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 of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. 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 whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Introduction
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare | Introduction
Between 1589 and 1613 at the age of 49. Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context. Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context. 44 years
how old was william shakespeare when he wrote hamlet
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Yorick, the dead jester whose skull Hamlet holds during this scene, is said to have been in the earth "three-and-twenty years," which would make Hamlet no more than seven years old when he last rode on Yorick's back. This view of Hamlet's age is supported by the fact that Richard Burbage, the actor who originally played the role, was thirty-two at the time of the play's premiere. However, a case has been made that at an early stage in "Hamlet"—with its apparent history of multiple revisions—Hamlet was presented as a sixteen-year-old. Several pieces of evidence support this view. Hamlet attends the University of Wittenberg, and members of the royalty and nobility (Elizabethan or medieval Danish) did not attend university at age 30.
Prince Hamlet | Hamlet's age
Additionally, a 30-year-old Prince Hamlet would clearly have been of ruling age. Given his great popularity (mentioned by Claudius), this would raise the question of why it was not he, rather than his uncle, who was elected to succeed to the throne upon the death of King Hamlet.
Prince Hamlet | Hamlet's age
In Act V, scene I of Shakespeare's" Hamlet", the First Gravedigger is asked by Hamlet at about line 147 and following, how long he has "been a grave-maker." His reply appears to determine the age of Hamlet in a roundabout but very explicit manner. The Gravedigger says that he has been in his profession since the day that Old Hamlet defeated Old Fortinbras, which was "the very day that young Hamlet was born." Then, a little later, he adds that "I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years." According to this logic, Hamlet must be thirty years old.
Prince Hamlet | Hamlet's age
After the Globe Theatre burns down in 1613 during a performance of Shakespeare's play "Henry VIII", William Shakespeare, aged 49, returns home to Stratford to rejoin his wife, Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare and Anne have a distant relationship, as he has spent most of their marriage working in London, and she is a down-to-earth country woman who cannot write. Their marriage has never recovered from the death of their son Hamnet, aged 11, in a plague outbreak in Stratford while his father was in London. Although they also have two daughters, Shakespeare regarded Hamnet as his favorite child, especially because of the poems which the child wrote before his death.
All Is True | Plot
While this lack of records bars any certainty about his activity during those years, it is certain that by the time of Greene's attack on the 28-year-old Shakespeare he had acquired a reputation as an actor and burgeoning playwright.
Life of William Shakespeare | Lost years
Oxford was born in 1550, and was between 40 and 53 years old when he presumably would have written the sonnets. Shakespeare was born in 1564. Even though the average life expectancy of Elizabethans was short, being between 26 and 39 was not considered old. In spite of this, age and growing older are recurring themes in the Sonnets, for example, in Sonnets 138 and 37. In his later years, Oxford described himself as "lame". On several occasions, the author of the sonnets also described himself as lame, such as in Sonnets 37 and 89.
Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship | Age and lameness
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 of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. 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 whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
William Shakespeare | Introduction
Hamnet Shakespeare (baptised 2 February 1585 – buried 11 August 1596) was the only son of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, and the fraternal twin of Judith Shakespeare. He died at the age of 11. Some Shakespearean scholars speculate on the relationship between Hamnet and his father's later play "Hamlet", as well as on possible connections between Hamnet's death and the writing of "King John", "Romeo and Juliet", "Julius Caesar", and "Twelfth Night".
Hamnet Shakespeare | Introduction
He was 16 years old.
William Heirens | Early life
At the age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. Two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds the next day as surety that there were no impediments to the marriage. The couple may have arranged the ceremony in some haste, since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times. Hathaway's pregnancy could have been the reason for this. Six months after the marriage, she gave birth to a daughter, Susanna. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare | Marriage
that Shakespeare "understood Latin pretty well: for he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country", etc.
William Beeston | Later years
In his "Remaines Concerning Britaine"—published in 1605, but finished two years previously and before the Earl of Oxford died in 1604—Camden names Shakespeare as one of the "most pregnant witts of these ages our times, whom succeeding ages may justly admire".
Shakespeare authorship question | Contemporary legal recognition
"Any dating of "Hamlet" must be tentative", cautions the "New Cambridge" editor, Phillip Edwards. The earliest date estimate relies on "Hamlet"s frequent allusions to Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", itself dated to mid-1599. The latest date estimate is based on an entry, of 26 July 1602, in the Register of the Stationers' Company, indicating that "Hamlet" was "latelie Acted by the Lo: Chamberleyne his servantes". In 1598, Francis Meres published his "Palladis Tamia", a survey of English literature from Chaucer to its present day, within which twelve of Shakespeare's plays are named. "Hamlet" is not among them, suggesting that it had not yet been written.
Hamlet | Date
For several decades, some theorists have suggested that William Shakespeare placed his mark on the translated text of Psalm 46 that appears in the King James Bible, although many scholars view this as unlikely, stating that the translations were probably agreed upon by a committee of scholars. On the other hand, Shakespeare was in King James' service during the preparation of the King James Bible, and was generally considered to be 46 years old in 1611 when the translation was completed. There are a few extant examples of Shakespeare's actual signature, and as was customary at the time, with spelling being somewhat lax in those pre-standardized days, on at least one occasion he signed it 'Shakspeare', which divides into four and six letters, thus '46'.
