Mrs. Stevenson
English II
November 6th, 2012
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare is one of the most well respected and time honored man of all time. His unique style, mysterious life and amazingly written sonnets make him the most studied and analyzed men to ever walk the planet. William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-upon-Avon, he was baptized on April 26th 1564, but his actual birth date is unknown. Shakespeare was the third child of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. William had two older sisters, Judith and Joan, and three younger brothers, Richard, Gilbert and Edmund. Not a lot is known of Shakespeare’s childhood, which is part of the reason everyone is so skeptical of his ability to have written everything he wrote. It is generally assumed that he went to the local grammar school, the King's New School, for most of his childhood. Shakespeare did not attend a university. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, he had three children with her, a daughter named Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. In 1585 he started a career as an actor, play writer, and a part owner of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, also known as The Kings Men. By the early 1590’s it is believed that Shakespeare had already written some plays and had a successful career as an actor. Sometime in 1589, Shakespeare wrote his first play, Henry VI. Between his marriage and writing this play, he moved to London. Shakespeare was not an immediate and universal success but with the the plays Richard III, Henry VI, The Comedy of Errors, and Titus Andronicus written Shakespeare became a popular playwright by the 1950’s. The year 1593, marked a huge point in his career as a playwright. By the end of that year, he scored a very important friend and fan in the Earl of Southampton and his Venus and Adonis was published. It is one of the first of Shakespeare’s works to be printed and it was a very big success. Many people believe that Shakespeare started his work as a poet and that he wrote
Cited: Frye, Roland Mushat. Shakespeare: The Art of the Dramatist. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Print. Greenblatt, Steven. "Shakespeares Leap." New York Times. New York Times, 12 Sept. 2004. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. . GradeSaver. *Biography of William Shakespeare | List of Works, Study Guides & Essays*. GradeSaver, 30 November 2012 Web. 30 November 2012. Mabillard, Amanda. Shakespeare 's Writing Style. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. (6 November 2012) . Magill, Frank N. Masterplots II. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem, 1986. Print.