Around 1860, while his work culminated in Les Miserables, Victor Hugo wrote from exile: "Shakespeare does not have the monument that England owes." At this point in the nineteenth century, the work of today is considered the greatest playwright of all time was ignored by most and despised by the exquisite. The words of the French patriarch fell like a hammer on the British patriotic consciousness, dozens of monuments to Shakespeare was erected immediately.
At present, the volume of his complete works is as indispensable as the Bible in Anglo households, Hamlet, Othello or Macbeth have become symbols and their author is a classic on the running rivers of ink. Nevertheless, William Shakespeare remains as a man, a mystery.
William Shakespeare
Large gaps, a bunch of apocryphal stories and some scattered data up his biography. Do not even know the exact date of his birth. This would lead in the last century to a strange work of apparent erudition, starring the "antiestratfordianos", aiming to spread the evil suspicion that Shakespeare's plays were not written by the historical character of the same name, but by others which served as a screen. Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, Walter Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth I and even the bard's own wife, Anne Hathaway, were nominated by the speculators in this fictional Shakespeare scholars. According to another theory, his friend the playwright Christopher Marlowe would have been the real author, he had died at twenty-nine, in a tavern brawl as previously believed, but managed to flee abroad and from there sent their writings to Shakespeare.
Some fans believed cryptography find in his works, the key to revealing the name of the real perpetrators. In line with the covers theater, Shakespeare was divided into the pseudo-Shakespeare Shakespeare and the Rogue. Under this work of pure entertainment encouraged a curious snobbishness, a man of humble and few studies could not have written such works of greatness.
Fortunately, with the passing of the years, no serious critic, less devoted to insulting to discern, more concerned with the brightness of others than himself, has signed these witty anecdotes. But the many rebuttals that have been invalidated, none more compelling, apart from the few but incontrovertible historical data, as the testimony of the work itself, because through his style and unmistakable talent we can find the man.
The origins
In the sixth year of the reign of Elizabeth I of England, April 26, 1564, William Shakespeare was baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, a village in Warwickshire that was no more than two thousand inhabitants, proud of his church all , school, and its bridge over the River. One of these was John Shakespeare, wool merchant, butcher and landlord who became a councilman, treasurer and mayor. From his union with Mary Arden, Miss a distinguished family, five children were born, the third of whom was named William. There is no record of the day of his birth, but his birthday is traditionally celebrated on April 23, perhaps to find some design or fatality at the time, since death came, fifty-two years later, in the same day.
So it was not as humble as his cradle ensures adverse criticism or his studies as rare as supposed. Although Ben Johnson, playwright and friend of the playwright, exaggerated claims that "knew little Latin and less Greek", the truth is that Shakespeare learned the language of Virgil in the Stratford school, even as unenthusiastic student, both ends confirm that their works. The mother came from an old and wealthy Catholic family, and it is very possible that the poet, along with his two brothers and a sister, was educated in the faith of his mother.
Shakespeare's Birthplace
However, should not have to spend much time in classrooms, because when he was thirteen years his father's fortune vanished and the young man had to be placed as a dependent of carnage. At fifteen years, allegedly was already a skilled butcher who slaughtered calves with pomp, that is, delivering funeral and flowery speeches. He also painted lazy wandering along the banks of Avon, scribbling verses, given to the study of botanical minutiae or competing with the toughest drinking and napping after the foot of the woods of Arden.
At eighteen he was married to Anne Hathaway, a village nine years older than he whose pregnancy was well advanced. Five months after her wedding had a daughter, Susan, and then the twins Judith and Hamnet. But Shakespeare was not going to be an ideal husband and she was so over the clothes to keep him at her side for long. The poet's interests led him down other paths rather than road home. He kept writing poetry, attending performances that hypnotized the companies offered strolling players in the Hall of Guilds of Stratford and did not miss the masquerades, fireworks, parades and theatrical performances that were held the queen visits the castle Kenilworth, home to one of their favorites.
According to legend, in 1586 was caught red-handed poaching. Nicholas Rowe, his first biographer, writes: "Unfortunately too often in young people, Shakespeare was a bad company, and some stealing deer led him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. Accordingly, this gentleman prosecuted Shakespeare, who, in revenge, wrote a satire against him. This maybe the first test of his muse was so aggressive that the gentleman redoubled their persecution in such terms that Shakespeare forced to leave business and his family take refuge in London. " But it is more plausible that the virus the theater would encourage him to join some entertainment from comedians nomads passing through Stratford, leaving children and wife and sliced by both dark and splendid capital of the kingdom.
Shakespeare in the theater city
From that moment there is a gap in the life of Shakespeare, a period that biographers call "the dark years." Not reappear before our eyes until 1593, when it is already a famous playwright and one of the most popular in London. Meanwhile attributed to the following jobs: trainee lawyer, schoolteacher, soldier of fortune, guardian of noble family, and even horse guard at the door of the theater. It would be several months until he could join them and get between racks, first as stage manager or servant of the pointer, then as a stooge, then as actor recognized and, finally, as a writer of great and deserved reputation.
