The concise message about William Shakespeare is understandable. Biography

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Biography

Shakespeare's life is little known, he shares the fate of the vast majority of other English playwrights of the era, whose personal life was little interested in contemporaries. There are different views on the personality and biography of Shakespeare. The main scientific current, supported by most researchers, is the biographical tradition that has developed over several centuries, according to which William Shakespeare was born in the city of Stratford-upon-Avon in a wealthy but not noble family and was a member of the acting troupe of Richard Burbage. This direction of Shakespeare's study is called "Stratfordianism".

There is also an opposite point of view, the so-called "anti-Stratfordianism" or "non-Stratfordianism", whose supporters deny the authorship of Shakespeare (Shakspere) from Stratford and believe that "William Shakespeare" is a pseudonym under which another person or group of persons was hiding. Doubts about the correctness of the traditional point of view have been known since the 18th century. At the same time, there is no unity among non-Stratfordians as to who exactly was the real author of Shakespeare's works. The number of probable candidates proposed by various researchers currently amounts to several dozen.

Traditional views ("Stratfordianism")

William Shakespeare was born in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon (Warwickshire) in 1564, according to legend, on April 23rd. His father, John Shakespeare, was a wealthy artisan (glove maker) and usurer, often elected to various public positions, once elected mayor of the city. He did not attend church services, for which he paid large fines (it is possible that he was a secret Catholic). His mother, nee Arden, belonged to one of the oldest English families. It is believed that Shakespeare studied at the Stratford "grammar school" (English "grammar school"), where he received a serious education: the Stratford teacher of Latin and literature wrote poetry in Latin. Some scholars claim that Shakespeare attended the King Edward VI School in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he studied the works of such poets as Ovid and Plautus, but the school journals have not survived, and now nothing can be said for sure.

In 1582 he married Anna Hathaway, the daughter of a local landowner, who was 8 years older than him; in 1583 they had a daughter, Susanna, in 1585, twins: a son, Hemnet, who died in childhood (1596), and a daughter, Judith. Around 1587 Shakespeare left Stratford and moved to London.

In 1592, Shakespeare became a member of Burbage's London acting troupe, and from 1599 he was also one of the company's shareholders. Under James I, Shakespeare's troupe received the status of a royal troupe (1603), and Shakespeare himself, along with other old members of the troupe, received the title of valet. For many years Shakespeare was engaged in usury, and in 1605 he became a church tithe farmer.

In 1612, Shakespeare retired for unknown reasons and returned to his native Stratford, where his wife and daughters lived. Shakespeare's will dated March 15, 1616 was signed in illegible handwriting, on the basis of which some researchers believe that he was seriously ill at that time. Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616.

Three days later, Shakespeare's body was buried under the altar of the Stratford church. An epitaph is written on his tombstone:
Good frend for Iesvs sake forbear,
To digg the dvst encloased heare.
Blest be ye man yt spares the stones,
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones.

Friend, for the Lord's sake, don't swarm
Remains taken by this land;
Untouched blessed for centuries
And cursed - who touched my ashes.
(Translated by A. Velichansky)

Criticism of traditional views ("Non-Stratfordianism")

The "non-Stratfordian" line of research casts doubt on the possibility of Shakespeare writing a "Shakespearean canon" from Stratford. Supporters of this theory believe that the facts known about him are in conflict with the content and style of the plays and poems under study. Numerous theories have been put forward by non-Stratfordians as to their true authorship. In particular, as candidates for the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, non-Stratfordians name Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlo, Roger Manners (Earl of Rutland), Queen Elizabeth and others (respectively, "Baconian", "Rutlandian", etc. hypotheses).

Non-Stratfordians are based, among other things, on the following circumstances:

Documents show that Shakespeare's parents, wife and children from Stratford were illiterate.

Not a single book belonging to Shakespeare from Stratford has survived. Reliable his autographs - only signatures of a surname and a name; his handwriting is rather sloppy, which leads non-Stratfordians to believe that he was not very used to writing or even illiterate. A number of Stratfordians believe that one of Shakespeare's creative autographs is still known: perhaps a part of the censored play "Sir Thomas More" was written with the same hand as the signatures (this is not just a copy, but a draft with the author's corrections).

The lexical dictionary of the works of William Shakespeare is 15 thousand different words, while the contemporary English translation of the King James Bible is only 5 thousand. Many experts doubt that the poorly educated son of a craftsman (Shakespeare never studied at universities and never traveled abroad; his education in a “grammar school” is also in question) could have such a rich vocabulary. On the other hand, contemporary writers of Shakespeare - Marlowe, Johnson, John Donne and others - were of no less, if not more modest origins (Shakespeare's father from Stratford was rich and was part of the city government), but their learning surpassed Shakespeare's.

During Shaksper's lifetime and for several years after his death, no one ever called him a poet and playwright.

Performances based on Shakespeare's plays took place at Oxford and Cambridge, while according to the rules, only the works of their graduates could be staged within the walls of these ancient universities.

Contrary to the customs of Shakespeare's time, no one in the whole of England responded with a single word to Shakspere's death.

Shakspere's Testament is a very voluminous and detailed document, but it does not mention any books, papers, poems, plays. When Shakespeare died, 18 plays remained unpublished; however, nothing is said about them in the will either.

The author of one of the fundamental works in this direction is the Russian Shakespeare scholar I. M. Gililov (1924-2007), whose book-research “The Game about William Shakespeare, or the Secret of the Great Phoenix”, published in 1997, aroused interest and resonance among specialists. As those who wrote Shakespearean masterpieces under a literary mask, Gililov names Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland, who was in a Platonic marriage, and Elizabeth Sidney-Ratland, daughter of the English poet Philip Sidney, who were in a platonic marriage.

In 2003, Shakespeare was published. The Secret History" by the authors who acted under the pseudonym "O. Cosminius" and "O. Melechtius". The authors conduct a detailed investigation, speaking of the Great Mystification, which (supposedly) resulted not only in the personality of Shakespeare, but also in many other famous figures of the era.

Based on the text of the first editions of Hamlet (1603, 1604, 1623), Igor Frolov’s book Shakespeare’s Equation, or the Hamlet We Haven’t Read, puts forward a hypothesis about what historical figures are hidden behind the masks of Shakespeare’s heroes .

In 2008, Sergey Stepanov's book "William Shakespeare" was published, where, based on his own translation, the author proves that W. Shakespeare's sonnets are the correspondence of Rutland, Pembroke and Elizabeth Sidney-Ratland. In the same year, Marina Litvinova's book "The Justification of Shakespeare" was published, where the author defends the version that the works of W. Shakespeare were created by two authors - Francis Bacon and Manners, the fifth Earl of Rutland.

Creation

Shakespeare's literary heritage is divided into two unequal parts: poetic (poems and sonnets) and dramatic. V. G. Belinsky wrote that “it would be too bold and strange to give Shakespeare a decisive advantage over all the poets of mankind, as a poet proper, but as a playwright he is now left without a rival whose name could be put next to his name.”

Dramaturgy

The question of periodization

Researchers of Shakespeare's work (Danish literary critic G. Brandes, publisher of Russian complete collection Shakespeare's works by S. A. Vengerov) at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, based on the chronology of the works, presented his spiritual evolution from a “cheerful mood”, faith in the triumph of justice, humanistic ideals at the beginning of the path to disappointment and the destruction of all illusions at the end.

However, in last years there was an opinion that the conclusion about the identity of the author on his works is a mistake.

In 1930, the Shakespeare scholar E. K. Chambers proposed a chronology of Shakespeare's work according to genre features, later it was corrected by J. McManway. There were four periods: the first (1590-1594) - early: chronicles, Renaissance comedies, "tragedy of horror" ("Titus Andronicus"), two poems; the second (1594-1600) - Renaissance comedies, the first mature tragedy ("Romeo and Juliet"), chronicles with elements of tragedy, chronicles with elements of comedy, ancient tragedy ("Julius Caesar"), sonnets; the third (1601-1608) - great tragedies, ancient tragedies, "dark comedies"; fourth (1609-1613) - fairy tale dramas with a tragic beginning and happy ending. Some of the Shakespeare scholars, including A. A. Smirnov, combined the first and second periods into one early period.

First period (1590-1594)

The first period approximately falls on the years 1590-1594.

According to literary methods, it can be called a period of imitation: Shakespeare is still completely at the mercy of his predecessors. By mood, supporters of a biographical approach to the study of Shakespeare's work defined this period as a period of idealistic faith in the best aspects of life: "The young Shakespeare enthusiastically punishes vice in his historical tragedies and enthusiastically sings of high and poetic feelings - friendship, self-sacrifice and especially love" ( Vengerov).

In the tragedy "Titus Andronicus" Shakespeare fully paid tribute to the tradition of contemporary playwrights to keep the attention of the audience by forcing passions, cruelty and naturalism. The comic horrors of "Titus Andronicus" are a direct and immediate reflection of the horrors of the plays by Kid and Marlowe.

Probably Shakespeare's first plays were the three parts of Henry VI. Holinshed's Chronicles served as the source for this and subsequent historical chronicles. The theme that unites all Shakespearean chronicles is the change in a series of weak and incapable rulers who led the country to civil strife and civil war and the restoration of order with the accession of the Tudor dynasty. Like Marlowe in Edward II, Shakespeare does not simply describe historical events, but explores the motives behind the actions of the characters.

"Comedy of Errors" - early, "student" comedy, sitcom. According to the custom of that time, a reworking of the play by a modern English author, the source for which was the Italian version of Plautus' comedy Menechma, which describes the adventures of twin brothers. The action takes place in Ephesus, which bears little resemblance to an ancient Greek city: the author transfers the signs of contemporary England to an antique setting. Shakespeare adds a double servant storyline, thereby confusing the action even more. It is characteristic that already in this work there is a mixture of comic and tragic, which is usual for Shakespeare: the old man Egeon, who unwittingly violated the Ephesian law, is threatened with execution and only through a chain incredible coincidences, ridiculous mistakes, in the finale salvation comes to him. Interrupting a tragic plot with a comic scene, even in the darkest works of Shakespeare, is a reminder, rooted in medieval tradition, of the proximity of death and, at the same time, the incessant flow of life and its constant renewal.

The play “The Taming of the Shrew”, created in the traditions of farcical comedy, is based on rough comic techniques. This is a variation on the plot, popular in London theaters in the 1590s, about the pacification of a wife by her husband. In an exciting duel, two outstanding personalities converge and the woman is defeated. The author proclaims the inviolability of the established order, where the head of the family is a man.

In subsequent plays, Shakespeare moves away from external comedic devices. Love's Labour's Lost is a comedy inspired by Lily's plays, which he wrote for performances in the theater of masks at the royal court and in aristocratic houses. With a fairly simple plot, the play is a continuous tournament, a competition of characters in witty dialogues, complex verbal play, composing poems and sonnets (by this time Shakespeare already mastered a difficult poetic form). The language of "Love's Labour's Lost" - pretentious, flowery, the so-called euphuism - is the language of the English aristocratic elite of that time, which became popular after the publication of Lily's novel "Euphues or the Anatomy of Wit".

Second period (1594-1601)

Around 1595, Shakespeare creates one of his most popular tragedies - "Romeo and Juliet" - the story of the development of the human personality in the struggle with external circumstances for the right to free love. The plot, known from Italian short stories (Masuccio, Bandello), was put by Arthur Brooke in the basis of the poem of the same name (1562). Probably, Brooke's work served as a source for Shakespeare. He enhanced the lyricism and drama of the action, rethought and enriched the characters' characters, created poetic monologues that reveal the inner experiences of the main characters, thus transforming an ordinary work into a Renaissance love poem. This is a tragedy of a special type, lyrical, optimistic, despite the death of the main characters in the finale. Their names have become a common noun for the highest poetry of passion.

