English playwright and poet (1564–1616)
"Shakespeare" redirects here. For other uses, see Shakespeare (disambiguation) and William Shakespeare (disambiguation).
William ShakespeareThe Chandos portrait, likely depicting Shakespeare, c. 1611Bornc. (1564-04-23)23 April 1564Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, EnglandDied23 April 1616(1616-04-23) (aged 51–52)Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, EnglandResting placeChurch of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-AvonOccupationsPlaywrightpoetactorYears activec. 1585–1613EraElizabethanJacobeanOrganisationsLord Chamberlain's MenKing's MenWorksShakespeare bibliographyMovementEnglish RenaissanceSpouse
Anne Hathaway (m. 1582)ChildrenSusanna HallHamnet ShakespeareJudith QuineyParentsJohn ShakespeareMary ArdenWriting careerLanguageEarly Modern EnglishGenresPlay (comedyhistorytragedy)Poetry (sonnetnarrative poemepitaph)
Signature
William Shakespeare (c. 23[a] April 1564 – 23 April 1616)[b] was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.[3][4][5] He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.[6] Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs and even certain fringe theories[7] as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.[8][9][10]
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613.[11][12] His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in English.[3][4][5] In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, who hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".[13]
Life[edit]
Main article: Life of William Shakespeare
Early life[edit]
John Shakespeare's house, believed to be Shakespeare's birthplace, in Stratford-upon-Avon
Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker) originally from Snitterfield in Warwickshire, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning family.[14] He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day.[1] This date, which can be traced to William Oldys and George Steevens, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616.[15][16] He was the third of eight children, and the eldest surviving son.[17]
Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford,[18][19][20] a free school chartered in 1553,[21] about a quarter-mile (400 m) from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic Latin text was standardised by royal decree,[22][23] and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar based upon Latin classical authors.[24]
At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage.[25] The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times,[26][27] and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583.[28] Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585.[29] Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596.[30]
Shakespeare's coat of arms, from the 1602 book The book of coates and creasts. Promptuarium armorum. It features spears as a pun on the family name.[c]
After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the "complaints bill" of a law case before the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589.[31] Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years".[32] Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him.[33][34] Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London.[35] John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster.[36] Some 20th-century scholars suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his will.[37][38] Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.[39][40]
London and theatrical career[edit]
It is not known definitively when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592.[41] By then, he was sufficiently known in London to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit from that year:
... there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's 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.[42]
Scholars differ on the exact meaning of Greene's words,[42][43] but most agree that Greene was accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match such university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Greene himself (the so-called "University Wits").[44] The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, along with the pun "Shake-scene", clearly identify Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used here, Johannes Factotum ("Jack of all trades") refers to a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the more common "universal genius".[42][45]
Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's work in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks.[46][47][48] After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed at The Theatre, in Shoreditch, only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London.[49] After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new King James I, and changed its name to the King's Men.[50]
All the world's a stage,
and all the men and women merely players:
they have their exits and their entrances;
and one man in his time plays many parts ...
—As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7, 139–142[51]
In 1599, a partnership of members of the company built their own theatre on the south bank of the River Thames, which they named the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Extant records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that his association with the company made him a wealthy man,[52] and in 1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, invested in a share of the parish tithes in Stratford.[53]
Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, beginning in 1594, and by 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title pages.[54][55][56] Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus His Fall (1603).[57] The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for Jonson's Volpone is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end.[46] The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged after Volpone, although one cannot know for certain which roles he played.[58] In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles.[59] In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father.[60] Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It, and the Chorus in Henry V,[61][62] though scholars doubt the sources of that information.[63]
Throughout his career, Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford. In 1596, the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames.[64][65] He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the same year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there.[64][66] By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There, he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of women's wigs and other headgear.[67][68]
Later years and death[edit]
Shakespeare's funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon
Nicholas Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated by Samuel Johnson, that Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years before his death".[69][70] He was still working as an actor in London in 1608; in an answer to the sharers' petition in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage stated that after purchasing the lease of the Blackfriars Theatre in 1608 from Henry Evans, the King's Men "placed men players" there, "which were Heminges, Condell, Shakespeare, etc.".[71] However, it is perhaps relevant that the bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609.[72][73] The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed during extended outbreaks of the plague (a total of over 60 months closure between May 1603 and February 1610),[74] which meant there was often no acting work. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time.[75] Shakespeare continued to visit London during the years 1611–1614.[69] In 1612, he was called as a witness in Bellott v Mountjoy, a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary.[76][77] In March 1613, he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory;[78] and from November 1614, he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall.[79] After 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613.[80] His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher,[81] who succeeded him as the house playwright of the King's Men. He retired in 1613, before the Globe Theatre burned down during the performance of Henry VIII on 29 June.[80]
Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52.[d] He died within a month of signing his will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in "perfect health". No extant contemporary source explains how or why he died. Half a century later, John Ward, the vicar of Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted",[83][84] not an impossible scenario since Shakespeare knew Jonson and Drayton. Of the tributes from fellow authors, one refers to his relatively sudden death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went'st so soon / From the world's stage to the grave's tiring room."[85][e]
Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare was baptised and is buried
He was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607,[86] and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare's death.[87] Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on 25 March 1616; the following day, Thomas Quiney, his new son-in-law, was found guilty of fathering an illegitimate son by Margaret Wheeler, both of whom had died during childbirth. Thomas was ordered by the church court to do public penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment for the Shakespeare family.[87]
Shakespeare bequeathed the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna[88] under stipulations that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body".[89] The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying.[90][91] The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct line.[92][93] Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one-third of his estate automatically.[f] He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation.[95][96][97] Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been the matrimonial bed and therefore rich in significance.[98]
Shakespeare's grave, next to those of Anne Shakespeare, his wife, and Thomas Nash, the husband of his granddaughter
Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death.[99][100] The epitaph carved into the stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in 2008:[101]
Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,
To digg the dvst encloased heare.
Bleste be yͤ man yͭ spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yͭ moves my bones.[102][g]
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.
Some time before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil.[103] In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published.[104] Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.[105][106]
Plays[edit]
Main articles: Shakespeare's plays, William Shakespeare's collaborations, and Shakespeare bibliography
Procession of Characters from Shakespeare's Plays by an unknown 19th-century artist
Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, mostly early and late in his career.[107]
The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI, written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date precisely, however,[108][109] and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare's earliest period.[110][108] His first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,[111] dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty.[112] The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca.[113][114][115] The Comedy of Errors was also based on classical models, but no source for The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though it has an identical plot but different wording as another play with a similar name.[116][117] Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve of rape,[118][119][120] the Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences.[121]
Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing. By William Blake, c. 1786.
Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his most acclaimed comedies.[122] A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes.[123] Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic The Merchant of Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, which reflects dominant Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences.[124][125] The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing,[126] the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies.[127] After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, Part 1 and 2, and Henry V. Henry IV features Falstaff, rogue, wit and friend of Prince Hal. His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his mature work.[128][129][130] This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death;[131][132] and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which introduced a new kind of drama.[133][134] According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in Julius Caesar, "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to infuse each other".[135]
Hamlet, Horatio, Marcellus, and the Ghost of Hamlet's Father. Henry Fuseli, 1780–1785.
In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem plays" Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends Well and a number of his best known tragedies.[136][137] Many critics believe that Shakespeare's tragedies represent the peak of his art. Hamlet has probably been analysed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which begins "To be or not to be; that is the question".[138] Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, Othello and Lear are undone by hasty errors of judgement.[139] The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves.[140] In Othello, Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him.[141][142] In King Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest daughter, Cordelia. According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play...offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty".[143][144][145] In Macbeth, the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies,[146] uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful king and usurp the throne until their own guilt destroys them in turn.[147] In this play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic structure. His last major tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, contain some of Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies by the poet and critic T. S. Eliot.[148][149][150] Eliot wrote, "Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum."[151]
In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, as well as the collaboration, Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors.[152] Some commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day.[153][154][155] Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.[156]
Classification[edit]
Further information: Chronology of Shakespeare's plays
The Plays of William Shakespeare, a painting containing scenes and characters from several plays of Shakespeare; by Sir John Gilbert, c. 1849
Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed according to their folio classification as comedies, histories, and tragedies.[157] Two plays not included in the First Folio,[13] The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, are now accepted as part of the canon, with today's scholars agreeing that Shakespeare made major contributions to the writing of both.[158][159] No Shakespearean poems were included in the First Folio.
