Shakespeare's summary of his biography is the most important thing. Shakespeare: was or was not? That is the question

Life of William Shakespeare (briefly)

William Shakespeare

In 1582, an extremely hasty marriage took place between the 18-year-old William Shakespeare and the poor girl Anne Hathaway, who was 8 years older than him. This was probably the result of a careless passion on the part of an ardent young man, in which he later had to repent all his life. Where and how the young people lived at first is also unknown; but when the affairs of his father began to tend almost to complete disorder, the young Shakespeare, about 1586, leaving his family in Stratford (he already had several children), went to London, where he met countrymen who served in the troupe of the Lord Chamberlain. With this troupe, Shakespeare joined, first as an actor, and then as a supplier of plays. He soon acquired big name in theater circles, found friends and patrons among the aristocratic London society, took a privileged position in the troupe of the Lord Chamberlain, and when the troupe's business went brilliantly, he increased his funds so much that in 1597 he could buy a house with a garden in Stratford. In 1602 and 1605 Shakespeare bought several more plots of land in Stratford for considerable sums and, finally (about 1608), left London to rest from the unrest of the capital and theater life. However, he did not completely break off ties with the theater, traveled to London on business, hosted friends and comrades on the stage and sent his new plays to them in London. William Shakespeare died at the age of 52 on April 23, 1616.

The first period of Shakespeare's work (briefly)

Based on the study of the works of William Shakespeare, it can be reliably stated that during his London life he worked hard on his education. He undoubtedly achieved a thorough knowledge of French and Italian, and in translations was well acquainted with the best works classical and modern European literature, the strong influence of which was already reflected in the youthful works of Shakespeare. The poem "Venus and Adonis" (1593), written on a plot borrowed from Ovid, and the poem "Lucretia", in which the well-known story from the first book of Titus Livy is processed, although they show independence young poet with regard to understanding and developing psychological types, however, in style, adorned with rhetoric, they entirely belong to the then fashionable Italian school. It also includes those “sweet sonnets” - as their contemporaries called them (published for the first time in 1609), which are so interesting and mysterious in an autobiographical sense, and in which Shakespeare either extols some friend, or depicts his feelings. to some beautiful coquette, then she indulges in sad thoughts about the frailty of everything earthly.

In dramatic works early period development of his talent (1587-1594) Shakespeare also did not come out of his contemporary literary movement. Such plays as Pericles, Henry VI, and especially Titus Andronicus (however, their belonging to Shakespeare is disputed), with all the striking touches that give a foreboding of the great master, suffer greatly from the shortcomings of the pompously bloody tragedies of Kid and Marlowe. And the youthful comedies of William Shakespeare (“Two Veronians”, “Comedy of Errors”, “The Taming of the Shrew”) can, like Plavtov’s and Italian comedies then fashionable on the English stage, deserve a reproach for the intricacy of the intrigue, the appearance of the comic, the naivety of the action, although there is abundant superb scenes and positions are scattered, and the characters vividly depicted. In the comedy Love's Labour's Lost, which can be viewed as a transitional to a more mature period of creativity, Shakespeare is already ridiculing the fashionable, flamboyant style to which he himself paid tribute.

The second period of Shakespeare's work (briefly)

In the next, relatively short period(1595-1601) the genius of William Shakespeare develops more and more freely. In the tragedy "Romeo and Juliet" (see full text and summary), he combined an enthusiastic hymn of love with the funeral song of a young feeling, portrayed love in all its depth and tragedy, as a mighty and fatal force, and in almost simultaneously written comedy "Dream in midsummer night"This very love, inserted into the frame of a fragrant night, in the darkness of which playful elves frolic and willfully unite human hearts, is interpreted as a radiant dream and is clothed in a graceful haze of fantastic colors. In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare proceeds to analyze difficult moral problems and shows a deep connoisseur human soul in all the complexity of her criss-crossing urges, drawing in Shylock a cruel pawnbroker, and tenderly loving son, and an inexorable avenger for the humiliated people. In the comedy Twelfth Night, he opposes unsympathetic puritan intolerance; in the play "All's well that ends well" strikes at the pedigree prejudices, and after that bursts into carefree laughter in the comedy "Much Ado About Nothing".

Stills from the feature film "Romeo and Juliet" with immortal music by Nino Rota

Belonging to this transitional period for Shakespeare historical dramas or dramatic chronicles from English history("King John", "Richard II", "Richard III", "Henry IV" in 2 parts, "Henry V") represent an important step in the development of William Shakespeare's work. From fantastic plots with universal types, he now turned to reality, plunged into history with its stubborn struggle of various interests. But, as if weary of prolonged contemplation of the gloomy and often outrageous pictures of English history, in which he met with the demonic image of Richard III, this personified evil, as if wanting to have fun and freshen up a little, Shakespeare writes a sweet, elegant pastoral "As You Like It" and household comedy "The Merry Wives of Windsor" with satirical arrows at the obsolete and decaying chivalry.

The third period of Shakespeare's work (briefly)

In the third, most mature period of creativity, from the pen of William Shakespeare came works as great in breadth of conception, clarity of art, images and psychological depth, as perfect in terms of composition, conciseness and strength of language, flexibility of verse. The human heart has already revealed to Shakespeare all its secrets, and with some elemental, unsurpassed, divinely inspired power, he creates one immortal creation after another and in the grandiose personalities of his heroes embodies all the diversity of human characters, all the fullness of world life in its eternal and immutable manifestations. The delight of love and the anguish of jealousy, ambition and ingratitude, hatred and deceit, pride and contempt, the torments of an oppressed conscience, the beauty and tenderness of a girl's soul, the unquenchable ardor of a mistress, the strength of a mother's feelings, the fidelity of a wife offended by suspicion - all this passes before us in a long line of Shakespearean images, all this lives, worries, trembles and suffers, all this is revealed to us in amazing pictures, either full of blood and horror, or imbued with the aroma and bliss of love, or imprinted with tenderness and quiet sorrow.

