Toshio shibata biography of william shakespeare

Literary and theater critics, historians, cultural commentators, journalists, major authors, and philosophers have engaged in a variety of ways with his work, studying and analyzing an enormous range of themes: editorial and textual issues, feminism, psychoanalysis, politics, patronage, performance history, and film studies. Shakespeare has been analyzed and studied in almost every conceivable way, and there is a massive bibliography of literary criticism, historical contextualization, theater history, theoretical readings, biography, and, of course, speculation.

Instead of merely being thought of as a writer, Shakespeare is now thought to be a shrewd business man who was a shareholder in his company and profited from their success. Schoenbaum provides an exhaustive list of the stories that have circulated about Shakespeare in order to provide the basis for analyzing the life records. Duncan-Jones compiles evidence to suggest that Shakespeare was less the untutored genius of romantic legend and more a social climber who was interested in material gain.

Greenblatt and Potter analyze his canon for clues about his personal life, drawing data from his characters and plot devices.

Toshio shibata biography of william shakespeare

Ackroyd, Peter. Shakespeare: The Biography. New York: Nan A. Talese, Bate, Jonathan. New York: Random House, Bevington, David. Together they had three children. Their first daughter, Susanna , was born six months after the wedding and was later followed by twins Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet died when he was just 11 years old. Shakespeare's career jump-started in London, but when did he go there?

We know Shakespeare's twins were baptised in , and that by his reputation was established in London, but the intervening years are considered a mystery. Shakespeare was the company's regular dramatist, producing on average two plays a year, for almost twenty years. Altogether Shakespeare's works include 38 plays, 2 narrative poems, sonnets, and a variety of other poems.

No original manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays are known to exist today. It is actually thanks to a group of actors from Shakespeare's company that we have about half of the plays at all. They collected them for publication after Shakespeare died, preserving the plays. Although the theater culture in 16 th century England was not greatly admired by people of high rank, some of the nobility were good patrons of the performing arts and friends of the actors.

By , Shakespeare and several fellow actors built their own theater on the south bank of the Thames River, which they called the Globe Theater. Julius Caesar is thought to be the first production at the new open-air theater. Owning the playhouse proved to be a financial boon for Shakespeare and the other investors. The company quickly rebuilt it, and it reopened the next year.

In , Puritans outlawed all theaters, including the Globe, which was demolished two years later. Centuries passed until American actor Sam Wanamaker began working to resurrect the theater once more. The third Globe Theater opened in , and today, more than 1. Some plays blur these lines, and over time, our interpretation of them has changed, too. However, Shakespeare was very innovative, adapting the traditional style to his own purposes and creating a freer flow of words.

With only small degrees of variation, Shakespeare primarily used a metrical pattern consisting of lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse, to compose his plays. At the same time, there are passages in all the plays that deviate from this and use forms of poetry or simple prose. Download our complete William Shakespeare Study Guide for free to explore the key themes and characters from three of his most important plays.

Download Free Study Guide. Character in Othello , King Lear , and Macbeth present vivid impressions of human temperament that are timeless and universal. Possibly the best known of these plays is Hamlet , which explores betrayal, retribution, incest, and moral failure. Shakespeare wrote comedies throughout his career, including his first play The Taming of the Shrew.

Some of his comedies might be better described as tragicomedies. Although graver in tone than the comedies, they are not the dark tragedies of King Lear or Macbeth because they end with reconciliation and forgiveness. Additional Shakespeare comedies include:. Shakespeare is known to have created plays with other writers, such as John Fletcher.

They also collaborated on Cardenio , a play which was not preserved. When including these works, Shakespeare has 41 plays to his name. Around the turn of the 17 th century, Shakespeare became a more extensive property owner in Stratford. When his father, John, died in , he inherited the family home. One scholarly explanation for this lack of historical verification is that "William Shakespeare" was the pen name of some more illustrious, well-educated figure of the Elizabethan era.

The controversy did not see the light of day until more than two centuries after the bard's death. Among the first to question the authorship of such all-time great works as "Macbeth" was a Pennsylvanian Lutheran named Samuel Schmucker, and he was merely drawing an analogy. He likened the scholarly trend of his time in using historic data to raise doubts about the existence of Christ was akin to speculating that Shakespeare never existed.

An offhand remark, but that is all it took to sow the seed of controversy. Some of the fuel for the fire included: 1. The lack of documentation for Shakespeare's existence. The disputed authorship of particular works. The unlikelihood that someone with the bard's background would rise to greatness. The controversy has even found its way into the U.

Supreme Court as the subject of a moot debate. One of the bard's most enduring influences is on the English language. Not only are many quotes from his plays, such as Polonius' advice to Hamlet, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be," a part of the English lexicon, but the way in which Shakespeare shaped the language to suit his own artistic purposes would influence future writers and poets throughout subsequent history, from Charles Dickens to Maya Angelou.

Charles Dickens drew upon the bard's writings for many of his titles as well as numerous quotations he used within his novels. Shakespeare also enriched the language with the addition of approximately 2, new words and numerous new usages of existing vocabulary. Some of the words attributed to the bard include "auspicious," "dwindle" and "sanctimonious.