In the late 19th century, Edward Dowden classified four of the late comedies as romances, and though many scholars prefer to call them tragicomedies, Dowden's term is often used.[160][161] In 1896, Frederick S. Boas coined the term "problem plays" to describe four plays: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and Hamlet.[162] "Dramas as singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies", he wrote. "We may, therefore, borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of today and class them together as Shakespeare's problem plays."[163] The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use, though Hamlet is definitively classed as a tragedy.[164][165][166]
Performances[edit]
Main article: Shakespeare in performance
It is not clear for which companies Shakespeare wrote his early plays. The title page of the 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus reveals that the play had been acted by three different troupes.[167] After the plagues of 1592–93, Shakespeare's plays were performed by his own company at The Theatre and the Curtain in Shoreditch, north of the Thames.[168] Londoners flocked there to see the first part of Henry IV, Leonard Digges recording, "Let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest ... and you scarce shall have a room".[169] When the company found themselves in dispute with their landlord, they pulled The Theatre down and used the timbers to construct the Globe Theatre, the first playhouse built by actors for actors, on the south bank of the Thames at Southwark.[170][171] The Globe opened in autumn 1599, with Julius Caesar one of the first plays staged. Most of Shakespeare's greatest post-1599 plays were written for the Globe, including Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.[170][172][173]
The reconstructed Globe Theatre on the south bank of the River Thames in London
After the Lord Chamberlain's Men were renamed the King's Men in 1603, they entered a special relationship with the new King James. Although the performance records are patchy, the King's Men performed seven of Shakespeare's plays at court between 1 November 1604, and 31 October 1605, including two performances of The Merchant of Venice.[62] After 1608, they performed at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre during the winter and the Globe during the summer.[174] The indoor setting, combined with the Jacobean fashion for lavishly staged masques, allowed Shakespeare to introduce more elaborate stage devices. In Cymbeline, for example, Jupiter descends "in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. The ghosts fall on their knees."[175][176]
The actors in Shakespeare's company included the famous Richard Burbage, William Kempe, Henry Condell and John Heminges. Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.[177] The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, among other characters.[178][179] He was replaced around 1600 by Robert Armin, who played roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It and the fool in King Lear.[180] In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that Henry VIII "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and ceremony".[181] On 29 June, however, a cannon set fire to the thatch of the Globe and burned the theatre to the ground, an event which pinpoints the date of a Shakespeare play with rare precision.[181]
Textual sources[edit]
Title page of the First Folio, 1623. Copper engraving of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout.
In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's friends from the King's Men, published the First Folio, a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It contained 36 texts, including 18 printed for the first time.[182] The others had already appeared in quarto versions—flimsy books made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves.[183] No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies".[184]
Alfred Pollard termed some of the pre-1623 versions as "bad quartos" because of their adapted, paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed from memory.[183][184][185] Where several versions of a play survive, each differs from the others. The differences may stem from copying or printing errors, from notes by actors or audience members, or from Shakespeare's own papers.[186][187] In some cases, for example, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, and Othello, Shakespeare could have revised the texts between the quarto and folio editions. In the case of King Lear, however, while most modern editions do conflate them, the 1623 folio version is so different from the 1608 quarto that the Oxford Shakespeare prints them both, arguing that they cannot be conflated without confusion.[188]
Poems[edit]
In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on sexual themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus; while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin.[189] Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses,[190] the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust.[191] Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote A Lover's Complaint. Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects.[192][193][194] The Phoenix and the Turtle, printed in Robert Chester's 1601 Love's Martyr, mourns the deaths of the legendary phoenix and his lover, the faithful turtle dove. In 1599, two early drafts of sonnets 138 and 144 appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim, published under Shakespeare's name but without his permission.[192][194][195]
Sonnets[edit]
Main article: Shakespeare's sonnets
Title page from 1609 edition of Shake-Speares Sonnets
Published in 1609, the Sonnets were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed. Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership.[196][197] Even before the two unauthorised sonnets appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599, Francis Meres had referred in 1598 to Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets among his private friends".[198] Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence.[199] He seems to have planned two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a married woman of dark complexion (the "dark lady"), and one about conflicted love for a fair young man (the "fair youth"). It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial "I" who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart".[198][197]
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate ...
—Opening lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.[200]
The 1609 edition was dedicated to a "Mr. W.H.", credited as "the only begetter" of the poems. It is not known whether this was written by Shakespeare himself or by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, whose initials appear at the foot of the dedication page; nor is it known who Mr. W.H. was, despite numerous theories, or whether Shakespeare even authorised the publication.[201] Critics praise the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time.[202]
Style[edit]
Main article: Shakespeare's writing style
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.[203] The poetry depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical—written for actors to declaim rather than speak. The grand speeches in Titus Andronicus, in 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.[204][205]
Pity by William Blake, 1795, is an illustration of two similes in Macbeth:
"And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of the air."[206]
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.[207][208] No single play marks a change from the traditional to the freer style. Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles.[209] By the time of Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself.
Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse, composed 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 lines, with the risk of monotony.[210] Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. 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:[211]
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 ...
— Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2, 4–8[211]
After Hamlet, Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies. The literary critic A. C. Bradley described this style as "more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical".[212] In the last phase of his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve these effects. These included run-on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length.[213] In Macbeth, for example, the language darts from one unrelated metaphor or simile to another: "was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed yourself?" (1.7.35–38); "... pity, like a naked new-born babe/ Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air ..." (1.7.21–25). The listener is challenged to complete the sense.[213] The late romances, with their shifts in time and surprising turns of plot, inspired a last poetic style in which long and short sentences are set against one another, clauses are piled up, subject and object are reversed, and words are omitted, creating an effect of spontaneity.[214]
Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a practical sense of the theatre.[215] Like all playwrights of the time, he dramatised stories from sources such as Plutarch and Holinshed.[216] He reshaped each plot to create several centres of interest and to show as many sides of a narrative to the audience as possible. This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting, and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama.[217] As Shakespeare's mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and distinctive patterns of speech. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however. In Shakespeare's late romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre.[218][219]
Legacy[edit]
Influence[edit]
Main article: Shakespeare's influence
Macbeth Consulting the Vision of the Armed Head. By Henry Fuseli, 1793–1794.
Shakespeare's work has made a significant and lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, and genre.[220] Until Romeo and Juliet, for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy.[221] Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events, but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds.[222] His work heavily influenced later poetry. 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."[223] John Milton, considered by many to be the most important English poet after Shakespeare, wrote in tribute: "Thou in our wonder and astonishment/ Hast built thyself a live-long monument."[224]
Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens. The American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King Lear.[225] Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare's works, including Felix Mendelssohn's overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream and Sergei Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet. His work has inspired several operas, among them Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff, whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays.[226] Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites, while William Hogarth's 1745 painting of actor David Garrick playing Richard III was decisive in establishing the genre of theatrical portraiture in Britain.[227] The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a friend of William Blake, even translated Macbeth into German.[228] The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular, that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature.[229] Shakespeare has been a rich source for filmmakers; Akira Kurosawa adapted Macbeth and King Lear as Throne of Blood and Ran, respectively. Other examples of Shakespeare on film include Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Laurence Olivier's Hamlet and Al Pacino's documentary Looking For Richard.[230] Orson Welles, a lifelong lover of Shakespeare, directed and starred in Macbeth, Othello and Chimes at Midnight, in which he plays John Falstaff, which Welles himself called his best work.[231]
In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling, and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now,[232] and his use of language helped shape modern English.[233] Samuel Johnson quoted him more often than any other author in his A Dictionary of the English Language, the first serious work of its type.[234] Expressions such as "with bated breath" (Merchant of Venice) and "a foregone conclusion" (Othello) have found their way into everyday English speech.[235][236]
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.[237][238] Actor and theatre director Simon Callow writes, "this master, this titan, this genius, so profoundly British and so effortlessly universal, each different culture – German, Italian, Russian – was obliged to respond to the Shakespearean example; for the most part, they embraced it, and him, with joyous abandon, as the possibilities of language and character in action that he celebrated liberated writers across the continent. 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."[239]
According to Guinness World Records, Shakespeare remains 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 400 years since his death. He is also the third most translated author in history.[240]
Critical reputation[edit]
Main articles: Reputation of William Shakespeare and Timeline of Shakespeare criticism
He was not of an age, but for all time.