Dozens of historical documents have been preserved about the life and work of William Shakespeare. He was well known to his contemporaries as a poet and playwright, whose writings were repeatedly published and quoted in verse and prose. Circumstances of his birth, education, lifestyle The vast majority of playwrights came from craft families (Shakespeare - the son of a glovemaker, Marlowe - the son of a shoemaker, Ben Jonson - the son of a bricklayer, etc.). From the children of artisans in England, acting troupes were replenished as early as the 15th century (perhaps this is due to the medieval tradition of staging mysteries, in which craft guilds took part). In general, the theatrical profession assumed a non-aristocratic origin. At the same time, Shakespeare's level of education was sufficient for this occupation. He went through the usual grammar school (a type of English school where they taught ancient languages ​​and literature), but it gave everything for the profession of a playwright.- everything corresponded to the time when the profession of a playwright was still considered low, but the theaters already brought their owners a considerable income. Finally, Shakespeare was both an actor and a playwright, and a shareholder in a theater troupe, he spent almost twenty years rehearsing and performing on stage. Despite all this, it is still debated whether William Shakespeare was the author of the plays, sonnets and poems published under his name. Doubts first arose in the middle of the 19th century. Since then, many hypotheses have appeared that attribute the authorship of Shakespeare's works to someone else.

The names of Bacon, Oxford, Rutland, Derby and Marlowe are, of course, not limited to the list of potential Shakespeare candidates. There are several dozen of them in total, including such exotic ones as Queen Elizabeth, her successor King James I Stuart, the author of Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe or the English romantic poet George Gordon Byron. But, in essence, it doesn’t matter who exactly these or those “researchers” consider to be the real Shakespeare. It is more important to understand why Shakespeare is repeatedly denied the right to be called the author of his works.

The point is not that nothing is known for certain about Shakespeare's life. On the contrary, after 200 years of research on Shakespeare, an amazing amount of evidence has been collected, and there is no reason to doubt the authorship of his works: there are absolutely no historical grounds for this.

For doubt, however, there are grounds of an emotional nature. We are the heirs of the romantic turning point that occurred in European culture at the beginning of the 19th century, when new ideas arose about the work and figure of the poet, unknown to previous centuries (it is no coincidence that the first doubts about Shakespeare arose precisely in the 1840s). In the very general view this new vision can be reduced to two related features. First: the poet is a genius in everything, including ordinary life, and the existence of the poet is inseparable from his work; he differs sharply from the average inhabitant, his life is like a bright comet that flies quickly and burns out just as quickly; at first glance it is impossible to confuse him with a person of a non-poetic disposition. And secondly: whatever this poet writes, he will always talk about himself, about the uniqueness of his existence; any of his works will be a confession, any line will reflect his whole life, the corpus of his texts is his poetic biography.

Shakespeare does not fit into such a notion. In this he is similar to his contemporaries, but only he has fallen to become, to paraphrase Erasmus, a playwright for all time. We do not demand that Racine, Moliere, Calderon or Lope de Vega live according to the laws of romantic art: we feel that there is a barrier between us and them. Shakespeare's work is capable of overcoming this barrier. Consequently, with Shakespeare, the demand is special: in the eyes of many, he must correspond to the norms (or rather, myths) of our time.

However, there is a reliable cure for this delusion - scientific historical knowledge, a critical approach to the conventional ideas of the century. Shakespeare is no worse and no better than his time, and it is no worse and no better than other historical epochs - they do not need to be embellished or altered, they must be tried to be understood.

Arzamas offers six of the longest-lived versions of who could have written for Shakespeare.

Version #1

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), philosopher, writer, statesman

Francis Bacon. Engraving by William Marshall. England, 1640

Delia Bacon. 1853 Wikimedia Commons

The daughter of a bankrupt settler from the US state of Connecticut, Delia Bacon (1811-1859), was not the first to try to attribute Shakespeare's writings to Francis Bacon, but it was she who introduced the general public to this version. Her faith in her own discovery was so contagious that famous writers, to whom she turned for help - the Americans Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Briton Thomas Carlisle - could not refuse her. Thanks to their support, Delia Bacon came to England and in 1857 published the 675-page The Real Philosophy of Shakespeare's Plays. This book said that William Shakespeare was just an illiterate actor and a greedy businessman, and plays and poems under his name were composed by a group of "high-born thinkers and poets" headed by Bacon - allegedly in this way the author of the "New Organon" expected to circumvent censorship restrictions, which prevented him from openly expressing his innovative philosophy (that plays were also censored in Elizabethan England, Delia apparently did not know anything).

However, the author of Genuine Philosophy did not provide any evidence in favor of her hypothesis: the evidence, Delia believed, lay either in the grave of Francis Bacon, or in the grave of Shakespeare. Since then, many anti-Shakespeareans are sure that the real author ordered to bury the manuscripts of "Shakespearean" plays with him, and if they are found, the issue will be resolved once and for all. At one time, this led to a real siege of historical graves throughout England. Delia was the first to apply for permission to open Bacon's grave in St. Albany, but without success..

