And cursed be he that moves my bones.

Some time before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with
a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and
Virgil.[104] In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving
was published.[105] Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials
around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in
Westminster Abbey.[106][107]

Plays

Procession of Characters from Shakespeare's Plays by an unknown 19th-century artist

Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, as critics agree
Shakespeare did, mostly early and late in his career.[108]

The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI, written in
the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date
precisely, however,[109][110] and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of
Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to
Shakespeare's earliest period.[111][109] His first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition
of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,[112] dramatise the destructive
results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the
Tudor dynasty.[113] The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists,
especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the
plays of Seneca.[114][115][116] The Comedy of Errors was also based on classical models, but no
source for The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though it has an identical plot but different
wording as another play with a similar name.[117][118] Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which
two friends appear to approve of rape,[119][120][121] the Shrew 's story of the taming of a woman's
independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences.[122]

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies

Dancing. By William Blake, c. 1786.

Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots and precise
comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his most acclaimed
comedies.[123] A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic
lowlife scenes.[124] Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic The Merchant of Venice,
contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, which reflects dominant
Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences.[125][126] The wit and
wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing,[127] the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the
lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies.[128]
After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy
into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, Part 1 and 2, and Henry V. Henry IV features Falstaff,
rogue, wit and friend of Prince Hal. His characters become more complex and tender as he
switches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative
variety of his mature work.[129][130][131] This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo
and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death;[132][133]
and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—
which introduced a new kind of drama.[134][135] According to Shakespearean scholar James
Shapiro, in Julius Caesar, "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary
events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to infuse each other".[136]

Hamlet, Horatio, Marcellus, and the

Ghost of Hamlet's Father. Henry Fuseli,
1780–1785.
In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem plays" Measure for Measure,
Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends Well and a number of his best known
tragedies.[137][138] Many critics believe that Shakespeare's tragedies represent the peak of his art.
Hamlet has probably been analysed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for
his famous soliloquy which begins "To be or not to be; that is the question".[139] Unlike the
introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, Othello and Lear are undone by hasty errors of
judgement.[140] The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws,
which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves.[141] In Othello, Iago stokes Othello's
sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him.[142][143] In King
Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which
lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest
daughter, Cordelia. According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play...offers neither its good
characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty".[144][145][146] In Macbeth, the shortest and
most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies,[147] uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and
his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful king and usurp the throne until their own guilt
destroys them in turn.[148] In this play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic
structure. His last major tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, contain some of
Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies by the poet and
critic T. S. Eliot.[149][150][151] Eliot wrote, "Shakespeare acquired more essential history from
Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum."[152]

In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more
major plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, as well as the collaboration, Pericles,
Prince of Tyre. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the
comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic
errors.[153] Some commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene
view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the
day.[154][155][156] Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two
Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.[157]
Classification

The Plays of William Shakespeare, a

painting containing scenes and
characters from several plays of
Shakespeare; by Sir John Gilbert,
c. 1849

Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed according to
their folio classification as comedies, histories, and tragedies.[158] Two plays not included in the
First Folio,[14] The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, are now accepted as part of
the canon, with today's scholars agreeing that Shakespeare made major contributions to the
writing of both.[159][160] No Shakespearean poems were included in the First Folio.

In the late 19th century, Edward Dowden classified four of the late comedies as romances, and
though many scholars prefer to call them tragicomedies, Dowden's term is often used.[161][162] In
1896, Frederick S. Boas coined the term "problem plays" to describe four plays: All's Well That
Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and Hamlet.[163] "Dramas as singular in
theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies", he wrote. "We may, therefore,
borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of today and class them together as Shakespeare's
problem plays."[164] The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in
use, though Hamlet is definitively classed as a tragedy.[165][166][167]