Psalm 46 | Shakespeare's alleged involvement
He died suddenly in October 2010, aged 61.
William Shakespeare (singer) | Introduction
Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52. 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", 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." He was survived by his wife and two daughters.
William Shakespeare | Later years and death
If Jonson is taken literally, for the play to have been between 25 and 30 years old in 1614, it must have been written between 1584 and 1589, a theory which not all scholars reject out of hand. For example, in his 1953 edition of the play for the "Arden Shakespeare" 2nd Series, J.C. Maxwell argues for a date of late 1589. Similarly, E.A.J. Honigmann, in his 'early start' theory of 1982, suggests that Shakespeare wrote the play several years before coming to London , and that "Titus" was actually his first play, written . In his "Cambridge Shakespeare" edition of 1994 and again in 2006, Alan Hughes makes a similar argument, believing the play was written very early in Shakespeare's career, before he came to London, possibly .
Titus Andronicus | Date
Six months later. The Old Woman tells Judith about her husband's condition and his history with the press gang, but Judith takes a moralistic tone, condemning the Old Man for his infidelity and irresponsibility. Later, Shakespeare and the Old Man are in the garden when the Young Woman returns. She is physically decimated, having been living in burned out barns all winter, supported by the Old Man. Shakespeare tells Judith to give the woman food and clothing, but Judith resents her and refuses. The woman hides in the orchard when Combe arrives to give Shakespeare the contract, which he signs.
Bingo (play) | Scene 2
His interpretation stressed the Oedipal overtones of the play, and cast 28-year-old Eileen Herlie as Hamlet's mother, opposite himself, at 41, as Hamlet. In 1953, actor Jack Manning performed the play in 15-minute segments over two weeks in the short-lived late night DuMont series "Monodrama Theater". "New York Times" TV critic Jack Gould praised Manning's performance as Hamlet.
Hamlet | Film and TV performances
Shakespeare is seated in his garden when the Young Woman arrives to beg. The Old Man takes her into the back garden for sex. The Old Woman tries to sound out Shakespeare's intentions with regards to Combe's land scheme and warns him that it will ruin local families. Combe arrives to convince Shakespeare to sign a contract stating that he will not interfere with the scheme, in exchange for the security of his own lands. Shakespeare hands Combe a paper stating his terms. The Old Man enters, followed by the Son, berating the Old Man for his sexual misconduct with the Young Woman.
Bingo (play) | Scene 1
He names twelve plays written by Shakespeare, including four which were never published in quarto: "The Two Gentlemen of Verona", "The Comedy of Errors", "Love's Labour's Won", and "King John", as well as ascribing to Shakespeare some of the plays that were published anonymously before 1598—"Titus Andronicus", "Romeo and Juliet", and "Henry IV, Part 1". He refers to Shakespeare's "sug[a]red Sonnets among his private friends" 11 years before the publication of the Sonnets. In the rigid social structure of Elizabethan England, William Shakespeare was entitled to use the honorific "gentleman" after his father's death in 1601, since his father was granted a coat of arms in 1596.
Shakespeare authorship question | Historical evidence
The common belief in Elizabethan England was that motherhood before sixteen was dangerous; popular manuals of health, as well as observations of married life, led Elizabethans to believe that early marriage and its consummation permanently damaged a young woman's health, impaired a young man's physical and mental development, and produced sickly or stunted children. Therefore, eighteen came to be considered the earliest reasonable age for motherhood and twenty and thirty the ideal ages for women and men, respectively, to marry. Shakespeare might also have reduced Juliet's age from sixteen to thirteen to demonstrate the dangers of marriage at too young of an age; that Shakespeare himself married Anne Hathaway when he was just eighteen might hold some significance.
Juliet | Juliet's age
Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596. 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. Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years".
William Shakespeare | Early life
That the parts of young women were played by pre-adolescent boys in Shakespeare's day also cannot be overlooked and it is possible that Shakespeare had the physique of a young boy in mind during composition, in addition to the fact that Romeo and Juliet are of wealthy families and would be more likely to marry earlier than commoners. At the time, English noblewomen married on average at 19–21 years (compared to 24–26 years for English noblemen) while the average marriage age in England was 25–26 years for women and 27–28 for men; Sir Thomas More wrote in his "Utopia" that, in Utopia, women must be at least eighteen years of age when they marry and men at least 22 years.
Juliet | Juliet's age
Hart does not suggest that there was any conspiracy, merely that evidence of the real authors's identities had been lost when the plays were published. Hart asserts that Shakespeare had been "dead for one hundred years and utterly forgotten" when old playscripts formerly owned by him were discovered and published under his name by Nicholas Rowe and Thomas Betterton. He speculates that only "The Merry Wives of Windsor" was Shakespeare's own work and that Ben Jonson probably wrote "Hamlet". In 1852 an anonymous essay in "Chambers's Edinburgh Journal" also suggested that Shakespeare owned the playscripts, but had employed an unknown poor poet to write them.