Delia's ideas found many followers. As evidence, they presented minor literary parallels between the works of Bacon and Shakespeare, which can be fully explained by the unity of the written culture of that time, as well as the fact that the author of Shakespeare's plays had a taste for philosophy and was aware of the life of a number of European royal houses. For example, this is the Navarre court depicted in the comedy Love's Labour's Lost..

Attempts to unravel the “Bacon cipher” can be considered a significant development of the original hypothesis. The fact is that Francis Bacon worked on improving the methods of steganography - cryptography, which, to the uninitiated person, looks like a full-fledged message with its own meaning. In particular, he proposed a method for encrypting letters English alphabet, reminiscent of modern binary code.. The Baconians are sure that their hero wrote plays under the guise of Shakespeare not at all for the sake of success with the public - Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and King Lear, Twelfth Night and The Tempest served as a cover for some secret knowledge.

Version #2

Edward de Vere (1550-1604), 17th Earl of Oxford, courtier, poet, playwright, patron of the arts and sciences

Edward de Ver. Copy of a lost portrait from 1575. Unknown artist. England, 17th century National Portrait Gallery, London

A simple English teacher who called himself a descendant of the Earls of Derby, Thomas Loney (1870-1944) did not believe that the "Merchant of Venice" This play Lowney read with students in the class from year to year. could have been written by a man of ignoble origin who had never been to Italy. Doubting the authorship of the comedy about Shylock, Lawney picked up an anthology of Elizabethan poetry and found that Shakespeare's poem "Venus and Adonis" (1593) was written in the same stanza and the same meter as Edward de Vere's poem "Women's Variation" ( 1587). De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, could boast of the antiquity of his family and a good acquaintance with Italy, was known to his contemporaries not only as a poet, but also as an author of comedies (not preserved).

Lowney did not hide the amateurish nature of his research and was even proud of it: “Probably, the problem is still not solved precisely because,” he wrote in the preface to Shakespeare Identified, “because scientists have been working on it until now.” Later Oxfordians That is, the followers of Lowney's version. It was named after Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. decided to call for the help of lawyers: in 1987 and 1988, in the presence of judges of the US Supreme Court and the London Middle Temple, respectively, the followers of Lowney’s hypothesis entered into an open dispute with Shakespeare scholars (in London, they were opposed, in particular, by the most respected living specialist on Shakespeare, Professor Stanley Wells). Unfortunately for the organizers, the judges both times awarded the victory to the scientists. On the other hand, the Oxfordians succeeded in pushing back the Baconinians - today the Oxfordian version of anti-Shakespeareanism is the most popular.

Among Lowey's most famous followers was the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, who in his younger years leaned towards Baconianism, and in 1923, after acquaintance with Shakespeare Identified, converted to Oxfordianism. So, in the 1930s, Freud began to develop parallels between the fate of King Lear and the biography of the Earl of Oxford: both had three daughters, and if the English earl did not care about his own at all, then the legendary British king, in contrast, gave everything to his daughters, what he had. Having fled from the Nazis to London in 1938, Freud wrote Loney a warm letter and called him the author of a "wonderful book", and shortly before his death, on the basis that Oxford had lost his beloved father in childhood and supposedly hated his mother for her next marriage, he attributed it to Hamlet Oedipus complex.

Version #3

Roger Manners (1576-1612), 5th Earl of Rutland, courtier, patron of the arts

Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland. Portrait by Jeremiah van der Eyden. About 1675 Belvoir Castle/Bridgeman Images/Fotodom

Belgian socialist politician, lecturer French literature and symbolist writer Celestine Damblon (1859-1924) became interested in the Shakespearean question after learning about a document found in one of family archives in 1908. It followed that in 1613 the butler of Francis Manners, 6th Earl of Rutland, paid a large sum"Mr. Shakespeare" and his fellow actor Richard Burbage, who devised and painted a witty emblem on the earl's shield so that Manners would adequately appear in a jousting tournament. This discovery alerted Dumblon: he noticed that Francis' older brother, Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland, died in 1612, almost at the same time that Shakespeare stopped writing for the stage. In addition, Roger Manners was in friendly relations with the Earl of Southampton (an aristocrat to whom Shakespeare dedicated two of his poems and who is considered the main addressee of Shakespeare's sonnets), as well as with the Earl of Essex, whose fall in 1601 indirectly affected the actors of the Globe Theater In February 1601, Essex attempted to start a rebellion against the Queen. The day before, supporters of the count persuaded the actors to put on Shakespeare's old chronicle "Richard II", which dealt with the overthrow of the monarch. The uprising failed, Essex was executed (his accuser was Francis Bacon). Southampton went to jail for a long time. The actors of the Globe were called in for explanations, but this had no consequences for them.. Manners traveled to the countries that served as the setting for many of Shakespeare's plays (France, Italy, Denmark), and even studied in Padua with two Danes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (common Danish surnames of the time). In 1913, Demblont summarized these and other considerations in a book written in French, Lord Rutland is Shakespeare.

Cover of the book "The Game of William Shakespeare, or the Mystery of the Great Phoenix" Publishing House "International Relations"

Dumblon's version has followers in Russia too: for example, Ilya Gililov Ilya Gililov(1924-2007) - literary critic, writer, scientific secretary of the Shakespeare Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences for almost three decades., author of The Game of William Shakespeare, or the Secret of the Great Phoenix (1997), claimed that Shakespeare was composed by a group of authors led by the young wife of the Earl of Rutland, Elizabeth - the daughter of the famous courtier, writer and poet Philip Sidney. Gililov based this on a completely arbitrary transfer of the Chester collection, which includes Shakespeare's poem "The Phoenix and the Dove" (1601, according to Gililov - 1613). He argued that Rutland, Elizabeth and others composed plays and sonnets for purely conspiratorial purposes - to perpetuate their close circle, in which some rituals conducted only by them coped. The scientific world, with the exception of a few sharp replies, ignored Gililov's book.