Puritan prohibited by a city council that considered a hotbed of vice, the theater had been installed across the Thames, outside the jurisdiction of the city and the discomfort of his deputies. Curtain, The Globe, The Swan or Blackfriars were not very different from the pens where Hispanics represented Lope de Vega. The scenery was extremely simple: two crossed swords in the background of the stage meant a battle, an actor was still dusty plaster a wall, and, separating the fingers, the wall was cracked, a man loaded with firewood, carrying a lantern and followed by a dog, was the moon.
The costume was improvised in a corner of the scene half hidden by tattered curtains, through which the audience saw the actors painting their cheeks with brick powder and blackened charred cork mustache. While actors gesticulating and declaiming, the noblemen and officers, arranged at the same level on the platform, I puzzled with their laughter, their cries and their games of cards, ready to show off their ingenuity and improvising replicas spoil the representation if the work is not pleased them. Around the courtyard, the gallery hosting the rich ladies and gentlemen. And at the bottom of "the pot", wrapped in shadows, sitting on the floor between pitchers of beer and smoke pipe, saw "the hideous", the smelly people.
In any case, it was a public with more imagination than the current or at least good knowledge of theatrical conventions imposed by the shortage or the law. Inspired by the harsh primitivism of Deuteronomy, legislators Puritans forbade the presence of women in the scene. The Juliets, Desdemona and Ophelia of Shakespeare were embodied by handsome young high-pitched voice, promoted to Hamlets, Macbeths and Othello as his beard was breaking them and change their voice. Such was the theater in which Shakespeare began his acting career.
Fertility
By 1589, Shakespeare began to write. He did it in sheets, like most poets of the time. The players learned and rehearsed their roles in a hurry and reading in the original, of which no copies were removed for lack of time, hence there are no manuscripts. As each evening offered a different work, the code had to be very varied. If the work failed again and not staged. If you liked was replenished every two or three days. A work of great success, like all of Shakespeare, could represent about ten or twelve times in a month. Some players were able to improvise from a brief argument, the dialogues of the play as the action unfolded. Shakespeare never needed them.
Shakespeare's portrait and signature
Spurred by the rapid pace and spurred by his genius, Shakespeare began to produce two plays a year. In its first stage, Shakespeare followed the line of these dramas swashbuckling Elizabethan. The years (between 1589 and 1592) are works which opens its national chronicle, historical dramas: the first three parts of Henry VI and the story of who killed him, Richard III . The comedy of errors based on a matter of Plautus, make your side of burlesque, and Titus Andronicus , a tragedy inspired by Seneca barbarous, his first work of Roman theme.
During the plague in London in 1592 (which the Puritans took to keep the theaters closed until 1594), Shakespeare retired to Stratford and developed his poetic gifts. In 1593 he published Venus and Adonis , and in 1594 the rape of Lucretia , two long poems dedicated to his young patron, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who is usually associated with one of the protagonists of the famous sonnets. As contained in documents in 1594 and was a leading member of the best company at the time, the Lord Chamberlain's Company of Players (Company of Actors Lord Chamberlain), named after his patron, and had written The Taming of the Shrew , The two Gentlemen of Verona , Italian-inspired two comedies and a third, Love's Labours Lost , set in an imaginary Navarra.
Shakespeare began as an actor in the company and continued to do so until 1603 but never came to play leading roles. However, the experience should be helpful. As Moliere, Brecht and Bulgakov, Shakespeare was a true man of the theater: I knew him from within, participated in the tests, witnessed the events and characters conceived thinking about specific actors. Alongside his theatrical success, improved its economy. He became a shareholder of the theater, could help his father financially and even in 1596 bought a title, whose coat appears on the monument to the poet built shortly after his death in the church of Stratford. Between 1594 and 1597 he wrote Romeo and Juliet and The dream of a summer night , two works of love and youth, and historical plays Richard II , King John and The Merchant of Venice .
In 1598, Chamberlain's company moved to the new Globe Theatre (Globe), whose name will join that of Shakespeare for good. This seems to have been the happiest time of the writer, the time of the comedies Much Ado About Nothing , As You Like It , The Merry Wives of Windsor (who according to legend was written in fifteen days for urgent request of the Queen), Night Reyes and All's Well That Ends Well , all written between 1598 and 1603. These years are also (as if anticipating the next stage) Julius Caesar , Troilus and Cressida and its most famous and enduring work, Hamlet .
On the death of Elizabeth l in 1603, James I, son of Mary Queen of Scots and King of Scotland since 1567, also became king of England and the company of Chamberlain came under their protection under the name of King's Men (the King's Men) . Despite the name change and protector, the theater held its public nature: they made representations to everyone, even to the court.
Given this success, the company opened a small room covered in 1608, Blackfriars, with a higher entry and for a select public. Financially, the company operated as a limited company of which Shakespeare was one of its major shareholders. Due to good governance, economic position was stated even more: he bought several properties in London and Stratford, made several investments, including some agricultural products, and in 1605 bought a share of the tithes of the parish of Stratford, thanks to which (and not its literary glory) would be buried in the chancel of the church.