Around 1596, another of Shakespeare's most famous works, The Merchant of Venice, dates back. Shylock, just like another famous Jew of the Elizabethan drama - Barabbas ("Jew of Malta" by Marlo), yearns for revenge. But, unlike Barabbas, Shylock, who remains a negative character, is much more difficult. On the one hand, this is a greedy, cunning, even cruel usurer, on the other hand, an offended person whose offense causes sympathy. Shylock's famous monologue on the identity of a Jew and any other person, "Doesn't a Jew have eyes? .." (act III, scene 1) is recognized by some critics as the best speech in defense of the equality of Jews in all literature. The play contrasts the power of money over a person and the cult of friendship - an integral part of life's harmony.

Despite the "problem" of the play and the drama of the storyline of Antonio and Shylock, in its atmosphere, "The Merchant of Venice" is close to fairy tale plays like "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1596). The magical play was probably written for the celebrations on the occasion of the wedding of one of the Elizabethan nobles. For the first time in literature, Shakespeare endows fantastic creatures with human weaknesses and contradictions, creating characters. As always, he layers dramatic scenes with comic ones: Athenian artisans, very similar to English workers, diligently and clumsily prepare for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta the play “Pyramus and Thisbe”, which is a story of unhappy love, told in a parodic form. The researchers were surprised by the choice of plot for the "wedding" play: its external plot - misunderstandings between two pairs of lovers, resolved only thanks to the goodwill of Oberon and magic, a mockery of female whims (Titania's sudden passion for the Foundation) - expresses an extremely skeptical view of love. However, this "one of the most poetic works" has a serious connotation - the exaltation of a sincere feeling, which has a moral basis.

S. A. Vengerov saw the transition to the second period “in the absence of that poetry of youth, which is so characteristic of the first period. The heroes are still young, but they have already lived a decent life and the main thing for them in life is pleasure. The portion is piquant, lively, but already the gentle charms of the girls of the Two Veronians, and even more so Juliet, are not in it at all.

At the same time, Shakespeare creates an immortal and most interesting type, which until now had no analogues in world literature - Sir John Falstaff. The success of both parts of "Henry IV" is not least the merit of this most striking character in the chronicle, who immediately became popular. The character is undoubtedly negative, but with a complex character. A materialist, an egoist, a man without ideals: honor is nothing for him, an observant and insightful skeptic. He denies honors, power and wealth: he needs money only as a means of obtaining food, wine and women. But the essence of the comic, the grain of the image of Falstaff is not only his wit, but also a cheerful laugh at himself and the world around him. His strength is in the knowledge of human nature, everything that binds a person is disgusting to him, he is the personification of the freedom of the spirit and unscrupulousness. A man of the passing era, he is not needed where the state is powerful. Realizing that such a character is out of place in a drama about an ideal ruler, Shakespeare removes him in Henry V: the audience is simply informed of the death of Falstaff. According to tradition, it is believed that at the request of Queen Elizabeth, who wanted to see Falstaff on stage again, Shakespeare resurrected him in The Merry Wives of Windsor. But this is only a pale copy of the former Falstaff. He lost his knowledge of the world around him, there is no more healthy irony, laughter at himself. Only a self-satisfied scoundrel remained.

Much more successful is the attempt to return to the Falstaff type again in the final play of the second period, Twelfth Night. Here, in the person of Sir Toby and his entourage, we have, as it were, a second edition of Sir John, although without his sparkling wit, but with the same infectious good-natured chivalry. The rude mockery of women in The Taming of the Shrew also fits perfectly into the framework of the “Falstaffian” period, for the most part.

Third period (1600-1609)

The third period of artistic activity, approximately covering the years 1600-1609, supporters of the subjectivist biographical approach to Shakespeare's work call the period of "deep spiritual darkness", considering the appearance of the melancholic character Jacques in the comedy "As You Like It" as a sign of a changed worldview and calling him almost the predecessor of Hamlet. However, some researchers believe that Shakespeare in the image of Jacques only ridiculed melancholy, and the period of alleged life disappointments (according to the supporters of the biographical method) is not actually confirmed by the facts of Shakespeare's biography. The time when the playwright created the greatest tragedies coincides with the flowering of his creative powers, the solution of material difficulties and the achievement of a high position in society.

Around 1600, Shakespeare creates Hamlet, according to many critics, his most profound work. Shakespeare kept the plot of the well-known tragedy of revenge, but shifted all his attention to spiritual discord, the inner drama of the protagonist. A new type of hero has been introduced into the traditional revenge drama. Shakespeare was ahead of his time - Hamlet is not familiar tragic hero carrying out vengeance for the sake of Divine justice. Coming to the conclusion that it is impossible to restore harmony with one blow, he experiences the tragedy of alienation from the world and dooms himself to loneliness. According to the definition of L. E. Pinsky, Hamlet is the first "reflective" hero of world literature.

The heroes of Shakespeare's "great tragedies" are outstanding people in whom good and evil are mixed. Faced with the disharmony of the world around them, they make a difficult choice - how to exist in it, they create their own destiny and bear full responsibility for it.

At the same time, Shakespeare creates the drama Measure for Measure. Despite the fact that in the First Folio of 1623 it is classified as a comedy, there is almost no comic in this serious work about an unjust judge. Its name refers to the teaching of Christ about mercy, in the course of action one of the heroes is in mortal danger, and the ending can be considered conditionally happy. This problematic work does not fit into a certain genre, but exists on the verge of genres: going back to morality, it is directed towards tragicomedy.

Real misanthropy comes through only in "Timon of Athens" - the story of a generous and kind man, ruined by those whom he helped and became a misanthrope. The play leaves a painful impression, despite the fact that the ungrateful Athens, after the death of Timon, suffers punishment. According to the researchers, Shakespeare suffered a failure: the play was written in uneven language and, along with its advantages, has even greater disadvantages. It is not excluded that more than one Shakespeare worked on it. The character of Timon himself failed, sometimes he gives the impression of a caricature, other characters are simply pale. Antony and Cleopatra can be considered a transition to a new strip of Shakespearean creativity. In Antony and Cleopatra, the talented, but devoid of any moral principles, predator from Julius Caesar is surrounded by a truly poetic halo, and the half-traitor Cleopatra largely atones for her sins with a heroic death.

Fourth period (1609-1612)

The fourth period, with the exception of the play "Henry VIII" (most researchers agree that it was almost entirely written by John Fletcher), embraces only three or four years and four plays - the so-called "romantic dramas" or tragicomedies. In the plays of the last period, hard trials emphasize the joy of deliverance from disasters. Slander is caught, innocence is justified, loyalty is rewarded, the madness of jealousy has no tragic consequences, lovers are united in a happy marriage. The optimism of these works is perceived by critics as a sign of reconciliation of their author. "Pericles", a play significantly different from everything previously written, marks the emergence of new works. Naivety bordering on primitiveness, the absence of complex characters and problems, a return to the construction of action characteristic of early English Renaissance drama - all indicate that Shakespeare was in search of a new form. winter fairy tale"- a bizarre fantasy, a story "about the incredible, where everything is possible." A story about a jealous man who succumbed to evil, who suffers mental anguish and deserves forgiveness with his repentance. In the finale, good conquers evil, according to some researchers, affirming faith in humanistic ideals, according others - the triumph of Christian morality. "The Tempest" is the most successful of the last plays and, in a sense, the finale of Shakespeare's work. Instead of struggle, the spirit of humanity, forgiveness reigns here. Poetic girls created now - Marina from Pericles, Loss from the Winter's Tale ", Miranda from The Tempest are images of daughters beautiful in their virtue. Researchers tend to see in the final scene of The Tempest, where Prospero renounces his magic and retires, Shakespeare's farewell to the world of the theater.

Poems and poems

In general, Shakespeare's poems, of course, cannot be compared with his brilliant dramas. But taken by themselves, they bear the imprint of an outstanding talent, and if they hadn’t drowned in the glory of Shakespeare the playwright, some of them could well have delivered and indeed delivered great fame to the author: we know that the scientist Mires saw in Shakespeare the poet the second Ovid. But, in addition, there are a number of reviews of other contemporaries who speak of the "new Catullus" with the greatest enthusiasm.

poems

The poem "Venus and Adonis" was published in 1593, when Shakespeare was already known as a playwright, but the author himself calls it his literary first-born, and therefore it is very possible that it was either conceived, or even partly written back in Stretford. There is also the suggestion that Shakespeare considered the poem (as opposed to plays for the public theater) a genre worthy of the attention of a noble patron and a work of high art. Echoes of the homeland clearly make themselves felt. The local Middle English flavor is vividly felt in the landscape, there is nothing southern in it, as required by the plot, before the spiritual gaze of the poet, there were undoubtedly native pictures of the peaceful fields of Warwickshire with their soft tones and calm beauty. One also senses in the poem an excellent connoisseur of horses and an excellent hunter. The plot is largely taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses; in addition, much is borrowed from Lodge's Scillaes Metamorphosis. The poem is developed with all the arrogance of the Renaissance, but still without any frivolity. And this is what mainly affected the talent of the young author, in addition to the fact that the poem was written in sonorous and picturesque verse. If the efforts of Venus to kindle desires in Adonis strike the later reader with their frankness, then at the same time they do not give the impression of something cynical and not worthy of artistic description. Before us is passion, real, frenzied, darkening the mind and therefore poetically legitimate, like everything that is bright and strong.

Much more mannered is the second poem, Lucretia, published the following year (1594) and dedicated, like the first, to the Earl of Southampton. In the new poem, not only is there nothing unbridled, but, on the contrary, everything, as in the ancient legend, revolves on the most refined understanding of a completely conventional concept of female honor. Insulted by Sextus Tarquinius, Lucretia does not consider it possible to live after the abduction of her marital honor and expresses her feelings in the longest monologues. Brilliant, but rather strained metaphors, allegories and antitheses deprive these monologues of real feelings and make the whole poem rhetorical. However, this kind of loftiness during the writing of poetry was very popular with the public, and Lucretia was as successful as Venus and Adonis. Booksellers, who alone at that time profited from literary success, since literary property for authors did not then exist, printed edition after edition. During Shakespeare's lifetime, "Venus and Adonis" went through 7 editions, "Lucretia" - 5.

Shakespeare is credited with two more small weak mannered works, one of which, "The Complaint of a Lover", may have been written by Shakespeare in his youth. The Passionate Pilgrim was published in 1599, when Shakespeare was already known. Its authorship is questioned: it is possible that thirteen of the nineteen poems were not written by Shakespeare. In 1601 Chester's collection Jove's Martyr of Rosalind published Shakespeare's feeble allegorical poem "The Phoenix and the Dove".

Sonnets

A sonnet is a poem of 14 lines. In the English tradition, which is based primarily on Shakespeare's sonnets, the following rhyme is adopted: abab cdcd efef gg, that is, three quatrains for cross rhymes, and one couplet (a type introduced by the poet Earl of Surrey, who was executed under Henry VIII).

In total, Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, and most of them were created in the years 1592-1599. They were first printed without the knowledge of the author in 1609. Two of them were published as early as 1599 in the collection The Passionate Pilgrim. These are sonnets 138 and 144.

The entire cycle of sonnets is divided into separate thematic groups:
Sonnets dedicated to a friend: 1-126
Chanting a friend: 1-26
Friendship Trials: 27-99
Bitterness of separation: 27-32
First disappointment in a friend: 33-42
Anguish and fear: 43-55
Growing alienation and melancholy: 56-75
Rivalry and jealousy towards other poets: 76-96
"Winter" of separation: 97-99
A celebration of renewed friendship: 100-126
Sonnets dedicated to the swarthy beloved: 127-152
Conclusion - the joy and beauty of love: 153-154

First publications

It is estimated that half (18) of Shakespeare's plays were published in one way or another during the playwright's lifetime. The folio of 1623 (the so-called "First Folio"), published by Shakespeare's troupe actors John Heming and Henry Condel, is considered to be the most important publication of Shakespeare's legacy. This edition includes 36 Shakespeare's plays - all except "Pericles" and "Two Noble Kinsmen". It is this edition that underlies all research in the field of Shakespeare.

