
[[Image:Shakespeare.jpg|frame|right|William Shakespeare (National Portrait Gallery, London), in the famous Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed.]] William Shakespeare (April 1564; baptism April 26, 1564 (Old Style); – April 23, 1616 (O.S.), May 3, 1616 (New Style)), England poet and playwright, has a reputation as the greatest of all writers in the English language, as well as one of the world's pre-eminent dramatists. Shakespeare's literary achievement is not confined to his mastery of the poetic and dramatic form; his ability to capture and convey the most profound aspects of human nature is considered by many scholars to be unequalled, due to his understanding of the range and depth of human emotions. A colossal figure in world literature, Shakespeare's legacy and influence continues to be felt in all parts of the globe. He has been translated into every major living language, and his plays are continually performed all around the world. Shakespeare was among the very few playwrights who have excelled in both tragedy and comedy. Shakespeare wrote his works between 1588 and 1616, although the exact dates and Chronology of Shakespeare plays attributed to him are often uncertain. His prolific output is especially impressive in light of the fact that he lived only 52 years. Shakespeare's influence on the English-speaking world shows in the widespread use of [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Shakespeare quotations from Shakespearean plays], the List of titles of works based on Shakespearean phrases, and the many list of adaptations of Shakespearean plays of his works. ==Biography== Most historians agree that William Shakespeare—actor, playwright and poet—was one individual whose life can be clearly mapped out through the study of considerable historical evidence. Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in April 1564, the son of John Shakespeare, a glove-maker, and of Mary Arden, a Landed gentry daughter. His baptismal record dates to April 26 of that year. Because baptisms were performed within a few days of birth, tradition has settled on April 23 as his birthday. It provides a convenient symmetry: he died on that day in 1616, and, perhaps appropriately for a playwright commonly considered to be England's greatest, it is also the Feast Day of Saint George, patron saint of England. Shakespeare's father, prosperous at the time of William's birth, was prosecuted for participating in the black market in wool, and later lost his position as an alderman. Some evidence exists that both sides of the family had Roman Catholic sympathies. As the son of a prominent town official, William Shakespeare probably attended the Stratford grammar school, which may have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and literature. The quality of Elizabethian era grammar schools was uneven. It is presumed that the young Shakespeare attended this school, since he was entitled to, although this cannot be confirmed because the school's records have not survived. There is no evidence that his formal education extended beyond grammar school. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare's wife), eight years his senior, on November 28, 1582 at Temple Grafton, near Stratford. Two neighbors of Anne, Fulk Sandalls and John Richardson (witness), posted bond that there were no impediments to the marriage. There appears to have been some haste in arranging the ceremony: Anne was three months pregnant. After his marriage, William Shakespeare left few traces in the historical record until he appeared on the London literary scene. On May 26, 1583 Shakespeare's first child, Susanna, was baptised at Stratford. A son, Hamnet, and a daughter, Judith, were baptized soon after on February 2, 1585. By 1592 Shakespeare had enough of a reputation for Robert Greene to denounce him as "an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his ''Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde'', supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey." (The italicised line parodies the phrase, "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" which Shakespeare used in ''Henry VI, part 3''.) In 1596 Hamnet died; he was buried on August 11, 1596. Because of the similarities of their names, some suspect that his death was part of the inspiration behind ''Hamlet'' (''c''.1601), a reworking of an older, lost play. By 1598 Shakespeare had moved to the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and appeared at the top of a list of actors in ''Every man in his Humour'' written by Ben Jonson. Shakespeare became an actor, writer and finally part-owner of a playing company, known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men — the company took its name, like others of the period, from its aristocratic sponsor, the Lord Chamberlain. The group became popular enough that after the death of Elizabeth I and the coronation of James I of England (1603), the new monarch adopted the company and it became known as the King's Men. In 1604, Shakespeare acted as a matchmaker for his landlord's daughter. Legal documents from 1612, when the case was brought to trial, show that in 1604, Shakespeare was a tenant of Christopher Mountjoy, a Huguenot tire-maker (a maker of ornamental headdresses) in the northwest of London. Mountjoy's apprentice Stephen Belott wanted to marry Mountjoy's daughter. Shakespeare was enlisted as a go-between, to help negotiate the details of the dowry. On Shakespeare's assurances, the couple married. Eight years later, Belott sued his father-in-law for delivering only part of the dowry. Shakespeare was called to testify, but remembered little of the circumstances. Various documents recording legal affairs and commercial transactions show that Shakespeare grew rich enough during his stay in London years to buy a property in Blackfriars, London and own the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place. In 1609 his Shakespeare's Sonnets were published, love poems variously addressed: most to a youth (or Fair Lord); the remainder to a Dark Lady. Some regard the former set as being homoerotic, but that characterization remains in debate. Shakespeare retired in about 1611. His retirement was not entirely without controversy. He was drawn into a legal quarrel regarding the enclosure of common lands. (Enclosure enabled land to be converted to pasture for sheep, but removed it as a resource for the poor.) Shakespeare had a financial interest in the land, and to the chagrin of some, he took a neutral position, making sure only that his own income from the land was protected. In the last few weeks of Shakespeare's life, the man who was to marry his younger daughter Judith - a tavern-keeper named Thomas Quiney - was charged in the local church court with "fornication." A woman named Margaret Wheeler had given birth to a child and claimed it was Quiney's; she and the child both died soon after. Quiney was disgraced, and Shakespeare revised his will to ensure that Judith's interest in his estate was protected from possible malfeasance on Quiney's part. Shakespeare died in 1616, on April 23. He remained married to Anne until his death and was survived by his two daughters Susannah and Judith. Susannah married John Hall (physician), and later became the subject of a court case. Shakespeare is buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church (Stratford-upon-Avon) in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was granted the honor of burial in the chancel not on account of his fame as a playwright, but for purchasing a share of the tithe of the church for £440 (a considerable sum of money at the time). A bust of him placed by his family on the wall nearest his grave shows him posed as writing. Each year on his claimed birthday, a new quill pen is placed in the writing hand of the bust. It was common in his time for graves in the chancel of the church to later be emptied with the contents removed to a nearby charnel house as room in the chancel was required. As a result, his grave carries a well-known epitaph: :Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, :To dig the dust enclosed here. :Blest be the man that spares these stones, :But cursed be he that moves my bones. Popular legend claims that unpublished works by Shakespeare may lie inside his tomb, but no-one has ever verified these claims, perhaps for fear of the curse included in the quoted epitaph. ==Reputation== ''Main articles:'' Shakespeare's reputation, Timeline of Shakespeare criticism Shakespeare's reputation has grown higher and higher since his own time, as illustrated in a timeline of Shakespeare criticism from the 17th to 20th century. During his lifetime and shortly after his death, Shakespeare was well-regarded, but not considered the supreme poet of his age. He was included in some contemporary lists of leading poets, but he lacked the stature of Edmund Spenser or Philip Sidney. It is more difficult to assess his contemporary reputation as a playwright: plays were considered ephemeral and even somewhat disreputable entertainments rather than serious literature. The fact that his plays were collected in an expensively produced folio in 1623 (the only precedent being Ben Jonson's ''Workes'' of 1616) and the fact that that folio went into another edition within nine years, indicate that he was held in unusually high regard for a playwright. [[Image:john_dryden.JPG|frame|right|John Dryden wrote about "the incomparable Shakespeare" in 1668.]] After the Interregnum (England) stage ban of 1642—1660, the new English Restoration theatre companies had the previous generation of playwrights as the mainstay of their repertory, most of all the phenomenally popular Beaumont and Fletcher, but also Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. Old plays were often adapted for the Restoration comedy, and where Shakespeare is concerned, this undertaking has seemed shockingly respectless to posterity. A notorious example is Nahum Tate's happy-ending ''King Lear'' of 1681, which held the stage until 1838. In the early 18th century, Shakespeare took over the lead on the English stage from Beaumont and Fletcher, never to relinquish it again. In literary criticism, by contrast, Shakespeare held a unique position from the start. The unbending French neo-classicism and the Classical unities were never strictly followed in England, and practically all critics gave the more "correct" Ben Jonson second place to "the incomparable Shakespeare" (John Dryden, 1668), the follower of nature, the untaught genius, the great realist of human character. The long-lived myth that the Romanticism were the first generation to truly appreciate Shakespeare and to prefer him to Ben Jonson is contradicted by accolades from Restoration and 18th-century writers such as John Dryden, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, and Samuel Johnson. The 18th century is also largely responsible for setting the text of Shakespeare's plays. Nicholas Rowe created the first truly scholarly text for the plays in 1709, and Edmund Malone ''Variorum Edition'' (published posthumously in 1821) is still the basis of modern editions of the plays. At the beginning of the 19th century, Romantic critics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge raised admiration for Shakespeare to adulation or bardolatry, in line with the Romantic reverence for the poet as prophet and genius. ==Identity and authorship== ''Main article:'' Shakespearean authorship As noted above, there is considerable historical evidence of the existence of ''a'' William Shakespeare who lived in both Stratford-upon-Avon and London. The vast majority of academics identify this Shakespeare as ''the'' Shakespeare. Over the years however, such figures as Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Sigmund Freud have expressed disbelief that the man from Stratford-upon-Avon, christened William Shaksper or Shakspere, actually produced the works attributed to him. This scepticism is variously grounded: the lack of a single book to be found in his otherwise detailed will, the circumscribed social, education and travel opportunities available to the young author that could have served to prepare him, the language of the works itself. Mainstream scholars consider all these supposed mysteries to be explicable. Many attribute this debate to the scarcity and ambiguity of many of the historical records of this period. Even the painting in the National_Portrait_Gallery,_London (''illustration above'') may not depict Shakespeare after all, and the well-known "Flower Portrait" at Stratford-upon-Avon was demonstrated (by analyzing pigment and discovering chrome yellow) to be an early 19th-century forgery [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4471515.stm]. Various fringe scholars have suggested writers such as Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and even Elizabeth I of England as alternative authors or co-authors for some or all of "Shakespeare's" work. Some of these claims necessarily rely on conspiracy theory to explain the lack of direct historical evidence for them, although advocates of alternative authors point to evidentiary gaps in the orthodox history. Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, an English nobleman and intimate of Queen Elizabeth, became the most prominent alternative candidate for authorship of the Shakespeare canon, after having been identified in the 1920s. Oxford partisans note the similaries between the Earl's life, and events and sentiments depicted in the plays and sonnets. Oxford was also contemporaneously identified as a poet and writer of some talent, and had the documented education, travel and life experience that one would ordinarily associate with works both as broad and detailed as Shakespeare. A related question in mainstream academia addresses whether Shakespeare himself wrote every word of his commonly-accepted plays, given that collaboration between dramatists routinely occurred in the Elizabethan theatre. Serious academic work continues to attempt to ascertain the authorship of plays and poems of the time, both those attributed to Shakespeare and others. See Shakespearean authorship#Academic authorship debates. ==Word Coinage== Shakespeare provided the first print citations for many of the words (ode, addiction, alligator) and phrases ("my mind's eye," "one fell swoop") that have become household words in our time. See: [http://www.rhymezone.com/r/gwic.cgi?Word=_&Path=shakespeare/coinages// Partial List of Shakespeare's Coinages] [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0419_040419_shakespeare.html National Geographic Article About Shakespeare's Coinages] ==Works== ===Canonical works=== ====The plays and their categories==== Shakespeare's plays first appeared in print as a series of Folios and Quartos (Shakespeare), and scholars, actors and directors continue to study and perform them extensively. They form an established part of the Western canon of literature. The plays are traditionally divided into tragedies, comedies and histories, following the logic of the original publications; however, modern criticism has labelled some of them "problem plays" as they elude easy categorization, or perhaps purposefully break generic conventions. In addition, Shakespeare's later comedies are commonly known as "Shakespeare's Late Romances". The following list gives the plays in the order and categorization of the 1623 First Folio (the first collected edition of the plays). A single asterisk indicates a play commonly classified as a 'romance' today; two asterisks indicates those generally accepted as 'problem plays' - though other comedies still occasion critical dispute. To see the plays in the order in which they were written, see Chronology of Shakespeare plays. *Shakespearean comedies ** ''The Tempest (play)'' * ** ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'' ** ''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' ** ''Measure for Measure'' ** ** ''The Comedy of Errors'' ** ''Much Ado About Nothing'' ** ''Love's Labour's Lost'' ** ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' ** ''The Merchant of Venice'' ** ** ''As You Like It'' ** ''Taming of the Shrew'' ** ''All's Well That Ends Well'' ** ''Twelfth Night (play)'' ** ''The Winter's Tale'' * ** ''Pericles, Prince of Tyre'' * (not included in the First Folio) ** ''The Two Noble Kinsmen'' * (not included in the First Folio) *Shakespearean histories ** ''King John'' ** ''Richard II (play)'' ** ''Henry IV, part 1'' ** ''Henry IV, part 2'' ** ''Henry V (play)'' ** ''Henry VI, part 1'' ** ''Henry VI, part 2'' ** ''Henry VI, part 3'' ** ''Richard III (play)'' ** ''Henry VIII (play)'' *Shakespearean tragedy ** ''Troilus and Cressida'' ** ** ''Coriolanus (play)'' ** ''Titus Andronicus'' ** ''Romeo and Juliet'' ** ''Timon of Athens'' ** ''Julius Caesar (play)'' ** ''Macbeth'' ** ''Hamlet'' ** ''King Lear'' ** ''Othello'' ** ''Antony and Cleopatra'' ** ''Cymbeline'' * (normally classed as a comedy today) ====Dramatic collaborations==== Like most playwrights of his period, Shakespeare did not always write alone and a number of his plays were collaborative, although the exact number is open to debate. Some of the following attributions, such as for ''The Two Noble Kinsmen'', have well-attested contemporary documentation; others, such as for ''Titus Andronicus'', remain more controversial, and are dependant on linguistic analysis by modern scholars. * ''Cardenio'', a lost play; contemporary reports say that Shakespeare collaborated on it with John Fletcher (playwright). * ''Henry VI, part 1'', possibly the work of a team of playwrights, whose identities we can only guess at. Some scholars argue that Shakespeare wrote less than 20% of the text. * ''Henry VIII (play)'', generally considered a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher (playwright). * ''Macbeth'': Thomas Middleton may have revised this tragedy in 1615 to incorporate extra musical sequences. * ''Measure for Measure'' may have undergone a light revision by Thomas Middleton at some point after its original composition. * ''Pericles Prince of Tyre'' may include the work of George Wilkins, either as collaborator, reviser, or revisee. * ''Timon of Athens'' may result from collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton; this might explain its incoherent plot and unusually cynical tone. * ''Titus Andronicus'' may be a collaboration with, or revision of, George Peele. * ''The Two Noble Kinsmen'', published in quarto in 1654 and attributed to John Fletcher (playwright) and William Shakespeare; each playwright appears to have written about half of the text. ====Lost plays by Shakespeare==== * ''Love's Labour's Won'' A late sixteenth-century writer, Francis Meres, and a scrap of paper (apparently from a bookseller), both list this title among Shakespeare's recent works, but no play of this title has survived. It may have become lost, or it may represent an alternate title of one of the plays listed above, such as ''Much Ado About Nothing'' or ''All's Well That Ends Well''. * ''Cardenio'', a late play by Shakespeare and John Fletcher (playwright), referred to in several documents, has not survived. It re-worked a tale in Cervantes' ''Don Quixote''. In 1727, Lewis Theobald produced a play he called ''Double Falshood'', which he claimed to have adapted from three manuscripts of a lost play by Shakespeare that he did not name. ''Double Falshood'' does re-work the Cardenio story, and modern scholarship generally agrees that ''Double Falshood'' represents all we have of the lost play. ====Poems==== Shakespeare's other literary works include: * ''Shakespeare's Sonnets''. * Longer poems: ** ''Venus and Adonis'' ** ''The Rape of Lucrece'' ** ''The Passionate Pilgrim'' ** ''The Phoenix and the Turtle'' ** ''A Lover's Complaint'' ===Apocrypha=== ====Plays possibly by Shakespeare==== Note: For a comprehensive account of plays possibly by Shakespeare, see the separate entry on the Shakespeare Apocrypha. *''Edward III (play)'' Some scholars have recently chosen to attribute this play to Shakespeare, based on the style of its verse. Others refuse to accept it, citing, among other reasons, the mediocre quality of the characters. If Shakespeare had involvement, he probably worked as a collaborator. *''Sir Thomas More (play)'', a collaborative work by several playwrights, possibly including Shakespeare. That Shakespeare had any part in this play remains uncertain. ====Other works possibly by Shakespeare==== *''A Funeral Elegy by W.S.'' (?). For a period many believed, on the basis of stylistic evidence researched by Donald Foster, that Shakespeare wrote a Funeral Elegy for William Peter. However most scholars, including Foster, now conclude that this evidence was flawed and that Shakespeare did not write the Elegy, which is more likely from the pen of John Ford (dramatist). *King James Version of the Bible Some people claim that Shakespeare assisted in the translation of the King James Bible, rewording or rewriting certain sections to make them more poetic; they argue that the poetic sensibility of certain sections of the King James Bible is very similar to the style of Shakespeare, and cite Psalm 46, where the word "shake" appears 46 words from the beginning, and "spear" 46 words from the end. This is a controversial notion and is not accepted by mainstream scholarship. ==Shakespeare and the textual problem== Unlike his contemporary Ben Jonson, Shakespeare did not have direct involvement in publishing his plays. The problem of identifying what Shakespeare ''actually'' wrote became a major concern for most modern editions. Textual corruptions stemming from printers' errors, misreadings by compositors or simply wrongly scanned lines from the source material litter the Bookbindings and the First Folio. Additionally, in an age before standardised spelling, Shakespeare often wrote a word several times in a different spelling, and this may have contributed to some of the transcribers' confusion. Modern editors have the task of reconstructing Shakespeare's original words and expurgating errors as far as possible. In some cases the textual solution presents few difficulties. In the case of ''Macbeth'' for example, scholars believe that someone (probably Thomas Middleton) adapted and shortened the original to produce the extant text published in the First Folio, but that remains our only authorised text. In others the text may have become manifestly corrupt or unreliable (''Pericles Prince of Tyre'' or ''Timon of Athens'') but no competing version exists. The modern editor can only regularise and correct erroneous readings that have survived into the printed versions. The textual problem can, however, become rather complicated. Modern scholarship now believes Shakespeare to have modified his plays through the years, sometimes leading to two existing versions of one play. To provide a modern text in such cases, editors must face the choice between the original first version and the later, revised, usually more theatrical version. In the past editors have resolved this problem by conflating the texts to provide what they believe to be a superior ''Ur-text'', but critics now argue that to provide a conflated text would run contrary to Shakespeare's intentions. In ''King Lear'' for example, two independent versions, each with their own textual integrity, exist in the Quarto and the Folio versions. Shakespeare's changes here extend from the merely local to the structural. Hence the ''Oxford Shakespeare'', published in 1986, provides two different versions of the play, each with respectable authority. The problem exists with at least four other Shakespearean plays (''Henry IV, part 1'', ''Hamlet'', ''Troilus and Cressida'', and ''Othello''). ==Specialist acting companies and theatres== * John Bell (actor)'s [http://www.bellshakespeare.com.au/ Bell Shakespeare Company] in Australia * Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, United States * Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom * Globe Theatre in London, United Kingdom * Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, Utah, United States * [http://www.coloradoshakes.org Colorado Shakespeare Festival] in Boulder, Colorado, United States * [http://www.shakespearedc.org/ The Shakespeare Theater] in Washington, DC, United States * Shakespeare by the Sea, various companies of this name in Canada and the USA * [http://www.ascnj.org/ Actors Shakespeare Company] in Jersey City, NJ, United States * Austin Shakespeare Festival in Austin, Texas, United States * Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery, Alabama, United States * Stratford Festival of Canada in Stratford, Ontario, Canada * Shakespeare Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California, United States * [http://www.shenandoahshakespeare.com/ Shenandoah Shakespeare], in Staunton, Virginia, USA (which has built a reconstruction of the Blackfriars Theatre) * The Chicago Shakespeare Theatre in Chicago, IL, United States * Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta, GA, United States * [http://www.shakespeare-company.org/ Shakespeare and Company], in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States ==Shakespeare in the movies== ''Main article:'' Shakespeare movies ==See also== * Elizabethan theatre * Shakespeare's contemporaries, such as Elizabeth I of England, Edward de Vere, Edmund Spenser * His fellow dramatists: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, John Fletcher (playwright), John Webster, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, John Marston, etc. * His godson, William Davenant, and son-in-law John Hall (physician). * Birmingham Central Library has a strong Shakespeare collection * The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC has the biggest Shakespeare collection * 2985 Shakespeare, named after the dramatist * List of archaic English words and their modern equivalents * World Almanac's Ten Most Influential People of the Second Millennium * David Bevington ==Further reading== * Stephen Greenblatt (2004), ''Will in the World'' (biography) ==External links== * [http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org Open Source Shakespeare] has Shakespeare's complete works, along with a full concordance and an advanced search engine. * [http://www.shakespearebot.com Talk to William Shakespeare] Have a real conversation with a William Shakespeare AI ChatterBot * [http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html British Library; original 93 copies in quarto] * [http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-3/online.htm Online Resources for Teaching Shakespeare] *[http://william-shakespeare.classic-literature.co.uk/ Online texts of Shakespeare's plays] * in various languages (includes spurious works) * University of Pennsylvania Online Books e-texts of [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/search?author=Shakespeare%2C+William the works of William Shakespeare] * [http://www.shakespeare-literature.com Shakespeare Literature], Chapter-indexed, searchable versions of Shakespeare's works. * [http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/ Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet] * [http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/william_shakespeare/the_sonnets/ Selected Sonnets] By William Shakespeare * [http://search.eb.com/shakespeare/index2.html Shakespeare and the Globe] from the Encyclopædia Britannica * [http://www.touchstone.bham.ac.uk/index.html Touchstone - UK Shakespeare collections] * [http://www.elook.org/literature/shakespeare/ Shakespeare works in online form and with a searchable database] * [http://shakespeare-1.com/doubtful/ Doubtful Works of William Shakespeare] Full text of plays which have been erroneously attributed to William Shakespeare * [http://shakespeare.nowheres.com/ The original shakespeare.com] * Shakespeare Discussion Groups Online * [http://wiredforbooks.org/shakespeare/ William Shakespeare's plays and poems in audio and video] ==Notes== Elizabethan English did not use standardised spelling; although Shakespeare's last name most frequently appears as ''Shakespeare'', it also frequently appears as ''Shakespere'', and sometimes as ''Shakespear'', ''Shaksper'' and even ''Shaxberd'' [http://www.shakespeareauthorship.com/name1.html#2]. 