William Shakespeare is one of the most famous English playwright, poets, and actors. He is viewed as the supreme writer in English literature and the greatest dramatist of the world. He is also called as the national poet of England and the “Bard of Avon.” He has written 154 sonnets, few other verses, two long narrative poems, and 39 plays. Shakespeare’s plays are translated into almost every major language of the world and are performed on stage to date.
A Short Biography of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was born on 23rd April 1564 and baptized on 26th April 1564 to John Shakespeare and Mary Shakespeare. He was the oldest living child, whereas the first two children died in infancy. William Shakespeare grew up as an elder brother with five siblings that include three brothers.
Shakespeare’s father had a profession of leatherworker who had his own business. When William was five, his father became a town Bailiff, a man with the same status as the mayor. However, after some time, John Shakespeare, with some unknown reasons, did not appear to have any public life.
Shakespeare, being the privileged citizen of Stratford, attended grammar school of Stratford. Like all schools, the course curriculum of this school included the Latin classics and memorization, writing, and acting of plays. Till the age of 15, Shakespeare attended the school.
William wedded Anne Hathaway in 1582, a few years after leaving school. Anne was already pregnant with their first child Susan. At the time of the marriage, Shakespeare was 18 years old while Anne was 28. They both spent their life in Stratford after marriage.
In 1585, Shakespeare and Anne completed their family by giving birth to twins: Hamnet and Judith. In the following years, Shakespeare moved to London, leaving his family in Stratford. This period of his life is known as “lost years” as nobody knew what he was up to these days until he was seen in the London theatre in 1592. He pursued a career in the theatre as an actor.
London Theater
As mentioned before, Shakespeare appeared in 1592 as an actor in the London theatre after seven “lost years.” He appeared as a well-known London playwright and actor and was mocked by his fellow writer as “Shake-scene.” In 1593, Shakespeare published Venus and Adonis, a long poem. In 1594, the first edition of his plays was published. As an actor and playwright, Shakespeare performed multiple roles in the London theatre for the next two decades.
During that time, he also became a business partner in a leading acting company named Lord Chamberlain’s men. In 1603, the company was renamed as King’s Men. In the course of years, in the world of London theatre, Shakespeare became increasingly famous; his name turned into a brand that was sold on the title pages, though his name was not even mentioned in his first quarto plays.
Shakespeare flourished financially with acting and writing as well as with his partnership with Lord Chamberlain’s Men. He invested his finances in buying the real-estate in Stratford. In 1597, he bought New Place, the second-largest house in Stratford.
Shakespeare died on 23rd April 1616. The date of his death is the same as the traditional date of his birth. The cause of death is unknown; however, it is assumed that his brother-in-law died a week prior to him with an infectious disease that could be transmitted to him as well. However, the health of Shakespeare had been declining for a long time.
William Shakespeare’s Writing Style
Shakespeare used the conventional style of his age to write his early plays. The plays were written in the stylized language, though it was not always the demand of the drama/play or character. The verses of his play have extended and elaborated conceits and metaphors.
The language he used is, most of the time, rhetorical as it was written to be acted by an actor rather than to speak. However, in the play Titus Andronicus, the critics say that the grand speeches delay the action. Similarly, in the play Two Gentlemen of Verona, the verses have been described as artificial.
Nonetheless, Shakespeare soon started to write in traditional styles. In the historical play, Richard III, the opening soliloquy has its origin in the self-assertion of wickedness in the medieval drama. Simultaneously, the obvious self-realization of Richard anticipates the soliloquies of the mature plays of Shakespeare. There is no single play that marks the transition from transitional style to the freer style. All his plays have a combination of both styles.
The play Romeo and Juliet is the best example that contains the blend of traditional as well as freer style. During the mid-1590s, in the plays Richard II, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Rome Juliet, Shakespeare had started writing more natural poetry than before. The extended metaphors and conceits that he would use in his plays had turned increasingly to the need for drama.
The standard poetic form employed by Shakespeare in his plays was blank verse. It was composed of iambic pentameter with vivid use of imagery and pun. His poetry is unrhymed and has ten syllables in a line. Each second syllable was supposed to be spoken with stress. The blank verse he used in his early plays is different from the blank verse he used in his later plays.
Though the employment of blank verse is beautiful, the sentences likely to start, pause and finish by the end of the line to avoid dullness. However, when Shakespeare got hold of the blank verse, he started interrupting and varying its flow due to the unique flexibility and power of the poetry released in his famous plays, Hamlet and Julius Caesar. For example, to create turmoil in the mind of Hamlet, Shakespeare uses this technique.
