William Shakespeare
Article
August 15, 2022
William Shakespeare is an English playwright, poet and actor baptized on April 26, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon and died on April 23, 1616 in the same city. Nicknamed "the Bard of Avon", "the Immortal Bard" or simply "the Bard", he is considered one of the greatest poets and playwrights in the English language. His work, translated into many languages, consists of 39 pieces, 154 sonnets and some additional poems, some of which are not attributed to him with certainty. After studying in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway at the age of 18, with whom he had three children. At an unknown date between 1585 and 1592, he began his career as a successful actor and author in London with the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a troupe of which he was a shareholder. He seems to have retired to Stratford around 1613 to die there three years later. There are hardly any traces of the Shakespearean man left, which has spawned much speculation regarding his physical appearance, sexuality, and religion. Marginal theories claim that his work was actually written by someone else. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays between 1589 and 1613. The first were mostly comedies and historical plays, then he devoted himself more to tragedies like Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. At the end of his life, he wrote tragicomedies and collaborated with other playwrights. During his lifetime, many of his plays were published in inexpensive books of varying quality. In 1623, two of his friends published the "First Folio", a collection which included almost all of his theatrical work in definitive form. In his preface, Ben Jonson correctly predicts the timelessness of Shakespeare, whose plays continue to be staged, adapted, rediscovered and reinterpreted over the centuries in varying cultural and political contexts.