1564 births 1616 deaths English poets English Renaissance dramatists English dramatists and playwrights William Shakespeare Mysterious people li:William Shakespeare ms:William Shakespeare scn:William Shakespeare simple:William Shakespeare
==Play texts== I'm not sure I like having two separate pages for each play, one for the text and one for commentary. I'm experiementing with a different approach. Take a look at :Macbeth and let me know what you think. -- User:Stephen Gilbert :I just wanted to thank the folks who have undertaken to post Shakespeare's works on Wikipedia. Very cool. I didn't find any commentary for Hamlet, but I can see where the single-page format used by Midsummer Night's Dream could be more convenient for many readers. Maybe a good thing would be a Perl script that follows the links from a Wiki page out to a maximum depth, and puts the result into a single text file? Maybe this could also be done in CGI, as an additional Wiki feature. :-- User:WillWare ::In reading the :Christopher Marlowe talk page, and seeing yet another "who really wrote Shakespeare's plays" theory, I was wondering whether there's a good book on the subject. I've heard :Francis Bacon and :Ben Jonson credited as well. Would welcome suggestions for further reading. --User:RjLesch :::I would not expect to find the complete text of a literary work in an encyclopedia. Would it not be better to link to an external source? The task of making public domain text available online rests with Project Gutenberg. -- User:Bob Waller ::::You wouldn't find it in an encyclopedia because they're generally printed on paper -- space considerations apply. "Wikipedia is not paper". I'd say keep the texts in. --User:Paul Drye I say keep them too (especially since I spend a lot of time on :Macbeth), but I won't be adding any more in the near future. Until our software evolves to make better use of primary text, I think importing primary sources isn't particularly useful. -- User:Stephen Gilbert :::::Actually, now that I notice that there are all these plays in here, I'm rather ''strongly'' opposed to keeping them inside Wikipedia itself. I know Wikipedia isn't paper, but still, the complete works of Shakespeare would be how many megabytes? And if Shakespeare's stuff gets to be in here, we'd have to let Chaucer and Dickens and all the rest of his classical-literature public domain buddies in as well. This way lies madness; :Wikipedia is not Project Gutenberg! When I click a link to an encyclopedia article about Midsummer Night's Dream (to pick a random example), I want to find historical context and literary analyses and other such information. I don't need yet another unannotated copy of the plain text. - user:Bryan Derksen Yep. This is a fairly old discussion, and I've since come to the same opinion as you, Bryan. Storage space isn't a serious consideration (according to Jimbo, who provides it), but there's really no advantage to importing all the classics when a simple link to PG would do. --User:Stephen Gilbert :::::My own opinion has softened slightly too, after looking around a bit more. Entries like :Macbeth look quite nicely done, in fact; something like that is not unweildly to navigate and should lend itself well to annotations. I've got no problem with full texts being included in that manner, on the understanding that there should eventually be more encyclopedic annotations added to it over time. However, I've still followed through on my threat to delete Midsummer Night's Dream, since that was just an ugly unformatted text dump and had a copyright restriction placed on it besides (still don't know if scanning a public domain book is enough of a change to make it a freshly copyrightable "derivative work," though). Hope this isn't being too bold even for Wikipedia. :) -user:Bryan Derksen :::::Oh, I forgot to mention, even though storage space is not an issue, there's still the matter of people on slow or by-the-byte metered internet access clicking on a link to what they think will be a three or four page article and instead getting 200K of text coming down the line. I know broadband is becoming ever more popular, but there could be users browsing on a wireless connection or PDA or something like that who would be put off by such a surprise. Just another angle to the issue which came to mind. -user:Bryan Derksen ==Kings and plays== I'm not so happy about every king having a note tacked on about the Shakespearean play of the same name though. Perhaps people who want to add articles on these plays could call them ''Henry I by Shakespeare'', ''Macbeth by Shakespeare'',etc. -- User:Derek Ross :I'm fine by that, the only reason I added those notes was because the links already existed on the Shakespeare page. Feel free to remove them and change the links. -user:Bryan Derksen ==Moved authorship material== I altered the article to contain more info and more focus on Shakespeare. Material on the Shakespeare/Bacon/de Vere controversy has been moved to a new, more extensive Shakespeare Authorship article. User:Amf :I reverted the article back to an "assumes Shakespeare wrote things" standpoint in the biography. The alternate-authorship theory has an article all to itself, and a link from this one; that's sufficient. Most scholars believe Shakespeare wrote the pla,sys, and that should be reflected in the main article. User:-- April ::The alternate author article is pretty good, but making that a separate article does not relieve this article from the responsibility of not taking sides on the question. :I think you misunderstand the NPOV. Please note this excerpt: ''there is probably not a good reason to discuss some assumption on a given page, if an assumption is best discussed in depth on some other page. Some brief, unobtrusive pointer might be apropos, however. E.g., in an article about the evolutionary development of horses, we might have one brief sentence to the effect that some creationists do not believe that horses (or any other animals) underwent any evolution, and point the reader to the relevant article. If there is much specific argumentation on some particular point, it might be placed on a special page of its own. '' Thus, the separate page is completely appropriate, with the majority view in the main article. User:-- April ==Order of plays== In what order are these plays listed? Is it by chronology? There doesn't seem to be any order. By the way, I added ''Edward III'', which has been accepted as a Shakesperean play since the 90s. I'll work on an article about it tomorrow. -- User:Zoe =="Stradford"== The word "Stradford" appears twice in the article. Is this a typo ? Also the info about Hamnet's death and the daughters' names appear twice. I could not find a way to merge them. User:Jay 20:15, Sep 12, 2003 (UTC) ==Most influential claim== Removed claim about being the most influential after the Bible. That statement is just nonsensical, as written. --User:Robert Merkel 06:55, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC) ==Calendar Confusion== Right now we are editing biographical data about Shakespeare in Slovenian vrsion. At the article about Cervantes it is mentioned that the Gregorian date of Shakespeare's death was May 3rd. What about the April 26th as his baptism date, is this Julian (if yes, what is it Gregorian) or Gregorian calendar? --User:193.2.136.41 11:16, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC) :The Gregorian calendar was not adopted until 1582, and not in England until 1752, so Shakespeare's baptism was on April 26, 1564 in the Julian calendar, which corresponds to May 6, 1564 in the (Proleptic Gregorian Calendar) Gregorian calendar. User:Gdr 11:39, 2004 Apr 23 (UTC) :When the Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1582, twelve extra days had been added because the Julian calendar added an extra day every four years. The Gregorian Calendar has end of century years (100, 200, 300, 400, ...) being leap years only if they are evenly divisible by 400. That means 1600 and 2000 were leap years,but 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years. The Julian date will always be ahead of Gregorian, not vice versa. In 1752, one extra day had been added in 1700 which meant England had to lose thirteen days from the calendar. Light years are measured in Julian because of this glitch. :Prompted by the query, I removed the following paragraph: ::Coincidentally, he died on the same day as his Spanish counterpart Miguel de Cervantes. :This appears to be a case of calendar confusion. Cervantes died on April 23, 1616 and Shakespeare died ten days later, on May 3, 1616. User:Gdr 11:50, 2004 Apr 23 (UTC) == Baptised vs. Born == Sorry if this is because of lack of data or if it's been brought up before, but could we have born/died as opposed to baptised/died?, if not, provide info on the fact that we dont know the birthdate --User:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 17:27, 2004 Jun 28 (UTC) :See the first paragraph of section 1 of the article. User:Gdr 15:41, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC) == Nazi claims to Shakespeare? == In ''Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country'', the Klingon chancellor Gorkon says that "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon." According to an interview on the Star Trek 6 SE DVD this is in reference to the Nazis, who claimed Shakespeare as their own and made a similar claim. I have put this information in Star Trek cultural references#Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. However, after quite a bit of googling, I have not been able to find any sort of reliable source of how or when this claim would have been made. Do any of you Shakespeare-wikipedians know anything about this, and could you in that case perhaps write something about it or point me to a source where I can learn about it (so that I can write about it)? – User:Foolip 00:21, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) :German critics "claimed" Shakespeare long before Nazis were dreamed of. "Shakspere's poetry is, upon the whole, near akin to the German spirit: hence he is appreciated in Germany more than any other foreign poet, and regarded with almost native affection. -- SCHLEGEL, FREDERICK, 1815-59, Lectures on the History of Literature, pp. 274, 276. [http://www.geocities.com/litpageplus/shakmoul-gencomms.html]; other quotes here: [http://www.geocities.com/litpageplus/shakmoul-gencomms2.html]. Whether there's also an additional Nazi race theorist who actually said something akin to "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original German" I cannot say but would not doubt. - User:Nunh-huh 00:36, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
== Shakespere spelling ==
William Shakespere
I don't see why it should be spelt in that way when a)it's not mentioned in the other spellings in the introduction and b)it simple looks like a spelling mistake especially when the following sentence has it as ''Shakespeare''. User:Violetriga 20:10, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
:''"The vast majority of academics accept that the William Shakespere recorded as living in Stratford-upon-Avon, the actor Shakespeare and the playwright Shakespeare are one and the same person, but this subject has been hotly debated over the years."''