—Ben Jonson[241]
Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he received a large amount of praise.[242][243] In 1598, the cleric and author Francis Meres singled him out from a group of English playwrights as "the most excellent" in both comedy and tragedy.[244][245] The authors of the Parnassus plays at St John's College, Cambridge, numbered him with Chaucer, Gower, and Spenser.[246] In the First Folio, Ben Jonson called Shakespeare the "Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage", although he had remarked elsewhere that "Shakespeare wanted art" (lacked skill).[241]
Between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson.[247] Thomas Rymer, for example, condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic with the tragic. Nevertheless, poet and critic John Dryden rated Shakespeare highly, saying of Jonson, "I admire him, but I love Shakespeare".[248] He also famously remarked that Shakespeare "was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there."[249] For several decades, Rymer's view held sway. 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 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790, added to his growing reputation.[250][251] By 1800, he was firmly enshrined as the national poet,[252] and described as the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard").[253][h] In the 18th and 19th centuries, his reputation also spread abroad. Among those who championed him were the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal, and Victor Hugo.[255][i]
William Ordway Partridge's garlanded statue of William Shakespeare in Lincoln Park, Chicago, typical of many created in the 19th and early 20th centuries
During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German Romanticism.[257] In the 19th century, critical admiration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered on adulation.[258] "This King Shakespeare," the essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1840, "does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying signs; indestructible".[259] The Victorians produced his plays as lavish spectacles on a grand scale.[260] The playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw mocked the cult of Shakespeare worship as "bardolatry", claiming that the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare obsolete.[261]
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. S. Eliot argued against Shaw that Shakespeare's "primitiveness" in fact made him truly modern.[262] Eliot, along with G. Wilson Knight and the school of New Criticism, led a movement towards a closer reading of Shakespeare's imagery. In the 1950s, a wave of new critical approaches replaced modernism and paved the way for post-modern studies of Shakespeare.[263] Comparing Shakespeare's accomplishments to those of leading figures in philosophy and theology, Harold Bloom wrote, "Shakespeare was larger than Plato and than St. Augustine. He encloses us because we see with his fundamental perceptions."[264]
Speculation[edit]
Authorship[edit]
Main article: Shakespeare authorship question
Around 230 years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship of the works attributed to him.[265] Proposed alternative candidates include Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.[266] Several "group theories" have also been proposed.[267] All but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe theory, with only a small minority of academics who believe that there is reason to question the traditional attribution,[268] but interest in the subject, particularly the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, continues into the 21st century.[269][270][271]
Religion[edit]
Main article: Religious views of William Shakespeare
Shakespeare conformed to the official state religion,[j] 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 England, where 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.[273] Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, certainly came from a pious Catholic family. The strongest evidence might be a Catholic statement of faith signed by his father, John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in the rafters of his former house in Henley Street. However, the document is now lost and scholars differ as to its authenticity.[274][275] In 1591, the authorities reported that John Shakespeare had missed church "for fear of process for debt", a common Catholic excuse.[276][277][278] In 1606, the name of William's daughter Susanna appears on a list of those who failed to attend Easter communion in Stratford.[276][277][278]
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.[279][280]
Sexuality[edit]
Main article: Sexuality of William Shakespeare
Artistic depiction of the Shakespeare family, late 19th century
Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 1583. Over the centuries, some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical,[281] 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.[282][283][284] The 26 so-called "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.[285]
Portraiture[edit]
Main article: Portraits of Shakespeare
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.[286] That demand also led to the production of several fake portraits, as well as misattributions, re-paintings, and relabelling of portraits of other people.[287][288]
Some scholars suggest that the Droeshout portrait, which Ben Jonson approved of as a good likeness,[289] and his Stratford monument provide perhaps the best evidence of his appearance.[290] Of the claimed paintings, art historian Tarnya Cooper concluded that the Chandos portrait had "the strongest claim of any of the known contenders to be a true portrait of Shakespeare". After a three-year study supported by the National Portrait Gallery, London, the portrait's owners, Cooper contended that its composition date, contemporary with Shakespeare, its subsequent provenance, and the sitter's attire, all supported the attribution.[291]
See also[edit]
Outline of William Shakespeare
English Renaissance theatre
Spelling of Shakespeare's name
World Shakespeare Bibliography
Shakespeare's Politics
Shakespeare's sonnets
Shakespeare's plays
References[edit]
Notes[edit]
^ The belief that Shakespeare was born on 23 April is a tradition and not a verified fact;[1] see § Early life below. He was baptised 26 April.
^ Dates follow the Julian calendar, used in England throughout Shakespeare's lifespan, but with the start of the year adjusted to 1 January (see Old Style and New Style dates). Under the Gregorian calendar, adopted in Catholic countries in 1582, Shakespeare died on 3 May.[2]
^ The crest is a silver falcon supporting a spear, while the motto is Non Sanz Droict (French for "not without right"). This motto is still used by Warwickshire County Council, in reference to Shakespeare.
^ Inscribed in Latin on his funerary monument: AETATIS 53 DIE 23 APR (In his 53rd year he died 23 April).[82]
^ Verse by James Mabbe printed in the First Folio.[85]
^ Charles Knight, 1842, in his notes on Twelfth Night.[94]
^ In the scribal abbreviations ye for the (3rd line) and yt for that (3rd and 4th lines) the letter y represents th: see thorn.
^ The "national cult" of Shakespeare, and the "bard" identification, dates from September 1769, when the actor David Garrick organised a week-long carnival at Stratford to mark the town council awarding him the freedom of the town. 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".[254]
^ Grady cites Voltaire's Philosophical Letters (1733); Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795); Stendhal's two-part pamphlet Racine et Shakespeare (1823–25); and Victor Hugo's prefaces to Cromwell (1827) and William Shakespeare (1864).[256]
^ For example, A.L. Rowse, the 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."[272]
Citations[edit]
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^ Shapiro 2005, p. 151.
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^ Bradley 1991, pp. 42, 169, 195.
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Sources[edit]
Books
Ackroyd, Peter (2006). Shakespeare: The Biography. London: Vintage. ISBN 978-0-7493-8655-9. OCLC 1036948826.
Adams, Joseph Quincy (1923). A Life of William Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. OCLC 1935264.
Baldwin, T.W. (1944). William Shakspere's Small Latine & Lesse Greek. Vol. 1. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. OCLC 359037. Archived from the original on 5 May 2023. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
Barroll, Leeds (1991). Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare's Theater: The Stuart Years. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-2479-3. OCLC 23652422.
Bate, Jonathan (2008). The Soul of the Age. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-670-91482-1. OCLC 237192578.
Bednarz, James P. (2004). "Marlowe and the English literary scene". In Cheney, Patrick Gerard (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 90–105. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521820340. ISBN 978-0-511-99905-5. OCLC 53967052 – via Cambridge Core.
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Chambers, E.K. (1944). Shakespearean Gleanings. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8492-0506-4. OCLC 2364570.
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Friedman, Michael D. (2006). "'I'm not a feminist director but...': Recent Feminist Productions of The Taming of the Shrew". In Nelsen, Paul; Schlueter, June (eds.). Acts of Criticism: Performance Matters in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries. New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. pp. 159–174. ISBN 978-0-8386-4059-3. OCLC 60644679.
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Jonson, Ben (1996) [1623]. "To the memory of my beloued, The AVTHOR MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: AND what he hath left vs". In Hinman, Charlton (ed.). The First Folio of Shakespeare (2nd ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-03985-6. OCLC 34663304.[permanent dead link]
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External links[edit]
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Digital editions
William Shakespeare's plays on Bookwise
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Works by William Shakespeare in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
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Exhibitions
Shakespeare Documented an online exhibition documenting Shakespeare in his own time
Shakespeare's Will from The National Archives
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William Shakespeare Archived 23 September 2021 at the Wayback Machine at the British Library
Music
Works by William Shakespeare set to music: free scores in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
Works by William Shakespeare set to music: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
Education
Shakespeare at Home an online resource providing free educational resources on William Shakespeare and the Renaissance world. Activities are dyslexia friendly and suitable for all ages.