Performances

It is not clear for which companies Shakespeare wrote his early plays. The title page of the 1594
edition of Titus Andronicus reveals that the play had been acted by three different troupes.[168]
After the plagues of 1592–93, Shakespeare's plays were performed by his own company at The
Theatre and the Curtain in Shoreditch, north of the Thames.[169] Londoners flocked there to see
the first part of Henry IV, Leonard Digges recording, "Let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest ...
and you scarce shall have a room".[170] When the company found themselves in dispute with their
landlord, they pulled The Theatre down and used the timbers to construct the Globe Theatre, the
first playhouse built by actors for actors, on the south bank of the Thames at Southwark.[171][172]
The Globe opened in autumn 1599, with Julius Caesar one of the first plays staged. Most of
Shakespeare's greatest post-1599 plays were written for the Globe, including Hamlet, Othello, and
King Lear.[171][173][174]

The reconstructed Globe Theatre on

the south bank of the River Thames in
London

After the Lord Chamberlain's Men were renamed the King's Men in 1603, they entered a special
relationship with the new King James. Although the performance records are patchy, the King's
Men performed seven of Shakespeare's plays at court between 1 November 1604, and 31
October 1605, including two performances of The Merchant of Venice.[63] After 1608, they
performed at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre during the winter and the Globe during the
summer.[175] The indoor setting, combined with the Jacobean fashion for lavishly staged
masques, allowed Shakespeare to introduce more elaborate stage devices. In Cymbeline, for
example, Jupiter descends "in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a
thunderbolt. The ghosts fall on their knees."[176][177]

The actors in Shakespeare's company included the famous Richard Burbage, William Kempe,
Henry Condell and John Heminges. Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of
many of Shakespeare's plays, including Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.[178] The popular
comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado
About Nothing, among other characters.[179][180] He was replaced around 1600 by Robert Armin,
who played roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It and the fool in King Lear.[181] In 1613, Sir
Henry Wotton recorded that Henry VIII "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of
pomp and ceremony".[182] On 29 June, however, a cannon set fire to the thatch of the Globe and
burned the theatre to the ground, an event which pinpoints the date of a Shakespeare play with
rare precision.[182]
Textual sources

Title page of the First Folio,

1623. Copper engraving of
Shakespeare by Martin
Droeshout.

In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's friends from the King's Men,
published the First Folio, a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It contained 36 texts,
including 18 printed for the first time.[183] The others had already appeared in quarto versions—
flimsy books made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves.[184] No evidence
suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First Folio describes as "stol'n
and surreptitious copies".[185]

Alfred Pollard termed some of the pre-1623 versions as "bad quartos" because of their adapted,
paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed from
memory.[184][185][186] Where several versions of a play survive, each differs from the others. The
differences may stem from copying or printing errors, from notes by actors or audience
members, or from Shakespeare's own papers.[187][188] In some cases, for example, Hamlet,
Troilus and Cressida, and Othello, Shakespeare could have revised the texts between the quarto
and folio editions. In the case of King Lear, however, while most modern editions do conflate
them, the 1623 folio version is so different from the 1608 quarto that the Oxford Shakespeare
prints them both, arguing that they cannot be conflated without confusion.[189]

Poems

In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two
narrative poems on sexual themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He dedicated
them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects
the sexual advances of Venus; while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by
the lustful Tarquin.[190] Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses,[191] the poems show the guilt and
moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust.[192] Both proved popular and were often
reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, in which a
young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the
Sonnets in 1609. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote A Lover's Complaint. Critics
consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects.[193][194][195] The Phoenix and the
Turtle, printed in Robert Chester's 1601 Love's Martyr, mourns the deaths of the legendary
phoenix and his lover, the faithful turtle dove. In 1599, two early drafts of sonnets 138 and 144
appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim, published under Shakespeare's name but without his
permission.[193][195][196]

Sonnets

Title page from 1609 edition

of Shake-Speares Sonnets

Published in 1609, the Sonnets were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed.
Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests
that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership.[197][198] Even
before the two unauthorised sonnets appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599, Francis Meres
had referred in 1598 to Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets among his private friends".[199] Few
analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence.[200] He
seems to have planned two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a married
woman of dark complexion (the "dark lady"), and one about conflicted love for a fair young man
(the "fair youth"). It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial
"I" who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with
the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart".[199][198]