:Just read this bit which kinda helps the situation but is ''after'' the other part. I generally see it as Shakespeare and indeed that is the article title so I really think it should be either explained in a bit of a better way or always appearing as ''Shakespeare''. User:Violetriga 20:13, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
:: I agree; more importantly, it simply isn't true that 'Shakspere' was the normal spelling. I'll put a note in and a reference. User:The Singing Badger 22:07, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
:::Great work - think it's a lot better now. User:Violetriga 00:20, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
== sig pic ==
My old copy of the complete works, has a pic of what i always assumed to be the bards signiture, however it looks absolutley NOTHING like the picture of his sig that has been posted. anyone know anything else about this? where did the pic come from? User:The bellman 03:13, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC) update: after a google search, bbc http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/705522.stm says that this http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/705000/images/_705522_will150.jpg is the sig he used in his will (quite different to the one that we have pictured), this is also corrobarated by the (british) national archives. However oxford uni (among othere uni sites) use the sig we have pictured. And both of these sigs are different to the one that i have on my old copy of the complete works; Hence i think we need some kind of explanation with the pic saying this isnt the be all and end all of shakespeare sigs. i will do this presently. User:The bellman 03:37, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
update: done, if anyone can find where the sig pictured is originally from (ie. on which document that shakespeare wrote it is from) please add that to the pic title. User:The bellman 03:39, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
==Nazi claims to Shakespeare revisited==
I think the idea that the Nazis claimed Shakespeare as a German author may be originally a British WWII propaganda myth. Hmmm? Yes that's right: I think we may be dealing with an urban myth, stemming from a British patriotic myth, according to which the Nazis propagated a patriotic myth that Shakespeare was German. At any rate, there's a suggestive bit of dialogue in the 1941 film ''Pimpernel Smith'' (US reissue title ''Mister V''), where the fat Nazi general shouts that yorr Schakesperre vass really a Gerrman, and Leslie Howard replies "But you must admit that the English translations are excellent". Mmmm? I don't know that the story comes from this film, but it was well made and seen by a lot of people. Does anybody have anything better, like a reference to an actual Nazi claim?--[[User:Bishonen|User:Bishonen User_talk:Bishonen 01:56, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
==Shakespeare's reputation==
It's a funny coincidence that when I looked in at William Shakespeare a few days ago, thinking to perhaps make a start on a "Reputation" section, I found that the Singing Badger had done that very thing only about an hour earlier. So I've had a rethink, and have now written a section about Shakespeare's Restoration and 18th century rep, which turned out to be long, so I'm about to create breakout article Shakespeare's reputation. I just wanted to explain first that I'm taking part of the Singing Badger's edit along to the new page, and that I, uh, kind of contradict the rest of it. I think the unappreciated 18th-century Shakespeare is a bit of a Romantic invention, actually, along with the whole rule-bound 18th century. It's true that critics from Dryden to Johnson did compare Shakespeare and Jonson and said "Jonson is more regular", but they always added "Who cares?" Well, unless you count the Francophile neo-classical nut Thomas Rhymer, and somewhat John Dennis (only when he was having a bad day), but they really were marginalized on this. Dryden pulverized Rhymer, and I don't think anybody besides Dennis ever said a word for him after that.
I've added a short afterthought about Romantic criticism, too, not written from a lot of information, and I'll do a summary Reputation section on William Shakespeare some day, if nobody else gets in first. (I'm hoping someone will, especially since with one thing leading to another, I've sort of already spent time I didn't have.) I'm conscious that I've never contributed to William Shakespeare before, not being much good on Bill as such, and I was far from planning to start by diving in and deleting and contradicting somebody else's new paragraphs. :-( I hope nobody thinks I've been too bold, and that as many people as possible, especially the Singing Badger, will check out my new page and let me know what you think, and make any desired changes, please be bold.
Btw, I don't know if anybody read my comment about Nazi claims to Shakespeare above. What do you think, might it be appropriate to put something about that into Shakespeare's reputation, or too speculative?--[[User:Bishonen|User:Bishonen User_talk:Bishonen20:00, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
:: I think the new page is excellent. I added the 'Reputation' section myself because I thought it was a gap in the article, but I was hoping someone more knowledgeable would rewrite it.
::My only request is that you place a one-paragraph summary of your new article in the William Shakespeare page in order that the Shakespeare page can contain a concise summary of all major aspects of his career for those readers who just want the basics. User:The Singing Badger 21:08, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
:::Thanks. Sure, yes, I'm planning to put a short summary in place, I just haven't had time.--User:Bishonen User_talk:Bishonen 23:00, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
==Moving reputation info==
Hi, 68.118.61.219, thanks very much for the good info on Shakespeare's Renaissance reputation. I hope you won't be offended if I move it to Shakespeare's reputation, the "Main article" that is linked to just under the heading. The reputation section at William Shakespeare is supposed to briefly summarize Shakespeare's reputation, compare the posts just above. I'm about to move your contribution over there, where it will be a very delightful addition, and reinstitute a shorter version on William Shakespeare. Hope that's OK.--User:Bishonen User_talk:Bishonen16:34, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
==Reputation section==
Now that there is a "Main article" Shakespeare's reputation, the section at William Shakespeare is supposed to be a concise summary of that main article. It would be much appreciated if editors would contribute additional detail at Shakespeare's reputation rather than here. Thank you.--User:Bishonen User_talk:Bishonen 19:21, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
==Putting section "External links" on a diet==
I have removed four external links (out of five I've taken a look at): [http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/Shakespeare Birmingham Central Library Shakespeare Memorial Room] because it's broken, [http://www.allshakespeare.com/film/1345 Shakespeare's Reputation] because it's by no stretch about Shakespeare's reputation; and [http://willamette.edu/~blong/Shakespeare.html Short Articles on Shakespeare by Bill Long] and [http://shakespeare-quotations.blogspot.com Shakespeare Quotations] because they're just pretty poor resources. Seems to me the only way an external links section on a topic as hugely covered on the Internet as Shakespeare is going to be helpful to the reader is if it's highly selective, i. e. limited to extremely valuable Shakespeare web resources. I'll be taking a look at the rest of the external links in a little while, and post anything else I remove here, too, in case anybody disagrees.--User:Bishonen User_talk:Bishonen20:59, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
== Shakespeare article vandalism ==
This was posted on the redirect page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Skakespeare&oldid=9128363 Looks to me like they just want someone to do their homework..
==The Sonnets and his love life==
The more I delve into the Sonnets, the more admiration I have for this man who dared to publish his love poems to a youth in the face of public opprobrium from some (and probably hillarity from others). And I am equally surprised to see that their homoerotic nature is passed over so lightly in this article: the poems to the dark lady are mentioned first, though they be fewer and at the tail of the collection, and no mention is made of the revolutionary nature of the great majority of the sonnets, that are an eloquent testament of the power of his love for a youth about to enter adulthood. I do not think that in your apparent desire to leave his reputation "unbesmirched" you do the man - or your readers - justice. User:Haiduc 05:09, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
: Well, change it then. That's the whole point of Wikipedia: if something is wrong, you can make it better. Be bold. User:The Singing Badger 13:32, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:This is a matter of some debate, actually, and it's covered in the articles on his Shakespeare's sonnets and the Fair Lord. In addition, it is also under some debate as to whether he published the sonnets himself. Many in fact regard their publication as having been without his permission. In any event, it was quite common for sonnets to be a more "private" sort of poetic form at the time. Many went unpublished, even by otherwise famed poets.