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Records on Shakespeare's Theatre Legacy from the UK Parliamentary Collections
Winston Churchill & Shakespeare – UK Parliament Living Heritage
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Cloten
Belarius
Guiderius
Arvirargus
Jupiter
Sources
Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136)
The Decameron (c. 1353)
Holinshed's Chronicles (1577)
Adaptations
Cymbeline (1982; TV)
Cymbeline (2014)
Related
Shakespeare's late romances
Philaster (c.1609)
Deus ex machina
Milford Haven
vteWilliam Shakespeare's HamletCharacters
Hamlet
Claudius
Gertrude
Ghost
Polonius
Laertes
Ophelia
Horatio
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Fortinbras
The Gravediggers
Yorick
Soliloquies
"To be, or not to be"
"Mortal coil"
"What a piece of work is a man"
"Speak the speech"
Words and phrases
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks"
"Thy name is"
Terminology
Dumbshow
Induction
Quiddity
Substitution
SourcesCriticism
Legend of Hamlet
The Spanish Tragedy
Ur-Hamlet
Critical approaches
Bibliographies
Saxo Grammaticus
House of Gonzaga
Damon and Pythias
Influence
Common phrases from Hamlet
Cultural references to Hamlet
Cultural references to Ophelia
Language of flowers
Human skull symbolism
Performances
Moscow Art Theatre (1911–1912)
Richard Burton (1964)
On screen
1900
1907
1908
1912
1913
1917
1921
1935
1948
1954
1961
1964
1969
1974
1990
1996
2000
2011
AdaptationsFilms
The Rest Is Silence (1959)
The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
Ophelia (1963)
Johnny Hamlet (1968)
One Hamlet Less (1973)
The Angel of Vengeance – The Female Hamlet (1977)
Strange Brew (1983)
Hamlet Goes Business (1987)
The Lion King (1994)
Let the Devil Wear Black (1999)
The Banquet (2006)
Doubt (2009)
Karmayogi (2012)
Haider (2014)
Hamlet A.D.D. (2014)
Hemanta (2016)
Ophelia (2018)
The Lion King (2019)
Novels
Hamlet Had an Uncle (1940)
Too, Too Solid Flesh (1989)
Gertrude and Claudius (2000)
Dating Hamlet (2002)
The Dead Fathers Club (2006)
Something Rotten (2007)
Hamlet's Father (2008)
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (2008)
Plays
Hamletmachine (1977)
Dogg's Hamlet (1979)
Fortinbras (1991)
Musicals
Rockabye Hamlet (1973)
Television
Hamlet (Australian TV, 1959)
Hamlet at Elsinore (BBC, 1964)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (BBC, 1980)
Hamlet (BBC 2, animated, 1992)
Hamlet (BBC 2, 2009)
Parodies
15-Minute Hamlet
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
I, Hamlet
The Klingon Hamlet
"Lyle the Kindly Viking"
To Be or Not to Be: That is the Adventure
"Tales from the Public Domain"
The Skinhead Hamlet
Songs
"My Robin is to the greenwood gone" (16th century)
"Pull Me Under" (1992)
"Song for Athene" (1997)
Opera/classical
Hamlet (Thomas)
Amleto (Faccio)
Hamlet (Tchaikovsky)
Tristia (Berlioz)
Die Hamletmaschine (Rihm)
Hamlet (Dean)
In popular cultureFilms
To Be or Not to Be (1942)
A Performance of Hamlet in the Village of Mrduša Donja (1973)
To Be or Not to Be (1983)
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)
Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
Last Action Hero (1993)
Renaissance Man (1994)
In the Bleak Midwinter (1995)
War (2002)
Hamlet 2 (2008)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead (2009)
Three Days (of Hamlet) (2012)
Grand Theft Hamlet (2024)
Plays
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966)
Stage Blood (1974)
I Hate Hamlet (1991)
To Be or Not to Be (2008)
Novels
Hamlet, Revenge! (1937)
Theatre of War (1994)
"The Undiscovered" (1997)
The Shakespeare Stealer (1998)
Interred with Their Bones (2007)
Hamnet (2020)
Television
"The Producer" (1966)
"The Conscience of the King" (1966)
"Born to Be King" (1983)
"Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow" (2001)
Slings & Arrows (2003)
Video games
Last Action Hero (1993)
Hamlet (2010)
Elsinore (2019)
Books
Asterix and the Great Crossing
The Seagull
Sharpe's Havoc
Art
Ophelia (Millais)
Ophelia (Cabanel)
Affe mit Schädel
Ophelia (Waterhouse)
Polish Hamlet. Portrait of Aleksander Wielopolski
The River Bank (Ophelia)
Related
Hamlet and Oedipus
Hamlet and His Problems
Hebenon
Hamlet Q1
Ostalo je ćutanje
The Chronicles of Amber
"Symphony No. 65" (Haydn)
The Hobart Shakespeareans
Gertrude – The Cry
Poor Murderer
Something Rotten!
Sons of Anarchy
vteWilliam Shakespeare's Julius CaesarSources
Parallel Lives
Screenadaptations
Julius Caesar (1914 film)
Julius Caesar (1950 film)
Julius Caesar (1953 film)
The Spread of the Eagle (1963; TV)
Julius Caesar (1970 film)
BBC Television Shakespeare (TV)
Shakespeare: The Animated Tales (TV)
Inspired work
La morte di Cesare (1788)
The Assassination of Julius Caesar (Sullivan)
Shakespeare Writing "Julius Caesar" (1907)
Caesar (1937)
Die Ermordung Cäsars (1959)
Dead Caesar (2007)
The Karaoke King (2007)
Roman Tragedies (2007)
Julius Caesar (overture, 1851)
Zulfiqar (2016)
Quotes
"The dogs of war"
"Et tu, Brute?"
"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears"
"Greek to me"
Related
Cultural depictions of Julius Caesar
Assassination of Julius Caesar
Caesar's Comet
Ides of March
Battle of Philippi
Me and Orson Welles (2008)
Caesar Must Die (2012)
Category
vteWilliam Shakespeare's King LearCharacters
King Lear
Cordelia
Goneril
Regan
Edmund
The Fool
Sources
Historia Regum Britanniae (1136)
The Mirror for Magistrates (1555)
Holinshed's Chronicles (1577)
King Leir (1594)
"Water and Salt"
Related
Llŷr
Leir of Britain
Cordelia of Britain
AdaptationsPlays
The History of King Lear (1681)
The Yiddish King Lear (1892)
Safed Khoon (1907)
Lear (1971)
King Lear (1978)
Novels
La Terre (1887)
A Thousand Acres (1991)
Fool (2009)
Operas
Re Lear (Libretto only) (1896)
Lear (1978)
Vision of Lear (1998)
Kuningas Lear (2000)
Films
King Lear (1910)
King Lear (1916)
Gunasundari Katha (1949)
King Lear (1971 USSR)
King Lear (1971 UK)
Ran (1985)
King Lear (1987)
A Thousand Acres (1997)
Gypsy Lore (1997)
King Lear (1999)
My Kingdom (2001)
Lear Rex (TBA)
Television
King Lear (1953)
BBC Television Shakespeare (1982)
King Lear (1983)
King of Texas (2002)
Second Generation (2003)
King Lear (2008)
King Lear (2018)
Story within a story
The Dresser (1980 play)
The Dresser (1983 film)
The Dresser (2015 film)
Other
Tiriel (1789, poem)
The Prince of the Pagodas (1957, ballet)
The Tragedy of King Lear (screenplay)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's MacbethCharacters
Macbeth
Lady Macbeth
Banquo
Macduff
King Duncan
Malcolm
Donalbain
Three Witches
Fleance
Lady Macduff
Macduff's son
Third Murderer
Young Siward
Inspirations
Macbeth, King of Scotland
Gruoch of Scotland
Duncan I of Scotland
Malcolm III of Scotland
Donald III of Scotland
Siward, Earl of Northumbria
King James VI and I
Sources
Daemonologie (1597)
The Witch (play)
Holinshed's Chronicles
Darraðarljóð
Film
1908
1909 (French)
1909 (Italian)
1911
1913
1915
1916
1922
1948
Unfinished
1971
2006
2015