Version #4

William Stanley (1561-1642), 6th Earl of Derby, playwright, statesman

William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby. Portrait by William Derby. England, 19th centuryThe Right Honor. Earl of Derby/Bridgeman Images/Fotodom

Abel Lefranc. Around 1910s Library of Congress

The French literary historian and specialist in François Rabelais Abel Lefranc (1863-1952) first thought about William Stanley's chances of becoming a candidate for "real Shakespeare" after the publication of a book by the respected English scholar James Greenstreet entitled "The Formerly Unknown Noble Author of Elizabethan Comedies" (1891). Greenstreet managed to find a letter dated 1599 signed by George Fenner, a secret agent of the Catholic Church, which stated that the Earl of Derby could not be useful to Catholics, as he was "busy writing plays for ordinary actors."

In 1918, Lefranc published Under the Mask of William Shakespeare, in which he recognizes Derby as a much more suitable candidate for Shakespeare than previous applicants, if only because the Earl's name was William and his initials match Shakespeare's. In addition, in private letters, he signed in the same way as lyrical hero Sonnet 135 - Will, not Wm and not Willm, as Stratford Shakespeare himself did on surviving documents. Further, Derby was an experienced traveler, in particular intimately familiar with the Navarrese court.

It is not surprising, Lefranc believed, that Henry V contains several extensive inserts on French, which Derby was good at. In addition, the expert on Rabelais believed, famous image Falstaff was created under the influence of Gargantua and Pantagruel, which had not yet been translated into English in Shakespeare's time.

For all the ingenuity of these arguments, the Derby version had little chance of standing on a par with the Oxfordian: Lefranc's book was written in French, and by the time it came out, Thomas Loney (who called himself a descendant of the Earl of Derby, by the way), had already put forward his arguments in in favor of Edward de Vere.

Version #5

Christopher Marlo (1564-1593) playwright and poet

Supposed portrait of Christopher Marlo. Unknown artist. 1585 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

The son of a shoemaker, born in the same year as Shakespeare and able to graduate from Cambridge only thanks to the generosity of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Christopher Marlowe turned out to be almost the only candidate for Shakespeare of ignoble origin. However, Calvin Hoffman (1906-1986), an American advertising agent, poet and playwright who published the book The Murder of the Man Who Was Shakespeare in 1955, attributed Marlo a love affair with the noble Thomas Walsingham, patron of poets and younger brother of the powerful sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State and Chief of the Secret Service to Queen Elizabeth. According to Hoffman, it was Thomas Walsingham who, having learned that Marlo was facing arrest on charges of atheism and blasphemy, decided to save his lover by simulating his murder. Accordingly, in a tavern quarrel in Deptford in 1593, it was not Marlow who was killed, but some tramp, whose corpse was passed off as the disfigured body of the playwright (he was killed by a dagger in the eye). Marlo himself, under a false name, hastily sailed to France, hiding in Italy, but soon returned to England, settling in seclusion near Skedbury, the estate of Thomas Walsingham in Kent. There he composed "Shakespearean" works, handing over the manuscripts to his patron. He sent them first to the copyist, and then, for staging on the stage, to the London actor William Shakespeare - a man completely devoid of imagination, but faithful and silent.

Cover of the first edition of The Murder of the Man Who Was Shakespeare.
1955 Grosset & Dunlap

Hoffman began his research by counting phraseological parallelisms in the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare, and later got acquainted with the works of the American professor Thomas Mendenhall, who compiled "vocabulary profiles" of various writers (with the help of the whole team women who laboriously counted millions of words and letters in words). Based on these findings, Hoffman declared the complete similarity of the styles of Marlowe and Shakespeare. However, most of all these "parallelisms" in fact were not such, the other part belonged to common words and constructions, and a certain layer of obvious parallels testified to the good known fact: the young Shakespeare was inspired by the tragedies of Marlowe, having learned a lot from the author of "Tamerlane the Great", "The Jew of Malta" and "Doctor Faust" Today one can only guess what the creative rivalry between the two Elizabethan geniuses would have resulted in if not for the death of Marlowe in 1593 - by the way, recorded in detail by the royal coroner, whose conclusions were witnessed by a jury of 16 people..

Attempts to discover a whole group of authors behind Shakespeare's writings have been made more than once, although the supporters of this version cannot agree on any specific composition. Here are some examples.

In 1923, H. T. S. Forrest, an official of the British administration in India, published a book called The Five Authors of Shakespeare's Sonnets, in which he spoke of a poetry tournament hosted by the Earl of Southampton. According to Forrest, five major Elizabethan poets competed for the award announced by the earl in the art of composing sonnets at once: Samuel Daniel, Barnaby Barnes, William Warner, John Donne and William Shakespeare. Accordingly, all five are the authors of the sonnets, which, Forrest believed, have since been erroneously attributed to Shakespeare alone. It is characteristic that one of this company, the author of the epic poem "Albion's England" Warner, did not write sonnets at all, while the other, John Donne, resorted to the sonnet form only for composing religious verses.