:Even aside from all this is the problem of interpretation. Many readers in our time regard the "I" of poetry always to be the poet himself, yet serious study of Renaissance poetry (and poetry from many other periods, as well) shows that the "I" in a poem may be just as much a character as Hamlet or Falstaff. That is, poetry is not always autobiographical. --User:ASDamick 11:46, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
==Appeal for input at Shakespeare's reputation==
I'm stalled at Shakespeare's reputation, please help. I started the page, and have done up the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries as best I could (not that they can't stand further improvements, esp. the 19th), but the rest really needs more hands. Come to the party, bring 'em if you've got 'em! These are some underdeveloped or missing aspects:
# An international perspective.
# Elizabethan theatrical conditions.
# 20th century stage reputation and literary criticism. (On the other hand, please note Talk page suggestion for creating a separate article for Shakespeare movies. (Hint, hint, feel free to go create it.) Shakespeare's reputation was split off to prevent article William Shakespeare from growing into a monster, and should, on the same principle, not balloon up excessively itself, either. It's already quite long.)--User:Bishonen | User talk:Bishonen 11:19, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:: You want it, you got it: Shakespeare Movies! I copied titles & such from IMDB, so it's not very helpful... but at least you've got a lot of titles and dates. User:Alan Nicoll 21:11, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)
==Finest lyric poems?==
"... several of his plays contain songs that are among the finest lyric poems in English."
Isn't that rather POV? I can't think of any way to trim the POV while retaining the content, so I've brought it here for opinions. - User:Vague Rant | User talk:Vague Rant 04:38, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)
== Barogue Shakespeare? ==
Everyone knows theat renaissance England = Shakespeare. But I doubt that all of his works, namely the late ones, are to be called renaissance. They are so rich and complicated, so full of indirect light, that i cann´t resist to call them baroque instead. What´s your view? Is there any evidence, which could justify it?
:I don't think literary baroque is even a coherent concept. If you go to the Baroque page on Wikipedia, the literary and philosophy section is rather diffusely and arbitrarily written. I would also argue that someone like Francis Bacon or Ben Jonson (or Henry VIII!) is more representative of renaissance england than Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a product of the renaissance, but not a scholar who encouraged it, as those three were. User:68.118.61.219 13:14, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
== Biography ==
The first sentence of the biography is rather confusing, I would recommend not mentioning it where it is. There is already an Identity section anyway.
==The lead paragraph: Two versions==
It's interesting to look back on how this article has changed in the past year:
:William Shakespeare (born April 1564, baptised April 26, 1564, died April 23, 1616 Julian calendar, May 3, 1616 Gregorian calendar) is widely considered to have been the greatest writer the English language has ever known. As a playwright, he wrote not only some of the most powerful tragedies, but also many comedies. He also wrote 154 sonnets and several major poems, some of which are considered to be the most brilliant pieces of English literature ever written, because of Shakespeare's ability to rise beyond the narrative and describe the innermost and the most profound aspects of human nature. He is believed to have written most of his works between 1585 and 1613, although the exact dates and chronology of the plays attributed to him are not accurately known. [Jul 20, 2004]
:William Shakespeare─born April 1564; baptised April 26, 1564; died April 23, 1616 (O.S.), May 3, 1616 (N.S.)─has a reputation as the greatest of all writers in the English language. His ability to capture and convey the most profound aspects of human nature is regarded by many as unequalled, and the English Renaissance has often been called "the age of Shakespeare". He was among the few playwrights who have excelled in both tragedy and comedy and several of his plays contain songs that are among the finest lyric poems in English. He also wrote 154 sonnets, two narrative poems, and a handful of shorter poems. Shakespeare wrote his works between 1588 and 1613, although the exact dates and chronology of the plays attributed to him are often uncertain. [present]
Is the new lead really better? I don't particularly like the first two sentences though. The first ("has a reputation as the greatest") sounds a bit too matter-of-factish while "regarded by many as unequalled" is arguable (it's ''arguable'' that Shakespeare's grasp of psychology may have been matched but no one has the insight into so many range of characters...does "rarely matched" sound better). All in all some parts of the older lead sound better, IMHO. What do people think? User:Mandel 07:06, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
==External links on a diet again==
Google gives 16 million hits for Shakespeare. Please only add the best and most useful of these sites to the section External links! Or, alternatively, add the links you like, but please don't be offended if others remove them. The section will become useless if it's not kept lean and mean. I'm removing just-shakespeare.com and Shakespeare--The Lay Bible. User:Bishonen | User talk:Bishonen 01:37, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
** About the link "[http://www.rosicrucian.com/zineen/pamen041.htm Shakespeare -- The Lay Bible] Shakespeare's works vs. the Holy Bible; Study into the archetypal ideas concealed beneath the outer form and embodied within the history and biography, the fable and parable":
Reducing the 16 million hits of Goggle on Shakespeare to 272.000 hits when searching Google for [http://www.google.pt/search?hl=pt-PT&q=Shakespeare+and+the+Holy+Bible&meta= Shakespeare and the Holy Bible] you find this unique study comparing Shakespeare works and the Holy Bible, documented, with analysis into the author and the his works, with rational arguments (some things I agree may be controversial) and you tell «''Please only add the best''»??? Please re-think your decision (re-posting the link and description) and allow interested people in the study of Shakespeare to read a serious and original study:
«There appears to be ample justification for regarding Shakespeare as a Lay Bible when considering its many correspondences, inner and outer, with those of the Holy Bible. Both are bestsellers. Both comprise a collection of Books, the Holy Scriptures having sixty-six and Shakespeare thirty-seven. Both have their Apocrypha. Both have concordances cataloguing every word of the text. Both have called forth innumerable commentaries. Special libraries have been dedicated to their sole study. In dictionaries of quotations, the Bible and Shakespeare lead all other works. In Bartlett's volume of quotations, the New and Old Testament combined take up thirty-seven pages whereas Shakespeare requires no less than one hundred and twenty-two.»
Sincerely yours, --User:GalaazV 12:09, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
== A Lover's Complaint ==
The short poem "A Lover's Complaint" is almost certainly by Shakespeare.
http://william-shakespeare.info/william-shakespeare-poem-the-lovers-complaint.htm
It dates from about 1603, yet it is not mentioned in this article.
User:Ogg 12:31, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
== Coinages ==
I'd like to raise a minor quibble with the section on coinages: I think it should mention that Shakespeare is only the earliest ''written'' source for them and that ultimately we don't know whether he invented them or not. Many supposed coinages may simply be dialect phases that he picked up and made use of. I don't want to denigrate his originality for a keen ear may be as much a part of it as pure invention. In a present-day writer like Alan Bennett you will find many expressions you will find nowhere else, but he did not make them up, rather he has had the singular wit to recognise and preserve them.
==List of plays==
I've restructured the list because:
* It was claimed to be in chronological order but it wasn't.
* Romances and problem plays were not distinguished.
I've reordered the plays as listed in the First Folio, explained any ambiguities, differentiated the romances, and provided a link to Chronology of Shakespeare plays for an alternative. User:The Singing Badger 00:28, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
==External links on a diet III==
User:GalaazV protests above against my removal of the link http://www.rosicrucian.com/zineen/pamen041.htm and asks me to reconsider, on the ground of the many correspondences between Shakespeare's works and the Bible, please see "External links on a diet again" above. I have thought again, and my conclusion is the same: the fact that both Shakespeare's collected works and the Bible are famous, divided into books, have given rise to concordances and lots of commentary etc., simply proves that they are both, well, famous. I'm quite non-plussed by the claim that these things have any tendency to prove "inner correspondences": to my mind that's so obviously irrelevant that I don't quite know what to say. Concordances and commentaries and selling well are mere external appurtenances, they're the fortunes of the books in the world: they are not intrinsic parts of the books, and have nothing to do with their origins or with Rosicrucian commentaries. Please don't add your link to William Shakespeare, add it to Rosicrucian, where it will be relevant and welcome, and which is the reasonable place for people to look for it. I don't want to stop anybody reading it, I just want it to be in the right place. And again, everybody, thank you for adding only the very best Shakespeare resources to the external links section, please remember that there are 16 million Shakespeare sites out there! User:Bishonen | User talk:Bishonen 14:42, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:I would have to concur with User:Bishonen (its almost funny). Mind you the external links at Rosicrucian could do with a prune. There are far too many for much relevance to be retained. -- User:Solipsist 15:10, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
==Let's not change==
...parts into something that read merely the same.