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
accolades
Television
1954
1960 US TV
1960 Australian TV
1961
1979
1982
1983
1992
2010
TV / film adaptations
The Real Thing at Last (1916)
Marmayogi (1951)
Joe MacBeth (1955)
Throne of Blood (1957)
Marmayogi (1964)
Macbeth (Verdi opera) (1987)
Men of Respect (1990)
Scotland, PA (2001)
Makibefo (2001)
Maqbool (2003)
2005
The Last King of Scotland (2006)
Shakespeare Must Die (2012)
Thane of East County (2015)
Veeram (2016)
Joji (2021)
Plays
Khwab-e-Hasti (1909)
Voodoo Macbeth (1936)
MacBird! (1967)
uMabatha (1970)
Macbett (1972)
Cahoot's Macbeth (1979)
MacHomer (1995)
Just Macbeth! (2008)
Sleep No More (2009)
Dunsinane (2010)
Sleep No More (2011)
Operas
Macbeth (1847, Verdi)
discography
Macbeth (1910, Bloch)
Literary adaptations
Wyrd Sisters (1988)
The Last King of Scotland (1998)
Macbeth (2018)
Albums
Music from Macbeth (1972)
Macbeth (1990)
Thane to the Throne (2000)
Shakespeare's Macbeth – A Tragedy in Steel (2003)
Lady Macbeth (2005)
Art
Pity (1795)
The Night of Enitharmon's Joy (1795)
Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers (1812 painting)
Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (1889)
Lady Macbeth (1905 sculpture)
Scenes and speeches
"On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth" (1823)
Sleepwalking Scene (5.1)
"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow"
Words and phrases
"What's done is done"
"Crack of doom"
The Scottish Play
Thane of Cawdor
In popular cultureNovels, film and theatre
We Work Again
Light Thickens
The Deadly Affair
Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine
The Scottish Play
Burke & Hare
Television
"A Witch's Tangled Hare" (1959, Looney Tunes)
"The Bellero Shield" (1964, The Outer Limits)
"The Movies" (1975, The Goodies)
"Sense and Senility" (1987, Blackadder the Third)
"Sleeping with the Enemy" (2004, The Simpsons)
"The Coup" (2006, The Office)
"Dial 'N' for Nerder" (2008, The Simpsons)
"Four Great Women and a Manicure" (2009, The Simpsons)
"The Shower Principle" (2012, 30 Rock)
"The Understudy" (2014, Inside No. 9)
Other
Macbeth (Johann Strauss)
The Scottish Play
Piano Trios, Op. 70 (Ludwig van Beethoven)
The Ruins of Cawdor
House of Cards (UK, 1990)
House of Cards (US, 2013–2018)
Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's OthelloCharacters
Othello
Desdemona
Iago
Cassio
Emilia
Bianca
Roderigo
Brabantio
Source
Della descrittione dell’Africa (1550) by Leo Africanus
"Un Capitano Moro" from Gli Hecatommithi (1565) by Cintio
Stageadaptations
The Duke of Milan (1623)
Love's Sacrifice (1633)
Masquerade (1835)
Othello (1951)
Catch My Soul (US; 1969)
Catch My Soul (UK; 1970)
Desdemona (2011)
Opera and balletadaptations
Otello (1816; opera by Rossini)
Otello (1887; opera by Verdi)
Othello (1892; overture)
The Moor's Pavane (1949; ballet)
Othello (1998; ballet score)
Bandanna (1999; opera)
Films
1922
1951
1955
1965
1995
TV
1964 Australia
1981
1990
1994
2001
Filmadaptations
Jubal (1956)
All Night Long (1962)
Catch My Soul (1974)
Kaliyattam (1997)
O (2001)
Souli (2004)
Omkara (2006)
Jarum Halus (2008)
From Verdi
Otello (1906; film)
Othello Ballet Suite/Electronic Organ Sonata No. 1 (1967; ballet suite)
Otello (1986; film)
The Othello Syndrome (2008; album)
Paintings
Othello
Phrases
"Beast with two backs"
Related
Othello error
Filming Othello
Story withina story
Carnival (1921 film)
Carnival (1931 film)
The Deceiver (1931)
Men Are Not Gods (1936)
A Double Life (1947)
Saptapadi (1961)
The Dresser (1980 play)
The Dresser (1983 film)
Goodnight Desdemona (1988)
An Imaginary Tale (1990)
Red Velvet (2012 play)
The Dresser (2015 film)
Related
Cultural references to Othello
vteWilliam Shakespeare's Romeo and JulietCharacters
Romeo
Juliet
Mercutio
Tybalt
Benvolio
Friar Laurence
Nurse
Paris
Rosaline
Queen Mab
Sources
The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet
Pyramus and Thisbe
Palace of Pleasure
Troilus and Criseyde
Ephesiaca
Ballets
Romeo and Juliet (1938, Prokofiev)
Romeo and Juliet (1962, Cranko)
Romeo and Juliet (1965, MacMillan)
Romeo and Juliet (1977, Nureyev)
Romeo and Juliet (1965, Lavery)
Radio and Juliet (2005)
Romeo + Juliet (2007, Martins)
Romeo and Juliet (2008, Pastor)
Operas
Romeo und Julie (1776, Benda)
Giulietta e Romeo (1796, Zingarelli)
Giulietta e Romeo (1825, Vaccai)
I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830, Bellini)
Gloria (1874, Cilea)
Roméo et Juliette (1867, Gounod)
A Village Romeo and Juliet (1907, Delius)
Romeo und Julia (1940, Sutermeister)
Romeo und Julia (1943, Blacher)
Musicals
The Belle of Mayfair (1906)
West Side Story (1957)
Once on This Island (1990)
Roméo et Juliette, de la Haine à l'Amour (2001)
Giulietta e Romeo (2007)
& Juliet (2019)
Classical
Beethoven's String Quartet No. 1 (c. 1800)
Roméo et Juliette (1839, Berlioz)
Romeo and Juliet (1870, Tchaikovsky)
On screenFilms
1900
1908
1916 Metro
1916 Fox
1936
1940
1953
1954
1955
1964
1967 (TV)
1968
1978 (TV)
1992 (TV)
1996
2006
2013
TV series
Ronny & Julia (2000)
Skin (2003)
Romeo × Juliet (2007)
Romeo y Julieta (2007)
Harina de otro costal (2010)
Star-Crossed (2014)
Romil & Jugal (2017)
Still Star-Crossed (2017)
A Infância de Romeu e Julieta (2023)
Plays
Romanoff and Juliet (1956)
People's Romeo (2010)
Romeo and Juliet (2013)
Songs
"Montagues and Capulets" (1935)
"Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet" (1968)
"(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (1976)
"Angelo" (1978)
"Romeo and Juliet" (1978)
"Romeo and Juliet" (1981)
"Cherish" (1989)
"Amor Prohibido" (1994)
"Kissing You" (1996)
"Starcrossed" (2004)
"Peut-être toi" (2006)
"Mademoiselle Juliette" (2007)
"Love Story" (2008)
"Love Me Again" (2013)
Albums
Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Romeo & Julia (2006)
Tragic Lovers (2008)
Star-Crossed (2021)
Rosaline (2022)
Literature
Les Chouans (1829)
The Wandering Jew (1844)
The Stolen Dormouse (1941)
The Faraway Lurs (1963)
The Destruction of Faena (1989)
Ronny & Julia (1995)
Romiette and Julio (2001)
New Moon (2006)
Warm Bodies (2010)
Art
Romeo and Juliet: the Tomb Scene (1790)
Romeo and Juliet (1978)
Phrases
A plague o' both your houses!
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
Star-crossed
Story withina story
Nicholas Nickleby
1912 film
1947 film
1980 play
2001 film
2002 film
The Picture of Dorian Gray
1910 film
1913 film
1915 film
1916 film
1917 German film
1917 Hungarian film
1945 film
1976 TV special
2009 film
Harlequinade
W Juliet
"Nothing Broken but My Heart"
Panic Button
Bare: A Pop Opera
Bolji život
The Sky Is Everywhere
Pay as You Exit
The White Mercedes
She Died a Lady
"Moonshine River"
Rendez-vous
Fame
"I Am Unicorn"
The Frog Prince
Molly
Smart Girls Get What They Want
Tumbleweeds
"The Thief of Baghead"
The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke
Prince Charming
Km. 0
Phileine Says Sorry
Hamateur Night
"Say You'll Be Mine"
Into the Gauntlet
Wandering Son
K-On!