In 1931, Gilbert Slater, an economist and historian, published The Seven Shakespeares, in which he combined the names of almost all the contenders most popular among anti-Shakespeareans. According to him, Shakespeare was composed by: Francis Bacon, Earls of Oxford, Rutland and Derby, Christopher Marlowe Slater believed that Marlowe was "reborn" to life in 1594 under the name of Shakespeare., as well as Sir Walter Raleigh and Mary, Countess of Pembroke (man of letters and sister of Sir Philip Sidney). Women were not often offered and offered for the role of Shakespeare, but for the Countess of Pembroke, Slater made an exception: in his opinion, "Julius Caesar" and "Antony and Cleopatra" are marked with a clear presence of female intuition, and also - in particular - "As You Like It", which Mary not only wrote, but also brought out herself in the form of Rosalind.

The great playwright of England of the Renaissance, the national poet, who received world recognition, William Shakespeare was born in the town of Stratford, which is located north of London. Only information about his baptism on April 26, 1564 has been preserved in history.

The boy's parents were John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. They were among the wealthy citizens of the city. The boy's father, in addition to agriculture, was engaged in the manufacture of gloves, as well as petty usury. He was elected several times to the city's board of directors, he was a constable and even a mayor.

According to some reports, John belonged to the Catholic faith, for which at the end of his life he was persecuted, forcing him to sell all his lands. During his life, he paid large sums to the Protestant church for not attending services. William's mother was a native Saxon, she belonged to an ancient respected family. Mary gave birth to 8 children, the third of which was William.

In Stratford, little William Shakespeare received a good education for those times. As a child, he entered a grammar school, where they studied Latin and ancient Greek. For a deeper and more complete assimilation of ancient languages, students were supposed to participate in school productions of plays in Latin.

According to some reports, in addition to this educational institution, William Shakespeare also attended the royal school in his youth, which was also located in his native town. There he had the opportunity to get acquainted with ancient Roman poetic works.

Personal life

At the age of 18, young William began an affair with the 26-year-old daughter of a neighbor, Anne Hathaway, whom they soon married. The reason for the hasty marriage was the girl's pregnancy. In those days, premarital affairs in England were considered the norm, marriage often took place after the conception of the first child. The only condition for such relationships was a mandatory wedding before the birth of a child. When the couple's daughter Susan was born in 1583, William was happy. All his life he was especially attached to her, even after the birth of twins, a son, Hemnet, and a second daughter, Judith, two years later.

There were no more children in the poet's family, most likely due to the second difficult birth of his wife Ann. In 1596, the Shakespeare couple will experience a personal tragedy: during an epidemic of dysentery, their only heir will die. After William moved to London, his family remained in his hometown. Infrequently, but regularly, William visited his relatives.

About him personal life in London, historians build many mysteries. It is possible that the playwright lived alone. Some researchers of the poet's biography attribute love affairs to him, including with the male sex. But this information remains unproven.

Unknown seven years

William Shakespeare is one of the few authors about whom information was collected literally bit by bit. Very little direct evidence of his life remains. Basically, all information about William Shakespeare was extracted from secondary sources, such as statements of contemporaries or administrative records. Therefore, about seven years after the birth of his twins and before the first mention of his work in London, researchers are building riddles.

Shakespeare is credited with serving a noble landowner as a teacher, and working in London theaters as a prompter, stagehand and even a horse breeder. But there is no truly reliable information about this period of the poet's life.

London period

In 1592, a statement by the English poet Robert Greene appeared in the press about the work of the young William. This is the first mention of Shakespeare as an author. The aristocrat in his pamphlet tried to ridicule the young playwright, as he saw in him a strong competitor, but who did not differ in noble birth and good education. At the same time, mention is made of the first productions of Shakespeare's play Henry VI at London's Rose Theatre.

This work was written in the spirit of the popular English chronicle genre. This type of performance was common during the Renaissance in England, it was epic in nature, the scenes and paintings were often not connected to each other. The chronicles were intended to sing of the statehood of England as opposed to feudal fragmentation and internecine wars.

It is known that since 1594 William has been a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Servants, a large acting community and soon becomes its co-founder. Performances brought big success, and the troupe became so rich in a short time that they allowed themselves to build the famous building of the Globe Theater over the next five years. And by 1608, the theater-goers also acquired an enclosed space, which they called Blackfriars.

In many ways, success was facilitated by the goodwill of the rulers of England: Elizabeth I and her heir James I, who theater group acquired permission to change status. Since 1603, the troupe has received the name "Servants of the King". Shakespeare not only wrote plays, he also took an active part in the staging of his works. In particular, information has been preserved that William played the main roles in all his plays.

State

According to some testimonies, in particular, about the real estate purchases made by William Shakespeare, he earned enough and was successful in financial affairs. The playwright is credited with practicing usury.

Thanks to his savings, in 1597 William was able to afford to buy a spacious mansion in Stratford. In addition, after his death, Shakespeare was immediately buried in the altar of the Church of the Holy Trinity of his native city. Such an honor was given to him not for special merits, but for the fact that during his lifetime he paid the due amount for the place of his burial.

Periods of creativity

The great playwright created an immortal treasury that has nourished world culture for more than five centuries in a row. The plots of his plays have become an inspiration not only for artists drama theaters, but also for many composers, as well as for filmmakers. Throughout his creative life, Shakespeare repeatedly changed the nature of writing his works.

His first plays in their structure often copied genres and plots popular at that time, such as chronicles, comedies of the Renaissance (“The Taming of the Shrew”), “tragedies of horror” (“Titus Andronicus”). These were cumbersome works with a large number of characters and an unnatural style for perception. On the classical forms for that time, the young Shakespeare comprehended the basics of writing a drama.