Biography

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) - English playwright, poet; was an actor of the royal troupe. Poems "Venus and Adonis" (1593) - on mythological plot, "Lucretia" (1594) - from Roman history. "Shakespeare's canon" (plays undoubtedly belonging to him) includes 37 dramas.

Shakespeare's early plays are imbued with a life-affirming beginning: the comedies The Taming of the Shrew (1593), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1596), Much Ado About Nothing (1598). Tragedy about love and fidelity at the cost of life "Romeo and Juliet" (1595). In historical chronicles (Richard III, 1593; Henry IV, 1597-98), tragedies (Hamlet, 1601; Othello, 1604; King Lear, 1605; Macbeth, 1606), in "Roman tragedies" (political - "Julius Caesar", 1599; "Antony and Cleopatra", 1607; "Coriolanus", 1607), lyric-philosophical "Sonnets" (1592-1600, published in 1609) moral, social and political conflicts epochs he comprehended as eternal, ineradicable, as the laws of the world order, in which the highest human values ​​- goodness, dignity, honor, justice - are inevitably perverted and suffer a tragic defeat.

William Shakespeare created bright characters endowed with a mighty will and strong passions, capable of both heroic confrontation with fate and circumstances, self-sacrifice, experiencing responsibility for the discord of the world (“the broken connection of times”), and ready to transgress the moral “law” and die for the sake of an all-consuming their ideas or passions (ambition, power, love). The search for an optimistic solution to conflicts led to the creation of romantic dramas The Winter's Tale (1611) and The Tempest (1612). Shakespeare's tragedies are the greatest examples of the tragic in world literature.

W. Shakespeare was born April 23, 1564, Stratford-on-Avon. He died April 23, 1616, ibid. Zodiac sign - Taurus.

Stratford. Departure for London

William was born into the family of a merchant and a respectable citizen of John Shakespeare. Shakespeare's ancestors had been farming in the vicinity of Stratford for several centuries. 1568-69 - the years of the greatest prosperity of the family, followed by a slow ruin. Around 1580, William had to leave school, which was excellent in Stratford, and start working. It is believed that, after leaving school, William Shakespeare helped his father as an apprentice for some time.

In November 1582 William married Anne Hathaway. Perhaps the marriage was forced: in May next year their first child, daughter Susan, was born. In February 1585, twins were born - the son of Hamnet and the daughter of Judith. In the second half of the 1580s. Shakespeare leaves Stratford. The so-called "lost" or "dark years" are coming, about which nothing is known.

At the turn of the 1590s. William Shakespeare comes to London. During these years, his first play was created - the chronicle "Henry VI". Having become quite a prominent figure, Shakespeare immediately received a jealous attack from one of the playwrights of the “university minds” group that reigned on the stage at that time, Robert Green, who called him a “stage shaker” (a pun on Shakespeare’s surname: Shake-speare, that is, “spear shaker”). ”) and a crow that “dresses itself in our feathers” (an altered quote from Henry VI). This was the first surviving review.

The emergence of a new playwright

In 1592-94 the London theaters were closed due to the plague. During an involuntary pause, W. Shakespeare creates several plays: the chronicle "Richard III", "The Comedy of Errors" and "The Taming of the Shrew", his first tragedy (still sustained in the common style of "bloody tragedy") "Titus Andronicus", and also releases in light for the first time under his name of the poem "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucretia". In 1594, after the opening of theaters, Shakespeare joined the new composition of the troupe of the Lord Chamberlain, named after the position of her patron Hunsdon. The “university minds” left the stage (died or stopped writing for the theatre). The age of Shakespeare begins. Here is what one of his contemporaries F. Merez wrote in 1597: “Just as the Romans considered Plautus and Seneca the best in terms of comedy and tragedy, so William Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both types of plays intended for the stage ...

Creative takeoff. "Globe"

In the 1590s (the period that is considered to be the first in Shakespeare's work) Shakespeare creates all of his main chronicles, as well as most of the comedies. In 1595-96, the tragedy "Romeo and Juliet" was written, followed by "The Merchant of Venice" - the first comedy, which would later be called "serious".

In the autumn of 1599, the Globe Theater opens. Above the entrance - winged words: "The whole world is a theater" ("Totus mundis agit histrionem"). Shakespeare is one of its co-owners, an actor in the troupe and principal playwright. In the year of the opening of the Globe, he writes the Roman tragedy Julius Caesar and the comedy As You Like It, which, by developing melancholy characters, open the way to the Hamlet created a year later. With his appearance, the period of "great tragedies" (1601-1606) begins. These include Othello (1604), King Lear (1605), Macbeth (1606). The tone of the comedies is now more serious, and sometimes becomes completely gloomy in such works as Troilus and Cressida (1601-1602), All's Well That Ends Well (1603-1603), Measure for Measure (1604).

Unexpected departure to Stratford

March 28, 1603 Queen Elizabeth dies. The English throne passes to James I, the son of the executed Mary Stuart, who inherited the crown of Scotland. The new king signs a patent, according to which he takes under his highest patronage the troupe of actors of the Lord Chamberlain. From now on, they will be called "servants of his majesty the king." After 1606 begins last period Shakespeare's work, which ended in 1613 with his departure to his native Stratford. At this time, tragedies based on ancient subjects were created (Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, 1607-08). Later "romantic" plays followed, including The Winter's Tale and The Tempest (1610-12).

The reason for the unexpected termination of such a successful career as a playwright and the departure from the capital was, apparently, an illness. In March 1616, William Shakespeare draws up and signs a will that will later cause so much confusion about his identity, authorship and will become an occasion for what will be called the "Shakespearean question." It is generally accepted that Shakespeare died on the same day that he was born - April 23. Two days later there followed a burial in the altar of the Church of the Holy Trinity on the outskirts of Stratford, in whose register of birth this entry was made.

During the lifetime of William Shakespeare, his works were not collected. Separately printed poems, a collection of sonnets. The plays originally appeared in the so-called "pirated editions" with corrupted text, followed, as a rule, in the form of a refutation by an edition prepared by the author. According to the format, these publications are called quarto (quarto). After Shakespeare's death, the efforts of his actor friends Heming and Condell prepared the first complete edition of his works, including 36 plays, the so-called The First Folio. Eighteen of them had not previously been published at all.

Chronicles

Shakespeare began with chronicles - plays about events national history, the law of which is designated by him by the word Time. The main Shakespearean chronicles form two cycles of four plays (tetralogies). The first is "Henry VI" (three parts) and "Richard III". The second is "Richard II" (1595), "Henry IV" (two parts; 1596-1598) and "Henry V" (1599).

In the first tetralogy, out of the chaos of turmoil, a strong historical figure appears, seeking to subjugate Fate and Time - Richard III. Force is able to secure the throne, but is not able to keep it if the sovereign violates the laws of morality and turns history into a political spectacle.

The theme of the second tetralogy is the formation of a nation-state. The chronicle "Henry IV" tells about the seizure of power by Henry IV, the ancestor of the Lancaster dynasty, and about the youth of the future ideal king Henry V. Under the leadership of Sir John Falstaff, Prince Henry passes the school of life in taverns and on the high road. The Prince draws strength from the earth, from everything that is bodily and material and that embodies Falstaff, the jester of Time. To the laughter of Falstaff, the Middle Ages descend from the stage with its knightly freemen, embodied in the image of Harry Hotspur, the rival of the prince. Shakespeare considers it necessary to lead his ideal monarch through the background of popular laughter. However, in the finale, when the prince is crowned, Falstaff is expelled, because the state order does not exist according to the laws of nature. Their contradiction is the source of Shakespeare's tragedy.

Comedy

Shakespeare's comedy was not satirical and this sharply differed from all subsequent development of the genre. Her laughter comes from the feeling of the fullness of life, its strength, beauty, variability. Shakespeare's comedy has its own great theme - Nature. She has her favorite hero - a jester, full of knowledge of life not as it seems, but as it is.

All of Shakespeare's early comedies can be identified by the title of the first of them, The Comedy of Errors. However, the source and tradition of the comic in them varies. If the basis of the "Comedy of Errors" were samples of ancient, Roman comedy, then the comedy "The Taming of the Shrew" (1594) indicates the connection between Shakespeare's laughter and the folk carnival.

The shrew, it turns out, is not so difficult to tame if the whole point is not in her character - strong, devoid of pettiness, and therefore, in fact, much less obstinate than many other heroines, but in the fact that the tamer has not yet been found. Suitors of Bianchi? It is impossible to imagine them next to Katarina. Petruchio appeared, and everything fell into place. Everything in this comedy is given with a carnival excess: both the initial obstinacy of the wife, and the tyranny of her husband as a corrective for her, and, finally, morality under the curtain. Without an adjustment for carnivalism, one cannot perceive either the re-education of the heroine, or the edifying speech delivered by her as a lesson to other shrews.

The comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595-96) tells about the whimsical feeling of love, about its right, confirmed by a miracle of nature, which here materializes in the magical world of the forest, ruled by Oberon, Titania, elves. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is one of Shakespeare's brightest, most musical and graceful comedies. It seems that it arose just as easily, in a single inspired breath. Perhaps it was. But then Shakespeare's other ability is striking - to bring together the most diverse plot material and, on its basis, create an entirely new work.

Correctible mistakes, misunderstandings, and misrecognition lie at the heart of the conflict of early comedies. But gradually Shakespeare's attitude to light unpretentious twists and turns is changing. In late comedies that appeared at the turn of the new century and at the beginning of the new century (they are called serious, dramatic, problematic), accumulating changes become apparent. Habitually playing on the name of one of them (“All is well that ends well”, 1602-1603), they say that now in Shakespeare not all is well that ends well. The happy ending, implied by the genre of comedy, ceases to convince that harmony has been restored, because now violations of the harmonic world order are not accidental. The conflict entered into characters, circumstances. Discord has become an integral feature of the world in which the heroes live.

Sonnets

The most likely time for the creation of sonnets is 1593-1600. In 1609, the only lifetime edition with a dedication was published, which to this day continues to be one of Shakespeare's mysteries. It was addressed to the mysterious W. H.: is this the “beautiful young man”, the friend to whom most of the sonnets are addressed (1-126 out of a total of 154)?

The most definite thematic cycle in Shakespeare's collection is represented by the first seventeen sonnets. They have one theme: a wish for the beautiful young man to continue oneself in posterity, not to forget how fleeting earthly life and earthly beauty. This is a kind of introduction to the book, which could be written by order and, perhaps, even before the poet's personal relationship with a friend arose, full of admiration and sincere love. The poet forever maintains a distance, either necessary for his feeling close to worship, or dictated by social difference, if we accept the version that the addressee of the sonnets was a young aristocrat (Earl of Southampton or Earl of Pembroke?). Love gives inspiration to poetry, but from it it receives eternity. The power of poetry, capable of conquering Time, is spoken of in sonnets 15, 18, 19, 55, 60, 63, 81, 101.

The poet's love is accompanied by a painful feeling from the fact that a friend is fickle in his affection. This also applies to his poetic tastes. A rival poet appears (sonnets 76, 78, 79, 80, 82-86).

The second part of the collection (127-154) is dedicated to the Swarthy Lady. The changed type of beauty sounds like a challenge to the tradition that goes back to the heavenly love of F. Petrarch, it is opposed to his angelic blond donna. Shakespeare emphasizes that, refuting the clichés of Petrarchism, his "darling steps on the earth" (translated by S. Marshak; Sonnet 130).