:has a reputation as the greatest = is considered by many
:dramatist = playwright
I've restored them. I won't want every single lead to read the same in Wikipedia. "Is considered by many" is used way too often in Wikipedia. We must have variety. User:Mandel 16:26, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
[[Image:Shakespeare.jpg|thumb|125px|William Shakespeare in the wide-spread Chandos portrait.]] This is a category of articles relating to William Shakespeare, who is considered by many to be the greatest writer the English language has ever known. English Renaissance dramatists British dramatists and playwrights English poets Tudor people
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William Shakespeare
[[Image:Shakespeare.jpg|frame|right|William Shakespeare (National Portrait Gallery, London), in the famous Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed.]] William Shakespeare (April 1564; baptism April 26, 1564 (Old Style); – April 23, 1616 (O.S.), May 3, 1616 (New Style)), England poet and playwright, has a reputation as the greatest of all writers in the English language, as well as one of the world's pre-eminent dramatists. Shakespeare's literary achievement is not confined to his mastery of the poetic and dramatic form; his ability to capture and convey the most profound aspects of human nature is considered by many scholars to be unequalled, due to his understanding of the range and depth of human emotions. A colossal figure in world literature, Shakespeare's legacy and influence continues to be felt in all parts of the globe. He has been translated into every major living language, and his plays are continually performed all around the world. Shakespeare was among the very few playwrights who have excelled in both tragedy and comedy. Shakespeare wrote his works between 1588 and 1616, although the exact dates and Chronology of Shakespeare plays attributed to him are often uncertain. His prolific output is especially impressive in light of the fact that he lived only 52 years. Shakespeare's influence on the English-speaking world shows in the widespread use of [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Shakespeare quotations from Shakespearean plays], the List of titles of works based on Shakespearean phrases, and the many list of adaptations of Shakespearean plays of his works. ==Biography== Most historians agree that William Shakespeare—actor, playwright and poet—was one individual whose life can be clearly mapped out through the study of considerable historical evidence. Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in April 1564, the son of John Shakespeare, a glove-maker, and of Mary Arden, a Landed gentry daughter. His baptismal record dates to April 26 of that year. Because baptisms were performed within a few days of birth, tradition has settled on April 23 as his birthday. It provides a convenient symmetry: he died on that day in 1616, and, perhaps appropriately for a playwright commonly considered to be England's greatest, it is also the Feast Day of Saint George, patron saint of England. Shakespeare's father, prosperous at the time of William's birth, was prosecuted for participating in the black market in wool, and later lost his position as an alderman. Some evidence exists that both sides of the family had Roman Catholic sympathies. As the son of a prominent town official, William Shakespeare probably attended the Stratford grammar school, which may have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and literature. The quality of Elizabethian era grammar schools was uneven. It is presumed that the young Shakespeare attended this school, since he was entitled to, although this cannot be confirmed because the school's records have not survived. There is no evidence that his formal education extended beyond grammar school. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare's wife), eight years his senior, on November 28, 1582 at Temple Grafton, near Stratford. Two neighbors of Anne, Fulk Sandalls and John Richardson (witness), posted bond that there were no impediments to the marriage. There appears to have been some haste in arranging the ceremony: Anne was three months pregnant. After his marriage, William Shakespeare left few traces in the historical record until he appeared on the London literary scene. On May 26, 1583 Shakespeare's first child, Susanna, was baptised at Stratford. A son, Hamnet, and a daughter, Judith, were baptized soon after on February 2, 1585. By 1592 Shakespeare had enough of a reputation for Robert Greene to denounce him as "an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his ''Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde'', supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey." (The italicised line parodies the phrase, "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" which Shakespeare used in ''Henry VI, part 3''.) In 1596 Hamnet died; he was buried on August 11, 1596. Because of the similarities of their names, some suspect that his death was part of the inspiration behind ''Hamlet'' (''c''.1601), a reworking of an older, lost play. By 1598 Shakespeare had moved to the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and appeared at the top of a list of actors in ''Every man in his Humour'' written by Ben Jonson. Shakespeare became an actor, writer and finally part-owner of a playing company, known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men — the company took its name, like others of the period, from its aristocratic sponsor, the Lord Chamberlain. The group became popular enough that after the death of Elizabeth I and the coronation of James I of England (1603), the new monarch adopted the company and it became known as the King's Men. In 1604, Shakespeare acted as a matchmaker for his landlord's daughter. Legal documents from 1612, when the case was brought to trial, show that in 1604, Shakespeare was a tenant of Christopher Mountjoy, a Huguenot tire-maker (a maker of ornamental headdresses) in the northwest of London. Mountjoy's apprentice Stephen Belott wanted to marry Mountjoy's daughter. Shakespeare was enlisted as a go-between, to help negotiate the details of the dowry. On Shakespeare's assurances, the couple married. Eight years later, Belott sued his father-in-law for delivering only part of the dowry. Shakespeare was called to testify, but remembered little of the circumstances. Various documents recording legal affairs and commercial transactions show that Shakespeare grew rich enough during his stay in London years to buy a property in Blackfriars, London and own the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place. In 1609 his Shakespeare's Sonnets were published, love poems variously addressed: most to a youth (or Fair Lord); the remainder to a Dark Lady. Some regard the former set as being homoerotic, but that characterization remains in debate. Shakespeare retired in about 1611. His retirement was not entirely without controversy. He was drawn into a legal quarrel regarding the enclosure of common lands. (Enclosure enabled land to be converted to pasture for sheep, but removed it as a resource for the poor.) Shakespeare had a financial interest in the land, and to the chagrin of some, he took a neutral position, making sure only that his own income from the land was protected. In the last few weeks of Shakespeare's life, the man who was to marry his younger daughter Judith - a tavern-keeper named Thomas Quiney - was charged in the local church court with "fornication." A woman named Margaret Wheeler had given birth to a child and claimed it was Quiney's; she and the child both died soon after. Quiney was disgraced, and Shakespeare revised his will to ensure that Judith's interest in his estate was protected from possible malfeasance on Quiney's part. Shakespeare died in 1616, on April 23. He remained married to Anne until his death and was survived by his two daughters Susannah and Judith. Susannah married John Hall (physician), and later became the subject of a court case. Shakespeare is buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church (Stratford-upon-Avon) in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was granted the honor of burial in the chancel not on account of his fame as a playwright, but for purchasing a share of the tithe of the church for £440 (a considerable sum of money at the time). A bust of him placed by his family on the wall nearest his grave shows him posed as writing. Each year on his claimed birthday, a new quill pen is placed in the writing hand of the bust. It was common in his time for graves in the chancel of the church to later be emptied with the contents removed to a nearby charnel house as room in the chancel was required. As a result, his grave carries a well-known epitaph: :Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, :To dig the dust enclosed here. :Blest be the man that spares these stones, :But cursed be he that moves my bones. Popular legend claims that unpublished works by Shakespeare may lie inside his tomb, but no-one has ever verified these claims, perhaps for fear of the curse included in the quoted epitaph. ==Reputation== ''Main articles:'' Shakespeare's reputation, Timeline of Shakespeare criticism Shakespeare's reputation has grown higher and higher since his own time, as illustrated in a timeline of Shakespeare criticism from the 17th to 20th century. During his lifetime and shortly after his death, Shakespeare was well-regarded, but not considered the supreme poet of his age. He was included in some contemporary lists of leading poets, but he lacked the stature of Edmund Spenser or Philip Sidney. It is more difficult to assess his contemporary reputation as a playwright: plays were considered ephemeral and even somewhat disreputable entertainments rather than serious literature. The fact that his plays were collected in an expensively produced folio in 1623 (the only precedent being Ben Jonson's ''Workes'' of 1616) and the fact that that folio went into another edition within nine years, indicate that he was held in unusually high regard for a playwright. [[Image:john_dryden.JPG|frame|right|John Dryden wrote about "the incomparable Shakespeare" in 1668.]] After the Interregnum (England) stage ban of 1642—1660, the new English Restoration theatre companies had the previous generation of playwrights as the mainstay of their repertory, most of all the phenomenally popular Beaumont and Fletcher, but also Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. Old plays were often adapted for the Restoration comedy, and where Shakespeare is concerned, this undertaking has seemed shockingly respectless to posterity. A notorious example is Nahum Tate's happy-ending ''King Lear'' of 1681, which held the stage until 1838. In the early 18th century, Shakespeare took over the lead on the English stage from Beaumont and Fletcher, never to relinquish it again. In literary criticism, by contrast, Shakespeare held a unique position from the start. The unbending French neo-classicism and the Classical unities were never strictly followed in England, and practically all critics gave the more "correct" Ben Jonson second place to "the incomparable Shakespeare" (John Dryden, 1668), the follower of nature, the untaught genius, the great realist of human character. The long-lived myth that the Romanticism were the first generation to truly appreciate Shakespeare and to prefer him to Ben Jonson is contradicted by accolades from Restoration and 18th-century writers such as John Dryden, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, and Samuel Johnson. The 18th century is also largely responsible for setting the text of Shakespeare's plays. Nicholas Rowe created the first truly scholarly text for the plays in 1709, and Edmund Malone ''Variorum Edition'' (published posthumously in 1821) is still the basis of modern editions of the plays. At the beginning of the 19th century, Romantic critics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge raised admiration for Shakespeare to adulation or bardolatry, in line with the Romantic reverence for the poet as prophet and genius. ==Identity and authorship== ''Main article:'' Shakespearean authorship As noted above, there is considerable historical evidence of the existence of ''a'' William Shakespeare who lived in both Stratford-upon-Avon and London. The vast majority of academics identify this Shakespeare as ''the'' Shakespeare. Over the years however, such figures as Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Sigmund Freud have expressed disbelief that the man from Stratford-upon-Avon, christened William Shaksper or Shakspere, actually produced the works attributed to him. This scepticism is variously grounded: the lack of a single book to be found in his otherwise detailed will, the circumscribed social, education and travel opportunities available to the young author that could have served to prepare him, the language of the works itself. Mainstream scholars consider all these supposed mysteries to be explicable. Many attribute this debate to the scarcity and ambiguity of many of the historical records of this period. Even the painting in the National_Portrait_Gallery,_London (''illustration above'') may not depict Shakespeare after all, and the well-known "Flower Portrait" at Stratford-upon-Avon was demonstrated (by analyzing pigment and discovering chrome yellow) to be an early 19th-century forgery [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4471515.stm]. Various fringe scholars have suggested writers such as Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and even Elizabeth I of England as alternative authors or co-authors for some or all of "Shakespeare's" work. Some of these claims necessarily rely on conspiracy theory to explain the lack of direct historical evidence for them, although advocates of alternative authors point to evidentiary gaps in the orthodox history. Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, an English nobleman and intimate of Queen Elizabeth, became the most prominent alternative candidate for authorship of the Shakespeare canon, after having been identified in the 1920s. Oxford partisans note the similaries between the Earl's life, and events and sentiments depicted in the plays and sonnets. Oxford was also contemporaneously identified as a poet and writer of some talent, and had the documented education, travel and life experience that one would ordinarily associate with works both as broad and detailed as Shakespeare. A related question in mainstream academia addresses whether Shakespeare himself wrote every word of his commonly-accepted plays, given that collaboration between dramatists routinely occurred in the Elizabethan theatre. Serious academic work continues to attempt to ascertain the authorship of plays and poems of the time, both those attributed to Shakespeare and others. See Shakespearean authorship#Academic authorship debates. ==Word Coinage== Shakespeare provided the first print citations for many of the words (ode, addiction, alligator) and phrases ("my mind's eye," "one fell swoop") that have become household words in our time. See: [http://www.rhymezone.com/r/gwic.cgi?Word=_&Path=shakespeare/coinages// Partial List of Shakespeare's Coinages] [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0419_040419_shakespeare.html National Geographic Article About Shakespeare's Coinages] ==Works== ===Canonical works=== ====The plays and their categories==== Shakespeare's plays first appeared in print as a series of Folios and Quartos (Shakespeare), and scholars, actors and directors continue to study and perform them extensively. They form an established part of the Western canon of literature. The plays are traditionally divided into tragedies, comedies and histories, following the logic of the original publications; however, modern criticism has labelled some of them "problem plays" as they elude easy categorization, or perhaps purposefully break generic conventions. In addition, Shakespeare's later comedies are commonly known as "Shakespeare's Late Romances". The following list gives the plays in the order and categorization of the 1623 First Folio (the first collected edition of the plays). A single asterisk indicates a play commonly classified as a 'romance' today; two asterisks indicates those generally accepted as 'problem plays' - though other comedies still occasion critical dispute. To see the plays in the order in which they were written, see Chronology of Shakespeare plays. *Shakespearean comedies ** ''The Tempest (play)'' * ** ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'' ** ''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' ** ''Measure for Measure'' ** ** ''The Comedy of Errors'' ** ''Much Ado About Nothing'' ** ''Love's Labour's Lost'' ** ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' ** ''The Merchant of Venice'' ** ** ''As You Like It'' ** ''Taming of the Shrew'' ** ''All's Well That Ends Well'' ** ''Twelfth Night (play)'' ** ''The Winter's Tale'' * ** ''Pericles, Prince of Tyre'' * (not included in the First Folio) ** ''The Two Noble Kinsmen'' * (not included in the First Folio) *Shakespearean histories ** ''King John'' ** ''Richard II (play)'' ** ''Henry IV, part 1'' ** ''Henry IV, part 2'' ** ''Henry V (play)'' ** ''Henry VI, part 1'' ** ''Henry VI, part 2'' ** ''Henry VI, part 3'' ** ''Richard III (play)'' ** ''Henry VIII (play)'' *Shakespearean tragedy ** ''Troilus and Cressida'' ** ** ''Coriolanus (play)'' ** ''Titus Andronicus'' ** ''Romeo and Juliet'' ** ''Timon of Athens'' ** ''Julius Caesar (play)'' ** ''Macbeth'' ** ''Hamlet'' ** ''King Lear'' ** ''Othello'' ** ''Antony and Cleopatra'' ** ''Cymbeline'' * (normally classed as a comedy today) ====Dramatic collaborations==== Like most playwrights of his period, Shakespeare did not always write alone and a number of his plays were collaborative, although the exact number is open to debate. Some of the following attributions, such as for ''The Two Noble Kinsmen'', have well-attested contemporary documentation; others, such as for ''Titus Andronicus'', remain more controversial, and are dependant on linguistic analysis by modern scholars. * ''Cardenio'', a lost play; contemporary reports say that Shakespeare collaborated on it with John Fletcher (playwright). * ''Henry VI, part 1'', possibly the work of a team of playwrights, whose identities we can only guess at. Some scholars argue that Shakespeare wrote less than 20% of the text. * ''Henry VIII (play)'', generally considered a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher (playwright). * ''Macbeth'': Thomas Middleton may have revised this tragedy in 1615 to incorporate extra musical sequences. * ''Measure for Measure'' may have undergone a light revision by Thomas Middleton at some point after its original composition. * ''Pericles Prince of Tyre'' may include the work of George Wilkins, either as collaborator, reviser, or revisee. * ''Timon of Athens'' may result from collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton; this might explain its incoherent plot and unusually cynical tone. * ''Titus Andronicus'' may be a collaboration with, or revision of, George Peele. * ''The Two Noble Kinsmen'', published in quarto in 1654 and attributed to John Fletcher (playwright) and William Shakespeare; each playwright appears to have written about half of the text. ====Lost plays by Shakespeare==== * ''Love's Labour's Won'' A late sixteenth-century writer, Francis Meres, and a scrap of paper (apparently from a bookseller), both list this title among Shakespeare's recent works, but no play of this title has survived. It may have become lost, or it may represent an alternate title of one of the plays listed above, such as ''Much Ado About Nothing'' or ''All's Well That Ends Well''. * ''Cardenio'', a late play by Shakespeare and John Fletcher (playwright), referred to in several documents, has not survived. It re-worked a tale in Cervantes' ''Don Quixote''. In 1727, Lewis Theobald produced a play he called ''Double Falshood'', which he claimed to have adapted from three manuscripts of a lost play by Shakespeare that he did not name. ''Double Falshood'' does re-work the Cardenio story, and modern scholarship generally agrees that ''Double Falshood'' represents all we have of the lost play. ====Poems==== Shakespeare's other literary works include: * ''Shakespeare's Sonnets''. * Longer poems: ** ''Venus and Adonis'' ** ''The Rape of Lucrece'' ** ''The Passionate Pilgrim'' ** ''The Phoenix and the Turtle'' ** ''A Lover's Complaint'' ===Apocrypha=== ====Plays possibly by Shakespeare==== Note: For a comprehensive account of plays possibly by Shakespeare, see the separate entry on the Shakespeare Apocrypha. *''Edward III (play)'' Some scholars have recently chosen to attribute this play to Shakespeare, based on the style of its verse. Others refuse to accept it, citing, among other reasons, the mediocre quality of the characters. If Shakespeare had involvement, he probably worked as a collaborator. *''Sir Thomas More (play)'', a collaborative work by several playwrights, possibly including Shakespeare. That Shakespeare had any part in this play remains uncertain. ====Other works possibly by Shakespeare==== *''A Funeral Elegy by W.S.'' (?). For a period many believed, on the basis of stylistic evidence researched by Donald Foster, that Shakespeare wrote a Funeral Elegy for William Peter. However most scholars, including Foster, now conclude that this evidence was flawed and that Shakespeare did not write the Elegy, which is more likely from the pen of John Ford (dramatist). *King James Version of the Bible Some people claim that Shakespeare assisted in the translation of the King James Bible, rewording or rewriting certain sections to make them more poetic; they argue that the poetic sensibility of certain sections of the King James Bible is very similar to the style of Shakespeare, and cite Psalm 46, where the word "shake" appears 46 words from the beginning, and "spear" 46 words from the end. This is a controversial notion and is not accepted by mainstream scholarship. ==Shakespeare and the textual problem== Unlike his contemporary Ben Jonson, Shakespeare did not have direct involvement in publishing his plays. The problem of identifying what Shakespeare ''actually'' wrote became a major concern for most modern editions. Textual corruptions stemming from printers' errors, misreadings by compositors or simply wrongly scanned lines from the source material litter the Bookbindings and the First Folio. Additionally, in an age before standardised spelling, Shakespeare often wrote a word several times in a different spelling, and this may have contributed to some of the transcribers' confusion. Modern editors have the task of reconstructing Shakespeare's original words and expurgating errors as far as possible. In some cases the textual solution presents few difficulties. In the case of ''Macbeth'' for example, scholars believe that someone (probably Thomas Middleton) adapted and shortened the original to produce the extant text published in the First Folio, but that remains our only authorised text. In others the text may have become manifestly corrupt or unreliable (''Pericles Prince of Tyre'' or ''Timon of Athens'') but no competing version exists. The modern editor can only regularise and correct erroneous readings that have survived into the printed versions. The textual problem can, however, become rather complicated. Modern scholarship now believes Shakespeare to have modified his plays through the years, sometimes leading to two existing versions of one play. To provide a modern text in such cases, editors must face the choice between the original first version and the later, revised, usually more theatrical version. In the past editors have resolved this problem by conflating the texts to provide what they believe to be a superior ''Ur-text'', but critics now argue that to provide a conflated text would run contrary to Shakespeare's intentions. In ''King Lear'' for example, two independent versions, each with their own textual integrity, exist in the Quarto and the Folio versions. Shakespeare's changes here extend from the merely local to the structural. Hence the ''Oxford Shakespeare'', published in 1986, provides two different versions of the play, each with respectable authority. The problem exists with at least four other Shakespearean plays (''Henry IV, part 1'', ''Hamlet'', ''Troilus and Cressida'', and ''Othello''). ==Specialist acting companies and theatres== * John Bell (actor)'s [http://www.bellshakespeare.com.au/ Bell Shakespeare Company] in Australia * Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, United States * Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom * Globe Theatre in London, United Kingdom * Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, Utah, United States * [http://www.coloradoshakes.org Colorado Shakespeare Festival] in Boulder, Colorado, United States * [http://www.shakespearedc.org/ The Shakespeare Theater] in Washington, DC, United States * Shakespeare by the Sea, various companies of this name in Canada and the USA * [http://www.ascnj.org/ Actors Shakespeare Company] in Jersey City, NJ, United States * Austin Shakespeare Festival in Austin, Texas, United States * Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery, Alabama, United States * Stratford Festival of Canada in Stratford, Ontario, Canada * Shakespeare Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California, United States * [http://www.shenandoahshakespeare.com/ Shenandoah Shakespeare], in Staunton, Virginia, USA (which has built a reconstruction of the Blackfriars Theatre) * The Chicago Shakespeare Theatre in Chicago, IL, United States * Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta, GA, United States * [http://www.shakespeare-company.org/ Shakespeare and Company], in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States ==Shakespeare in the movies== ''Main article:'' Shakespeare movies ==See also== * Elizabethan theatre * Shakespeare's contemporaries, such as Elizabeth I of England, Edward de Vere, Edmund Spenser * His fellow dramatists: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, John Fletcher (playwright), John Webster, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, John Marston, etc. * His godson, William Davenant, and son-in-law John Hall (physician). * Birmingham Central Library has a strong Shakespeare collection * The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC has the biggest Shakespeare collection * 2985 Shakespeare, named after the dramatist * List of archaic English words and their modern equivalents * World Almanac's Ten Most Influential People of the Second Millennium * David