Second half of the 90s XVI century was marked by the appearance of dramaturgically perfected in form and content compositions for the theater. The poet is looking for a new form, without departing from the given framework of the Renaissance comedy and tragedy. It fills the old obsolete forms with new content. So the brilliant tragedy "Romeo and Juliet", the comedies "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Merchant of Venice" are born. The freshness of the verse in the new works of Shakespeare is combined with an unusual and memorable plot, which makes these plays popular with the public of all segments of the population.

At the same time, Shakespeare creates a cycle of sonnets, the famous genre of love poetry at that time. For almost two centuries, these poetic masterpieces of the master were forgotten, but with the advent of romanticism, they regained their fame. In the 19th century, there was a fashion for quoting immortal lines written at the end of the Renaissance by an English genius.

Thematically, the poems are love letters to an unknown young man, and only the last 26 sonnets out of 154 are an appeal to a black-haired lady. Many researchers see autobiographical features in this cycle, suggesting an unconventional orientation of the playwright. But some historians are inclined to think that these sonnets use William Shakespeare's appeal to his patron and friend the Earl of Southampton in the then adopted secular society form.

At the turn of the century, works appeared in the work of William Shakespeare that made his name immortal in the history of world literature and theater. A practically successful, creatively and financially successful playwright creates a number of tragedies that brought him fame not only in England. These are the plays Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello. These works raised the popularity of the Globe Theater to the heights of one of the most visited places of entertainment in London. At the same time, the fortune of its owners, including Shakespeare, has increased many times over a short period.

At the end of his career, Shakespeare composes a series immortal works who surprised contemporaries with their new form. They combine tragedy with comedy, and fairy tales are woven into the canvas of describing situations from Everyday life. First of all, these are fantasy plays "The Tempest", "The Winter's Tale", as well as dramas on ancient subjects - "Coriolanus", "Anthony and Cleopatra". In these works, Shakespeare acted as a great connoisseur of the laws of drama, who easily and gracefully brings together the features of tragedy and fairy tale, complex high syllable and understandable speech patterns.

Individually, many of dramatic works Shakespeare were published during his lifetime. But the complete collection of works, which included almost all the canonical plays of the playwright, appeared only in 1623. The collection was printed on the initiative of Shakespeare's friends William John Heming and Henry Condela, who worked in the troupe of the Globe. The book, consisting of 36 plays by the English author, was published under the title "First Folio".

During the 17th century, three more folios were published, which came out with some changes and with the addition of previously unpublished plays.

Death

Since the last years of his life, William Shakespeare suffered from a serious illness, as evidenced by his altered handwriting, he created some of the last plays in collaboration with another playwright of the troupe, whose name was John Fletcher.

After 1613, Shakespeare finally leaves London, but does not give up doing some business. He still has time to participate in the trial of his friend as a defense witness, and also acquires another mansion in the former Blackfriar parish. For some time, William Shakespeare lives on the estate of his son-in-law John Hall.

Three years before his death, William Shakespeare writes his will, in which he leaves almost all his property to his eldest daughter. The English writer died at the end of April 1616 in his own house. His wife Ann outlived her husband by 7 years.

In family eldest daughter Susan by this time had already been born the granddaughter of the genius Elizabeth, but she died childless. In family youngest daughter Shakespeare's Judith, who married just two months after her father's death to Thomas Quiney, had three boys, but they all died in their youth. Therefore, Shakespeare did not have direct descendants.

• No one knows the exact date of the birth of William Shakespeare. In the arsenal of historians there is only a church record of the baby's baptism, which took place on April 26, 1564. Researchers suggest that the ceremony was performed on the third day after birth. Accordingly, in an incredible way, the date of birth and death of the playwright fell on the same date - April 23.
• The great English poet had phenomenal memory, his knowledge could be compared with encyclopedic. In addition to knowing two ancient languages, he also knew the modern dialects of France, Italy and Spain, although he himself never left the borders of the English state. Shakespeare understood both the subtle historical issues and the current political environment. His knowledge affected music and painting, he thoroughly studied a whole layer of botany.

• Many historians tend to think of gay poet, referring to the fact that the playwright lived separately from his family, as well as his long friendship with the Earl of Southampton, who had a habit of dressing in women's clothes and putting a lot of paint on his face. But there is no direct evidence for this.
• The Protestant faith of Shakespeare and his family remains in doubt. There is circumstantial evidence that his father belonged to the Catholic denomination. But during the reign of Elizabeth I, it was forbidden to be an open Catholic, so many adherents of this branch simply paid off the reformers and attended Catholic worship in secret.

• The only autograph of the writer that has survived to this day is his will. In it, he lists all his property to the smallest detail, but never mentions his literary works.
• Throughout his life, presumably, Shakespeare changed about 10 professions. He was a theater stable keeper, actor, theater co-founder and stage director. In parallel with acting, William conducted usurious business, and at the end of his life he was engaged in brewing and renting out housing.
• Modern historians support the version of unknown writer who made Shakespeare his figurehead. Even the Encyclopædia Britannica does not refuse the version that Count Edward de Vere could create plays under the pseudonym Shakespeare. According to a number of guesses, it could be Lord Francis Bacon, Queen Elizabeth I, and even whole group persons of aristocratic origin.

• The poetic style of Shakespeare had a great influence on the development of the English language, forming the basis of modern grammar, and also enriching the literary speech of the English with new phrases, which were used as quotations from the works of the classic. Shakespeare left over 1,700 new words as a legacy to his compatriots.