History of the Shakespeare authorship question | Debate in the 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, 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. The 26 so-called "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.
William Shakespeare | Sexuality
Anne Hathaway (1556 – 6 August 1623) was the wife of William Shakespeare, the English poet, playwright and actor. They were married in 1582, when he was 18 and she was 26 years old. She outlived her husband by seven years. Very little is known about her beyond a few references in legal documents. Her personality and relationship to Shakespeare have been the subject of much speculation by many historians and creative writers.
Anne Hathaway (wife of Shakespeare) | Introduction
About 60 years old when the house was built, Rogers was a successful butcher and also a corn and cattle merchant. He served as Alderman for the Stratford Corporation alongside John Shakespeare, William’s father.
Harvard House | Introduction
When Charles Lamb drew the public's attention to the best Elizabethan and Jacobean plays in his "Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived about the Time of Shakespeare" (1808) he included substantial extracts from "Old Fortunatus", and declared that the man who wrote it "had poetry enough for any thing." The first edition of the play for more than 200 years appeared in 1814, as part of C. W. Dilke's "Old English Plays". "Old Fortunatus" was acted at Covent Garden on eleven nights in 1819, with incidental music by Henry Bishop. The same year William Hazlitt delivered his "Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth", in which he spoke of "Old Fortunatus" as having "the idle garrulity of age, with the freshness and gaiety of youth still upon its cheek and in its heart." Later in the century James Russell Lowell called the play "a favourite of mine", while George Saintsbury wrote that it was "to the last degree crude and undigested, but the ill-matured power of the writer is almost the more apparent." The literary historian Adolphus William Ward balanced the work's vices and virtues: The construction of this drama is necessarily lax; the wild defiance of the unities of time and place accords well with the nature of the subject; but as the author seems so strongly impressed by the moral of his story, he ought not to have allowed the virtuous and the vicious son of Fortunatus to come alike to grief...Altogether this romantic comedy attracts by a singular vigour and freshness; but its principal charm lies in the appropriately "naif" treatment of its simple, not to say childlike, theme.
Old Fortunatus | Revival and critical reception
At age 12, he authored a play.
James M. Nack | Introduction
He played up the Oedipal overtones of the play, to the extent of casting the 28-year-old Eileen Herlie as Hamlet's mother, opposite himself (aged 41) as Hamlet. Film scholar Jack Jorgens has commented that "Hamlet's scenes with the Queen in her low-cut gowns are virtually love scenes." In contrast, Jean Simmons' Ophelia is destroyed by Hamlet's treatment of her in the nunnery scene: ending with her collapsing on the staircase in what Deborah Cartmell calls the position of a rape victim. According to J. Lawrence Guntner, the style of the film owes much to German Expressionism and to "film noir": the cavernous sets featuring narrow winding stairwells correspond to the labyrinths of Hamlet's psyche.
Hamlet on screen | Laurence Olivier, 1948
The sources of "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark", a tragedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601, trace back as far as pre-13th century. The generic "hero-as-fool" story is so old and is expressed in the literature of so many cultures that scholars have hypothesized that it may be Indo-European in origin. A Scandinavian version of the story of Hamlet (called Amleth or Amlóði, which means "mad" or "not sane" in Old Norse) was put into writing around 1200 AD by Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus in his work "Gesta Danorum" (the first full history of Denmark).
Sources of Hamlet | Introduction
Shakespeare is walking home from the tavern through the fresh snow, coming across the Old Man, who is throwing snowballs. Judith enters and scolds Shakespeare; Shakespeare tells her that after temporarily abandoning her mother, he tried to love Judith with money, but ended up making her materialistic and vulgar. She leaves him, and as he sits alone in the snow, several dark figures run by backstage, and a gunshot is heard. The Old Woman comes to bring Shakespeare home.
Bingo (play) | Scene 5
"Hamlet" exists in several early versions: the first quarto edition (Q1, 1603), the second quarto (Q2, 1604), and the First Folio (F, 1623). Q1 and F do not contain this speech, although both include a form of The Closet Scene, so the 1604 Q2 is the only early source for the quote. The omission of this speech—as well as the long soliloquy in Act 4, Scene 4—is generally considered to have been cut in the playhouse for various practical reasons. But in the 1985 Cambridge Shakespeare edition of the play, Philip Edwards argued that these were deliberate cuts by Shakespeare.
Hoist with his own petard | Date and text
William Shakespeare is an 1864 work by Victor Hugo, written in his 13th year of exile. The title is misleading; the true subject of the work is the writers that Hugo considered "the greatest geniuses of all time."
William Shakespeare (essay) | Introduction
Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic Latin text was standardised by royal decree, and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar based upon Latin classical authors. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage. The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times, and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583.