The 1609 edition was dedicated to a

"Mr. W.H.", credited as "the only Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate ...
begetter" of the poems. It is not known
whether this was written by
Shakespeare himself or by the publisher, —Opening lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.[201]
Thomas Thorpe, whose initials appear
at the foot of the dedication page; nor is it known who Mr. W.H. was, despite numerous theories,
or whether Shakespeare even authorised the publication.[202] Critics praise the Sonnets as a
profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time.[203]

Style

Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in a
stylised language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the
drama.[204] The poetry depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and
the language is often rhetorical—written for actors to declaim rather than speak. The grand
speeches in Titus Andronicus, in the view of some critics, often hold up the action, for example;
and the verse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona has been described as stilted.[205][206]

Pity by William Blake, 1795, is an

illustration of two similes in Macbeth:

"And pity, like a naked new-

born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's
cherubim, hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of
the air."[207]

However, Shakespeare soon began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. The
opening soliloquy of Richard III has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama. At
the same time, Richard's vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soliloquies of Shakespeare's
mature plays.[208][209] No single play marks a change from the traditional to the freer style.
Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best
example of the mixing of the styles.[210] By the time of Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A
Midsummer Night's Dream in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural
poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself.
Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter. In
practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line,
spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different
from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish
at the end of lines, with the risk of monotony.[211] Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank
verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the new power and
flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet. Shakespeare uses it, for
example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind:[212]

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting

That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly—
And prais'd be rashness for it—let us know
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well ...

— Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2, 4–8[212]

After Hamlet, Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional
passages of the late tragedies. The literary critic A. C. Bradley described this style as "more
concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical".[213]
In the last phase of his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve these effects.
These included run-on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence
structure and length.[214] In Macbeth, for example, the language darts from one unrelated
metaphor or simile to another: "was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed yourself?" (1.7.35–38);
"... pity, like a naked new-born babe/ Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd/ Upon the
sightless couriers of the air ..." (1.7.21–25). The listener is challenged to complete the sense.[214]
The late romances, with their shifts in time and surprising turns of plot, inspired a last poetic
style in which long and short sentences are set against one another, clauses are piled up, subject
and object are reversed, and words are omitted, creating an effect of spontaneity.[215]

Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a practical sense of the theatre.[216] Like all
playwrights of the time, he dramatised stories from sources such as Plutarch and Holinshed.[217]
He reshaped each plot to create several centres of interest and to show as many sides of a
narrative to the audience as possible. This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play
can survive translation, cutting, and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama.[218] As
Shakespeare's mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and
distinctive patterns of speech. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays,
however. In Shakespeare's late romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which
emphasised the illusion of theatre.[219][220]
Legacy

Influence

Macbeth Consulting the

Vision of the Armed Head. By
Henry Fuseli, 1793–1794.

Shakespeare's work has made a significant and lasting impression on later theatre and literature.
In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, and
genre.[221] Until Romeo and Juliet, for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic
for tragedy.[222] Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or
events, but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds.[223] His work heavily influenced
later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with
little success. Critic George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Coleridge to
Tennyson as "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes."[224] John Milton, considered by many
to be the most important English poet after Shakespeare, wrote in tribute: "Thou in our wonder
and astonishment/ Hast built thyself a live-long monument."[225]

Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens.
The American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain
Ahab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King Lear.[226] Scholars have identified
20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare's works, including Felix Mendelssohn's overture
and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream and Sergei Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and
Juliet. His work has inspired several operas, among them Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth, Otello and
Falstaff, whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays.[227] Shakespeare has
also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites, while William
Hogarth's 1745 painting of actor David Garrick playing Richard III was decisive in establishing the
genre of theatrical portraiture in Britain.[228] The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a friend of
William Blake, even translated Macbeth into German.[229] The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew
on Shakespearean psychology, in particular, that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature.[230]
Shakespeare has been a rich source for filmmakers; Akira Kurosawa adapted Macbeth and King
Lear as Throne of Blood and Ran, respectively. Other examples of Shakespeare on film include
Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Laurence Olivier's Hamlet and Al Pacino's
documentary Looking For Richard.[231] Orson Welles, a lifelong lover of Shakespeare, directed and
starred in Macbeth, Othello and Chimes at Midnight, in which he plays John Falstaff, which Welles
himself called his best work.[232]

