William Shakespeare, the greatest English poet and playwright, was born in Stratford-upon-Avon (1564-1616). His father was a merchant and eminent citizen, so Shakespeare was able to attend the local Grammar School. At 18 he married Anne Hathaway and had three children. Ten years later he was already famous in London as an actor and dramatist. When the theatres were closed down (1592-1594) because of the plague, Shakespeare turned to poetry and produced two long poems and a number of sonnets. In 1595 he was one of the owners of the company of actors called the Chamberlain’s Men, and in 1599 he became co-partner of the Globe Theatre. Now rich and important, he obtained a coat of arms for his family and bought New Place, a large house in Stratford, for himself. Here he retired in 1610 and died in 1616.
Shakespeare lived in an age, the Elizabethan age, in which all the arts flowered under the influence of the Renaissance. London, as the capital of the kingdom, was the centre of the cultural revival: the poets celebrated the Queen, the players acted in front of the Court, the playwrights and the companies of actors needed the protection of important lords to perform their plays. Many public theatres were opened on the banks of the Thames, and the Globe was the most famous. The Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences were warm and involved, curious to learn the destiny of the great and ready to weep at their misfortunes, happy to laugh at comic scenes and characters.
Shakespeare’s plays were popular: they mixed tragedy with comedy, people from the noble classes and common people, they touched the heart of the spectators because they described real feelings, from envy to pity, from love to jealousy, from revenge to pardon.
Shakespeare produced about 36 plays. Some are tragedies (e.g. Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet), some are comedies (e.g. The Taming of the Shrew, Love’s Labours Lost, The Merry Wives of Windsor), and others are romances, or fantasies dominated by the central theme of love (e.g. A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, The Tempest).