William Shakespeare | Early life
Scholars have long speculated about the influence – if any – of Hamnet's death upon William Shakespeare's writing. Unlike his contemporary Ben Jonson, who wrote a lengthy piece on the death of his own son, Shakespeare, if he wrote anything in response, did so more subtly. At the time his son died, Shakespeare was writing primarily comedies, and that writing continued until a few years after Hamnet's death, when his major tragedies were written. It is possible that his tragedies gained depth from his experience. Biographical readings, in which critics would try to connect passages in the plays and sonnets to specific events in Shakespeare's life, are at least as old as the Romantic period.
Hamnet Shakespeare | Connection to "Hamlet" and other plays
Guest actors included James Murdoch in "Hamlet" and "The Lady of Lyons", Samuel Lover in his own play, "Emigrant's Dream", Mrs. George Percy Farren (née Mary Ann Russell) in "The Stranger", "The Gamester", and "The Ransom", Mr. and Mrs. James W. Wallack Jr. in "Macbeth" with guest actor James Stark, W. B. Chapman, James Robertson Anderson in "Othello" and "Romeo and Juliet". John Brougham's comedy, "Romance and Reality", starring the author, was a big hit and ran two weeks, as did John Collins, the Irish singer and actor. Professor Risley & Sons, a popular gymnastics act, was on the bill for two weeks in October.
Old Broadway Theatre | 1847–50
Consequently, there is no direct evidence that Kyd wrote it, nor any evidence that the play was not an early version of "Hamlet" by Shakespeare himself. This latter idea—placing "Hamlet" far earlier than the generally accepted date, with a much longer period of development—has attracted some support.
Hamlet | Sources
The Shakespearean scholar, Eric Sams points to a letter written by the 20-year-old Earl of Southampton to a Mr. Hicks (or Hyckes) regarding Lord Burghley, at a time when Southampton had not yet agreed to marry Burghley's granddaughter. The letter is signed by the Earl of Southampton, but the body of the letter was written by someone else. It is dated 26 June 1592, a year when it is thought that Shakespeare may have first encountered Southampton and had begun writing the sonnets. Sams notices that the handwriting in the body of the letter is literally a secretary hand, and it resembles the handwriting found in the addition to "Sir Thomas More" by Hand D.
Shakespeare's handwriting | Handwriting in a letter signed by the Earl of Southampton
However, according to Samuel Schoenbaum, since Aubrey's comment was unpublished, the existence of some other sources saying the same thing suggests that the story that "Sir William was more than Shakespeare's mere poetical offspring was common in Davenant's lifetime." In 1618, after Shakespeare's death, the 12-year-old Davenant wrote an ode "". He attended Lincoln College, Oxford, for a while in about 1620, but left before gaining any degree, becoming a page to the Duchess of Richmond. In London in 1630, he contracted a venereal disease, and was given a syphilis treatment by Thomas Cademan. As a convalescent, he left for the country in 1632 for a time.
William Davenant | Early life
In the latter campaign, he recalled focusing on soliloquies from "Hamlet" and "Henry V" to keep his sanity.
William Needles | Early years
The Parisian public's fascination with Ophelia, prototype of the "femme fragile", began in the fall of 1827, when an English company directed by William Abbot came to Paris to give a season of Shakespeare in English at the Odéon. On 11 September 1827 the Irish actress Harriet Smithson played the part of Ophelia in "Hamlet". Her mad scene appeared to owe little to tradition and seemed almost like an improvisation, with several contemporary accounts remarking on her astonishing capacity for mime. Her performances produced an extraordinary reaction: men wept openly in the theater, and when they left were "convulsed by uncontrollable emotion." The twenty-five-year-old Alexandre Dumas, père, who was about to embark on a major career as a novelist and dramatist, was in the audience and found the performance revelatory, "far surpassing all my expectations".
Hamlet (Thomas) | Ophelia mania in Paris
Hamlet by William Shakespeare has been performed many times since the beginning of the 17th century.
Hamlet in performance | Introduction
Old Times is a play by the Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. It was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre in London on 1 June 1971. It starred Colin Blakely, Dorothy Tutin, and Vivien Merchant, and was directed by Peter Hall. The play was dedicated to Hall to celebrate his 40th birthday. Peter Hall also directed the Broadway première, which opened at the Billy Rose Theater in New York City on 16 November 1971, starring Robert Shaw, Rosemary Harris and Mary Ure; and a year later, the German language première of the play at the Burgtheater in Vienna, with Maximilian Schell, Erika Pluhar and Annemarie Düringer.
Old Times | Introduction
Thomas Nashe, in his introduction to Greene’s "Menaphon" (1589), writes in a riddling way that seems to leave clues regarding the identity of playwrights who have left the trade of noverint (lawyer’s clerk) to turn to writing, and who are being influenced by the Roman playwright Seneca, who "if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets…" Nashe then writes that his followers are like the "kid" in Aesop. The reference to "Hamlets" vouches for the idea that a Hamlet-play existed as early as 1589. Other references, are interpreted by some to contribute to the idea that Thomas Kyd, who was a noverint, and a Seneca-influenced playwright, and whose name is a homophone of Aesop’s "kid", might be the author of the "Hamlet" that Nashe mentions.