In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling, and pronunciation were less standardised than
they are now,[233] and his use of language helped shape modern English.[234] Samuel Johnson
quoted him more often than any other author in his A Dictionary of the English Language, the first
serious work of its type.[235] Expressions such as "with bated breath" (Merchant of Venice) and "a
foregone conclusion" (Othello) have found their way into everyday English speech.[236][237]

Shakespeare's influence extends far beyond his native England and the English language. His
reception in Germany was particularly significant; as early as the 18th century Shakespeare was
widely translated and popularised in Germany, and gradually became a "classic of the German
Weimar era;" Christoph Martin Wieland was the first to produce complete translations of
Shakespeare's plays in any language.[238][239] Actor and theatre director Simon Callow writes,
"this master, this titan, this genius, so profoundly British and so effortlessly universal, each
different culture – German, Italian, Russian – was obliged to respond to the Shakespearean
example; for the most part, they embraced it, and him, with joyous abandon, as the possibilities
of language and character in action that he celebrated liberated writers across the continent.
Some of the most deeply affecting productions of Shakespeare have been non-English, and non-
European. He is that unique writer: he has something for everyone."[240]

According to Guinness World Records, Shakespeare remains the world's best-selling playwright,
with sales of his plays and poetry believed to have achieved in excess of four billion copies in the
almost 400 years since his death. He is also the third most translated author in history.[241]

Critical reputation

Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he

He was not of an age, but for all time.
received a large amount of praise.[243][244] In 1598,
the cleric and author Francis Meres singled him out —Ben Jonson[242]
from a group of English playwrights as "the most
excellent" in both comedy and tragedy.[245][246] The authors of the Parnassus plays at St John's
College, Cambridge, numbered him with Chaucer, Gower, and Spenser.[247] In the First Folio, Ben
Jonson called Shakespeare the "Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage",
although he had remarked elsewhere that "Shakespeare wanted art" (lacked skill).[242]
Between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas
were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and
Ben Jonson.[248] Thomas Rymer, for example, condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic
with the tragic. Nevertheless, poet and critic John Dryden rated Shakespeare highly, saying of
Jonson, "I admire him, but I love Shakespeare".[249] He also famously remarked that Shakespeare
"was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards,
and found her there."[250] For several decades, Rymer's view held sway. But during the 18th
century, critics began to respond to Shakespeare on his own terms and, like Dryden, to acclaim
what they termed his natural genius. A series of scholarly editions of his work, notably those of
Samuel Johnson in 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790, added to his growing reputation.[251][252]
By 1800, he was firmly enshrined as the national poet,[253] and described as the "Bard of Avon"
(or simply "the Bard").[254][h] In the 18th and 19th centuries, his reputation also spread abroad.
Among those who championed him were the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal, and Victor
Hugo.[256][i]

William Ordway Partridge's

garlanded statue of William
Shakespeare in Lincoln Park,
Chicago, typical of many
created in the 19th and early
20th centuries

During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of
German Romanticism.[258] In the 19th century, critical admiration for Shakespeare's genius often
bordered on adulation.[259] "This King Shakespeare," the essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1840,
"does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of
rallying signs; indestructible".[260] The Victorians produced his plays as lavish spectacles on a
grand scale.[261] The playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw mocked the cult of Shakespeare
worship as "bardolatry", claiming that the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare
obsolete.[262]

