Биография Вильяма Шекспира (SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM), подробный обзор его творчества. Сюжет и содержание произведения Ромео и Джульетта
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
Shakespeare the man
LIFE
Although the amount of factual knowledge available about Shakespeare is
surprisingly large for one of his station in life, many find it a little
disappointing, for it is mostly gleaned from documents of an official
character. Dates of baptisms, marriages, deaths, and burials; wills,
conveyances, legal processes, and payments by the court--these are the
dusty details. There are, however, a fair number of contemporary allusions
to him as a writer, and these add a reasonable amount of flesh and blood to
the biographical skeleton.
Early life in Stratford.
The parish register of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon,
Warwickshire, shows that he was baptized there on April 26, 1564; his
birthday is traditionally celebrated on April 23. His father, John
Shakespeare, was a burgess of the borough, who in 1565 was chosen an
alderman and in 1568 bailiff (the position corresponding to mayor, before
the grant of a further charter to Stratford in 1664). He was engaged in
various kinds of trade and appears to have suffered some fluctuations in
prosperity. His wife, Mary Arden, of Wilmcote, Warwickshire, came from an
ancient family and was the heiress to some land. (Given the somewhat rigid
social distinctions of the 16th century, this marriage must have been a
step up the social scale for John Shakespeare.)
Stratford enjoyed a grammar school of good quality, and the education there
was free, the schoolmaster's salary being paid by the borough. No lists of
the pupils who were at the school in the 16th century have survived, but it
would be absurd to suppose the bailiff of the town did not send his son
there. The boy's education would consist mostly of Latin studies--learning
to read, write, and speak the language fairly well and studying some of the
classical historians, moralists, and poets. Shakespeare did not go on to
the university, and indeed it is unlikely that the tedious round of logic,
rhetoric, and other studies then followed there would have interested him.
Instead, at the age of 18 he married. Where and exactly when are not known,
but the episcopal registry at Worcester preserves a bond dated November 28,
1582, and executed by two yeomen of Stratford, named Sandells and
Richardson, as a security to the bishop for the issue of a license for the
marriage of William Shakespeare and "Anne Hathaway of Stratford," upon the
consent of her friends and upon once asking of the banns. (Anne died in
1623, seven years after Shakespeare. There is good evidence to associate
her with a family of Hathaways who inhabited a beautiful farmhouse, now
much visited, two miles from Stratford.) The next date of interest is found
in the records of the Stratford church, where a daughter, named Susanna,
born to William Shakespeare, was baptized on May 26, 1583. On February 2,
1585, twins were baptized, Hamnet and Judith. (The boy Hamnet,
Shakespeare's only son, died 11 years later.)
How Shakespeare spent the next eight years or so, until his name begins to
appear in London theatre records, is not known. There are stories--given
currency long after his death--of stealing deer and getting into trouble
with a local magnate, Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford; of
earning his living as a schoolmaster in the country; of going to London and
gaining entry to the world of theatre by minding the horses of
theatregoers; it has also been conjectured that Shakespeare spent some time
as a member of a great household and that he was a soldier, perhaps in the
Low Countries. In lieu of external evidence, such extrapolations about
Shakespeare's life have often been made from the internal "evidence" of his
writings. But this method is unsatisfactory: one cannot conclude, for
example, from his allusions to the law that Shakespeare was a lawyer; for
he was clearly a writer, who without difficulty could get whatever
knowledge he needed for the composition of his plays.
Career in the theatre.
The first reference to Shakespeare in the literary world of London comes in
1592, when a fellow dramatist, Robert Greene, declared in a pamphlet
written on his deathbed:
There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his
Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide supposes he is as well able to
bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute
Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a
country.
It is difficult to be certain what these words mean; but it is clear that
they are insulting and that Shakespeare is the object of the sarcasms. When
the book in which they appear (Greenes groats-worth of witte, bought with a
million of repentance, 1592) was published after Greene's death, a mutual
acquaintance wrote a preface offering an apology to Shakespeare and
testifying to his worth. This preface also indicates that Shakespeare was
by then making important friends. For, although the puritanical city of
London was generally hostile to the theatre, many of the nobility were good
patrons of the drama and friends of actors. Shakespeare seems to have
attracted the attention of the young Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd earl of
Southampton; and to this nobleman were dedicated his first published poems,
Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
One striking piece of evidence that Shakespeare began to prosper early and
tried to retrieve the family fortunes and establish its gentility is the
fact that a coat of arms was granted to John Shakespeare in 1596. Rough
drafts of this grant have been preserved in the College of Arms, London,
though the final document, which must have been handed to the Shakespeares,
has not survived. It can scarcely be doubted that it was William who took
the initiative and paid the fees. The coat of arms appears on Shakespeare's
monument (constructed before 1623) in the Stratford church. Equally
interesting as evidence of Shakespeare's worldly success was his purchase
in 1597 of New Place, a large house in Stratford, which as a boy he must
have passed every day in walking to school.
It is not clear how his career in the theatre began; but from about 1594
onward he was an important member of the company of players known as the
Lord Chamberlain's Men (called the King's Men after the accession of James
I in 1603). They had the best actor, Richard Burbage; they had the best
theatre, the Globe; they had the best dramatist, Shakespeare. It is no
wonder that the company prospered. Shakespeare became a full-time
professional man of his own theatre, sharing in a cooperative enterprise
and intimately concerned with the financial success of the plays he wrote.
Unfortunately, written records give little indication of the way in which
Shakespeare's professional life molded his marvellous artistry. All that
can be deduced is that for 20 years Shakespeare devoted himself assiduously
to his art, writing more than a million words of poetic drama of the
highest quality.
Private life.
Shakespeare had little contact with officialdom, apart from walking--
dressed in the royal livery as a member of the King's Men--at the
coronation of King James I in 1604. He continued to look after his
financial interests. He bought properties in London and in Stratford. In
1605 he purchased a share (about one-fifth) of the Stratford tithes--a fact
that explains why he was eventually buried in the chancel of its parish
church. For some time he lodged with a French Huguenot family called
Mountjoy, who lived near St. Olave's Church, Cripplegate, London. The
records of a lawsuit in May 1612, due to a Mountjoy family quarrel, show
Shakespeare as giving evidence in a genial way (though unable to remember
certain important facts that would have decided the case) and as
interesting himself generally in the family's affairs.
No letters written by Shakespeare have survived, but a private letter to
him happened to get caught up with some official transactions of the town
of Stratford and so has been preserved in the borough archives. It was
written by one Richard Quiney and addressed by him from the Bell Inn in
Carter Lane, London, whither he had gone from Stratford upon business. On
one side of the paper is inscribed: "To my loving good friend and
countryman, Mr. Wm. Shakespeare, deliver these." Apparently Quiney thought
his fellow Stratfordian a person to whom he could apply for the loan of 30--
a large sum in Elizabethan money. Nothing further is known about the
transaction, but, because so few opportunities of seeing into Shakespeare's
private life present themselves, this begging letter becomes a touching
document. It is of some interest, moreover, that 18 years later Quiney's
son Thomas became the husband of Judith, Shakespeare's second daughter.
Shakespeare's will (made on March 25, 1616) is a long and detailed
document. It entailed his quite ample property on the male heirs of his
elder daughter, Susanna. (Both his daughters were then married, one to the
aforementioned Thomas Quiney and the other to John Hall, a respected
physician of Stratford.) As an afterthought, he bequeathed his "second-best
bed" to his wife; but no one can be certain what this notorious legacy
means. The testator's signatures to the will are apparently in a shaky