Ur-Hamlet | Authorship theories
Q1 of "Hamlet" (also called the "First Quarto", full title The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke) is a short early text of the Shakespearean play. The intended publication of the play is entered in the Stationers' Register in 1602 by James Roberts, but Q1 was not published until summer or autumn 1603. It was published by the booksellers Nicholas Ling and John Trundell, and printed by Valentine Simmes. Roberts later printed the "Second Quarto" (Q2). The other two early printed texts of "Hamlet" are the Second Quarto (Q2, 1604) and First Folio (F1, 1623) (subsequent quartos over the period 1604–1623 are all, at least in their substantive features, derived from Q2).
Hamlet Q1 | Introduction
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play with 30,557 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother. "Hamlet" is considered among the most powerful and influential works of world literature, with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others". It was one of Shakespeare's most popular works during his lifetime and still ranks among his most performed, topping the performance list of the Royal Shakespeare Company and its predecessors in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1879.
Hamlet | Introduction
There are no historic records of the foundation of the hamlet. The oldest houses still existing were probably built in the 15th century.
Bardou, Hérault | Middle ages
William Shakespeare was an actor, playwright, poet, and theatre entrepreneur in London during the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. He was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, in the Holy Trinity Church. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway with whom he had three children. He died in his home town of Stratford on 23 April 1616, aged 51. Though more is known about Shakespeare's life than those of most other Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, few personal biographical facts survive, which is unsurprising in the light of his social status as a commoner, the low esteem in which his profession was held, and the general lack of interest of the time in the personal lives of writers.
Life of William Shakespeare | Introduction
The Old Bachelor is the first play written by British playwright William Congreve, produced in 1693. Henry Purcell set it to music.
The Old Bachelor | Introduction
Shakespeare is in bed, half delirious, repeating the phrase "Was anything done?" Judith and her mother knock on the door calling for Shakespeare to let them in, gradually becoming hysterical when he does not respond, until finally he slips his will to them under the door and they leave. The Son enters, and tells Shakespeare that in a scuffle with Combe's men he shot his father, the Old Man. Combe enters, and the Son hypocritically accuses him of shooting the Old Man. While Combe and the Son argue, Shakespeare takes poison pills he had taken from Jonson. Combe and the Son leave, unaware that Shakespeare is dying.
Bingo (play) | Scene 6
In her 1974 book, "Lancashire Legends", Kathleen Eyre claims that although "it may be no more than a fond hope" there is evidence that a "William Shakeshaft" (a common version of Shakespeare's name) was a youthful member of the "Hesketh Company of Players" who visited in about 1585. The date coincides with Shakespeare's absence from Stratford-on-Avon following a bout of deer-stealing from neighbouring parks, particularly that of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote.
Rufford Old Hall | Shakespeare connection
William Haughton (died 1605) was an English playwright in the age of English Renaissance theatre.
William Haughton (playwright) | Introduction
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English poet, playwright and actor. William Shakespeare may also refer to:
William Shakespeare (disambiguation) | Introduction
Both Q2 and F1 are more than 1600 lines longer than Q1. Q1 was unknown until 1823, when the first of only two known copies was discovered by Sir Henry Bunbury. Since then the exact relationship between Q1 and the other early texts of the play, as well as its origin as a text, has been extensively debated but no scholarly consensus has been reached.
Hamlet Q1 | Introduction
He was 59.
William Campbell Moore | Introduction
Most scholars, including Harold Bloom, dismiss the idea that "Hamlet" is in any way connected with Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet Shakespeare, who died at age eleven. Conventional wisdom holds that "Hamlet" is too obviously connected to legend, and the name Hamnet was quite popular at the time. However, Stephen Greenblatt has argued that the coincidence of the names and Shakespeare's grief for the loss of his son may lie at the heart of the tragedy. He notes that the name of Hamnet Sadler, the Stratford neighbor after whom Hamnet was named, was often written as Hamlet Sadler and that, in the loose orthography of the time, the names were virtually interchangeable.
Sources of Hamlet | Shakespeare's son
Most Oxfordians consider "Hamlet" the play most easily seen as portraying Oxford's life story, though mainstream scholars say that incidents from the lives of other contemporary figures such as King James or the Earl of Essex, fit the play just as closely, if not more so. Hamlet's father was murdered and his mother made an "o'er-hasty marriage" less than two months later. Oxfordians see a parallel with Oxford's life, as Oxford's father died at the age of 46 on 3 August 1562, although not before making a will six days earlier, and his stepmother remarried within 15 months, although exactly when is unknown.
Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship | "Hamlet"
It's never dull, and if characters such as Fortinbras and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have been sacrificed, it's remarkable how little they are missed. James Agee in "Time" wrote in 1948: "A man who can do what Laurence Olivier is doing for Shakespeare is certainly among the more valuable men of his time."
Hamlet (1948 film) | Influence
The case for Oxford's authorship is also based on perceived similarities between Oxford's biography and events in Shakespeare's plays, sonnets and longer poems; perceived parallels of language, idiom, and thought between Oxford's letters and the Shakespearean canon; and the discovery of numerous marked passages in Oxford's Bible that appear in some form in Shakespeare's plays. The first to lay out a comprehensive case for Oxford's authorship was J. Thomas Looney, an English schoolteacher who identified personality characteristics in Shakespeare's works—especially "Hamlet"—that painted the author as an eccentric aristocratic poet, a drama and sporting enthusiast with a classical education who had travelled extensively to Italy.