Although love is glorified by Shakespeare as unshakable in its value (sonnet 116), having descended from heaven to earth, it is open to all the imperfections of the world, its suffering, which it is ready to take upon itself (sonnet 66).

tragedy

The first truly Shakespearean tragedy - "Romeo and Juliet" - arose in the midst of comedies and sonnets. It is sonnet in its linguistic nature, because its main character Romeo not only speaks, but also loves in this conditional tradition. In love with Juliet, he must discover himself and face the world. At the same time, the sonnet word, which came to tragedy, opened up new lyrical possibilities for this genre in depicting a person, which made it possible to replace pre-Shakespearean rhetoric with depth of thought and feeling. Without this, five years later, Hamlet would not have been possible.

Hamlet

The unprecedented novelty and dignity of Hamlet were reflected in the fact that, reflecting on the necessity of an act, he weighs its consequences and, as it were, anticipates what can be called moral responsibility. Motivated to revenge not only by the call of his father, but by all the usual logic of the "tragedy of revenge", Hamlet does not believe that his only blow is capable of restoring something in world harmony, that he alone is given to set the "dislocated eyelid". Hamlet's alienation, which grows in the course of action, is catastrophic.

Ophelia

The hero's discord with historical Time will continue to grow tragically in Shakespeare's plays. True, in the “great tragedies” written after Hamlet, the last attempt of an epicly whole and beautiful hero to break into the world is made: by love - Othello, by force - Macbeth, by goodness - Lear. It fails: Time is impenetrable to them. Moreover, it is not given to them internally to resist the destructive effects of Time. The greater the man, the more terrible is his fall. “Evil is good, good is evil…” (translated by Russian writer Boris Leonidovich Pasternak) - the spell of the witches in Macbeth sounds like an ominous refrain.

Shakespeare's last plays, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, are written as afterwords to tragedies. They were originally classified as comedies. Now they are called "romantic dramas" (romances). Repeating the situations of tragic plots, they end happily - as if returning a utopian hope for the best.

The main idea of ​​the Renaissance was the idea of ​​a worthy person. Time has subjected this idea to a tragic test, the evidence of which was the work of Shakespeare. By the end, the metaphor of the storm grows in it, because, as in a storm, everything suddenly spun, got confused, lost. Greatness and meanness began to easily change places. Man, fleeing from himself, like King Lear, rushed back to nature, tore off his clothes in order to discover in the naked nakedness of the soul the previously unknown complexity of inner being, his simultaneously Divine and cruel essence. “Time came out of the grooves”, the former unity fell apart, flashed by a multitude of faces, perhaps striking not with heroic grandeur, but with unprecedented diversity, which was first and forever captured in Shakespeare’s dramaturgy.

"Shakespeare Question"

A source of grief and doubt for Shakespeare's biographers was his will. It talks about houses and property, about rings for the memory of friends, but not a word about books, about manuscripts. As if not a great writer died, but an ordinary man in the street. The will was the first reason to ask the so-called "Shakespearean question": was William Shakespeare of Stratford the author of all those works that we know under his name?

For a hundred years now, there have been many supporters of a negative answer: I was not, could not be, because I was uneducated, did not travel, did not study at the university. Stratfordians (supporters of the traditional version) and anti-Stratfordians were given a lot of witty arguments. More than two dozen Shakespeare candidates were proposed. Among the most popular contenders are the philosopher Francis Bacon and Shakespeare's forerunner in transforming dramatic art, the greatest of the "university minds" Christopher Marlo. However, they mainly searched among titled persons: the earls of Derby, Oxford, Rutland were called - the rights of the latter were also supported in Russia. It was believed that only their inherent education, position in society and at court, the ability to travel, opened up a broad overview of life, which is in the plays. They could have reasons to hide their real name, which, according to the ideas of the time, would supposedly be a stain of shame on the craft of a playwright.

However, the main argument testifies in favor of Shakespeare: during his lifetime, his name appeared on dozens of editions of individual plays, poems, and on a collection of sonnets. Shakespeare was spoken of as the author of these works (why, with every mention of the name, should one expect clarification that it was a Stratford native and not someone else?). Immediately after Shakespeare's death, two of his actor friends published his works, and four poets, including the greatest of Shakespeare's contemporaries, his friend Ben Jonson, glorified him. And not once did any denials or revelations follow. None of his contemporaries and descendants, until the end of the 18th century. no doubt about Shakespeare's authorship. Is it possible to assume that the secret, into which dozens of people were supposed to be privy, was kept so zealously?

And how to explain that the next generation playwright William Davenant, who was well versed in theater affairs and gossip, came up with a legend according to which it turned out that his mother was the “Swarty Lady” of the sonnets, and he himself was Shakespeare’s own son from Stratford-on-Avon? What was there to be proud of?

The Shakespearean mystery certainly exists, but it is not a biographical mystery, but the mystery of a genius accompanied by what the Romantic poet John Keats would call Shakespeare's "negative ability," his poetic vision of seeing everything and not revealing his presence in anything. A unique Shakespearean mystery that belongs to personality and time, when the personal for the first time cuts through the impersonality of being, and the great playwright, who created a portrait gallery for centuries to come new era hides only one face - its own.

William Shakespeare completes the process of creating a national culture and in English; his work sums up the tragic end of the entire era of the European Renaissance. In the perception of subsequent generations, an image of Shakespeare is formed as a comprehensive genius who, at the beginning of the New Age, created a gallery of his human types and life situations. Shakespeare's plays to this day form the basis of the world theater repertoire. Most of them have been repeatedly filmed for film and television.

(I. O. Shaitanov)

Biography

William Shakespeare is the greatest of the English language writers. In the treasury of his plays and poems, each new generation finds its own hidden meaning.

Shakespeare worked for twenty years, from 1592 to 1612, during the reign of two monarchs, Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and James I (1603-25). During this period, Shakespeare wrote two large poems, a cycle of interconnected sonnets - rhyming poems consisting of 14 lines of ten syllables each - and 37 plays. William Shakespeare was baptized in the parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, on April 26, 1564, i.e., most likely, he was born a day or two earlier. His father, John Shakespeare, a prosperous glover, was elected bailiff (mayor) of the city shortly after William's birth. However, starting in 1576, he began to experience financial difficulties, and, probably, it was for this reason that the able William was not sent to study at the university. However, an analysis of Shakespeare's work shows that he received a good school education - apparently, in his native Stratford.

In 1582, Shakespeare, only 18 years old, marries Anna Gathaway, 8 years older than himself and already expecting a baby. In total, two daughters were born in the Shakespeare family, Susanna and Judith, and a son, Hamlet, who died when he was 11 years old.

Actor and playwright

The next time Shakespeare's name is mentioned is in 1592: he is successful, works in London, where his plays about Henry VI are staged, and his colleague Robert Greene enviously calls him a screamer and upstart in a sharp pamphlet. The reason for the ridicule is that Shakespeare did not receive a university education, and quite a few snobs followed Green over the centuries to believe that Shakespeare was just a gifted "child of nature" - or that he did not exist at all, and that someone outstanding was hiding under this name. , for example, the famous philosopher and writer Francis Bacon, who allegedly dabbled in writing plays in his spare time!

In 1593-94. because of the epidemic, London theaters closed, and Shakespeare turned to lyric poetry, in which he was encouraged by his friend the Earl of Southampton. When the epidemic ended, Shakespeare joined another theatrical troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Servants, for several years. He played with them and wrote plays for them, mainly historical chronicles and comedies, although the outstanding tragedy "Romeo and Juliet" also falls on this period.

Many of his early works, and especially "Love for Love" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream", breathe youth and freshness, and their style and rhymes are surprisingly melodious. Other plays of those years - for example, "The Merchant of Venice" - seem to anticipate gloomy comedies more late period creativity. (After all, a comedy doesn't have to be funny - it just has to have a happy ending, not a sad one.)

Around the same time, Shakespeare was finishing work on two plays about the era of Henry IV, in which his funniest character, the liar and fat Falstaff, appears. The misadventures of this colorful figure so amused Elizabeth that she demanded another play about Falstaff, and Shakespeare very soon presented his "Merry Wives of Windsor" to the queen.

Financial success of William Shakespeare

In 1599, the troupe moved to the other side of the Thames, to the Globe Theatre, a tenth share of which belonged to Shakespeare. Being a shareholder in a successful enterprise turned out to be more profitable than writing plays, for each of which the author was entitled to only 6 pounds. In 1603, Elizabeth I died, and King James I ascended the throne. The troupe he loved was immediately renamed the "King's Servants" and was often called with performances to the court. By this time, Shakespeare had become rich and began to buy hometown real estate. At the same time, he wrote his greatest, soul-shattering tragedies - Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.

In his tragedies, Shakespeare achieved an unprecedented brightness of poetic language and unsurpassed freedom of handling blank verse. These qualities are even more clearly manifested in his latest creations, from which tragic moods have almost disappeared: both The Winter's Tale and The Tempest end on a note of reconciliation, logically completing the work of the great playwright.

Shakespeare retired around 1610. In peace and prosperity, he spent the remaining years of his life in his native Stratford, although at first, for two or three years, he constantly kept in touch with his theater in the capital. On April 23, 1616 (perhaps on his 52nd birthday), he died without showing much interest in the fate of his plays. Fortunately, they were all collected and published by two Shakespearean theater actors, Geminge and Condell. The collection opened with a poem by Ben Jonson, who said that Shakespeare is "not a poet of the ages, but for all ages!"

Biography

English playwright, poet

Born in Stratford-upon-Avon (Warwickshire) April 23, 1564. in the family of a craftsman and merchant John Shakespeare, who was a prominent person in Stratford and held various positions in the city government, up to the mayor of Stratford (in 1568).

From the age of 7 to 14, Shakespeare studies at the Stratford Grammar School, one of the best provincial schools in England, where the sons of the townspeople received free education, mainly studying Latin language and literature. The deteriorating financial situation of his father forces Shakespeare to leave school early and help his family.

May 1583 - the birth of the first child, daughter Susan. February

1585 - the birth of the twins Judith and Gamnet (died at an early age).

Around 1585 Shakespeare leaves Stratford. The so-called "lost" or "dark" years are coming, about which Shakespeare's biographers know nothing.

Some time later, Shakespeare is in London.

At the end of the 1580s. Shakespeare's work in the theater begins (actor and playwright). During these years, his first play was created - the chronicle "Henry VI" (Henry VI, 1590).

1592-94 London theaters closed due to plague. During an involuntary pause (this period of the 1590s is considered to be the first in Shakespeare's work), Shakespeare creates several plays, chronicles, comedies: the chronicle "Richard III" (Richard III, 1593), the Comedy of Errors (The Comedy of Errors, 1592) and "The Taming of the Shrew" (The Taming of the Shrew, 1593), etc.

1592 - Shakespeare publishes for the first time under his own name the poem "Venus and Adonis" (Venus and Adonis), written in a fashionable erotic genre, preceded by a humble dedication to the Duke of Southampton - a brilliant young nobleman and patron of literature. The poem was an extraordinary success and was published eight times during the life of the author.

1593 - A longer and more serious poem "Lucrece" (Lucrece) is published, also with a dedication to Southampton. The play The Two Gentlemen of Verona was also written - the playwright's first experience in a romantic comedy, an appeal to the theme of first love. This play is one of the shortest and most unsuccessful in his work. The first attested production was in 1762, already in D. Garrick's revision.

1594 - Shakespeare's first tragedy is published, still sustained in the prevailing style of "bloody tragedy" - "Titus Andronicus" (Titus Andronicus), without the name of the author on the title page). In 1594 after the opening of theaters, Shakespeare joins as a shareholder and actor in the new composition of the troupe "Servants of the Lord Chamberlain", with which he remains associated until his retirement. Starting from this year, accurate evidence of Shakespeare's theatrical activity appears. The play Love's Labour's Lost was written, later revised for a court performance (1597). There are reasons to think that it was written for a private presentation and contains many satirical attacks that are not clear to us against real people.

December 28, 1594 - The Comedy of Errors is presented at the Gray's Inn. This is the only time that Shakespeare refers to the traditional Elizabethan practice of recasting ancient comedies for the modern stage.