Famous Shakespeare quotes

Famous phrases of the classic often contain philosophical thoughts which are expressed very precisely and concisely. A large number of subtle observations are devoted to the love sphere. Here is some of them:

• “You are trying so hard to judge the sins of others - start with your own and you won’t get to strangers”;
• "Oaths given in a storm are forgotten in calm weather";
• “With one look you can kill love, with one look you can resurrect it”;
• “What does the name mean? A rose smells like a rose, even if you call it a rose, even if you don’t”;
• "Love flees from those who chase after it, and those who run away, throw themselves on the neck."

An actor of the royal troupe, this brilliant Briton is a playwright and poet, from whose pen came out works inhabited by bright heroes, in whose characters a mighty will was combined with strong passion. William Shakespeare endowed them with the ability to resist fate, to be sacrificial - and at the same time ready to die for an idea or passion.

Shakespeare was born under the sign of Taurus on April 23, 1564. His hometown of Stratford-on-Avon is located in Warwickshire, not far from Birmingham. His biography began in a family of hereditary farmers, where prosperity soon after his birth ended in ruin.

At the age of 16, the future genius of English literature left the excellent Stratford school and supported his father John Shakespeare as an apprentice, and two years later William married, taking Anne Hathaway as his wife (her full namesake is currently successfully conquering the bastions of Hollywood). Having become the father of the son of Gamneta and the daughters of Susan and Judith, he soon leaves his native place and disappears from the field of view of biographers for several years.

On the road to glory

At the very beginning of the 90s, Shakespeare ended up in London and created his first play - a chronicle about Henry VI. This noticeably distinguishes him from the general mass of writers, however, at the same time, it makes him an object of attack.

One of the leading playwrights, Robert Green, for example, “glues” to him the label of a stage shaker (from the phrase “shake speare” in William’s last name), as well as a crow that has a desire to “dress up in our feathers” (taken from the chronicle of Henry VI).

However, the future luminary of English drama does not lose heart, creating a chronicle about Richard III and a whole scattering of masterpieces, including The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew, as well as poetic works - Venus and Adonis and Lucretia. 1594 was the year when Shakespeare's biography takes a steep rise on the road to fame.

He enters the Hunsdon troupe and overshadows all her former idols. From this time begins the first period of his work. William creates one of his greatest tragedies - "Romeo and Juliet", "The Merchant of Venice" - a comedy, which later received the name "serious", and also opens his famous "" in 1599, proverb, placed above the entrance to it, were the words that the whole world is a theater.

At the same time, he acted as a co-owner, an actor in the troupe and the main playwright of his offspring. And writing for the opening of the theater "Julius Caesar" and "As You Like It" opened a direct path to "Hamlet", born a year later.

Since that time, "great tragedies" have taken their countdown, including "Othello", "King Lear" and "Macbeth". More serious, and often just gloomy, are the comedies he creates.

Rise, decline and life after the death of the "Shakespearean question"

These heydays (1601-1605) end with death. Shakespeare enters a period lasting from 1600 to 1613, which is considered to be the last. At this time, he writes "Antony and Cleopatra", "Coriolanus", "Timon of Athens", as well as "The Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest".

Researchers, for whom the biography of the playwright is a document without riddles, believe that the reason for moving in 1613 from London to Stratford and drawing up a will in 1616 was illness.

This, at first glance, quite a common thing, was, however, regarded by many as an attempt to mislead the public about copyright. Those who still doubt the authenticity of the authorship of numerous masterpieces that laid the foundation for English drama can be understood.

The fact is that William in his will lists his houses and property, writes that after his death, friends will receive rings belonging to him in memory of him. However, this document does not contain any indication of any part of his books and manuscripts. Contemporaries and researchers of the genius Briton, when reading the will, could get the impression that we are talking about the death of an ordinary man in the street.

So who is he, William Shakespeare, a native of Stratford-on-Avon? Many people absolutely do not take into account the fact that the playwright's biography contains several "dark years" between his departure from the city of his childhood and his appearance in London. And without this circumstance, it is impossible to objectively answer the question of how William from the distant British periphery could write all these brilliant works.

Nevertheless, over the past hundred years, the topic of authorship has been hotly discussed by serious researchers of his work. The main arguments in favor of denying merit are that history does not know the facts of Shakespeare's receiving any serious education. There is no historically impeccable record of him traveling.

Thus, a completely different person or group of persons could become the true author of immortal creations. The anti-Strafordians or defenders of the theory of denial made very witty arguments and offered more than twenty literary and public figures who could well work under the pseudonym William Shakespeare.

The most popular candidate "to fill the vacancy" of the great Briton was the personality of the philosopher Francis Bacon. Others quite real person, whose education and position in society corresponded in their own way creativity William, was called his predecessor in terms of modernizing the dramatic art of England at that time, Christopher Marlo.

However, another part of the opponents of Shakespeare's authorship actively sought out candidates where titled personalities were noted. In particular, it could, in their opinion, be the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Oxford and especially the Earl of Rutland, the possible authorship of this undoubtedly creatively gifted person was supported by the Russians.

The arguments in favor of such a decision were his education, position, both in society and at court, as well as the ability to travel. With such an arsenal of tools, William could have the horizons and rich life experience necessary for writing plays.

However, why, in this case, these people could not sign their real names during their lifetime? The fact is that the then ideas about the profession of a playwright were not the most positive. On the contrary, the slightest involvement in it could become an indelible shame for high-ranking people.