Shakespeare authorship question | Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
George Kittredge born in 1860, was nearly 80 years old when the first volumes of Kittredge Shakespeare were published in 1939. The original series included text and analysis of sixteen of Shakespeare's Plays. Kittredge, who had taught Harvard undergraduates an introductory course on Shakespeare called English 2, had written very little on the subject, other than an address in 1916 at the Sanders Theater, before publishing his "Complete Works" in 1936 (see below) and the individual play series, starting in 1939. The original series included an introduction to each play, text of the play, copious literary notes following the text, textual notes, and a glossary.
Kittredge Shakespeare | Original series
The Ur-Hamlet (the German prefix "Ur-" means "original") is a play by an unknown author, thought to be either Thomas Kyd or William Shakespeare. No copy of the play, dated by scholars to the second half of 1587, survives today. The play is known to have been staged in London, more specifically at The Burbages' Shoreditch Playhouse as recalled by Elizabethan author Thomas Lodge. The play is known to have a character named Hamlet; the only other known character from the play is a ghost who cries, "Hamlet, revenge!"
Ur-Hamlet | Introduction
William is eight at the start of the book and the third oldest.
Or Give Me Death | William
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. Until about 1608, he wrote mainly tragedies, among them "Hamlet", "Romeo and Juliet", "Othello", "King Lear", and "Macbeth", all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
William Shakespeare | Introduction
Shakespeare's plays are therefore still familiar and comprehensible 400 years after they were written, but the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, which had been written only 200 years earlier, are considerably more difficult for the average modern reader.
Early Modern English | Development to Modern English
An increasing number of scholars look to evidence from Shakespeare’s work, such as the placement of young Hamlet as a student at Wittenberg while old Hamlet's ghost is in purgatory, as suggestive of a Catholic worldview, but these speculations can be contradictory: the University of Wittenberg was an intellectual centre of the Protestant Reformation and the whole of "Hamlet" can be read as filled with "cryptic allusions to the Protestant Reformation". Other indications have been detected in the sympathetic view of religious life expressed in the phrase "thrice blessed", scholastic theology in "The Phoenix and the Turtle", sympathetic allusions to English Jesuit Edmund Campion in "Twelfth Night", and many other instances.
Religious views of William Shakespeare | Textual evidence
It is generally classified as apocryphal and not part of the main Shakespearean canon. Other proposed authors have included George Peele, Robert Greene, and Thomas Lodge. Greene's "James IV" (c. 1590) and Peele's "Old Wive's Tale" (1595) belong to the same genre.
Mucedorus | Introduction
He died eight years later, aged only 35.
Henry Seekamp | Introduction
All references to "Hamlet", unless otherwise specified, are taken from the Arden Shakespeare Q2. Under their referencing system, 3.1.55 means act 3, scene 1, line 55. References to the First Quarto and First Folio are marked "Hamlet Q1" and "Hamlet F1", respectively, and are taken from the Arden Shakespeare "Hamlet: the texts of 1603 and 1623". Their referencing system for Q1 has no act breaks, so 7.115 means scene 7, line 115.
Hamlet | References
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English playwright and poet. Shakespeare may also refer to:
Shakespeare (disambiguation) | Introduction
Although Ireland claimed throughout his life that he was born in London in 1777, the Ireland family Bible puts his birth two years earlier, on 2 August 1775. His father, Samuel Ireland, was a successful publisher of travelogues, collector of antiquities and collector of Shakespearian plays and "relics". There was at the time, and still is, a great scarcity of writing in the hand of Shakespeare. Of his 37 plays, there is not one copy in his own writing, not a scrap of correspondence from Shakespeare to a friend, fellow writer, patron, producer or publisher. Forgery would fill this void.
William Henry Ireland | Early life
HHF's masterwork – one that occupied him for more than 45 years, and remained unfinished at his death – was to create a complete variorum of Shakespeare's 38 plays. He compared variations in the texts over the known editions; annotated the playwright's many thousands of references; surveyed the commentary of three centuries of critics (in multiple languages); and examined the performance histories and the interpretations of Shakespearean actors. He published 17 volumes of analysis between 1871 and 1913—one per play, two for "Hamlet". His middle son, Horace Howard Furness, Jr. (1865–1930), joined as co-editor of the later volumes. After HHF's death, Horace Jr.
Lindenshade (Wallingford, Pennsylvania) | Fireproof library
Though it was a popular success, "Barnavelt" was not published in the seventeenth century. It remained in manuscript until 1883, when Bullen included it in his "Old English Plays", Vol. 2. The manuscript is now in the collection of the British Museum, identified as Add. MS. 18653. It is a fair copy of the play text prepared by the professional scribe Ralph Crane, who worked repeatedly for the King's Men in the early seventeenth century and would prepare copy for some of Shakespeare's plays for the First Folio (1623). Crane's manuscript is of high quality, with full Act-and-scene divisions; it is marked by two other hands.
John van Olden Barnavelt | Manuscript
He was eighty-one years of age.
John Q. Farmer | Introduction
The title is taken from the St Crispin's Day Speech by King Henry in Act IV, Scene 3 of Shakespeare's "Henry V": Despite the title, Cooper was in his early sixties when he wrote the book, having retired from public life in 1947 at the age of fifty-seven. The publisher Rupert Hart-Davis, who was Cooper's nephew, published the first edition in November 1953. The book covers Cooper's early years – his schooldays at Eton, studies and socialising at Oxford – followed by his army service in the First World War, in which he fought in the trenches and was one of the few members of his intimate circle to survive the war.
Old Men Forget | Publishing history, content and reception
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English poet and playwright. He wrote approximately 39 plays and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems.
Shakespeare bibliography | Introduction
He was 80.
William Hanley | Life
Playters died at the age of 78 and was commemorated on a monument on the tomb of his wife at Dickleburgh, Norfolk.
William Playters | Introduction
Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time. Shakespeare continued to visit London during the years 1611–1614. In 1612, he was called as a witness in "Bellott v Mountjoy", a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. In March 1613, he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory; and from November 1614, he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall. After 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613. His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house playwright of the King's Men.
William Shakespeare | Later years and death
Scholars believe that as a result of these events William Shakespeare altered his will to favour his other daughter, Susanna Hall, and excluded Quiney from his inheritance. Judith and Thomas had three children: Shakespeare, Richard, and Thomas. Shakespeare Quiney died at six months of age, and neither Richard nor Thomas lived past 21. The death of Judith's last child led to legal wrangling over William Shakespeare's will that lasted until 1652. Scholars speculate that Thomas Quiney may have died in 1662 or 1663 when the burial records are incomplete.
Thomas Quiney | Introduction
Outside Scandinavia, the story of Amleth or Hamlet was popularized through François de Belleforest's French "Histoires tragiques" (Paris, Chez Jean Hupeau, 1572, Fueil 149), where it appears as the fifth story of the fifth volume. An English version, "The Hystorie of Hamblet", was published in 1608. An English stage version, conventionally known as the "Ur-Hamlet", appeared by 1589. The play is lost but is mentioned in a few other sources, the first being Thomas Nashe's 1589 preface to Robert Greene's "Menaphon". William Shakespeare wrote his play "Hamlet" sometime between 1599 and 1602. The "Ur-Hamlet" is thought to be his primary source; his version owes but the outline of the story to Saxo.
Amleth | 16th-century reception
Hamlet is a tragic play by William Shakespeare. Hamlet may also refer to:
Hamlet (disambiguation) | Introduction
Jo Maxwell Muller, who was only 18 years old, was cast as Ophelia on the insistence of Plummer. "Hamlet at Elsinore" was broadcast in Canada on April 15, 1964, and in the United Kingdom on April 19, exactly one week before Shakespeare's 400th birthday. It was intended by the BBC to be its major commemoration of the Shakespeare quatercentenary. It was broadcast in the United States on November 15, 1964.
Hamlet at Elsinore | Production
He is the supposed author of: The dedication to Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, is signed 'W. C.' It is now attributed to William Covell. In this very curious and interesting work mention is made of our old English writers, 'sweet Shakespeare,' Harvey, Nash, and 'divine Spenser.' It has been said that this is the earliest known publication in which William Shakespeare's name is mentioned; but it occurs previously in the commendatory verses prefixed to "Willobie His Avisa," 1594.
William Clerke (writer) | Works
Some suggest that the "Ur-Hamlet" is an early version of Shakespeare's own play, pointing to the survival of Shakespeare's version in three quite different early texts, Q1 (1603), Q2 (1604) and F (1623), and offer the possibility that the play was revised by the author over a period of many years. While the exact relationship of the short and apparently primitive text of Q1 to the later published texts is not resolved, Hardin Craig has suggested that it may represent an earlier draft of the play and hence would confirm that the "Ur-Hamlet" is in fact merely an earlier draft of Shakespeare's play.
Ur-Hamlet | Authorship theories
An Age of Kings is a fifteen-part serial adaptation of the eight sequential history plays of William Shakespeare ("Richard II", "1 Henry IV", "2 Henry IV", "Henry V", "1 Henry VI", "2 Henry VI", "3 Henry VI" and "Richard III"), produced by the BBC in 1960. At the time, the show was the most ambitious Shakespearean television adaptation ever made, and was a critical and commercial success in both the UK and the US.
An Age of Kings | Introduction
There is speculation that "Hamlet" (c. 1601) may be a reworking of an older, lost play (the so-called "Ur-Hamlet"), but the number of lost plays from this time period makes it impossible to determine that relationship with certainty. (The "Ur-Hamlet" may in fact have been Shakespeare's, and was just an earlier and subsequently discarded version.) For plays on historical subjects, Shakespeare relied heavily on two principal texts. Most of the Roman and Greek plays are based on Plutarch's "Parallel Lives" (from the 1579 English translation by Sir Thomas North), and the English history plays are indebted to Raphael Holinshed's 1587 "Chronicles".