Bevington ==Further reading== * Stephen Greenblatt (2004), ''Will in the World'' (biography) ==External links== * [http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org Open Source Shakespeare] has Shakespeare's complete works, along with a full concordance and an advanced search engine. * [http://www.shakespearebot.com Talk to William Shakespeare] Have a real conversation with a William Shakespeare AI ChatterBot * [http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html British Library; original 93 copies in quarto] * [http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-3/online.htm Online Resources for Teaching Shakespeare] *[http://william-shakespeare.classic-literature.co.uk/ Online texts of Shakespeare's plays] * in various languages (includes spurious works) * University of Pennsylvania Online Books e-texts of [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/search?author=Shakespeare%2C+William the works of William Shakespeare] * [http://www.shakespeare-literature.com Shakespeare Literature], Chapter-indexed, searchable versions of Shakespeare's works. * [http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/ Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet] * [http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/william_shakespeare/the_sonnets/ Selected Sonnets] By William Shakespeare * [http://search.eb.com/shakespeare/index2.html Shakespeare and the Globe] from the Encyclopædia Britannica * [http://www.touchstone.bham.ac.uk/index.html Touchstone - UK Shakespeare collections] * [http://www.elook.org/literature/shakespeare/ Shakespeare works in online form and with a searchable database] * [http://shakespeare-1.com/doubtful/ Doubtful Works of William Shakespeare] Full text of plays which have been erroneously attributed to William Shakespeare * [http://shakespeare.nowheres.com/ The original shakespeare.com] * Shakespeare Discussion Groups Online * [http://wiredforbooks.org/shakespeare/ William Shakespeare's plays and poems in audio and video] ==Notes== Elizabethan English did not use standardised spelling; although Shakespeare's last name most frequently appears as ''Shakespeare'', it also frequently appears as ''Shakespere'', and sometimes as ''Shakespear'', ''Shaksper'' and even ''Shaxberd'' [http://www.shakespeareauthorship.com/name1.html#2]. 1564 births 1616 deaths English poets English Renaissance dramatists English dramatists and playwrights William Shakespeare Mysterious people li:William Shakespeare ms:William Shakespeare scn:William Shakespeare simple:William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
==Play texts== I'm not sure I like having two separate pages for each play, one for the text and one for commentary. I'm experiementing with a different approach. Take a look at :Macbeth and let me know what you think. -- User:Stephen Gilbert :I just wanted to thank the folks who have undertaken to post Shakespeare's works on Wikipedia. Very cool. I didn't find any commentary for Hamlet, but I can see where the single-page format used by Midsummer Night's Dream could be more convenient for many readers. Maybe a good thing would be a Perl script that follows the links from a Wiki page out to a maximum depth, and puts the result into a single text file? Maybe this could also be done in CGI, as an additional Wiki feature. :-- User:WillWare ::In reading the :Christopher Marlowe talk page, and seeing yet another "who really wrote Shakespeare's plays" theory, I was wondering whether there's a good book on the subject. I've heard :Francis Bacon and :Ben Jonson credited as well. Would welcome suggestions for further reading. --User:RjLesch :::I would not expect to find the complete text of a literary work in an encyclopedia. Would it not be better to link to an external source? The task of making public domain text available online rests with Project Gutenberg. -- User:Bob Waller ::::You wouldn't find it in an encyclopedia because they're generally printed on paper -- space considerations apply. "Wikipedia is not paper". I'd say keep the texts in. --User:Paul Drye I say keep them too (especially since I spend a lot of time on :Macbeth), but I won't be adding any more in the near future. Until our software evolves to make better use of primary text, I think importing primary sources isn't particularly useful. -- User:Stephen Gilbert :::::Actually, now that I notice that there are all these plays in here, I'm rather ''strongly'' opposed to keeping them inside Wikipedia itself. I know Wikipedia isn't paper, but still, the complete works of Shakespeare would be how many megabytes? And if Shakespeare's stuff gets to be in here, we'd have to let Chaucer and Dickens and all the rest of his classical-literature public domain buddies in as well. This way lies madness; :Wikipedia is not Project Gutenberg! When I click a link to an encyclopedia article about Midsummer Night's Dream (to pick a random example), I want to find historical context and literary analyses and other such information. I don't need yet another unannotated copy of the plain text. - user:Bryan Derksen Yep. This is a fairly old discussion, and I've since come to the same opinion as you, Bryan. Storage space isn't a serious consideration (according to Jimbo, who provides it), but there's really no advantage to importing all the classics when a simple link to PG would do. --User:Stephen Gilbert :::::My own opinion has softened slightly too, after looking around a bit more. Entries like :Macbeth look quite nicely done, in fact; something like that is not unweildly to navigate and should lend itself well to annotations. I've got no problem with full texts being included in that manner, on the understanding that there should eventually be more encyclopedic annotations added to it over time. However, I've still followed through on my threat to delete Midsummer Night's Dream, since that was just an ugly unformatted text dump and had a copyright restriction placed on it besides (still don't know if scanning a public domain book is enough of a change to make it a freshly copyrightable "derivative work," though). Hope this isn't being too bold even for Wikipedia. :) -user:Bryan Derksen :::::Oh, I forgot to mention, even though storage space is not an issue, there's still the matter of people on slow or by-the-byte metered internet access clicking on a link to what they think will be a three or four page article and instead getting 200K of text coming down the line. I know broadband is becoming ever more popular, but there could be users browsing on a wireless connection or PDA or something like that who would be put off by such a surprise. Just another angle to the issue which came to mind. -user:Bryan Derksen ==Kings and plays== I'm not so happy about every king having a note tacked on about the Shakespearean play of the same name though. Perhaps people who want to add articles on these plays could call them ''Henry I by Shakespeare'', ''Macbeth by Shakespeare'',etc. -- User:Derek Ross :I'm fine by that, the only reason I added those notes was because the links already existed on the Shakespeare page. Feel free to remove them and change the links. -user:Bryan Derksen ==Moved authorship material== I altered the article to contain more info and more focus on Shakespeare. Material on the Shakespeare/Bacon/de Vere controversy has been moved to a new, more extensive Shakespeare Authorship article. User:Amf :I reverted the article back to an "assumes Shakespeare wrote things" standpoint in the biography. The alternate-authorship theory has an article all to itself, and a link from this one; that's sufficient. Most scholars believe Shakespeare wrote the pla,sys, and that should be reflected in the main article. User:-- April ::The alternate author article is pretty good, but making that a separate article does not relieve this article from the responsibility of not taking sides on the question. :I think you misunderstand the NPOV. Please note this excerpt: ''there is probably not a good reason to discuss some assumption on a given page, if an assumption is best discussed in depth on some other page. Some brief, unobtrusive pointer might be apropos, however. E.g., in an article about the evolutionary development of horses, we might have one brief sentence to the effect that some creationists do not believe that horses (or any other animals) underwent any evolution, and point the reader to the relevant article. If there is much specific argumentation on some particular point, it might be placed on a special page of its own. '' Thus, the separate page is completely appropriate, with the majority view in the main article. User:-- April ==Order of plays== In what order are these plays listed? Is it by chronology? There doesn't seem to be any order. By the way, I added ''Edward III'', which has been accepted as a Shakesperean play since the 90s. I'll work on an article about it tomorrow. -- User:Zoe =="Stradford"== The word "Stradford" appears twice in the article. Is this a typo ? Also the info about Hamnet's death and the daughters' names appear twice. I could not find a way to merge them. User:Jay 20:15, Sep 12, 2003 (UTC) ==Most influential claim== Removed claim about being the most influential after the Bible. That statement is just nonsensical, as written. --User:Robert Merkel 06:55, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC) ==Calendar Confusion== Right now we are editing biographical data about Shakespeare in Slovenian vrsion. At the article about Cervantes it is mentioned that the Gregorian date of Shakespeare's death was May 3rd. What about the April 26th as his baptism date, is this Julian (if yes, what is it Gregorian) or Gregorian calendar? --User:193.2.136.41 11:16, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC) :The Gregorian calendar was not adopted until 1582, and not in England until 1752, so Shakespeare's baptism was on April 26, 1564 in the Julian calendar, which corresponds to May 6, 1564 in the (Proleptic Gregorian Calendar) Gregorian calendar. User:Gdr 11:39, 2004 Apr 23 (UTC) :When the Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1582, twelve extra days had been added because the Julian calendar added an extra day every four years. The Gregorian Calendar has end of century years (100, 200, 300, 400, ...) being leap years only if they are evenly divisible by 400. That means 1600 and 2000 were leap years,but 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years. The Julian date will always be ahead of Gregorian, not vice versa. In 1752, one extra day had been added in 1700 which meant England had to lose thirteen days from the calendar. Light years are measured in Julian because of this glitch. :Prompted by the query, I removed the following paragraph: ::Coincidentally, he died on the same day as his Spanish counterpart Miguel de Cervantes. :This appears to be a case of calendar confusion. Cervantes died on April 23, 1616 and Shakespeare died ten days later, on May 3, 1616. User:Gdr 11:50, 2004 Apr 23 (UTC) == Baptised vs. Born == Sorry if this is because of lack of data or if it's been brought up before, but could we have born/died as opposed to baptised/died?, if not, provide info on the fact that we dont know the birthdate --User:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 17:27, 2004 Jun 28 (UTC) :See the first paragraph of section 1 of the article. User:Gdr 15:41, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC) == Nazi claims to Shakespeare? == In ''Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country'', the Klingon chancellor Gorkon says that "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon." According to an interview on the Star Trek 6 SE DVD this is in reference to the Nazis, who claimed Shakespeare as their own and made a similar claim. I have put this information in Star Trek cultural references#Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. However, after quite a bit of googling, I have not been able to find any sort of reliable source of how or when this claim would have been made. Do any of you Shakespeare-wikipedians know anything about this, and could you in that case perhaps write something about it or point me to a source where I can learn about it (so that I can write about it)? – User:Foolip 00:21, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) :German critics "claimed" Shakespeare long before Nazis were dreamed of. "Shakspere's poetry is, upon the whole, near akin to the German spirit: hence he is appreciated in Germany more than any other foreign poet, and regarded with almost native affection. -- SCHLEGEL, FREDERICK, 1815-59, Lectures on the History of Literature, pp. 274, 276. [http://www.geocities.com/litpageplus/shakmoul-gencomms.html]; other quotes here: [http://www.geocities.com/litpageplus/shakmoul-gencomms2.html]. Whether there's also an additional Nazi race theorist who actually said something akin to "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original German" I cannot say but would not doubt
William Shakespeare
[[Image:Shakespeare.jpg|thumb|125px|William Shakespeare in the wide-spread Chandos portrait.]] This is a category of articles relating to William Shakespeare, who is considered by many to be the greatest writer the English language has ever known. English Renaissance dramatists British dramatists and playwrights English poets Tudor people
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