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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE WAS A POET, WRITER, AND ACTOR AND  HIS WORK HAS MADE A LASTING IMPRESSION ON LATER THEATRE AND LITERATURE

Who was William Shakespeare and what was William Shakespeare's most remembered and famous work?

THE TIME-LINE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  

1564

  • 26TH APRIL William was born the son of John Shakespeare and Mary in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

  • William is baptized around the same time as his birth

  • Williams father John is a member of the common hall of Stratford

1566

  • 13TH OCTOBER: William’s brother Gilbert is born

1568

  • William’s father John was appointed the high bailiff which is similar to a mayor

1569

  • 15TH APRIL William’s sister Joan Shakespeare is born

  • William enters King's New school, an excellent grammar school in Stratford

1571

  • 28TH SEPTEMBER Anne Williams sister is born

  • William’s father John was prosecuted sometimes in the 1570s for usury and for illegal dealing in wool.

1574

  • 11TH MARCH William’s brother Richard is born

1579

  • 4TH APRIL William’s sister Anne died

1580

  • William’s brother Edmund is born

1582

  • NOVEMBER: William married Anne Hathaway, William was eighteen, and Anne was twenty-six-year-old. the both lived on Henley street the place of where William was born

1583

  • 26TH MAY William’s daughter Susannah is born and baptised in the church of the holy trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon

  • The theatre company, “Queen Elizabeth’s men” is formed, which was a playing company or troupe of actors

1585

  • JUNE The death of William knell, who was a member of the “queen’s men. his death at this point in time.  gave an opening for William to join and replace him in the “queen’s men”.it opened a door for Williams career.

1587

  • JUNE: the death of William knell, who was a member of the “queen’s men. his death at this point in time.  gave an opening for William to join and replace him in the “queen’s men”.it opened a door for Williams career

1590

  • William, around this time, writes Henry VI, part one his very first play.

1592

  • William plays on are the London stage

  • Playwright Robert Greene pens a scathing critique of Shakespeare, calling him an "upstart crow" who doesn't belong with Greene's university-educated dramatist crowd

1593

  • JANUARY: The plague hits London and the theatre is then shut due to this.

  • APRIL William publishes "Venus and Adonis," his first long published poem. it is dedicated to his patron Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton

  • 30TH MAY The death of Christopher Marlowe

1594

  • SPRING The London theatres re-opens to the public

  • MAY William publishes "The Rape of Lucrece," also dedicated to the Earl of Southampton and some of his plays were published in quarto editions.

  • William was part-owner of a playing company, founded as Lord Chamberlain's Men, under the patronage of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon.

  • William’s plays were performed only by the lord chamberlain's men

1595

  • The swan is built in Southwark, London, England

1596

  • 11th AUGUST William’s son Hamnet Shakespeare died aged eleven years.

  • William was living in the parish of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, north of the river Thames

1597

  • MAY: William, buys a new place to live, the new place is the second-largest house in Stratford.

  • The Lord’s chamberlain men perform regularly at The Curtain Theatre,

1598

  • William is cast in one of Ben Jonson’s plays “A Humorous Day's Mirth”

  • Writer Francis Meres publishes a glowing review of Shakespeare's work. Thanks to Meres' review, we know that by this time William has become a noted playwright with at least a dozen plays to his name.

1599

  • The Globe Theatre is built on land owned by a Thomas Brend. Many of Shakespeare’s most famous plays are performed for the first time here,

  • The Globe opened in autumn 1599, with Julius Caesar one of the first plays staged here

  • William  had moved across the river to Southwark

1600

  • William’s younger brother Edmund followed him to London to become an actor

1601

  • The first production of Julius Caesar

  • 7TH SEPTEMBER Williams father John died and was buried at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford r John is buried at holy trinity church, Stratford

1602

  • 1ST MAY Williams brother Gilbert acted as an agent for William Sorting his deeds to acres farmland

  • William lived with the Mountjoy family in nearby Silver Street

 

1603

  • 24TH MARCH Queen Elizabeth the 1st is dead, and King James VI of Scotland is king of England

  • 19TH MAY The Chamberlain's Men change their name to The King's Men and perform before king James eleven times between November 1604-1605

1604

  • The first recorded performance of Othello was before King James I and his court.