Shakespeare's plays | Source material of the plays
Wooland kept a herd of cows, each of which was named after a Shakespearean character. He died in 1989, aged 79.
Norman Wooland | Introduction
In April 1930 Gielgud finished the season playing Hamlet. Williams's production used the complete text of the play. This was regarded as a radical innovation; extensive cuts had been customary for earlier productions. A running time of nearly five hours did not dampen the enthusiasm of the public, the critics or the acting profession. Sybil Thorndike said, "I never hoped to see Hamlet played as in one's dreams ... I've had an evening of being swept right off my feet into another life – far more real than the life I live in, and moved, moved beyond words." The production gained such a reputation that the Old Vic began to attract large numbers of West End theatregoers.
John Gielgud | Old Vic
This view is held in some form or another by Harold Bloom, Peter Alexander, and Andrew Cairncross, who stated, "It may be assumed, until a new case can be shown to the contrary, that Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and no other is the play mentioned by Nashe in 1589 and Henslowe in 1594". Harold Jenkins, in his 1982 Arden edition, dismisses this assertion.
Ur-Hamlet | Authorship theories
Oxfordians think that the phrase "our ever-living Poet" (an epithet that commonly eulogised a deceased poet as having attained immortal literary fame), included in the dedication to Shakespeare's sonnets that were published in 1609, was a signal that the true poet had died by then. Oxford had died in 1604, five years earlier. Shakespeare's funerary monument in Stratford consists of a demi-figure effigy of him with pen in hand and an attached plaque praising his abilities as a writer. The earliest printed image of the figure, in Sir William Dugdale's "Antiquities of Warwickshire" (1656), differs greatly from its present appearance.
Shakespeare authorship question | Circumstances of Shakespeare's death
Shakespeare almost certainly wrote the role of Hamlet for Richard Burbage. He was the chief tragedian of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, with a capacious memory for lines and a wide emotional range. Judging by the number of reprints, "Hamlet" appears to have been Shakespeare's fourth most popular play during his lifetime—only "Henry IV Part 1", "Richard III" and "Pericles" eclipsed it. Shakespeare provides no clear indication of when his play is set; however, as Elizabethan actors performed at the Globe in contemporary dress on minimal sets, this would not have affected the staging. Firm evidence for specific early performances of the play is scant.
Hamlet | Shakespeare's day to the Interregnum
See also W. Barske, "Oldcastle-Falstaff in der englischen Literatur bis zu Shakespeare" ("Palaestra", 1. Berlin, 1905).
John Oldcastle | Bibliography
After the publication of the Q1 and Q2 "Hamlet" in 1603, no new plays were published until 1608. Anderson observes that, "After 1604, the 'newly correct[ing]' and 'augment[ing]' stops. Once again, the Shake-speare ["sic"] enterprise appears to have shut down".
Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship | Chronology of the plays and Oxford's 1604 death
"Ubi sunt" poetry also figures in some of Shakespeare's plays. When Hamlet finds skulls in the Graveyard (V. 1), these rhetorical questions appear: Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kiss'd I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning – quite chap-fall'n.
Ubi sunt | Shakespeare
A Trick to Catch the Old One is a Jacobean comedy written by Thomas Middleton, first published in 1608. The play is a satire in the subgenre of city comedy. The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 7 October 1607 by the printer George Eld, and published by him in quarto in the following year, 1608. The title page of Q1 states that "A Trick" was acted by the Children of Paul's, one of the companies of boy actors popular at the time. The play was probably written and first acted circa 1605. The play was popular; a second quarto was issued in the same year, printed by Eld for the bookseller Henry Rocket.
A Trick to Catch the Old One | Introduction
Thomas Fingal Healy, writing for "The American Mercury" in 1940, picked up the idea, claiming that many of the plays draw on Irish folklore. Shakespeare was forced to conceal his Irish background because the Irish were considered a "rebel race" by Queen Elizabeth. Healy found numerous references in the text of "Hamlet" to clothes which, he thought, showed that the Dane was based on a legendary Irish tailor called Howndale. The distinguished Meath historian Elizabeth Hickey writing under the pen name of Basil Iske, claimed in 1978 that she had identified the Irish Shakespeare as the rebel and adventurer William Nugent.
History of the Shakespeare authorship question | Non-English candidates
Hazlitt would frequently visit him—by then about 80 years old—and they conversed endlessly on men and manners, the illustrious figures of Northcote's younger days, particularly Reynolds, and the arts, particularly painting.
William Hazlitt | "The old age of artists"
The hair over the forehead was scraped out and painted over to create a bald patch. It was also lengthened at the sides, an appearance associated with Shakespeare. The date was also altered to fit Shakespeare's age. The coat of arms was painted over. In this form the painting bore the date 1611 and purported to show Shakespeare at the age of 47. In 1940, Charles Wisner Barrell argued on the basis of x-ray evidence that the portrait originally depicted Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford and that this was evidence that Oxford was the true author of Shakespeare's plays.
Ashbourne portrait | Introduction