The last act
Shakespeare was always work on stage, but never bored. Between 1600 and 1610 did not fail to be in the limelight with their rulers compelled to undertake the impossible, his bombastic speech monarchs, courtiers vengeful and grim, his sane types who pretend to be mad and crazy dudes that want to reach as black as of his madness, his fairies and elves lively, his jesters, his monsters, his predatory and perfect stupid. This plethora of creatures capable of cramming heaven and hell they filled the bag.
At the end of the century and was quite wealthy and had bought or built a house in Stratford, which he called New Place. In 1597 her son was dead, leaving a single sign of their brief time on earth a line in the mortuary record of the parish of his people. Susan and Judith were married, the first with a doctor and the second with a merchant. Susan had talent, Judith could not read or write and signed with a cross. In 1611, when Shakespeare was at the height of his fame, was dismissed from the scene with the storm and perhaps tired and sick, he retired to his home in New-Place ready to give body and soul to your garden and resigned to see him every morning with the stern face of his wife. In the garden planted the first mulberry cultivated in Stratford. He died on April 23, 1616 at fifty-two years, at a date which was marked in black in the history of world literature by coincidence mourning the death of Cervantes.
The mysteries of Shakespeare
It is true that the youth of the poet offers the more obscure passages for the biographer. However, the real mysteries of life belong to those years when his career can be reconstructed fairly accurately. The most famous of these puzzles are related to his Sonnets , published in 1609, but written for the most part, about ten or fifteen years earlier. One of the protagonists of the 154 sonnets is a handsome young man whom the poet admires, and the other is the famous dark lady, "dark lady" that he was unfaithful to the former.
Many tried to find in these poems keys Shakespeare's inner life, evidence of his alleged homosexuality, saying the young heartthrob of the sonnets or, perhaps, the "dark lady" was none other than the Earl of Southampton, patron of the debutante author, who had spent his first two volumes of poetry. No one knows for sure who was the object of secret worship of the poet. His only personal references are trifles understandable and clear: he suffered from insomnia, he liked the music, which disapproved the painted cheeks and the use of wigs.
 |
| From Jakubog |
Count Henry Wriothesley of
Southampton, patron of Shakespeare
Another unknown is that its most successful years of social, economic and professional, between 1603 and 1612, coincide with the period of his greatest tragedies, his most bitter and disillusioned, like Othello , King Lear , Macbeth , Antony and Cleopatra , Coriolanus and Timon of Athens . Even the last play of these years, Measure for Measure , is darker than many of his dramas. In addition, his last four plays, Pericles , Cymbeline , The Winter's Tale and The Tempest , his wonderful farewell to the theater and the world show a curious foray fictional and pastoral elements in his plays, no doubt under the influence of the new generation playwrights such as Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. Two other plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble relatives, both in 1612-1613, whose authors are often attributed in part, because by all indications were written in collaboration with the young Fletcher, with the number of his plays would add 38. But The Tempest is universally considered to be his last work.
Either way, the truth is that around 1613, ie forty-eight years old, in the power of his mental faculties and at the zenith of his career, Shakespeare broke sharply with the theater and went to their city home as a petty bourgeois could do that after a lifetime of work would like to enjoy their property in the quiet countryside. His last years were spent as a respected country gentleman, was involved in the social life of Stratford, managed its properties and shared their days with their relatives and neighbors.
His work continued in theaters until after his death, and had to maintain some contact, but only friendly, with the theater. He even said, according to a legend recorded almost half a century later, that he died from a banquet in the company of his colleague Ben Jonson. This story contradicts the fact that a month before his death dictate his will signed a trembling signature to imagine that it was ill.
The will, extensive and thorough, is related to the ultimate mystery of Shakespeare's life, if only minor and anecdotal order: after naming her husband as principal heir of his eldest daughter, Susan, and leave valuable objects of gold Silver and her other daughter, Judith, left his wife his "second best bed." Nobody has been able to decipher the true meaning of this strange legacy, which, in turn, says much about the marriage aspect of the poet.
Posterity has dealt with Shakespeare more than any other author, and not only in the positive. Many wanted to deny the authorship of his work attributed to higher spirits, preferably illustrious origin. A Voltaire and Tolstoy, for example, will not irritate the person of the poet (or his plebeian origin), but his work, which is contrary to all order classical realism artistic or formal rule. It is the same freedom: verbal, dramatic, emotional. Is expressed with images fast, jumps in the same work years, countries and seas, randomly change the threads of plot and tone alternating comic with the tragic. His work is a perennial concern and perspective, the infinite. Ignores the canons of composition because due to laws and atavistic important that the unit of time or place. No one was able to immortalize many characters as the playwright who almost did not invent or own a single story.
In one of those amazingly plastic metaphors that abound in his work, Shakespeare defines the glory as "a circle in the water / that never ceases to enlarge / to be so w / that vanishes into nothing ...». But theirs was not. There tended to fade, even to languish, after the relative lack of interest in his work at the time of Puritan morality and the Neoclassical style, from pre-Romanticism rediscovered it so universal. Since then, all eras and styles have their own Shakespeare, corroborating the prediction of his friend and rival, Ben Jonson: "He was not of an age but for all time."
