Negarin sadr biography of william shakespeare
William Shakespeare wrote sonnets mostly in the s. These short poems, deal with issues such as lost love. His sonnets have an enduring appeal due to his formidable skill with language and words. The plays of Shakespeare have been studied more than any other writing in the English language and have been translated into numerous languages.
He was rare as a play-write for excelling in tragedies, comedies and histories. He deftly combined popular entertainment with an extraordinary poetic capacity for expression which is almost mantric in quality. Farewell: my blessing season this in thee! During his lifetime, Shakespeare was not without controversy, but he also received lavish praise for his plays which were very popular and commercially successful.
His plays have retained an enduring appeal throughout history and the world. Some of his most popular plays include:. Shakespeare died in ; it is not clear how he died, and numerous suggestions have been put forward. John Ward, the local vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford where Shakespeare is buriedwrites in a diary account that:.
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. The grand speeches in Titus Andronicusin 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.
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.
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Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself. Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank versecomposed 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 lineswith the risk of monotony. 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: [ ].
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 After HamletShakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies.
The literary critic A. Bradley described this style as "more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical". These included run-on linesirregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length. The listener is challenged to complete the sense. Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a practical sense of the theatre.
This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting, and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however. In Shakespeare's late romanceshe deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre. Shakespeare's work has made a significant and lasting impression on later theatre and literature.
In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisationplot, languageand genre. 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. His work has inspired several operas, among them Giuseppe Verdi 's MacbethOtello and Falstaffwhose critical standing compares with that of the source plays.
In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling, and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now, [ ] and his use of language helped shape modern English. 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.
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. According to Guinness World RecordsShakespeare negarin sadr biographies of william shakespeare 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 years since his death.
He is also the third most translated author in history. Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he received a large amount of praise. Between the Restoration of the monarchy in and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. 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 and Edmond Malone inadded to his growing reputation. During the Romantic eraShakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridgeand the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German Romanticism.
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. Eliot argued against Shaw that Shakespeare's "primitiveness" in fact made him truly modern. Wilson Knight and the school of New Criticismled a movement towards a closer reading of Shakespeare's imagery. In the s, a wave of new critical approaches replaced modernism and paved the way for post-modern studies of Shakespeare.
He encloses us because we see with his fundamental perceptions. Around years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship of the works attributed to him. Shakespeare conformed to the official state religion, [ k ] 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 Englandwhere 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. The strongest evidence might be a Catholic statement of faith signed by his father, John Shakespearefound in in the rafters of his former house in Henley Street. However, the document is now lost and scholars differ as to its authenticity.
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. Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married year-old Anne Hathawaywho was pregnant.
Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 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. 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. Some scholars suggest that the Droeshout portraitwhich Ben Jonson approved of as a good likeness, [ ] and his Stratford monument provide perhaps the best evidence of his appearance. After a three-year study supported by the National Portrait Gallery, Londonthe portrait's owners, Cooper contended that its composition date, contemporary with Shakespeare, its subsequent provenance, and the sitter's attire, all supported the attribution.
Negarin sadr biography of william shakespeare: feminine connotations such as
Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. English playwright and poet — For other uses, see Shakespeare disambiguation and William Shakespeare disambiguation. The Chandos portraitlikely depicting Shakespeare, c. Stratford-upon-AvonWarwickshire, England.
Elizabethan Jacobean. Lord Chamberlain's Men King's Men. Anne Hathaway. John Shakespeare Mary Arden. Play comedy history tragedy. Poetry sonnet narrative poem epitaph. Main article: Life of William Shakespeare. London and theatrical career. Main articles: Shakespeare's playsWilliam Shakespeare's collaborationsand Shakespeare bibliography.
Further information: Chronology of Shakespeare's plays. Main article: Shakespeare in performance. Main article: Shakespeare's sonnets. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate Main article: Shakespeare's writing style. Main article: Shakespeare's influence. He was not of an age, but for all time. Main article: Shakespeare authorship question.
Main article: Religious views of William Shakespeare. Main article: Sexuality of William Shakespeare. Main article: Portraits of Shakespeare. He was baptised 26 April. Under the Gregorian calendaradopted in Catholic countries inShakespeare died on 3 May. This motto is still used by Warwickshire County Councilin reference to Shakespeare. 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".
Rowsethe 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. Archived from the original on 8 February Retrieved 8 February Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent.
Archived from the original on 7 May Retrieved 7 May Poetry Foundation. Archived from the original on 6 January Retrieved 6 January The Oxford Handbook of the Georgian Theatre — Oxford University Press. The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 3 February Retrieved 3 February Broadcast 18 May Archived from the original on 3 March Retrieved 29 November The Local Germany.
Well, William Shakespeare was the greatest after all Archived from the original on 14 April Retrieved 2 September Guinness World Records. Beaumont and Fletcher. Ben Jonson. Seventeenth Century. Henry Craik, ed. English Prose". Archived from the original on 20 July Retrieved 20 July May Metropolitan Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 10 September Retrieved 16 April CBS News.
Negarin sadr biography of william shakespeare: In addition to his
Archived from the original on 19 April The Guardian. Retrieved 15 April Ackroyd, Peter Shakespeare: The Biography. London: Vintage. ISBN OCLC Adams, Joseph Quincy A Life of William Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Baldwin, T. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Archived from the original on 5 May Retrieved 5 May Barroll, Leeds Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Bate, Jonathan The Soul of the Age. 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.
The bard's masterful characterizations have become archetypes for social standards. Such larger-than-life characters as Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Ophelia and a host of others inform contemporary social standards in ways that are inextricably woven into the fabric of modern society. They not only appear as standard icons in the theater, movies, literature and visual arts, but also have established themselves as cultural norms, particularly in English-speaking societies.
It is not even necessary to have read the works of Shakespeare to be familiar with his well-known quotations and characters. Even the controversy surrounding the authorship of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets serves to keep the bard very much a vital figure in contemporary lore. The probability that the mystery will probably never be resolved, given the lack of hard evidence, means that Shakespearean scholars, school teachers and their students will be reading and discussing the 16th-century master far into the future.
Their first daughter, Susannawas 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 inand 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. These writings were brought together in what is known as the First Folio 'Folio' refers to the size of the paper used.