William Shakespeare was presumably born at Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1564. We know for certain that he was christened on April 26: Shakespeare's family almost certainly christened the newborn not later than the third day, as it was customary.He was the third of the eight children of John Shakespeare, a glover, and Mary Arden, an aristocrat. However, he was the first one who managed to get over the years of plague and childhood.
His father soon became a man of substance, thanks to his successful activity as a tradesman; he was an active citizen as well, since he first became an official of the town and later a bailiff, it is to say the major law officer in charge. Unfortunately, in 1577, when William was only thirteen, he suffered a period of financial reverses. Maybe the future bard had to leave school, however he went to neither university.
In 1582, when he was just eighteen, William got married with Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior and three months pregnant of Susan. In 1585, Anne had two twins, Hamnet and Judith. Shakespeare, aged twenty-one, had to struggle very soon to make a name of himself: his father economic misfortune and Anne's poverty pushed him to work hard to survive.
Later, in 1592, after a lapse of time we almost know nothing about, Shakespeare worked in London as an actor and playwright, despite the chance of plague contagion. Between 1590 and 1594 he wrote "Henry VI", "Richard III", "Titus Andronicus", "The Comedy of Errors", "The Taming of the Shrew". He also published the two short narrative poems "Venus and Adonis" (1593) and "The Rape of Lucrece" (1594): both were dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton.
After the plague years, in 1595 Shakespeare was in charge of the company of Lord Chamberlain, a man of estate, as the official receiver of remunerations. He very soon reached a solid position, since he was regarded as the most prominent playwright of all the theatre companies of the Elizabethan Age.
This stage is worth a digression: let us focus on the structure of the theatres for a while. They were built in former inns, and they consisted of a platform that projected right in the middle of the audience, which used to watch the performance standing, while eating and drinking. Aristocrats, on the contrary, stayed on the stage or in the gallery. Every performance took place in the open air. The actors performed among the people, who took an active part in the performance showing enthusiasm, boredom or disapproval.
In the audience aristocrats and bourgeois mixed with craftsmen and laymen. The ones liked witty remarks, verbal tricks, witty dialogues, romantic elements and moving solutions, the others the violence and horror of the tragic scenes, as well as mockery humor.
Shakespeare had, and still has an answer for all of us, because he grew up as a man of the theatre. He identified himself with it: the theatre demands, the strong relationship with a real, common audience could rely on an intuitive understanding ... they were a part of him.
The bard's sensibility was strictly related to life in its different aspects. His brilliant and ardent imagination gave life to universally known characters he rendered with unsurpassed lyricism and psychological introspection. His powerful poetry which fully rendered life's complexity in its richness and inconsistency, his vigorous, refined and equally evocative style and the complex dramatic variety of his verses endowed his lively characters.
To Shakespeare the fact of sharing the young noblemen's life was not necessary for him to create characters of that kind: he simply let the peculiarities of his soul come to light by appealing to his still unspoiled heart and to his enthusiasm for excellence as well, without referring to himself as the fount of that excellence with immortality.
This extraordinary writer helps us to better understand that no academic training whatsoever can give a future writer the gift of mastering the writing skill, nor can it teach him that fundamental and striking ability to combine words in new utterances that reflect some startling truths about life. Shakespeare had a great natural talent that he developed time after time thanks to his personal exploitation, observation and love for the English language, a subject that was not taught at school.
He put his poetry at the service of Nature so that it could be represented as completely as possible: he was educated by nature, he did not have to read through the books' glasses in order to know Nature; he used to search for it inside of him, and he could find it livelier and truer than ever.
Shakespeare did not develop a narrative thread because of his interest in a specific episode, but above all because the story contributed to underline some important truths about nature.
But his personal story is not over yet: in 1596 Shakespeare and his offspring were granted the arms of a gentleman, a tribute that was considered a great honour those days (however, no male child of John and William Shakespeare's family survived, therefore there never was a direct offspring).
His ascent continued: in 1599 he bought 10 per cent of the new Globe Theatre so that he assured himself of the sharing of Lord Chamberlain's Company financial revenue. After Queen Elizabeth death, in 1603, James I gave the company a new name: the King's Men.
It was time for success: by then, Shakespeare shined as a playwright of unsurpassed versatility and poetic strength. In the meanwhile Shakespeare had written "The Two Gentlemen of Verona", "Love's Labour's Lost", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Romeo and Juliet", "Richard II", "King John", "The Merchant of Venice", "Henry IV", "Henry V", "Julius Caesar", "Much Ado about Nothing", "As You like It", "The Twelfth Night", "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and his famous Sonnets. Scholars generally divide Shakespeare's works in three main periods: all the works we have quoted so far belong to the first period and they reveal the author's general acknowledgement of the positive values of life.
Later, from 1601 to 1608, with "Hamlet", "The Phoenix and the Turtle", "Troilus and Cressida", "All's Well that Ends Well", "Measure for Measure", "Othello", "King Lear", "Macbeth", "Antony and Cleopatra", "Coriolanus", "Timon of Athens" and "Pericles, King of Tyrus" we enter the second period, that was characterized by a much more pessimistic conception of life.
In 1609, after buying his house in 1597, the New Place, Shakespeare probably moved to Stratford, even if he continued to cooperate with London and the theatre. In 1613 the Globe caught fire during the performance of his last play, "Henry VIII", Shakespeare probably wrote with Fletcher. The fire marked the end of his career. He had transposed so much of himself in the life of the theatre, that its destruction paralleled a change in the author's life: Shakespeare departed from the scene for good.
In this last season, our great poet and playwright wrote "Cymbelin", "The Winter's Tale", "The Tempest": this period of serenity derived from his detached contemplation of life's contradictions. In 1616 he made his will and less than two months later he died, aged fifty-two. It was April 23, 1616.