The modernist revolution in the arts during the early 20th century, far from discarding
Shakespeare, eagerly enlisted his work in the service of the avant-garde. The Expressionists in
Germany and the Futurists in Moscow mounted productions of his plays. Marxist playwright and
director Bertolt Brecht devised an epic theatre under the influence of Shakespeare. The poet and
critic T. S. Eliot argued against Shaw that Shakespeare's "primitiveness" in fact made him truly
modern.[263] Eliot, along with G. Wilson Knight and the school of New Criticism, led a movement
towards a closer reading of Shakespeare's imagery. In the 1950s, a wave of new critical
approaches replaced modernism and paved the way for post-modern studies of
Shakespeare.[264] Comparing Shakespeare's accomplishments to those of leading figures in
philosophy and theology, Harold Bloom wrote, "Shakespeare was larger than Plato and than St.
Augustine. He encloses us because we see with his fundamental perceptions."[265]

Speculation

Authorship

Around 230 years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship
of the works attributed to him.[266] Proposed alternative candidates include Francis Bacon,
Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.[267] Several "group theories" have
also been proposed.[268] All but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a
fringe theory, with only a small minority of academics who believe that there is reason to
question the traditional attribution,[269] but interest in the subject, particularly the Oxfordian
theory of Shakespeare authorship, continues into the 21st century.[270][271][272]

Religion

Shakespeare conformed to the official state religion,[j] but his private views on religion have been
the subject of debate. Shakespeare's will uses a Protestant formula, and he was a confirmed
member of the Church of England, where he was married, his children were baptised, and where
he is buried.

Some scholars are of the view that members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time
when practising Catholicism in England was against the law.[274] Shakespeare's mother, Mary
Arden, certainly came from a pious Catholic family. The strongest evidence might be a Catholic
statement of faith signed by his father, John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in the rafters of his
former house in Henley Street. However, the document is now lost and scholars differ as to its
authenticity.[275][276] In 1591, the authorities reported that John Shakespeare had missed church
"for fear of process for debt", a common Catholic excuse.[277][278][279] In 1606, the name of
William's daughter Susanna appears on a list of those who failed to attend Easter communion in
Stratford.[277][278][279]

Other authors argue that there is a lack of evidence about Shakespeare's religious beliefs.
Scholars find evidence both for and against Shakespeare's Catholicism, Protestantism, or lack of
belief in his plays, but the truth may be impossible to prove.[280][281]

Sexuality

Artistic depiction of the Shakespeare

family, late 19th century

Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway,
who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May
1583. Over the centuries, some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are
autobiographical,[282] and point to them as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the
same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than romantic love.[283][284][285]
The 26 so-called "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of
heterosexual liaisons.[286]

Portraiture

No written contemporary description of Shakespeare's physical appearance survives, and no

evidence suggests that he ever commissioned a portrait. From the 18th century, the desire for
authentic Shakespeare portraits fuelled claims that various surviving pictures depicted
Shakespeare.[287] That demand also led to the production of several fake portraits, as well as
misattributions, re-paintings, and relabelling of portraits of other people.[288][289]

Some scholars suggest that the Droeshout portrait, which Ben Jonson approved of as a good
likeness,[290] and his Stratford monument provide perhaps the best evidence of his
appearance.[291] Of the claimed paintings, art historian Tarnya Cooper concluded that the
Chandos portrait (shown at the top of this article) had "the strongest claim of any of the known
contenders to be a true portrait of Shakespeare". After a three-year study supported by the
National Portrait Gallery, London, the portrait's owners, Cooper contended that its composition
date, contemporary with Shakespeare, its subsequent provenance, and the sitter's attire, all
supported the attribution.[292]

See also

Outline of William Shakespeare

English Renaissance theatre

Spelling of Shakespeare's name

World Shakespeare Bibliography

Shakespeare's Politics

References

Notes

a. The belief that Shakespeare was born on 23 April is a tradition and not a verified fact;[2] see
§ Early life below. He was baptised 26 April.