The main argument for

And soon after the death of the great playwright, new editions of his works appeared, which saw the light, thanks to the efforts of Shakespeare's friends. In addition, in verse, William Shakespeare received laudatory epithets from four contemporary poets, including praised his merits by a friend of the writer, Ben Jonson.

And none of the above facts has become a subject for refutation or exposure. As an author, Shakespeare never became a person whose identity would be disputed until the very end of the 18th century. What is this secret, I would like to ask the supporters of the denial of its authorship, which has been kept behind the notorious seven seals for so long?

Moreover, Shakespeare was later confirmed by his contemporaries in his true capacity. In particular, after his death, a legend invented by William Davenant said that this man, who was well-informed in gossip and intrigue, was supposedly the son of the "dark lady" from Shakespeare's sonnets.

According to the surrounding greatest playwright the riddle is actually the secret of genius: Sir William's famous poetic vision allowed him to see everything, but at the same time to reveal himself to nothing!

Yes, this is what he really is - a man who completed the creation of English culture and the English language. With his work, he seemed to draw a tragic line under the entire Renaissance of medieval Europe. And this is his greatest merit before Britain and the British, who revere him almost like a deity!

In Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The parish register records his baptism on April 26. His father, John Shakespeare, was a prominent person in Stratford (according to some sources, he traded in leather goods) and held various positions in the city government, up to the bailiff (estate manager). The mother was the daughter of a small landed nobleman from Warwickshire, descended from an ancient family of Arden Catholics.

By the end of the 1570s, the family went bankrupt and around 1580 William had to leave school and start working.

In November 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. In May 1583 their first child was born - daughter Susan, in February 1585 - twins son Hamnet and daughter Judith.

It became popular to say that Shakespeare joined one of the theater companies in London, which performed on tour in Stratford.

Until 1593, Shakespeare did not publish anything, in 1593 he published the poem "Venus and Adonis", dedicating it to the Duke of Southampton, the patron of literature. The poem was a great success and was published eight times during the author's lifetime. In the same year, Shakespeare joined Richard Burbage's Lord Chamberlain's troupe, where he worked as an actor, director and playwright.

Theatrical activities under the auspices of Southampton quickly brought him wealth. His father, John Shakespeare, after several years of financial difficulties, received the right to a coat of arms in the Heraldic Chamber. The granted title gave Shakespeare the right to sign "William Shakespeare, gentleman."

In 1592-1594 the London theaters were closed due to the plague. During an involuntary pause, Shakespeare created several plays - the chronicle "Richard III", "The Comedy of Errors" and "The Taming of the Shrew". In 1594, after the opening of theaters, Shakespeare joined the Lord Chamberlain's new troupe.

In 1595-1596 he wrote the tragedy "Romeo and Juliet", romantic comedies"A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Merchant of Venice".

The playwright was doing well - in 1597 he acquired big house with a garden in Stratford, where he moved his wife and daughters (the son died in 1596) and settled himself after he left the London scene.

In the years 1598-1600, the peaks of Shakespeare's work as a comedian were created - "Much Ado About Nothing", "As You Like It" and "Twelfth Night". At the same time, he wrote the tragedy "Julius Caesar" (1599).

Became one of the owners, playwright and actor of the opened theater "Globe". In 1603, King James took Shakespeare's troupe under direct patronage - it became known as the Servants of His Majesty the King, and the actors were considered as courtiers as valets. In 1608, Shakespeare became a shareholder in the lucrative London Blackfriars Theatre.

With the advent of the famous "Hamlet" (1600-1601), the period of great tragedies of the playwright began. In 1601-1606 Othello (1604), King Lear (1605), Macbeth (1606) were created. The tragic worldview of Shakespeare left its mark on those works of this period that do not belong directly to the genre of tragedy - the so-called "bitter comedies" "Troilus and Cressida" (1601-1602), "All is well that ends well" (1603- 1603), Measure for Measure (1604).

In 1606-1613, Shakespeare created tragedies based on ancient subjects "Antony and Cleopatra", "Coriolanus", "Timon of Athens", as well as romantic tragicomedies, including "The Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest", and the late chronicle "Henry VIII ".

What is known about Shakespeare's acting is that he played the roles of the Ghost in Hamlet and Adam in the play As You Like It. He played a role in the play by Ben Jonson "Everyone in his own way." Shakespeare's last attested performance on stage was in his own play, The Sejanus. In 1613 he left the stage and settled in his house in Stratford.

The playwright was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, where he had previously been baptized.

For more than two centuries after Shakespeare's death, no one doubted Shakespeare's authorship. Since 1850, doubts have arisen about the authorship of the playwright, which are still shared by many today. The source for Shakespeare's biographers was his will, which speaks of houses and property, but not a word about books and manuscripts. There are many supporters of the negative statement - Shakespeare from Stratford could not be the author of such works, because he was uneducated, did not travel, did not study at the university. Stratfordians (supporters of the traditional version) and anti-Stratfordians have made many arguments. More than two dozen candidates for "Shakespeare" were proposed, among the most popular applicants were the philosopher Francis Bacon and Shakespeare's predecessor in the transformation of dramatic art Christopher Marlowe, also called the Earls of Derby, Oxford, Rutland.

William Shakespeare is considered the greatest English playwright one of the best playwrights in the world. His plays have been translated into all major languages ​​and to this day form the basis of the world theatrical repertoire. Most of them have been filmed many times.

In Russia, Shakespeare's work has been known since the 18th century; it has become a fact of Russian culture (comprehension, translations) from the first half of XIX century.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources