WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE -

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is generally regarded as the greatest writer ever in the English Language. He was born in Stratford– upon- Avon in England. His father, John Shakespeare was a prosperous farmer and wool and timber merchant. His mother Mary Arden, was the daughter of a prosperous farmer, descended from an old Warwickshire family of mixed Anglo-Saxon and Norman blood. It is said that Shakespeare probably attended the endowed grammar school at Stratford, where he picked up the “Small Latin and less Greek” to which his learned friend Ben Jonson refers. When he was about fourteen years old, his father’s fortunes declined. In 1582, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a peasant family of Shottery, who was eight years his senior. Around the year 1587 Shakespeare left his family and went to London. There he began a successful career as an actor, writer and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later on 23 rd April, 1616 and was buried in the Stratford Church. Shakespeare’s dramatic career extends over a period of nearly twenty two years, from 1590 to 1612. 

During this period, the dramatist worked hard producing, about two plays a year, besides two poems- “Rape of Lucrece” and “Venus and Adonis”- and a sequence of 154 sonnets. A study of his plays in chronological order reveals a gradual development of his mind and art. To emphasize this gradual growth of his art, Prof. Dowden has divided his dramatic career into four parts, each showing a definite advance over the previous one. The first stage is apprenticeship which was a period of early experimentation for the poet. It is marked by excessive use of rhymes, pun, conceits and other forms of word jugglery. Typical works of this period are his early poems, Loves’ Labour’s Lost , Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Richard III. 

The second stage is a period of rapid growth and development. Some of the works of this period are Midsummer Nights Dream, Merchant of Venice, Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, As you Like It and Henry V. The third stage is a period of gloom and depression which marks the full maturity of his powers. The Sonnets with their note of personal disappointment and the four great tragedies Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Othello belong to this period. The fourth stage marks the last years of the poet’s literary work. The plays written during this period are Coriolanus, Pericles, Cymbeline, Winter’s Tale, The Tempest and Henry VIII