William Shakespeare

From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change

William Shakespeare (April, 1564 - April 23, 1616) was an English writer. He wrote plays and also some poetry. Many people consider him to be the greatest English writer of all time and one of the greatest in the world. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and histories. His poetry and plays are about being human, with feelings such as love, jealousy, anger, and much more. Children learn about him in schools around the world. Shakespeare wrote his works between about 1590 and 1613.

Contents 1 His Life 2 Shakespeare's popular works 3 Who wrote "Shakespeare"? 4 Other websites

[change] His Life

Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in April 1564, the son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years older than him, on November 28, 1582. Anne was three months pregnant. They had three children: Susanna, and the twins Hamnet and Judith. After his marriage, Shakespeare's name is not heard of again until 1592, when he was writing in London.

In 1596 Hamnet died. Because of the similarities of their names, some people think that his death was the idea for Shakespeare's play The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, which Shakespeare wrote 1600-1602.

By 1596 Shakespeare was living in Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames in London, and he was at the top of a list of actors in the play "Every Man in his Humour", by Ben Jonson.

Shakespeare acted in an acting company called "The Lord Chamberlain's Men". The company took its name, like others of the time, from the man who gave it pounds: the Lord Chamberlain. The group became so popular that after the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, the new king, James I gave the company his favour. The company changed its name to "The King's Men".

In London, Shakespeare became very successful. He bought a house in Blackfriars, London, and also owned the second-largest house in Stratford: New Place.

Shakespeare stopped working in about 1613 and died in 1616. He was married to Anne until his death. His gravestone (the stone where he lies in the cemetery) says:

Good Friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blest be the man who spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

This means that nobody is allowed to open the grave or to remove the gravestone. If somebody dares to move his body, this person will have bad luck. Some people say that other works by Shakespeare may be in his tomb, but no one has ever checked this, perhaps because they were afraid of the words on his gravestone. Historians do not believe any work by Shakespeare was buried with him.

[change] Shakespeare's popular works

Here is a full list of all of Shakespeare's plays:

• Shakespearean tragedies
  • Romeo and Juliet
  • Macbeth
  • King Lear
  • Hamlet
  • Othello
  • Titus Andronicus
  • Julius Caesar
  • Antony and Cleopatra
  • Coriolanus
  • Troilus and Cressida
  • Timon of Athens
• Shakespearean comedies
  • The Comedy of Errors
  • All's Well That Ends Well
  • As You Like It
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream
  • Much Ado About Nothing
  • Measure for Measure
  • The Tempest
  • Taming of the Shrew
  • Twelfth Night or What You Will
  • The Merchant of Venice
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor
  • Love's Labour's Lost
  • The Two Gentlemen of Verona
  • Pericles Prince of Tyre
  • Cymbeline
  • The Winter's Tale
• Shakespearean histories
  • Richard III
  • Richard II
  • Henry VI, part 1
  • Henry VI, part 2
  • Henry VI, part 3
  • Henry V
  • Henry IV, part 1
  • Henry IV, part 2
  • Henry VIII
  • King John

[change] Who wrote "Shakespeare"?

About 150 years after Shakespeare died, some writers began to say that the works we call "Shakespeare" were not really written by William Shakespeare. They had various reasons for saying this. For example, the person who wrote "Shakespeare" knew a lot about other countries (especially Italy), but William Shakespeare never left England as far as we know.

Several other writers of "Shakespeare" have been suggested, such as Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Most scholars believe that William Shakespeare did write the works that bear his name, but the idea that someone else "wrote Shakespeare" still gets discussed a lot.

[change] Other websites

• Open Source Shakespeare