1595 - the play "The Taming of the Shrew" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" - Shakespeare's first brilliant triumph in the field of romantic comedy.

March 1595 - Shakespeare, W. Kemp and R. Burbage receive a reward for two plays presented at the court by the troupe of the Lord Chamberlain on Christmas holidays. Theater activity under the auspices of Southampton quickly brings wealth to Shakespeare - this is evident from the fact that in 1596. John Shakespeare, after several years of financial difficulties, obtains at the Heraldic Chamber the right to the coat of arms, the famous Shakespearean shield, paid for by William no doubt; the granted title gives Shakespeare the right to sign "William Shakespeare, gentleman." Another proof of his success: in 1597 he acquires a large house with a garden in New Place in Stratford. Shakespeare rebuilds the house, transports his wife and daughters there, and later, when he leaves the London stage, he himself settles in it.

1595-96 - the tragedy "Romeo and Juliet" was written, followed by "The Merchant of Venice" - the first comedy, which would later be called "serious".

1596 - The Merchant of Venice is written, a play more serious than Shakespeare's other early comedies. Perhaps the reason for the composition was the desire of Shakespeare's troupe to stage a play that could compete with the popular play by Marlowe "The Jew of Malta", resumed in 1595-1596. troupe "Servants of the Admiral". plot outline Shakespeare takes from an Italian short story where a treacherous Jew threatens the life of a Christian merchant. The thoughtful course of the intrigue and its unexpected denouement anticipate the tragicomedies of Fr. Beaumont and D. Fletcher.

1597-1598 - at least five Shakespeare plays published.

1598 - Berbage brothers disassemble old theater- a building on the northern outskirts of London, where Shakespeare's troupe played, and from its logs they build the Globe Theater on the south bank of the Thames, in Southwark. Shakespeare becomes one of the shareholders of the new theatre; he receives the same right in 1608, when the troupe got the even more profitable Blackfriars Theater, in the city.

Autumn 1599 - The Globe Theater opens. Above the entrance there are winged words: “The whole world is a theater” (Totus mundis agit histrionem). Shakespeare is one of its co-owners, an actor in the troupe and the main playwright. In the year of the opening of the Globe, he writes the Roman tragedy Julius Caesar and the comedy As You Like It (1599-1600), which, through the development of melancholy characters, open the way to the Hamlet created a year later. . With his appearance, the period of great tragedies begins (1601-1606).

1599-1600 - The Merry Wives of Windsor comedy.

1601-1602 - the comedy "The Twelfth Night" (The Twelfth Night), after which Shakespeare moves on to more serious topics. The turn to tragedy is caused by several reasons. The theatrical fashion, which had changed by the end of the century, again brings tragedy to the stage, displacing patriotic chronicles. Writing for the mass audience, Shakespeare had to respond to the new demands of the public. A more significant reason may be his desire to try his hand at tragedy, reputedly the highest poetic genre. He hadn't touched that area since his first audition for Romeo and Juliet. Having completed the cycle of chronicles, he again turns to tragedy. The transition to the tragic genre is marked by the play "Hamlet" (Hamlet, 1600-1601). It is based on an old lost play (c. 1588–1589; author probably T.Kid), but an idea of ​​it can be obtained from a later and distorted German translation of Punished Fratricide, or Prince Hamlet of Denmark. Apparently, Shakespeare's troupe received the rights to stage Kid's play, since it is known that as early as 1594. and 1596. she represented a certain "Hamlet". If it had been a tragedy by Shakespeare, it would have managed to get into the list of Meres, compiled in 1598. It is more likely that, having finished Julius Caesar, Shakespeare takes the manuscript of the old play from the archives of the troupe and remakes it. The play is a huge success, which is clear from the allusions, quotations and even parodies that immediately appeared. She created a fashion for the "tragedy of vengeance", which lasted until the closing of theaters in 1642.

March 28, 1603 - Queen Elizabeth dies. The English throne passes to James I, the son of the executed Mary Stuart, who inherited the crown of Scotland. The new king signs a patent, according to which he takes under his highest patronage the troupe of actors of the Lord Chamberlain. From now on, they will be called "servants of his majesty the king." His Majesty's servants are especially loved at court, the troupe performs there often and for a good reward, of which Shakespeare certainly receives a share. Increasing income allows him to widely invest in farming and real estate in both London and Stratford.

November 1, 1604 - the tragedy "Othello" (Othello) is played at the court, more than any other play by Shakespeare, close to the Elizabethan genre of "family tragedy". Having been successful at the first productions, after the Restoration it is resumed; then for the first time the role of Desdemona is played by a woman - Margaret Hughes.

1605 - the tragedy "King Lear" (King Lear), the action of which is relegated to the distant barbarian past; the plot is more symbolic than realistic, and lacks that unity and integrity that distinguishes the tragedy of the Moor of Venice. Productions of "King Lear" never met with much success; moreover, in the era of the Restoration, Shakespeare's play was forced out of the stage by the sentimental alteration of N. Tate (1652-1715). It is staged less frequently than other Shakespearean tragedies even today.

1606 - "Macbeth" (Macbeth) - one of the shortest plays by Shakespeare, apparently composed in great haste to fulfill the wish of King James to present a new play during the festivities in honor of Christian of Denmark, who came to England, the king's relative. The theme may have been suggested by a 1605 meeting at Oxford. performance for the king. Three students dressed as sibyls recited a Latin poem containing an ancient prophecy that Banquo, a distant ancestor of Jacob, would give birth to a dynasty of kings who would rule over three kingdoms - England, Scotland and Ireland. The king was very pleased, and Shakespeare apparently concluded that a play about Banquo and his murderer Macbeth would be well received at court. For material for the play, he turns to the then exemplary "Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland" (1577) by R. Holinshed (d. c. 1580).

1606 - the last period of Shakespeare's work begins, ending in 1613 with his departure to his native Stratford. It includes three plays on ancient subjects - "Timon of Athens" (Timon of Athens, 1605-1606), "Antony and Cleopatra" (Antony and Cleopatra, 1607-1608) and "Coriolanus" (Coriolanus, 1608-1609).

1609 - the only lifetime edition of Shakespeare's sonnets with a dedication W. H, which has not been solved to this day, is published. The most likely time for the creation of sonnets is 1593-1600.

1611 - The Winter's Tale tragicomedy. In accordance with genre requirements, the play is full of theatrical effects and surprises.

1612 - tragicomedy "The Tempest" (The Tempest), apparently the last independent play by Shakespeare.

1613 - Shakespeare leaves for Stratford. The reason for the unexpected termination of such a successful career as a playwright and the departure from the capital was, apparently, an illness.

March 1616 Shakespeare draws up and signs his will.

April 23, 1616 - William Shakespeare died and was buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church on the outskirts of Stratford.

Shakespeare's works were not collected during his lifetime. Separately printed poems, a collection of sonnets. The plays originally appeared in the so-called pirated editions with corrupted text, followed, as a rule, by an edition prepared by the author in the form of a refutation. According to the format, these publications are called quarto (quarto). After Shakespeare's death, the efforts of his actor friends Heming and Condell prepared the first complete edition of his works, including 36 plays, the so-called "First Folio" (The First Folio, 1623). Eighteen of them had not previously been published at all. The Shakespearean canon (the plays undoubtedly belonging to Shakespeare) includes 37 dramas. Early plays are imbued with a life-affirming beginning: the comedies The Taming of the Shrew (1593), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1596), Much Ado About Nothing (1598). Tragedy about love and fidelity at the cost of life "Romeo and Juliet" (1595). In historical chronicles (Richard III, 1593; Henry IV, 1597-98), tragedies (Hamlet, 1601; Othello, 1604; King Lear, 1605; Macbeth, 1606), in Roman tragedies (political - "Julius Caesar", 1599; "Antony and Cleopatra", 1607; "Coriolanus", 1607), lyric-philosophical "Sonnets" (1592-1600, published in 1609) comprehended the moral, social and political conflicts of the era as eternal, irremovable, as the laws of the world order, under which the highest human values ​​- goodness, dignity, honor, justice - are inevitably perverted and suffer a tragic defeat. The search for an optimistic solution to conflicts led to the creation of romantic dramas The Winter's Tale (1611) and The Tempest (1612). Shakespeare completes the process of creating a national culture and the English language; his work sums up the tragic end of the entire era of the European Renaissance. In the perception of subsequent generations, an image of Shakespeare is formed as a comprehensive genius who, at the beginning of the New Age, created a gallery of his human types and life situations. Shakespeare's plays to this day form the basis of the world theatrical repertoire. Most of them have been repeatedly filmed for film and television. More than two centuries after Shakespeare's death, no one doubted that William Shakespeare of Stratford, an actor in the troupe of His Majesty's Servants, wrote both poems published under his name and plays in 1623. collected in a folio by his actor friends. However, around 1850 there were doubts about Shakespeare's authorship, which are still shared by many today. It's hard to say where the idea came from. Perhaps the reason was that the Victorians believed in the need for education for the writer, and Shakespeare was considered uneducated - in the words of T. Carlyle, "a poor peasant from Warwickshire". In search of a probable author of the works that came down under the name of Shakespeare, skeptics, of course, turned to the most learned Elizabethan - Francis Bacon. The choice was unfortunate, because of all the educated people of that era, Bacon was the least able to write something like that - which is easy to see by comparing his essay "Love" with "Romeo and Juliet" or with sonnets. Along with Bacon, there are other contenders. Chief among them is Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, whose candidacy for authorship enjoys the support of many influential voices in England. Oxford is a far more likely candidate than Bacon, for he was a poet, a patron of an acting troupe, and, according to Meres, was considered, along with D. Lily, R. Green, and Shakespeare, "the best of us in terms of comedy." Unfortunately for Oxford supporters, he died in 1604. – before many of Shakespeare's plays were written, including The Tempest. In America, the former stronghold of Baconian theory, the authorship of E. Dyer (c. 1545-1607) was defended by O. Brooks, who wrote a book that Shakespeare from Stratford was not a poet at all, but only a secretary and literary agent. But Dyer, like Oxford, died too early to write the later plays of Shakespeare's Canon. To prove anyone, except Shakespeare himself, the rights to the authorship of his plays means, simply speaking, not to take into account the totality of the evidence of that time. The most weighty of them belongs to Ben Jonson - he knew the actor Shakespeare, who regularly played in Johnson's plays; he criticized the extravagance of Shakespeare's style and noted his errors, but he also praised him as a playwright who could compete "with everything that audacious Greece or arrogant Rome has created."

Brief literary encyclopedia: In 8 vols. Moscow: Soviet encyclopedia, 1962. Literary encyclopedia: In 11 vols. - M., 1929-1939.

Biography

SHAKESPEARE

Interest in Shakespeare is steadily growing. More and more people are becoming familiar with his works, and in connection with this, naturally, the circle of those who want to know about his life and what kind of person he was is expanding. But if it is easy to get acquainted with his work, then Shakespeare's personality is by no means so open to us.

Now Shakespeare is recognized as one of the the greatest writers peace. He is the pride of mankind. But in the eyes of his contemporaries, Shakespeare was not a significant figure. Then he was not considered so great, and his fame was much less.

Shakespeare wrote his main works for the public theater of the people. In those days, the theater was considered entertainment of a relatively low kind. Suffice it to say that the city authorities did not allow the building of theaters and public performances within London. Theaters were built outside the city limits, where there were all kinds of hot places and entertainment such as bear-baiting pens and cockfighting arenas.

Although actors were favored at court and invited to give performances there, drama was by no means considered high art. The authority of the ancient Roman playwrights - Seneca, Terence and Plautus was recognized. Modern authors who wrote for theaters were not respected in wide circles. The audience was not interested in who wrote this or that popular play, just as now the public does not know the names of screenwriters who write for the cinema.

Shakespeare's name first appeared in print in 1593. He signed the dedication of the poem "Venus and Adonis" with it to his patron, the Earl of Southampton. He dedicated to him the second poem - "Dishonored Lucretia", published the following year.