b. Dates follow the Julian calendar, used in England throughout Shakespeare's lifespan, but
with the start of the year adjusted to 1 January (see Old Style and New Style dates). Under
the Gregorian calendar, adopted in Catholic countries in 1582, Shakespeare died on 3
May.[3]

c. The crest is a silver falcon supporting a spear, while the motto is Non Sanz Droict (French
for "not without right"). This motto is still used by Warwickshire County Council, in reference
to Shakespeare.

d. Inscribed in Latin on his funerary monument: AETATIS 53 DIE 23 APR (In his 53rd year he
died 23 April).[83]

e. Verse by James Mabbe printed in the First Folio.[86]

f. Charles Knight, 1842, in his notes on Twelfth Night.[95]

g. In the scribal abbreviations ye for the (3rd line) and yt for that (3rd and 4th lines) the letter y
represents th: see thorn.
 h. The "national cult" of Shakespeare, and the "bard" identification, dates from September
1769, when the actor David Garrick organised a week-long carnival at Stratford to mark the
town council awarding him the freedom of the town. In addition to presenting the town with
a statue of Shakespeare, Garrick composed a doggerel verse, lampooned in the London
newspapers, naming the banks of the Avon as the birthplace of the "matchless Bard".[255]

i. Grady cites Voltaire's Philosophical Letters (1733); Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
(1795); Stendhal's two-part pamphlet Racine et Shakespeare (1823–25); and Victor Hugo's
prefaces to Cromwell (1827) and William Shakespeare (1864).[257]

j. For example, A.L. Rowse, the 20th-century Shakespeare scholar, was emphatic: "He died, as
he had lived, a conforming member of the Church of England. His will made that perfectly
clear—in facts, puts it beyond dispute, for it uses the Protestant formula."[273]

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Articles and online

Casey, Charles (1998). "Was Shakespeare gay? Sonnet 20 and the politics of pedagogy".
College Literature. 25 (3): 35–51. JSTOR 25112402 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/25112402) .

Fort, J.A. (October 1927). "The Story Contained in the Second Series of Shakespeare's
Sonnets". The Review of English Studies. Original Series. III (12): 406–414. doi:10.1093/res/os-
III.12.406 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fres%2Fos-III.12.406) . ISSN 0034-6551 (https://search.
worldcat.org/issn/0034-6551) – via Oxford Journals.

Hales, John W. (26 March 1904). "London Residences of Shakespeare" (https://archive.org/str

eam/p1athenaeum1904lond#page/400/mode/2up) . The Athenaeum. No. 3987. London:
John C. Francis. pp. 401–402.

Jackson, MacDonald P. (2004). Zimmerman, Susan (ed.). "A Lover's Complaint revisited" (http
s://www.thefreelibrary.com/A+Lover%27s+Complaint+revisited.-a0125306072) . Shakespeare
Studies. XXXII. ISSN 0582-9399 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0582-9399) . Archived (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20210323100406/https://www.thefreelibrary.com/A+Lover%27s+Co
mplaint+revisited.-a0125306072) from the original on 23 March 2021. Retrieved
29 December 2017 – via The Free Library.

Mowat, Barbara; Werstine, Paul (n.d.). "Sonnet 18" (https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespear

es-works/shakespeares-sonnets/sonnet-18/) . Folger Digital Texts. Folger Shakespeare
Library. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20210623175149/https://shakespeare.folger.e
du/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/sonnet-18/) from the original on 23 June
2021. Retrieved 20 March 2021.

"Bard's 'cursed' tomb is revamped" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/coventry_wa

rwickshire/7422986.stm) . BBC News. 28 May 2008. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/2
0100915013619/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/coventry_warwickshire/74229
86.stm) from the original on 15 September 2010. Retrieved 23 April 2010.

"Did He or Didn't He? That Is the Question" (https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/education/

edlife/22shakespeare-survey.html) . The New York Times. 22 April 2007. Archived (https://we
b.archive.org/web/20210323100407/https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/education/edlif
e/22shakespeare-survey.html) from the original on 23 March 2021. Retrieved 31 December
2017.
 "Shakespeare Memorial" (https://web.archive.org/web/20160304192458/http://www.southwa
rk.anglican.org/cathedral/tour/bill.htm) . Southwark Cathedral. Archived from the original (htt
p://southwark.anglican.org/cathedral/tour/bill.htm) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 2 April 2016.

