William paul thurston biography of william shakespeare

Dramatist, poet, actor; b. Stratford-on-Avon, April 1564; d. there, April 23, 1616. The facts of Shakespeare's life, preserved in authentic records, are considerable. Unfortunately he left no diaries or personal letters nor did he attract the notice of gossips or note takers, so that all attempts to write an intimate life must rely on guesswork.

The Biographical Record

The records show that he was the son of John Shakespeare, yeoman and glover, a leading citizen of Stratford, and of Mary Arden of Wilmcote, whose family were staunch Catholic gentlefolk. William was baptized April 26, 1564.

According to Nicholas Rowe (1674–1718), who published the first short biography in 1709, Shakespeare was educated at the Stratford grammar school. The masters of the school during and after his boyhood—all graduates

of Oxford—were Walter Roche, 1569 to 1571; Simon Hunt, 1571 to 1575 (when he went overseas to Douai and was later admitted into the Society of Jesus in 1578); Thomas Jenkins, 1575 to 1579; John Cottam, 1579 to 1581; and Alexander Aspinall, 1581 to 1624. At Elizabethan grammar schools, boys were subjected to an elaborate memory training in Latin (and to a lesser degree in Greek) and read a fair selection of the greater classics. All this fostered in brighter boys a keen interest in language and its use as well as a general knowledge of classical mythology and history.

On Nov. 28, 1582, a license was issued by the Bishop of Worcester to "William Shagspere" to marry "Anne Hathwey" of Stratford after one reading of the banns. According to the inscription on her gravestone, Anne Shakespeare died on Aug. 6, 1623, aged 67 years, and was thus eight years older than her husband. Their three children were baptized in Stratford church—Susanna on May 26, 1583, and Hamnet and Judith (twins) on Feb. 2, 1585. Nothing is certainly known of Shakespeare's early manhood; traditions that he was forced to flee Stratford for stealing

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616), the national poet of England, the greatest dramatist that modern Europe has produced, was born in April, in the year 1564, at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick. The known facts of the poet’s personal history are comparatively few, and before giving them in order we purpose considering in some detail the larger educational influences which helped to stimulate his latent powers, to evoke and strengthen his poetical and patriotic sympathies, and thus prepare and qualify him for his future work. In dealing with these influences we are on firm and fruitful ground. We know, for example, that Shakespeare was born and lived for twenty years at Stratford-upon-Avon; and we can say therefore with certainty that all the physical and moral influences of that picturesque and richly-storied Midland district melted as years went by into the full current of his ardent blood, became indeed the vital element, the very breath of life his expanding spirit breathed. We know a good deal about his home, his parents, and his domestic surroundings; and these powerful factors in the development of any mind gifted with insight and sensibility must have acted with redoubled force on a nature so richly and harmoniously endowed as that of the Stratford poet. It would be difficult indeed to overestimate the combined effect of these vital elements on his capacious and retentive mind, a mind in which the receptive and creative powers were so equally poised and of such unrivalled strength. This review of the larger influences operating with concentrated force during the critical years of youth and early manhood will help to connect and interpret the few and scattered particulars of Shakespeare’s personal history. These particulars must indeed be to some extent connected and interpreted in order to be clearly understood, and any intelligible account of Shakespeare’s life must therefore

Shakespeare's history plays

This article is about Shakespeare's history plays. For a history of the reception of Shakespeare's work, see Reputation of William Shakespeare.

In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. The histories—along with those of contemporary Renaissance playwrights—help define the genre of history plays. The Shakespearean histories are biographies of English kings of the previous four centuries and include the standalones King John, Edward III and Henry VIII as well as a continuous sequence of eight plays. These last are considered to have been composed in two cycles. The so-called first tetralogy, apparently written in the early 1590s, covers the Wars of the Roses saga and includes Henry VI, Parts I, II & III and Richard III. The second tetralogy, finished in 1599 and including Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II and Henry V, is frequently called the Henriad after its protagonist Prince Hal, the future Henry V.

The folio's classifications are not unproblematic. Besides proposing other categories such as romances and problem plays, many modern studies treat the histories together with those tragedies that feature historical characters. These include Macbeth, set in the mid-11th century during the reigns of Duncan I of Scotland and Edward the Confessor and the legendary King Lear and also the Roman plays Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra.

List of Shakespeare's histories

English histories

As they are in the First Folio, the plays are listed here in the sequence of their action, rather than the order of the plays' composition. Short forms of the full titles are used.

Roman histories

As noted above, the First Folio groups these with the tragedies.

Set in ancient Rome, Titus Andronicus dramatises a fictional story and is therefore excluded as a Roman

William Shakespeare is a mystery. What we know about the facts of his life is outweighed by what we don’t know. His life can be likened metaphorically to a jigsaw puzzle in which most of the pieces are missing. It is no wonder, therefore, that he continues to puzzle historians.

One of the most puzzling pieces of the puzzle is the spiritual will and testament of John Shakespeare, the poet’s father, which had been discovered in 1757 and has been the cause of controversy ever since. Most recently, Matthew Steggle has argued in the Shakespeare Quarterly that “John Shakespeare’s ‘Spiritual Testament’ Is Not John Shakespeare’s”. On the contrary, he argues, it was not written and/or signed by Shakespeare’s father but by the poet’s sister, Joan Hart.

Before we consider the evidence that Professor Steggle presents, let’s look at the history of the contested document, in which the signatory, be it the poet’s father or sister, affirms a devout and unequivocal belief in the doctrines of the Catholic faith.

In 1930, the Shakespearean scholar, E.K. Chambers, published William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, in which he affirmed the genuineness of John Shakespeare’s spiritual will in the face of earlier suggestions that it had been a forgery. Four years later, G.B. Harrison, another eminent Elizabethan and Jacobean scholar, best known for his edition of Shakespeare’s works (1952), concluded cautiously that “Shakespeare’s family was apparently Catholic” and that, therefore, “it follows that Shakespeare was brought up in the old faith”. Then, in 1946, John Henry de Groot, in his work of groundbreaking scholarship, The Shakespeares and “The Old Faith”, asserted that the spiritual will “offers strong evidence that John Shakespeare was a Catholic throughout his life, and that his household was infused with the spirit of the old Faith”.

The spiritual will was discovered in 1757, as we have said