"Venus and Adonis" Shakespeare called "the first fruit of my work." Meanwhile, by the time the poem came out, no less than six plays had already been staged on the stage, among them Richard III, The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew. What did the recognition of the poem as the first fruit of poetic creativity mean? Maybe that it was created before the plays? Far from it. The point is simply that works that belonged to high and generally recognized literary genres were considered real literature. Plays for the folk theater have not yet been recognized as such.

The first editions of Shakespeare's plays, following the poems, were anonymous. The author's name was not indicated. It should not be thought that this was due to "discrimination" against Shakespeare. The plays of other writers were also first published in this way. Note that in those days copyright did not yet exist. Having sold the play to the theater, the writer ceased to be the owner of his work. It belonged to the theatre. As a rule, the troupe did not sell the plays of their repertoire, so that they would not be staged by rival theaters. But the plague epidemic of 1592-1594. caused theaters to close. In need of money, the troupes sold many plays to publishers. Among them were the works of Shakespeare. In addition, if the play was popular, the publishers obtained it in a dishonest "pirate" way, sometimes they simply stole it, and sometimes they sent stenographers to record the performance. "Pirated" editions were also some of Shakespeare's plays.

Only in 1597 did Shakespeare's name appear for the first time on the title page of an edition of the play. It was the comedy Love's Labour's Lost. And the following year, a booklet by one lover of literature and theater, Francis Merez, "Palladis Tamia, or the Treasury of the Mind" was published. It contained an overview of English literature, and domestic writers were compared with ancient Roman and Italian authors. Here Shakespeare is given his due. He is described as a playwright, "the most excellent in both kinds of plays", that is, in tragedy and comedy. At the same time, Merez listed ten plays by Shakespeare.

To repeat, Shakespeare's position as a playwright was neither honorable nor respected. Writers still had a long struggle for a worthy position in society. Of course, people who knew a lot about art already appreciated Shakespeare during his lifetime, as evidenced by a number of reviews of his contemporaries. But his social position does not in the least compare with how he began to be treated a hundred and fifty years later and later. IN mid-eighteenth V. he was recognized as a classic. A genuine cult of Shakespeare arose and developed, and at the beginning of the 19th century. he was hailed as the greatest poet.

There was nothing even remotely like this during Shakespeare's lifetime and could not have been. Therefore, one should not be surprised that it did not occur to any of his contemporaries then to collect information about him and write his biography. However, to be precise, it should be mentioned that a contemporary of Shakespeare, playwright Thomas Haywood (1573-1641) began to write "Lives of the Poets", but did not finish this work, and, like most of his plays - and he claimed that he alone and co-authored composed over two hundred of them - it has not survived.

In general, biographies in those days were honored only by royal persons, the highest prelates and persons canonized as saints. Renaissance humanists wanted to break this bad tradition by creating biographies of poets and artists. The English thinker and writer Thomas More (1478-1535) translated the biography of the Italian philosopher Pico della Mirandola. Thomas More himself was written about by his son-in-law Roper. But about no other writer of the 16th and first half of the 17th century. no biographical work was written at that time.

The genre of biography of cultural figures began to develop in England only a quarter of a century after the death of Shakespeare, when Isaac Walton wrote a biography of the poet John Donne (1640). Then came the biographies of other writers.

It was then for the first time that they realized that it was necessary to collect information about famous people of the past. One of the collectors was the priest Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), who graduated from Cambridge University. His History of the Worthies of England, written by him, was published after his death (1662). He still caught Shakespeare's contemporaries alive and recorded their stories. They are given in this book, and S. Shenbaum considers the degree of their reliability. Collected various information about Shakespeare and Oxford University student John Aubrey (1626-1697). According to those who knew him, he was not very thorough in checking the information, and the traditions he collected about Shakespeare did not differ in accuracy. His notes were not finalized, they were discovered and first published in the 18th century. The reader will get acquainted with them in the interpretation of S. Shenbaum.

So, both during Shakespeare's life and after his death, biographical data about him remained almost unknown. Stratford old-timers told something about him, some legends were preserved and passed down from generation to generation in the acting environment. But nothing reliable about the life of Shakespeare was known.

Serious study of Shakespeare began in the 18th century. Writers and scientists appeared who studied the life and work of Shakespeare. The first place of honor among them belongs to the playwright Nicholas Rowe (1676-1718). In 1709 he published the collected works of Shakespeare, accompanied by a biography of the poet. He collected various information for her, both reliable and doubtful. Be that as it may, he created the first coherent biography of Shakespeare, which formed the basis of all subsequent biographies.

While several scholars and critics of the XVIII century. engaged in editing and publishing more and more perfect texts of Shakespeare's works, there was also a collection of information about the life of Shakespeare, about his era, about other writers of that time, about theater and actors, and as a result, a special section of knowledge arose - Shakespeare studies.

It should not be surprising that scholars have also dealt with the texts of Shakespeare's works. In his time, publishing was at a relatively early stage of development. The first book in England was printed in "1475, that is, only ninety years before the birth of Shakespeare. Typing and printing were still done in a rather primitive way. Norms of the English language and even an ordered, uniform grammar for all did not yet exist. Spelling was not settled. It was up to the typesetter to write the words as they were in the author's manuscript, or to enter their spelling. Without understanding what was written in the manuscript, the typographer could read and change the text in his own way. In this form, Shakespeare's plays appeared during his lifetime. The 18th century had to work hard to clear the early printed texts of errors, and this work continues to this day.

It may be asked: Didn't Shakespeare himself supervise the publication of his works? Alas, we can be sure of the accuracy of Shakespeare's text only in relation to the poems "Venus and Adonis" and "Dishonored Lucretia": they were given to print by Shakespeare himself, typed and printed by his fellow countryman, who became a London printer. As for the rest of Shakespeare's works, the situation is as follows: a number of editions were "pirated", and, consequently, Shakespeare did not have the opportunity to monitor how they were typed. But in other cases, the case did without him. The theater sold the manuscript of the play to the publisher, who himself oversaw the typesetting and printing. This is how nineteen of Shakespeare's thirty-seven plays were born. Eighteen plays were not printed at all during his lifetime. The first collection of his plays, the so-called Folio of 1623, appeared seven years after Shakespeare's death. It was published by his friends, the actors John Heming and Henry Condel. Consequently, Shakespeare did not follow the publication of the first complete collection of his plays either.

All this the reader should keep in mind when he tries to understand the fate of Shakespeare. It is unlike the fate of such great writers as Goethe, Balzac, Pushkin, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Ibsen - in a word, those writers of modern times whose life path known to the smallest detail.

If, however, we now have an idea about the life of Shakespeare and the conditions in which he worked, then we owe this to many generations of scientists who have long and diligently sought information about the great playwright.

Shakespearean studies have their luminaries. I do not mean textual scholars who have done a gigantic job of cleaning up texts, and not critics who have created profound interpretations of Shakespeare's works, but those who have enriched this section of Shakespeare studies - the writer's biography. I will confine myself to mentioning the most significant scientists.

In the XVIII century. There were two such scholars. They summarized the results of the studies of their predecessors and created fundamental works. George Stevens (1736-1800) accompanied his edition of Shakespeare's Works (1778) with an extensive collection of documents and various materials on the life of Shakespeare and the theater of his time. Edmund Malone (1741-1812) was a titan of Shakespearean studies, who began work in collaboration with Stevens, and then went his own way. The second of Shakespeare's editions prepared by him came out after his death in 1821. It was a bridge from eighteenth-century Shakespeare studies. to Shakespeare in the 19th century. Volume 21 of this edition is the richest collection of commentaries on Shakespeare's works, supplemented by studies of various kinds.

Among the Shakespeare scholars of the 19th century who were engaged in the biography of Shakespeare, James Orchard Holywell-Philipps (1820-1889) should be singled out. An indefatigable collector and researcher of materials on the life of Shakespeare, he published his first book about him in 1848. Three decades later, he prepared Essays on the Life of Shakespeare (1881). Finally, in 1887, he published the final version of his essays.

Holywell-Philipps stuck strictly to the facts. He collected many of them. But he left the interpretation to others. In the 19th century several good works were published, combining the facts collected by Shakespeare scholars with attempts to connect them with Shakespeare's work. Perhaps the most significant of the experiments of this kind is the extensive work of the Danish critic and literary critic Georg Brandes (1842-1927). His "William Shakespeare" (1896) links Shakespeare's biography with Renaissance culture in Europe and England, offering both a psychological portrait of Shakespeare as a thinker and an artist. Brandes' work exists in two Russian translations.

Rowe, Malon, Holywell-Philipps, Chambers - these are the main milestones on the way to establishing the biography of Shakespeare. It must be said that Chambers's work was written not for a wide range of readers, but for specialists. This is not a coherent biography, but a collection of documents and legends, carefully commented on by scholars.

The work of S. Shenbaum brought to the attention of the Soviet reader is structured differently. The American scholar seeks to present in a clear chronological order everything that is known about each period of Shakespeare's life. He has absolutely nothing to do with the work of the playwright. Before us is the experience of a biography based on documents. But Shenbaum does not exclude from the field of consideration the legends preserved from those distant times. He carefully examines them, trying to separate the authentic from the fictional.

To put it bluntly, Shakespeare himself remains enigmatic. It cannot be otherwise, since no documents have been preserved that open the veil over the writer's personal life. But the reader gets a broad picture of Shakespeare's environment, the customs of that era, learns what Shakespeare was like in everyday life.

Other readers may be disappointed by the fact that many documents testify to how the great playwright cared about wealth. Until now, the romantic idea of ​​great poets as beings not of this world, soaring in the skies, is still alive. Documents show that Shakespeare was not like that. Yes, he made an effort to earn enough money to buy real estate, bought the best stone house in Stratford, bought several plots of land.

In order to correctly assess these facts, we must recall what was said above about the position of William Shakespeare as a playwright. G. Ibsen, B. Shaw, G. Hauptmann could provide themselves with creative work. Shakespeare didn't get it. Suffice it to say that for "Hamlet" he received, apparently, ten pounds sterling. Even if we take into account that then the money cost thirty times more, then such a fee can hardly be considered sufficient for a play that was later recognized as perhaps the most popular in the world repertoire. Having received a one-time payment, the playwright no longer had any income from the play. He was not paid for re-performances of it, he did not receive anything for publishing the play.

How did Shakespeare support himself? He lived on income from participation in an acting partnership. Shakespeare invested his money in the general fund of actors-shareholders. Part: funds went to rent a land plot, on which a theater was built, the other part - to the construction of the building itself; it was necessary to pay the running costs of organizing performances, to hire actors for secondary roles. These were the main items of expenditure of the troupe. The smallest share was paid for new plays.

The income consisted of the money that the collector received at the entrance to the theater from visitors. Money to cover expenses was deducted from the amount of the collection, and the remainder was divided among the actors-shareholders according to the share contributed to the total capital.

The business side of the troupe was not handled by Shakespeare, but, apparently, by someone else - at one time Augustine Philips, then John Heming. But Shakespeare regularly received his share and invested, as it was said, in real estate. There is nothing shameful in the fact that he showed enough efficiency in accumulating property that allowed him to live comfortably.

Are we mistaken in assuming that Shakespeare was striving for independence? He, a man of low rank and social status, wanted to take a place in society that would make him relatively free and independent from his superiors in class and wealth. In his time, many did not shy away from the most dishonorable means of enrichment. Even the philosopher F. Bacon was removed from a high government post for taking bribes. Documents show that in property matters Shakespeare was completely clean. Here is what should be noted by those who feel that property matters take up too much space in Shakespeare's documentation. Moreover, the documents also show that, having the means, Shakespeare, when necessary, helped fellow countrymen and they were sure that they could turn to him with a request to lend money.