Other
Such Tweet Sorrow
Romeo and Juliet effect
Romeo and Juliet laws
After Juliet
"Upper West Side Story" (2012)
Millennium Dome Show
Inge Sylten and Heinz Drosihn
Boys Don't Cry
My Wedding and Other Secrets
Donkey in Lahore
Upside Down
Letters to Juliet
Sherlock Gnomes
Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo
vteWilliam Shakespeare's Timon of AthensCharacters
Timon
Alcibiades
Apemantus
Sources
Palace of Pleasure (1566)
Adaptations
Timon (1973)
Timon of Athens (1981)
Revisions
The History of Timon of Athens the Man-hater (1677)
Related
Thomas Middleton
vteWilliam Shakespeare's Titus AndronicusCharacters
Titus Andronicus
Tamora
Aaron
Lavinia
Emperor Saturninus
Marcus
Lucius
Sources
Ab Urbe Condita (c.26 BC)
Metamorphoses (c.AD 8)
Thyestes (first century AD)
Gesta Romanorum (late third century AD)
Adaptations
Titus Andronicus (1985; TV)
Titus (1999)
"Scott Tenorman Must Die" (2001; TV)
The Hungry (2017)
Related
Peacham drawing
Authorship question
Themes
"Titus Andronicus' Complaint"
George Peele
Philomela
Thyestes
Revenge play
Grand Guignol
Gorboduc (1561)
Edmund Ironside (1590)
Jan Vos
Titus (soundtrack)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's Troilus and CressidaCharactersTrojans
Priam
Hector
Deiphobus
Helenus
Paris
Troilus
Cassandra
Andromache
Aeneas
Pandarus
Cressida
Calchas
Helen
Greeks
Agamemnon
Menelaus
Nestor
Ulysses
Achilles
Patroclus
Diomedes
Ajax
Thersites
Myrmidons
Sources
Troilus and Criseyde
Troy Book
Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye
Adaptations
The Face of Love (1954, TV)
Troilus and Cressida (1981, TV)
Related
Trojan War
Trojan War in popular culture
Troilus and Cressida (Dryden play)
Achilles and Patroclus
Shakespearean problem play
Shakespearean comedy
vteWilliam Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends WellCharacters
Bertram
Countess of Roussillon
Helen
Rinaldo
Lavatch
Paroles
King of France
Lafeu
Duke of Florence
Widow
Diana
Mariana
Sources
The Decameron (c.1353)
Palace of Pleasure (1566)
Adaptations
All's Well That Ends Well (1981; TV)
Related
Shakespearean problem play
Diana
Alazôn
Bed trick
vteWilliam Shakespeare's As You Like ItCharacters
Rosalind
Orlando
Celia
Jaques
Touchstone
Screen
1912
1936
Sollu Thambi Sollu (1959)
1978 (TV)
1991
1994 (TV)
2006
Related
"All the world's a stage"
vteWilliam Shakespeare's The Comedy of ErrorsSources
Menaechmi
Amphitryon
Apollonius of Tyre
Opera and musicals
Gli equivoci (1786)
The Boys from Syracuse (1938)
Pozdvižení v Efesu (1943)
The Comedy of Errors (1976)
The Bomb-itty of Errors (2000)
Film/TV
The Boys from Syracuse (1940)
Bhranti Bilas (1963)
Do Dooni Chaar (1968)
Angoor (1982)
The Comedy of Errors (1983; TV)
Big Business (1988)
Ulta Palta (1997)
Bade Miyan Chote Miyan (1998)
Dam Dama Dam (1998)
Ulta Palta (1998)
Heeralal Pannalal (1999)
Ambuttu Imbuttu Embuttu (2005)
Baa Bega Chandamama (2008)
Double Di Trouble (2014)
Cirkus (2022)
Related
Gesta Grayorum (1688)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's Love's Labour's LostCharacters
Costard
Adaptations
1920 animated short
1973 opera
TV, 1985
2000 film
Related
Love's Labour's Won
Honorificabilitudinitatibus
Nine Worthies
The School of Night
Robert Tofte
The Princess (poem; 1847)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's Measure for MeasureCharacters
Angelo
Sources
Hecatommithi by Cinthio
Promos and Cassandra by George Whetstone
Theatrical adaptations
The Law Against Lovers (1662)
Das Liebesverbot (1834)
Round Heads and Pointed Heads (1936)
Desperate Measures (2004)
Film adaptations
Measure for Measure (1943)
Measure for Measure (1979; TV)
Measure for Measure (2020)
Related
Thomas Middleton
Mariana (Tennyson)
Mariana in the South (Tennyson)
Bletting
Bed trick
Shakespearean problem play
Mariana (Millais)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's The Merchant of VeniceCharacters
Shylock
Antonio
Bassanio
Portia
Jessica
Sources
Gesta Romanorum
Il Pecorone
The Jew of Malta
On screen
1914
1916
1923
Shylock (1940)
1953
1961
1969
1980 (TV)
2004
Music
Incidental music: Shylock (1889)
Opera: Le marchand de Venise (1935); The Merchant of Venice (1982)
Musical: Shylock (1987)
Adaptations
Serenade to Music (1938)
The Merchant (1976)
Shylock (1996)
Yasser (2001)
The Maori Merchant of Venice (2002)
Related
"All that glitters is not gold"
"Between you and I"
"The quality of mercy"
vteWilliam Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of WindsorCharacters
Falstaff
Mistress Quickly
Ancient Pistol
Bardolph
Robert Shallow
Corporal Nym
Film/Television
The Merry Wives of Windsor (1950)
Overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor (1953)
The Merry Wives of Windsor (1982; TV)
Opera/Musical
Falstaff (1799)
The Merry Wives of Windsor (1849)
Falstaff (1893)
Sir John in Love (1929)
Lone Star Love (2004)
Related
"You Banbury cheese!"
Herne the Hunter
Il Pecorone
vteWilliam Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's DreamCharactersLovers
Theseus and Hippolyta
Oberon and Titania
Hermia and Lysander
Helena and Demetrius
Mechanicals
Nick Bottom
Peter Quince
Francis Flute
Robin Starveling
Tom Snout
Snug
Others
Puck
Egeus
Philostrate
ProductionsFilm
1935
1959
1968
1999
2017
Television
1969
1981
1992
2016
Stage
1970
AdaptationsFilm
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1909, silent)
Wood Love (1925)
Dream of a Summer Night (1983)
Get Over It (2001)
A Midsummer Night's Rave (2002)
Midsummer Dream (2005)
Were the World Mine (2008)
10ml Love (2012)
Strange Magic (2015)
Literature
A Midsummer Tempest (1974)
Lords and Ladies (1992)
A Midsummer Night's Gene (1997)
A Midsummer's Nightmare (1997)
The Great Night (2011)
Music
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1842, Mendelssohn)
"Wedding March"
Three Shakespeare Songs (1951)
Symphony No. 8 (1992, Henze)
Il Sogno (2004)
Opera
The Fairy-Queen (1692)
Pyramus and Thisbe (1745)
Puck (1949)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960, opera)
The Enchanted Island (2011)
Stage
The Triumph of Beauty (1646, masque)
St. John's Eve (1852, play)
The Park (1983, play)
The Donkey Show (1999, musical)
The Dreaming (2001, musical)
The Lovers (2022, musical)
Comics
The Sandman: Dream Country (1991)
Auberon
Faerie
Titania
Art
Hermia and Lysander
The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania
Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream
Titania and Bottom
Ballet
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1962)
The Dream (1964)
Television
"Fascination" (1994, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1994, ShakespeaRe-Told)
A Midsummer's Nightmare (2017)
Related
Love-in-idleness
Pyramus and Thisbe (8 CE)
Dead Poets Society (1989)
The Apartment (1996)
Wicker Park (2004)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's Much Ado About NothingCharacters
Beatrice
Don Pedro
Dogberry
Hero
AdaptationsScreen
1984 (TV)
1993
2005 (TV)
2012
Opera
Béatrice et Bénédict (1862)
Much Ado About Nothing (opera) (1901)
Musical
Much Ado (1995)
The Boys Are Coming Home (2005)
Adaptations
The Law Against Lovers (1662)
Dil Chahta Hai (2001)
Imogen Says Nothing (2017)
Anyone but You (2023)
Related
Dogberryism
"Curiosity killed the cat"
Pleaching
vteWilliam Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of TyreCharacters
John Gower
Diana
Sources
Confessio Amantis (1390)
The Pattern of Painful Adventures (1576)
Adaptations
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1984; TV)
Related
George Wilkins
Shakespeare's late romances
Shakespeare apocrypha
Apollonius of Tyre
The Pattern of Painful Adventures (2008; radio)
First water
The Porpoise
vteWilliam Shakespeare's The Taming of the ShrewCharacters
Kate
Petruchio
Bianca Minola
Christopher Sly
Stage adaptations
The Woman's Prize (c1611)
Catharine and Petruchio (1754)
Las bravías (1896)