Shakespeare’s poetic style changed further after writing Hamlet. This changed style is noticed in the emotional passages of his later tragedies. According to the critic A.C. Bradley, this style of Shakespeare is “more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical.”
To accomplish this effect, Shakespeare implemented many techniques. These techniques included irregular stops and pauses, run-on lines, and high alteration in length and structure of sentences. For example, in his play, Macbeth, the language of Lady Macbeth’s speeches shifts from one dissimilar simile or metaphor to another.
Was the hope drunk,
Wherein you dress’d yourself? Hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely?
(Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Act I, Scene VII)
In the late romances, Shakespeare created the effect of spontaneity with the shifts in time and unexpected turns in plots. This inspired his last poetic style as he set short and long sentences against one another, piled up the clauses, reversed the subject and object, and omitted the words, thus exciting the audience to complete the sense of sentence by themselves.
The poetic genius of Shakespeare was associated with the concrete sense of London theatre. Shakespeare, like every other contemporary playwright, used the stories from sources like Holinshed and Petrarch to dramatize. He redesigned the plots to create interest and also showed many perspectives of narratives. It was due to this strength of design that ensured the fact that the plays of Shakespeare can be translated with both wide and cutting interpretation without loss of the main plot.
With growing mastery, Shakespeare designed his characters with more diverse motivations and characteristic speech patterns. He sustained the features of his style on earlier plays in his later plays as well. He intentionally moved to artificial style in his late romances to highlight the theatrical illusions.
Form
The punctuation that Shakespeare used at the end of the lines in his early works strengthened the rhyme. This form of blank verse was used by him, along with other contemporary dramatists and playwrights, in dialogues between the characters to uplift the poetry. He used rhyme couplet to end his scenes in the play, therefore created suspense. A well-known example of this form occurs in the play Macbeth when Macbeth leaves the stage to kill Duncan.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to Heaven, or to Hell.
(Macbeth, Macbeth; Act II, Scene I)
The literary device soliloquy is used effectively by William Shakespeare in his plays. In his plays, a solitary speech is made by the character that gives the audience an insight into the inner feeling, conflict, and motivation of the character. In a soliloquy, the character either addresses the audience and speaks to them directly or speaks an imaginary realm.
The writing of Shakespeare is full of far-reaching puns that indent two things and subtle rhetorical additions. The key element in all his plays is humor. The bawdy puns he used in his plays made his works controversial to the degree that almost every play has sexual puns. The best example of Bawdy punning is his comedy Twelfth Night.
Certainly, the censored versions of Shakespeare’s plays were produced by Henrietta Bowdler as The family Shakespeare. His comic scenes are not restricted to his comedies only, his tragedies and historical plays have a comic interlude. For example, in Hamlet and Henry IV, there are comic scenes that relax the audience.
Similarities to Contemporary Playwrights
Though Shakespeare has a traditional style that was commonly used in his time, his general style is also compared to his contemporary writers. Shakespeare plays have lots of resemblances to the pays of Christopher Marlowe. It seems that Marlowe’s Queen’s Men have a strong influence on Shakespeare in writing his historical plays. His writing style is also compared to the other playwrights like John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont.
Shakespeare borrowed the plots of his plays from stories and plays of other writers. For example, the plot of Hamlet is taken from Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus. Similarly, the plot of Romeo Juliet is taken from The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, a narrative poem by Arthur Brooke. It was common in Shakespeare’s time to borrow the plot of plays from old plays. Even this tradition continued after the death of Shakespeare, as playwrights started borrowing plots from Shakespeare’s works.
Differences from Contemporary Playwrights
We see the expression of a complete variety of human experiences in the works of Shakespeare. He designed his characters “round” that developed over the course of plays as a human being in the course of life, therefore commanded the sympathies of the audiences. Whereas, the characters designed by his contemporary writers used to be archetypes and flat. For example, Macbeth, in the play, Macbeth killed six people on stage and also responsible for many murders offstage.
However, he still gains the sympathies of the audience due to his flawed nature like humans. Similarly, Hamlet is well aware that he has to avenge the death of his father; however, he procrastinates until he has no choice. He experiences a downfall due to his feelings and emotions, just like humans. Characters designed by Shakespeare were complex and humanistic. He would develop the character of his protagonists with the development of the plots.