"Visiting the Abbey" (https://web.archive.org/web/20160403162702/http://www.westminster-

abbey.org/archive/visit-us/highlights/poets-corner) . Westminster Abbey. Archived from the
original (http://www.westminster-abbey.org/archive/visit-us/highlights/poets-corner) on 3
April 2016. Retrieved 2 April 2016.

External links

Library resources about

William Shakespeare

Online books (https://ftl.toolforge.org/cgi-bin/ftl?st=wp&su=William+Shakespeare&library=OLBP)

Resources in your library (https://ftl.toolforge.org/cgi-bin/ftl?st=wp&su=William+Shakespeare)
Resources in other libraries (https://ftl.toolforge.org/cgi-bin/ftl?st=wp&su=William+Shakespeare&library=
0CHOOSE0)
By William Shakespeare
Online books (https://ftl.toolforge.org/cgi-bin/ftl?at=wp&au=William+Shakespeare&library=OLBP)
Resources in your library (https://ftl.toolforge.org/cgi-bin/ftl?at=wp&au=William+Shakespeare)
Resources in other libraries (https://ftl.toolforge.org/cgi-bin/ftl?at=wp&au=William+Shakespeare&library=
0CHOOSE0)

Digital editions

William Shakespeare's plays on Bookwise (https://bookwise.io/author/william-shakespeare)

Internet Shakespeare Editions (https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/)

The Folger Shakespeare (https://shakespeare.folger.edu/)

Open Source Shakespeare (http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/) complete works, with

search engine and concordance

The Shakespeare Quartos Archive (https://wayback.archive-it.org/org-467/20191016094633/h

ttp://quartos.org/)

Works by William Shakespeare in eBook form (https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-sha

kespeare) at Standard Ebooks

Works by William Shakespeare (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/65) at Project

Gutenberg

Works by or about William Shakespeare (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subjec

t%3A%22Shakespeare%2C%20William%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22William%20Shakespear
e%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Shakespeare%2C%20William%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22W
illiam%20Shakespeare%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Shakespeare%2C%20W%2E%22%20OR%
20title%3A%22William%20Shakespeare%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Shakespeare%2C%
 20William%22%20OR%20description%3A%22William%20Shakespeare%22%29%20OR%20%2
8%221564-1616%22%20AND%20Shakespeare%29%29%20AND%20%28-mediatype:software%
29) at the Internet Archive

Works by William Shakespeare (https://librivox.org/author/37) at LibriVox (public domain

audiobooks)
Exhibitions

Shakespeare Documented (https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/) an online exhibition

documenting Shakespeare in his own time

Shakespeare's Will (https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/+/https://www.national

archives.gov.uk/dol/images/examples/pdfs/shakespeare.pdf) from The National Archives

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/)

William Shakespeare (https://www.bl.uk/people/william-shakespeare) Archived (https://web.

archive.org/web/20210923070227/https://www.bl.uk/people/william-shakespeare) 23
September 2021 at the Wayback Machine at the British Library
Music

Works by William Shakespeare set to music: free scores in the Choral Public Domain Library
(ChoralWiki)

Works by William Shakespeare set to music: Scores at the International Music Score Library
Project

Education

Shakespeare at Home (https://shakespeareathome.org/) an online resource providing free

educational resources on William Shakespeare and the Renaissance world. Activities are
dyslexia friendly and suitable for all ages.
Legacy and criticism

Records on Shakespeare's Theatre Legacy from the UK Parliamentary Collections (https://ww

w.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/towncountry/towns/collections/co
llections-shakespeare/)

Winston Churchill & Shakespeare – UK Parliament Living Heritage (https://www.parliament.uk/

about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/yourcountry/collections/churchillexhib
ition/churchill-death/herbert-samuel/)

Portals: Biography England History Literature Theatre