It cannot be denied that facts and documents reveal the prosaic side of Shakespeare's life. But this side is in the biography of all great poets and writers. Only many of them we know other sides, so we neglect the prose of their lives. But everyone had it. Many lived beyond their means, and they did not have enough, but we forget about this, carried away by the more interesting circumstances of their lives. As a theater shareholder and actor, Shakespeare earned enough to avoid borrowing money. Borrowed from him. Is this not evidence of the character and abilities of a person?

What influenced the young Shakespeare in this regard? Maybe the sudden ruin of his father, maybe the pitiful fate of Green, a playwright and writer who died in an inn without even leaving money for a funeral... One way or another, Shakespeare managed to arrange his life in a worthy way. It is strange that there are people who almost condemn him for this.

Even worse, there are those who, from the facts known to us about the life of Shakespeare, conclude that he was not the author of the plays that are known under his name.

This issue needs to be touched upon, for the slander denying the authorship of Shakespeare has become widespread.

I am afraid that S. Shenbaum's book can strengthen the opinion of skeptics and those who do not believe in the authorship of Shakespeare. The author deals with documentation all the time, and it is mostly not connected with Shakespeare's creative activity. Only a small number of not so much documents as legends concerns Shakespeare - the playwright and poet.

The undoubted gap between the prosaic facts of Shakespeare's everyday activity and his poetic dramaturgy has long raised the question: how to combine a caring collector of property and the owner of a beautiful New Place house with the author of Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, " Anthony and Cleopatra"?

We have to remind you again that sentimental ideas about great artists have nothing to do with reality. Voltaire was a wealthy and tight-fisted landowner. Goethe managed to get the highest literary fees for that time from publishers, Balzac and Dostoevsky suffered in the clutches of creditors, and money matters were very important for them. Let us recall the words of Pushkin: "Inspiration is not for sale, but you can sell the manuscript." Of course, it is sad that some of the great writers, composers, and artists died in poverty, but unfavorable social circumstances are to blame for this. If Mozart did not manage to get out of poverty, it was not because of a lack of enterprise. Efficiency and the ability to stand up for their interests do not belittle talent.

Let us therefore put aside imaginary moral considerations.

Other opponents of Shakespeare are based on the paucity of documents about his life. Indeed, we know less about Shakespeare than we would like, and a number of circumstances of his life remained unclear (S. Shenbaum very correctly shows which ones). But aren't there ambiguities in the biographies of people of a time closer to us?

We do not know as much about any of Shakespeare's contemporaries as we do about him. Even about Ben Jonson, who cared about his posthumous fame, unlike Shakespeare, who was indifferent to it, we know less.

S. Shenbaum did not seek in his book to give a complete picture of Shakespeare. He clearly defined his task - to speak only about facts, documents, legends, without allowing any conjectures. The work of Shakespeare as a playwright is hardly touched upon in the book. Meanwhile, this side of Shakespeare's life is documented in its own way. It was possible to establish when certain of his plays were created. We know sometimes when they were on stage, we know exactly when they were printed. There are a large number of facts undeniably connected with the personality of Shakespeare. They are not affected here, but they exist. It is enough for the reader to refer to any book about Shakespeare's work to find out when this or that play was written, where Shakespeare drew its plot, when it was staged and printed. Sometimes we even know the opinion of contemporaries about the works of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's biography is not only his path to well-being, but also the path of an artist, poet and playwright, and we know a lot about this. We know how, for example, plays are connected with certain topical events. We know that in the prologue to "Henry V" there is a laudatory allusion to the Earl of Essex, who was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. We know that the accession to the throne of King James I, a Scot by origin, caused the appearance in the repertoire of the troupe of "Macbeth", a play based on a plot from Scottish history, in which a flattering allusion to the new monarch is inserted. We know that the references to recent eclipses of heavenly bodies in King Lear were a response to these astronomical phenomena, that the wonders of distant lands, which were told about by sailors who traveled to America, inspired the fantasy of Shakespeare's The Tempest. It would be a long time to list everything that in Shakespeare's works directly or indirectly reflected what he and his contemporaries lived.

Anyone who has read Shakespeare carefully and more than once gets his own idea of ​​his personality in the same way that those who love Pushkin, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky create in their souls the image of these writers. Of course, everyone has their own perception of genius. But any genius has certain and universally recognized traits. So is Shakespeare.

One of the main "charges" against the native of Stratford is the lack of education. He really did not graduate from the university, like his predecessors Christopher Marlo and Robert Green, but this did not prevent him from surpassing them artistically.

Doubts have been raised as to whether Shakespeare graduated from school, as the list of students at the Stratford Grammar School has not been preserved. But the absence of a certificate of education does not mean the absence of education.

Some say that Shakespeare did not know how to write at all. But even the most ardent opponents of Stratford do not deny that he was an actor. And to master this profession, the ability to read and learn the role by heart was required. If he could read, then somehow, presumably, he managed to learn how to write.

If, on the one hand, opponents of Shakespeare's authorship in every possible way belittle the knowledge and abilities of Shakespeare's actor, then, on the other hand, they place an unusually high value on the mind and knowledge of the one who wrote the plays, and believe that only a person who belonged to the circles of the highest society. The "theory" that Shakespeare's plays were written by the philosopher F. Bacon has long since collapsed, although supporters of Bacon's authorship still exist.

But most opponents of the Stratfordian put forward as the author of Shakespeare's plays such representatives of the Elizabethan nobility as the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Darby, the Earl of Rutland, Lord Strange. Since their biographies are little known, the supporters of these "theories" are free to come up with all sorts of "facts" and coincidences, allegedly confirming their authorship. I will give an illustrative example. If we accept the version of supporters of the Earl of Rutland, then he should have written the first play of Shakespeare when he was about twelve years old. It is hard to believe that this child prodigy created "Richard III" at the age of fifteen.

In addition to the earls, the playwright Christopher Marlo was proposed as the author of Shakespeare's plays. The creator of this version, the American K. Hoffman, claimed that Marlowe was not killed in a brawl in 1593, but disappeared and continued to write plays, one better than the other, which the actor Shakespeare passed on to the troupe, keeping the secret of authorship. But if we talk about documents, then Marlo's death is documented in great detail. The fantasticness of the version of Marlowe - Shakespeare is obvious. But this is not the most ridiculous "theory". It has occurred to someone that Shakespeare's plays were written by none other than Queen Elizabeth. Someone invented that Shakespeare's wife was engaged in writing, and he only arranged her plays in the theater and played them himself.

What is the main flaw of all anti-Shakespearean hypotheses? Not even in the fact that their authors are trying to put in Shakespeare's place a person with a more or less romantic biography (mostly unreliable and fictional), but in the fact that the creator of Shakespeare's plays reflected his life in them, was in turn Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Prospero. Here, however, there is a problem. If Shakespeare's plays are a reflection of the life of their author, then shouldn't he be recognized as a cruel and treacherous murderer like Richard III or Macbeth?

The naive identification of the author's personality with his characters is refuted by the entire history of world literature. True, writers have always used personal experience when creating images of their heroes, but rarely directly. In Shakespeare's time, confessional motifs were not yet encountered in dramaturgy. They began to appear only in romantic art, and then not so much in drama as in poetry and novels. In the XVI-XVII centuries. this has not yet taken place.

In this respect, the authors of anti-Shakespeare's "theories" reveal a complete misunderstanding of the nature of Shakespeare's dramaturgy. It has long been generally recognized that Shakespeare is objective in his work, and therefore it is futile to look for personal motives in his plays. In general, it should be noted that for anti-Shakespearians, Shakespeare's works in themselves, as art phenomena, are of no interest, they serve only to search for the "key" to the imaginary mystery of Shakespeare's authorship.

In fact, there is no mystery. Plays by Shakespeare, written by actor William Shakespeare. It is he! There can be no doubt about this, and for a very simple reason. The whole world recognized Shakespeare as the greatest playwright. Could any of the counts named above, in their leisure hours, by the way, write plays that have stood the test of time and still excite the audience with a depth of comprehension of life and skill in depicting human characters? Of course not. Shakespeare's plays are the fruit of high professional skill. They could be written only by a person who knew the theater thoroughly, deeply comprehended the laws of influencing the audience.

Shakespeare's plays were written not for the theater in general, but for a very specific troupe. Beginning in 1594, when an acting partnership was formed, taken under the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain, Shakespeare created plays designed for the actors of his troupe. The main roles in each play were intended for the shareholders of the acting partnership. By carefully reading the plays, one can determine what acting roles are designed for roles in the chronicles, tragedies and comedies of Shakespeare.

The troupe's premier was Richard Burbage (1568-1619). The roles of Richard III, Romeo, Brutus, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Lear, Coriolanus, Antony, Prospero were written for him. But in the troupe there were actors for the second most important roles. So, in the second half of the 1590s. Shakespeare wrote roles for an actor with a hot and stormy temperament. He played the bully Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet and the fiery, belligerent Harry Percy, nicknamed Hot Spur. It is quite obvious that the troupe had a magnificent comedian, a fat and middle-aged actor, who so brilliantly played the role of Falstaff in the first part of Henry IV, that Shakespeare wrote a sequel for him - the second part of Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

There were no actresses at that time, and the female roles were played by boys specially trained by adult actors in whose families they lived. Judging by the number of female roles in Shakespeare's plays, one can determine how many male actors were in the troupe in a given period. In the 1590s, when Shakespeare created his cheerful comedies, there were up to four boys in the troupe, three at any rate. In "A Midsummer Night's Dream" there are four female roles - Hippolyta, Titania, Hermia, Elena. However, two roles - Hippolyta and Titania - could be played by the same boy, because these two characters do not meet together. In Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It.

"Twelfth Night" three female roles. IN early XVII V. there were fewer boy actors in the troupe. In "Hamlet", "Julius Caesar", "Troilus and Cressida" - two female roles each. Such facts are not accidental. Shakespeare always adapted his plays to the characteristics of the actors of the troupe, using their physical and voice characteristics.

Glancing at the list of characters in any play by Shakespeare, it is not difficult to see that their number reaches thirty, or even more. Meanwhile, the troupe usually had no more than eight main actors (shareholders) and eight to ten actors hired for secondary roles. It has been established that the actors who worked in the troupe for hire usually performed at least two roles - one at the beginning of the play, the other in its second half.

Later actors who played the roles of Shakespeare's heroes made a curious discovery. It turned out that Shakespeare took into account the physical capabilities of the actor and throughout the play created pauses for him when he did not participate in the action and could rest backstage, preparing for the next scene, which required great effort. This is especially noticeable between the third and fifth acts of the play; in the fourth acts of the tragedies, the leading man in some scenes does not appear before the audience at all. What count, supposedly writing plays, could come up with such calculations? Only a playwright who was also an actor could take into account all the details necessary for the successful performance of a play on stage.

After reading what is written here, another reader will still not believe us and will demand unconditional documentary evidence that it was the actor Shakespeare who wrote all the plays attributed to him. Such evidence was left by Shakespeare's contemporaries, primarily those who were associated with the theater. These testimonies are either given in the book of S. Shenbaum, or are briefly mentioned in it. Since S. Shenbaum himself does not doubt that the plays belong to Shakespeare, he considers the statements of contemporaries in a slightly different aspect.

The recognition that Shakespeare was both an actor and a playwright is the review of the writer Robert Greene. Dying, he warned his fellow writers against actors: "Do not believe them [actors]; there is an upstart - a crow among them, adorned with our plumage, who "with the heart of a tiger in the skin of a hypocrite" believes that he is able to pompously utter his white verse, like the best of you, and he - the purest jack-of-all-trades - imagines himself to be the only stage stunner in the country."

Gabriel Harvey, in his personal notes of the same kind, made between 1598 and 1601, notes: "Young people are very fond of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, and those who are more mature in mind prefer his Lucretius and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Ibid., p. 197).

The epithet "honey-tongued" was first applied to Shakespeare by F. Merez in 1598, and, as we see, he quickly stuck with him.

One passage from The Return from Parnassus is especially important. Here, among the actors are the actors of Shakespeare's troupe, the comedian Kemp and the tragedian Richard Burbage. Cambridge pedants do not favor here either folk theater. They portray Kemp as ignorant. This is clear from his reasoning: "Few of these university students know how to write plays well. They smelled too much of this writer Ovid and this writer Metamorphosis and talk too much about Proserpine and Jupiter ..." (Ibid.) This is an attack on the public folk theater in defense of academic drama following the patterns of the Roman classics. And then we hear from Kemp a direct opposition of the "ignorant" Shakespeare to the "educated" writers: "But our friend Shakespeare puts all of them on the shoulder blades. Yes, and Ben Jonson to boot" (Ibid.). Proponents of academic drama bitterly admit that "uneducated" playwrights, like Shakespeare, enjoy great success with the audience. Cambridgeians are outraged by this, and they laugh at the tastes of the "crowd".

Praise was given to Shakespeare by other contemporary poets and playwrights. No one had even a shadow of a doubt that he was the author of the plays, poems and sonnets he created.

Of particular interest are those reviews that indicate a personal acquaintance of the person who wrote them with Shakespeare. S. Shenbaum cites in his book a review of the writer John Davis, who quipped, saying that Shakespeare, who played kings, would himself be a worthy interlocutor of monarchs, and noted that there was something regal in his personality. Davies titled his epigram: "To Our Terentius, Mr. William Shakespeare." It directly speaks of Shakespeare as an actor and playwright at the same time.

Ridiculous and absurd doubts about the authorship of Shakespeare. After all, we even know how he wrote. This is evidenced by his actor friends, who published the first collection of Shakespeare's plays, Heming and Condel: "His thought always kept pace with the pen, and he expressed his intentions with such ease that we did not find any blots in his manuscripts." Ben Jonson also knew Shakespeare's style of writing, but he treated it differently than the actors. S. Shenbaum quotes him as saying that Shakespeare "wrote with such ease that sometimes it was necessary to stop him."

Do you need any more evidence that Shakespeare was the author of his works?

S. Shenbaum's book immerses the reader into the world of everyday life that surrounded Shakespeare. Everyday trifles and details should not, however, obscure the great poet and playwright. Having satisfied, as far as possible, curiosity about the circumstances of Shakespeare's life, let us turn to his works. It is in them that he appears before us in all his gigantic stature as a great connoisseur of human souls, a thinker who understood the course of world history, a playwright who skillfully expressed the Contradictions and conflicts of reality, a wonderful master of poetry, who was fluent in words. It is this Shakespeare that most demands our attention. Shakespeare the artist is inexhaustibly rich in discoveries about life and man.

A. Anikst

Brean Hammond, a professor at the University of Nottingham, one of Britain's leading Shakespeare scholars, has concluded that the play, which for more than 250 years was considered a fake of Shakespeare, actually belonged to the classic's pen.

When Theobald quarreled with famous poet Alexander Pope, the latter declared "Double Lies" a falsification. This opinion was accepted by the public - "Double Lies" has since been staged only twice - in 1749. Now experts are working on a textual reconstruction of the 17th-century original (illustrated by Wikimedia Commons).

What is very symbolic, we are talking about a work called Double Falshood, or Ditrest Lovers ("Double Lies, or Distressed Lovers"). The text was presented in 1727 by theater impresario Lewis Theobald, who claimed that the production was based on Shakespeare's play Cardenio.

This work is now considered lost. "Cardenio", written by Shakespeare together with John Fletcher (John Fletcher) based on one of the storylines of "Don Quixote", was staged during the author's lifetime only once, in 1613. Theobald claimed that he had at once three versions of Shakespeare's play, which were subjected to "creative processing" (as was widespread at the time).

Hammond, who spent ten years studying Theobald's play, came to the conclusion that it was indeed based on Shakespeare's text. Also in the work it was possible to identify traces of the work of two other authors. According to the scientist, the passages in the first part of the play are distinguished by "density, sophistication of rhythm and richness of metaphors" characteristic of the great playwright's handwriting.

Part of the concrete evidence is already being given: for example, in "Double Lies" there are marker words that are not found in other texts by Fletcher and Theobald, for example, the epithet "absonant" in relation to sound ("sharp", "dissonant"). "I think Shakespeare's hand is clearly visible in the first and second acts, as well as two scenes in the third," says Hammond.

The material is provided by the online magazine MEMBRANA (www.membrana.ru)

Proposed exhumation of Shakespeare's body ((June 24, 2011, 6:12 pm | Text: Dmitry Tselikov | http://culture.compulenta.ru/618417/))

Scholars have requested permission to exhume William Shakespeare's body in the hope of establishing how he died.

The paleontologists sent an official statement to the Anglican Church, because the grave of the playwright is located in the local parish church in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Francis Thackeray from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) believes that modern computer technology will make it possible to establish all the nuances of the health and lifestyle of the great writer (of course, if these are his works), who died in 1616 for unknown reasons. In addition, it would be possible to finally restore the appearance of Shakespeare, because the 400th anniversary of his death is coming.

Mr. Thackeray notes that today technology has reached such heights that the skeleton can be studied without moving it.

For the first time, the scientist made this proposal about ten years ago, having studied 24 pipes found during excavations in the playwright's garden. He established that they were used to smoke cannabis: in the era of Shakespeare, this plant was cultivated and consumed throughout Great Britain. Some fans of the playwright's work were furious: they say that a drug addict could not create anything great.

A spokesman for the Church of England said he was not aware of the request, but in any case, the decision would be made at the diocesan level.

Short biography of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is an outstanding English poet and playwright, considered the greatest writer of English origin and one of the best playwrights in the world. Shakespeare is said to have been born on April 23, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. On April 26, he was baptized in the Church of the Holy Trinity. The writer's father was a wealthy craftsman and was often elected to important posts. There is evidence that he was mayor of Stratford-upon-Avon. Shakespeare's mother came from an old Arden family. Presumably, the boy attended the Stratford Grammar School, where he studied Latin and literature.

Upon reaching the age of 18, he married Ann Hathaway, the daughter of a wealthy landowner, who was several years older than him. They had three children. When William was about 23 years old, he moved to London, where he got a job. At first he did any small work, and then got a job in the theater. It is not known for certain when his career began, but biographers attribute this stage to the mid-1580s. In 1592, Shakespeare was already a well-known playwright, as well as a member of the Burbage London acting troupe, which received royal status under James I. The first mention of the historical chronicle of the writer "Henry VI", which was staged on the stage of the Rose Theater, owned by Philip Henslow, dates back to this time.

In 1599, his troupe built a new theater on the south bank of the Thames called the Globe. A few years later they purchased another theater closed type"Blackfires". Thanks to a rapid theatrical career, Shakespeare soon became a very wealthy man. There is evidence that already in 1597 he acquired one of the largest houses in his native Stratford. From 1598, his name was full of publications on leaflets. Combining acting and dramaturgy, Shakespeare spent most of his time in London, but went home between breaks. There is evidence that he preferred to play "royal roles" in his theater. So, for example, he played the father of Hamlet, Chorus in "Henry V", etc.

At the beginning of the 17th century, many theaters in London were closed due to outbreaks of the plague. Actors, remaining unemployed, went home. So, shortly before his death, Shakespeare returned to Stratford-upon-Avon. During the years 1606-1607 he wrote several more plays, and in 1613 he stopped writing altogether. It is believed that the last three plays were written jointly with another playwright, John Fletcher. Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616. During his short career, he wrote more than 10 tragedies, 17 comedies, 10 historical chronicles, more than 150 sonnets and many romantic poems. The most famous of his works are A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, and of course Romeo and Juliet. ". There is no clear chronology of the appearance of Shakespeare's works.

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 V 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 affairs 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 take a break from the excitement of metropolitan and theatrical life in the free environment of a prosperous squire. 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, strong influence 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 the independence of the young poet in relation to the understanding and development of psychological types, however in style, adorned with rhetoric, they belong entirely 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 of the development of his talent (1587-1594) Shakespeare also has not yet emerged from his contemporary literary trend. 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, to deserve a reproach for the intricacy of the intrigue, the appearance of the comic, the naivety of the action, although excellent scenes and situations are abundantly scattered here and the characters are vividly outlined. 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 arbitrarily unite human hearts, is interpreted as a radiant dream and clothed in a graceful haze of fantastic colors, In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare proceeds to an analysis of difficult moral problems and shows himself to be a deep connoisseur of the human soul in all the complexity of its intersecting impulses, drawing in Shylock both a cruel usurer and a tenderly loving son, and implacable 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

The historical dramas or dramatic chronicles from English history belonging to this transitional period for Shakespeare (King John, Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV in 2 parts, Henry V) represent an important step in the development of creativity. William Shakespeare. 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.

Did Shakespeare exist? The assertion that Shakespeare was not the creator of his great works has long been commonplace because of the scarcity of information about the life of the poet. In the 70s of the XVIII century, a hypothesis arose according to which the author of the plays was not William Shakespeare, but another person who wished to remain anonymous. Over the two centuries of disputes and discussions, dozens of hypotheses have been put forward, and now, perhaps, there is not a single more or less famous contemporary Shakespeare, who would not be credited with the authorship of brilliant plays. Maria Molchanova argues for and against Shakespeare's question.

There are more than a dozen contenders for the authorship of Shakespeare's works

The circumstances of the life of the great English playwright William Shakespeare are relatively little known, because he shares the fate of the vast majority of other authors of his era, whose personality was not particularly interested in contemporaries. Speaking about the study of the biography of the playwright, it is worth first of all to single out a group of “non-Stratfordian” scholars, whose members deny the authorship of the actor Shakespeare from Stratford and believe that this is the name under which another person or group of persons was hiding, and, most likely, the real actor Shakespeare he himself gave permission for the use of his name. The rejection of the traditional view has been known since 1848, although there is no consensus among non-Stratfordians as to who exactly was the real author of Shakespeare's works.

Portrait of William Shakespeare

Proponents of this theory believe that known facts about the actor Shakespeare from Stratford contradict the content and style of Shakespeare's plays and poems. Numerous theories have been put forward regarding the alleged candidates, and so far there are several dozen.

Shakespeare's family was illiterate, and instead of a signature they put a cross

The Globe Theater in London where Shakespeare's plays were staged

The lexical dictionary of the works of William Shakespeare is 15 thousand different words, while the contemporary English translation of the King James Bible is only 5 thousand. However, Shakespeare's contemporary writers (Marlo, Johnson, John Donne) were of no less modest origin (by the way, Shakespeare's father from Stratford was rich and was one of the city's governors), but their learning surpassed Shakespeare's.

Among his contemporaries, Shakespeare was considered a gifted self-taught writer.

Among Shakespeare's contemporaries, the playwright was never considered highly educated, but rather an intuitively gifted self-taught writer.

Queen Elizabeth I in a palanquin during a procession, c. 1601 Robert Peake, 17th century

Portrait of Francis Bacon

Another contender for authorship was Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. The 17th Earl of Oxford was Queen Elizabeth I's court poet and served as Chamberlain of England. His poems are similar to Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. In addition, the earl's coat of arms is a lion, stunning with a broken spear, and the famous aristocrat of his era was aware of the palace intrigues reflected in many of Shakespeare's plays.

Editions of Shakespeare contain secret messages about the English court

Portrait of Edouard de Vere

Another candidate is Shakespeare's contemporary playwright Christopher Marlo. There is an assumption that he created the pseudonym "Shakespeare" in order to continue to work as a playwright after his staged death in 1593.

Portrait of Christopher Marlo (1585)

Another candidate is Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland. In college, Rutland was nicknamed "The Terrific Spear", and later he studied at the University of Padua with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (the characters in the play "Hamlet").

Portrait of Roger Manners

The last of the most popular contenders is William Stanley, Earl of Derby. His older brother kept his own acting troupe, in which, according to some, the actor William Shakespeare began his career.