  • William had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses, where he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear.

1606

  • 26TH DECEMBER Records show that the play "King Lear" was performed before King James I at Whitehall Palace

1607

  • 5TH JUNE William’s daughter Susanna married a  called doctor John Hall

  • 31ST DECEMBER: Williams brother Edmund died and was buried at St Savior's in Southwark.

1608

  • William’s mother Mary died

  • 21ST FEBRUARY: William’s granddaughter Elizabeth is born, from his daughter Susannah

  • The King's Men begin performing at Blackfriars, an indoor theatre in London.

1609

  • Publisher Thomas Thorpe prints a collection of 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

1610

  • Williams daughter Susannah married John Hall. John Hall was a physician

1612

  • 3RD FEBRUARY: Williams brother Gilbert died

1613

  • 4TH FEBRUARY William’s brother Richard died

  • 10TH MARCH  William bought the Blackfriars gatehouse William Johnson was William’s trustee, for the mortgage

  • William composes his final plays— Henry VIII, Two Noble Kinsmen

  • William retired from theatre and moves back to Stratford.

  • 29TH JUNE The Globe Theater destroyed by fire

1614

  • JUNE: The Globe Theater is rebuilt.

1616

  • JANUARY: William summons his lawyer, Francis Collins, regarding alterations to his will.

  • 10TH FEBRUARY William’s daughter Judith married Thomas Quiney in holy trinity church

  • 25TH MARCH William made an alteration to his will.

  • 23RD APRIL: William died at age fifty -two years.

 

William Shakespeare resting place was at the church of the holy trinity,

Stratford-upon-Avon

EXTRA FACTS ON WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  • William Shakespeare was a poet, writer, and actor and his work have made a lasting impression on later theatre and literature.

 

  • Mary Arden, Williams mother was from a family of status and her ancestors had connections in society, such as Thomas Arden, who fought in the thirteenth-century civil war for the Barons and Simon de Montfort; Robert Arden who fought in the War of Roses; John Arden who served on the court of King Henry VII.

 

  • John Shakespeare, William's father, was a glove maker and wool dealer

 

  • Anne Whateley is the name given to the woman who was supposedly Williams first love and the one he was to marry originally. However, some scholars believe her name could be just a clerical error in documents.

 

 

  • The King's Men was the name of the acting company that William worked and belonged to throughout most of his career. Lawrence Fletcher, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillips, John Heminges, Henry Condell, William Sly, Robert Armin and Richard Cowley, were all a part of this. Henry Carey was a great patron of the King Men. Henry was also the first cousin to Elizabeth I of England, the son of Mary Boleyn.

 

  • To be, or not to be is the opening phrase of a soliloquy. These words were spoken by Prince Hamlet and are famously quoted in William’s play “Hamlet” act III

 

 

  • Richard Burbage played most of the lead roles in William’s plays,. This included Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth while Shakespeare himself performed some secondary roles.

 

  • Some of Williams’s works were not written by him solely, however, this was common for that time. William not only wrote plays, he was also an actor who performed many of his own plays as well as those of other playwrights. There is evidence that he played the ghost in Hamlet and Adam in As You Like It.

 

  • William’s family home in Stratford was called New Place. The house stood on the corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane and was apparently the second largest house in the town

 

 

  • The Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship proposes that Edward de Vere the 17th Earl of Oxford) wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare

 

  • John Taylor is said to have been the most likely artist of The "Chandos" portrait, no other painting exists of William Shakespeare.

 

  • On William Shakespeare Grave, in the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-Upon-Avon, carries a curse. It reads: "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones"

SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE HENLEY STREET, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, WARWICKSHIRE, ENGLAND,

THE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

WILLIAM’S COAT OF ARMS AS IT APPEARED

  PORTRAYALS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

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