Der Widerspänstigen Zähmung (1872)
Sly, ovvero La leggenda del dormiente risvegliato (1927)
Kiss Me, Kate (1948)
The Taming of the Shrew (1953)
Ukroshchenye Stroptivoy (1957)
Christopher Sly (1963)
Direct adaptations
1908
1929
1962 (TV)
1967
1980 (TV)
1994 (TV)
Other adaptations
Daring Youth (1924)
You Made Me Love You (1933)
Second Best Bed (1938)
The Taming of the Shrew (1942)
Enamorada (1946)
Kiss Me Kate (1953)
Abba Aa Hudugi (1959)
Gundamma Katha (1962)
Manithan Maravillai (1962)
McLintock! (1963)
Arivaali (1963)
Kiss Me Kate (1968)
Pattikada Pattanama (1972)
The Taming of the Scoundrel (1980)
Nanjundi Kalyana (1989)
Banarasi Babu (1997)
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
O Cravo e a Rosa (2000; TV)
Deliver Us from Eva (2003)
The Taming of the Shrew (2005; TV)
Frivolous Wife (2008)
10 Things I Hate About You (2009; TV)
Isi Life Mein...! (2010)
Related
The Taming of the Shrew in performance
The Taming of the Shrew on screen
Shrew (stock character)
Vinegar Girl (2016)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's The TempestCharacters
Prospero
Miranda
Ariel
Caliban
Sycorax
Ferdinand
Gonzalo
Stephano
Sources
A True Reportory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight
Decades of the New World
Montaigne's Essays
Ovid's Metamorphoses (Of Cannibals)
Erasmus's Naufragium
Commedia dell'arte
Sea Venture
Films
1908
1911
1960
1963
1979
1980
1992
2010
AdaptationsMusic
Three Shakespeare Songs (Vaughan Williams)
The Tempest (Sullivan)
The Tempest (Sibelius)
The Tempest (Tchaikovsky)
The Tempest (ballet) (Nordheim)
"Don't Pay the Ferryman" (1982)
Screen
Yellow Sky (1948)
Forbidden Planet (1956)
Tempest (1982)
The Journey to Melonia (1989)
Prospero's Books (1991)
The Tempest (1998)
Shakespeare's Shitstorm (2020)
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury (2022-2023)
Painting
Scene from Shakespeare's The Tempest (c, 1736-1738, Hogarth)
Ferdinand Lured by Ariel (1850, Millais)
Musicals
Beach Blanket Tempest
Return to the Forbidden Planet
Amaluna
Plays
The Tempest (Dryden)
The Sea Voyage
The Mock Tempest (1674 Duffet)
Une Tempête (1969 Césaire)
The Sea (play) (1973)
I'll Be The Devil (2008)
Opera
The Tempest (1756 Smith)
Die Geisterinsel (libretto 1796)
Die Geisterinsel (1798 Reichardt)
Die Geisterinsel (1805 Zumsteeg)
Der Sturm (1955 Martin)
Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs (1991 Nyman)
The Tempest (Adès 2004)
The Enchanted Island (2011 Sams)
Poetry andprose fiction
"Caliban upon Setebos" (Browning)
"The Sea and the Mirror" (Auden)
Indigo (Warner)
A Midsummer Tempest (Anderson)
Island (Rogers)
Hag-Seed (Atwood)
Video Games
The Book of Watermarks (1999)
Phrases
"Ariel's Song"
"Full fathom five"
"Sea change"
"What's past is prologue"
Sculpture
The Tempest (1966)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's Twelfth NightCharacters
Viola
Orsino
Olivia
Sebastian
Malvolio
Maria
Sir Toby Belch
Sir Andrew Aguecheek
Feste
On screen
1933
1955
1966 (TV)
1970 (TV)
1980 (TV)
1986
1988 (TV)
1992 (TV)
1996
Musical
Your Own Thing (1968)
Music Is (1976)
Play On! (1997)
Illyria (2004)
All Shook Up (2004)
Adaptations
Kanniyin Kathali (1949)
Just One of the Guys (1985)
Motocrossed (2001)
She's the Man (2006)
Dil Bole Hadippa! (2009)
Opera
Viola (unfinished)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of VeronaCharacters
Valentine
Proteus
Julia
Silvia
Launce
Speed
Crab
Sources
The Boke Named the Governour (1531)
Los Siete Libros de la Diana (1559)
Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit (1578)
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1580)
Theatrical adaptations
Two Gentlemen of Verona (1971)
Screen adaptations
A Spray of Plum Blossoms (1931)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (TV; 1983)
Related
Proteus
Jorge de Montemor
Stuart Draper
"An Sylvia" (1826)
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's The Two Noble KinsmenCharacters
Theseus
Hippolyta
Emilia
Pirithous
Palamon
Arcite
Hymen
Lafeu
Artesius
Valerius
Jailer
Doctor
Gerald
Nell
Timothy
Sources
"The Knight's Tale"
The Canterbury Tales
Related
Shakespeare apocrypha
Shakespeare's late romances
John Fletcher
Creon
William Davenant
Stoolball
The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn (1613)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's The Winter's TaleCharacters
Leontes
Perdita
Florizel
Sources
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (c.1580)
Pandosto (1588)
Oberon, the Faery Prince (1611)
Adaptations
The Winter's Tale (1910)
The Winter's Tale (1967)
The Winter's Tale (1981)
"The Winter's Tale" (1994)
Stage works
Hermione (1872 opera)
Perdita (1897 opera)
The Winter's Tale (2014 ballet)
The Winter's Tale (2017 opera)
Shakespearean history
vteWilliam Shakespeare's King JohnCharacters
King John
Queen Eleanor
Prince Henry
Blanche of Castile
Earl of Essex
Earl of Salisbury
Earl of Pembroke
Lord Bigot
Philip Faulconbridge
King Philip of France
Louis the Dauphin
Lady Constance
Arthur
Cardinal Pandulf
Hubert
Sources
Holinshed's Chronicles (1577)
The Troublesome Reign of King John (c.1589)
Adaptations
King John (1899)
Said-e-Havas (1936)
The Life and Death of King John (1984; TV)
Related
King Johan
Cultural depictions of John, King of England
Anglo-French War (1213–1214)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's Edward IIICharactersEnglish
Edward III
Queen Philippa
Edward the Black Prince
Earl of Salisbury
Countess of Salisbury
Earl of Warwick
Sir William Montague
Earl of Derby
Lord Audley
Lord Percy
Robert of Artois
Lord Montfort
French
King John II of France
Prince Charles
Prince Philip
Duke of Lorraine
King of Bohemia
Scottish
King David of Scotland
Sir William Douglas
Sources
Froissart's Chronicles (c.1370)
Palace of Pleasure (1566)
Holinshed's Chronicles (1577)
Related
Shakespeare apocrypha
Thomas Kyd
George Peele
Robert Greene
Hundred Years' War
Battle of Halidon Hill
Siege of Calais
Battle of Crécy
Battle of Poitiers
vteWilliam Shakespeare's Henriad (c. 1595–99)
Richard II
Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 2
Henry V
Characters
Ancient Pistol
Bardolph
Charles VI
Corporal Nym
Doll Tearsheet
Falstaff
Fluellen
Henry IV
Henry V
Prince Hal
Owain Glyndŵr
Owen Glendower
Poins
Nell Quickly
Richard II
Robert Shallow
Sources
Holinshed's Chronicles
The Famous Victories of Henry V (c. 1585)
Thomas of Woodstock (c. 1593)
Related plays
The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597)
Sir John Oldcastle (1599)
Falstaff's Wedding (1760)
On screenRichard II
King Richard II (1954; TV)
An Age of Kings (1960; TV)
The Life and Death of King Richard II (1960; TV)
King Richard the Second (1979; TV)
Richard the Second (2001)
The Hollow Crown: Richard II (2012; TV)
Henry IV, Part 1
An Age of Kings (1960; TV)
Chimes at Midnight (1966)
Henry the Fourth, Part I (1979; TV)
The Hollow Crown: Henry IV, Part 1 (2012; TV)
The King (2019)
Henry IV, Part 2
An Age of Kings (1960; TV)
Chimes at Midnight (1966)
Henry the Fourth, Part II (1979; TV)
The Hollow Crown: Henry IV, Part 2 (2012)
The King (2019)
Henry V
Henry V (1944)
An Age of Kings (1960; TV)
Chimes at Midnight (1966)
Henry the Fifth (1979; TV)
Henry V (1989)
The Hollow Crown: Henry V (2012)
The King (2019)
Related music
Falstaff (1913)
At the Boar's Head (1925)
Suite from Henry V (1963)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy
Henry VI, Part 1
Henry VI, Part 2
Henry VI, Part 3
Richard III
Charactersand events1 Henry VI
Henry VI
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester
Duke of Exeter
Lord Talbot
Duke of Bedford
Richard, Duke of York
Bishop of Winchester
Earl of Suffolk
Duke of Somerset (conflation of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset and Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset)
Earl of Warwick
Earl of Salisbury
John Talbot
Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March (conflation of Sir Edmund Mortimer and Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March)
Sir John Fastolf
Charles the Dauphin
Joan la Pucelle
Margaret of Anjou
Reignier, Duke of Anjou
Duke of Alençon
Bastard of Orléans
Duke of Burgundy
Jacques d'Arc
Siege of Orléans
Battle of Patay
2 Henry VI
Henry VI
Queen Margaret
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester
Richard, Duke of York
Earl of Salisbury
Earl of Warwick
Cardinal of Winchester
Duke of Suffolk
Duke of Buckingham
Jack Cade
Duke of Somerset (conflation of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset and Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset)
Duchess of Gloucester
Edward Plantagenet
Richard Plantagenet
Lord Clifford
Young Clifford
Margery Jourdayne
Lord Saye
Lord Scales
First Battle of St Albans
Peasants' Revolt
3 Henry VI
Henry VI
Queen Margaret
Richard, Duke of York
Earl of Warwick
Edward IV
Richard, Duke of Gloucester
George, Duke of Clarence
Edward, Prince of Wales
Lord Clifford
Lady Grey
Montague
Earl of Oxford
Duke of Somerset (conflation of Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset and Edmund Beaufort, 4th Duke of Somerset)
Lord Hastings
Sir William Stanley
Earl of Northumberland
Duke of Exeter
Duke of Norfolk
Earl of Westmorland
Lord Rivers
Edmund, Earl of Rutland
Henry, Earl of Richmond
Louis XI of France
Bona of Savoy
Prince Edward
Earl of Pembroke
Lord Stafford
Lord Bourbon
Battle of Towton
Battle of Barnet
Battle of Wakefield
Second Battle of St Albans
Battle of Tewkesbury
Richard III
Richard III
Duke of Buckingham
Queen Elizabeth
Duchess of York
Queen Margaret
Lady Neville
George, Duke of Clarence
Edward IV
Lord Hastings
Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby
Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond
Sir William Catesby
Sir Richard Ratcliffe
Lord Rivers
Marquis of Dorset
Sir James Tyrrell
Lord Richard Grey
Prince Edward
Richard, Duke of York
Earl of Warwick
Countess of Salisbury
Duke of Norfolk
Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishop of York
Earl of Surrey
Sir Thomas Vaughan
Sir Christopher
Robert Brackenbury
Lord Lovel
Ghost of Henry VI
Ghost of Edward, Prince of Wales
Lord Mayor of London
Earl of Oxford
Sir James Blunt
Sir William Brandon
Bishop of Ely
Sheriff of Wiltshire
Wars of the Roses
Princes in the Tower
Battle of Bosworth Field
On screenTetralogy
An Age of Kings (1960; TV)
The Wars of the Roses (1965; TV)
BBC Television Shakespeare (1983; TV)
The Hollow Crown
Henry VI, Part 1
Henry VI, Part 2
Richard III (2016; TV)
Richard III
The Life and Death of King Richard III (1912)
Richard III (1955)
"The Foretelling" (1983; TV)
"King Richard III" (1994; TV)
Richard III (1995)
Looking for Richard (1996)
Richard III (2007)
Sources
The Mirror for Magistrates (1559)
Holinshed's Chronicles (1577)
Richardus Tertius (1580)
The Spanish Tragedy
The True Tragedy of Richard III (c.1590)
Historical context
Hundred Years' War
Wars of the Roses
House of Plantagenet
House of York
House of Lancaster
Related
"Let's kill all the lawyers"
"Even a worm will turn"
The Tragical History of King Richard the Third (1699)
David Garrick as Richard III (1745)
vteWilliam Shakespeare's Henry VIIICharacters
Henry VIII
Cardinal Wolsey
Queen Katherine
Anne Bullen
Duke of Buckingham
Thomas Cranmer
Stephen Gardiner
Lord Chamberlain
Duke of Norfolk
Duke of Suffolk
Earl of Surrey
Cardinal Campeius
Capucius
Thomas Cromwell
Lord Sands
Lord Abergavenny
Lord Chancellor
Bishop of Lincoln
Thomas Lovell
Henry Guildford
Nicholas Vaux
Anthony Denny
Dr. Butts
Garter King-of-Arms
Sources
Thomas Wolsey, Late Cardinall, his Lyffe and Deathe (1558)
Holinshed's Chronicles (1577)
Adaptations
Henry VIII (1911)
The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight (1979)
Related
John Fletcher
Cultural depictions of Henry VIII
Cultural depictions of Anne Boleyn
Globe Theatre
Category
vteWilliam Shakespeare's family tree Direct ascendants and descendants of William Shakespeare are shown with a blue background
Shakespeare's siblings are shown with a red background
Anne Hathaway and ascendants are shown with a yellow background
People related to Shakespeare only through marriage are shown with a green background
Relations whose identity is not known are shown with a dashed border Years given are usually approximate and typically reflect baptismal and burial years, rather than birth and death.
For remarriages, the number in parentheses after the name indicates the order of the marriages.
RichardShakespeare(1490–before 1561)(unknown)(unknown)RobertArden(died 1556)
JohnShakespeare(c. 1531–1601)MaryArden(c. 1537–1608)(unknown) (1)RichardHathaway(–1581)JoanHathaway (2)(–1599)
Joan(1558–1558)Margaret(1562–1563)GilbertShakespeare(1566–1612)JoanShakespeare(1569–1646)WilliamShakespeare(1564–1616)AnneHathaway(1555–1623)
Anne(1571–1579)Richard(1574–1613)EdmundShakespeare(1580–1607)
JohnHall(1575–1635)SusannaHall(1583–1649)JudithQuiney(1585–1662)ThomasQuiney(1589–1662)HamnetShakespeare(1585–1596)
ThomasNash (1)(1593–1647)ElisabethBarnard(1608–1670)JohnBarnard (2)(1604–1674)ShakespeareQuiney(1616–1617)RichardQuiney(1618–1639)ThomasQuiney(1620–1639)
Sources
Chambers, E. K. (1930). William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. Vol. I 11–12, 18, Vol. II 8–9. OCLC 353406.
Schoenbaum, S. (1977). William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 292. ISBN 0195051610.
vtePortraits, sculptures and memorials to William ShakespearePortraits
Chandos portrait
Droeshout portrait
Disputed
Ashbourne portrait
Cobbe portrait
Flower portrait
Sanders portrait
Sculptures
Shakespeare's funerary monument
Heminges and Condell Memorial
Statues
Central Park, New York
Leicester Square, London
British Library
Memorials
Boydell Shakespeare Gallery
Garrick's Temple to Shakespeare
vteThe "Beaumont and Fletcher" Canon
Francis Beaumont
John Fletcher
Philip Massinger
Nathan Field
William Shakespeare
James Shirley
Thomas Middleton
William Rowley
John Ford
Ben Jonson
George Chapman
John Webster
Plays(someattributionsconjectural)Beaumont
The Knight of the Burning Pestle
The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn
Beaumontand Fletcher
The Woman Hater
Cupid's Revenge
The Coxcomb
Philaster
The Captain
The Maid's Tragedy
A King and No King
Love's Pilgrimage
The Scornful Lady
The Noble Gentleman
Fletcher
The Faithful Shepherdess
The Woman's Prize
Valentinian
Bonduca
Monsieur Thomas
The Mad Lover
The Chances
The Loyal Subject
Women Pleased
The Humorous Lieutenant
The Island Princess
The Pilgrim
The Wild Goose Chase
A Wife for a Month
Rule a Wife and Have a Wife
Fletcher andMassinger
†Barnavelt
The Little French Lawyer
The False One
The Double Marriage
The Custom of the Country
The Lovers' Progress
The Spanish Curate
The Prophetess
The Sea Voyage
The Elder Brother
†A Very Woman
Fletcherand others
with Beaumont & Massinger
Thierry and Theodoret
Beggars' Bush
Love's Cure
with Massinger & Field
The Honest Man's Fortune
The Queen of Corinth
The Knight of Malta
with Field
Four Plays, or Moral Representations, in One
with Shakespeare
†Henry VIII
The Two Noble Kinsmen
with Shirley
The Night Walker
Wit Without Money
with Rowley
The Maid in the Mill
with Massinger, Chapman & Jonson
Rollo, Duke of Normandy
with Massinger, Ford & Webster
The Fair Maid of the Inn
Others
The Nice Valour (Middleton)
Wit at Several Weapons (Middleton & Rowley)
The Laws of Candy (Ford)
The Coronation (Shirley)
Performanceand publication
English Renaissance theatre
King's Men
Beaumont and Fletcher folios
Humphrey Moseley
Humphrey Robinson
Related
†The History of Cardenio (Shakespeare & Fletcher?)
†Double Falsehood (possibly based on Cardenio)
† = Not published in the Beaumont and Fletcher folios
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