We do not know when Shakespeare was born we do, however know he was baptised on the 26th of April in 1564 in a town know as Stratford-on-Avon. He was the third child of John and Mary Shakespeare, the third child of a family of seven. His family consisted of him, two brothers and two girls along with his mother and father. Unfortunately for the Shakespeare's his father, previously a man of great prosperity fell into debt and as a result had to mortgage his wives land.
Shakespeare attended the local grammar school where he learnt Latin and Greek, in later life he also learnt French which he used in Henry V. HE left school when he was 13 years old though any records of what he did then are unavailable and thus his actions are unknown.
Shakespeare was married at age 18 to Anne Hathaway who was an amazing 8 years older than Shakespeare himself. Together they had three children, Susannah and twined Hamnet and Judith.
He later left Stratford to work in London where he dedicated work to his patron, the Earl of Southampton. By 1597 Shakespeare was earning an incredibly good income as a playwright and dramatist, he returned to Stratford and bought the largest house that was available. He also became a share holder of the globe theatre when it was constructed in 1599.
Shakespeare spent his final years in Stratford and died on the 23rd of April 1616.
Most of Shakespeare's known work was written in between 1590 and 1613. Previously all he had written were comedies and histories, genres that he personally raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. However, after the end of the sixteenth century, Shakespeare's work began to be based much more on tragedies which include Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth. These three plays are considered to be some of the finest examples in the English language. Shakespeare's plays have been translated into every major written language and his plays are the most used in the world. Finally, Shakespeare began to right romances; it was during this time that he began to collaborate with other play wrights. Many of his plays were published over the course of the seventeenth century, and the same can still be said for today's society. Shakespeare however did not rise to his current peak of popularity until the late nineteenth century. True, he was a well respected playwright in his day but it was only during the nineteenth century when the romantics began to acclaim his genius.
The Society that Shakespeare was living in:
Victorian society believed heavily that a person's fate was not influenced by their own actions but rather by the actions of the heavens. They believed in the zodiac, and that all living beings were somehow arranged in a great chain of being, they also believed in the music of the spheres and that the earth was the centre of the universe.
The church was under attack in Shakespeare's time as their was much movement against the church with the idea of a reformation that would change the traditional Roman Catholic religion into a new bridge of Christianity known as the Church of England. Also, for the first time, the bible was available for ordinary people to read and understand as it was translated into English.
It was a time of great discoveries in science and astronomy. Galileo proved that the world was round, against all former belief, this was also recognised by Sir Francis Drake who circumnavigated the world and thus proved that the Sun, not the Earth, was at the centre of our solar system. Galileo's telescope also voided the idea of the chain of being when he showed the world that the once considered perfect sun had sunspots on it and that the divine moon was as imperfect as the earth with many valleys and mountains also covering its surface.
The zodiac, in Shakespeare's day it was believed by everyone that the fortunes of everyone depended on events that occurred in the heavens, outside that person's control. The stars were immensely important as what sign you were born under would influence the kind of person that you would eventually grow up to be. There was also a belief that all living things were made up of the four elements of fire, water, earth and air. It was also believed that these four elements had counterparts within the human body; these were blood (air), phlegm (water), melancholy, yellow bile, (earth) and choler, black bile, (fire). If any element was dominant in a man it effected their mood, hence the words melancholy, sanguine, phlegmatic and choleric. An imbalance of these elements within a person would result in ill humour whereas a balance would give a person good humour. To go with this was the idea of the wheel of fortune. It determined that fate was the main controlling force in a person's life and that just a wheel rotates, so does the fortune of a man. However no one could determine when the wheel would stop, and where fortune would lead. The idea of the wheel of fortune is believed to be associated with seasonal rituals from pagan times when winter represented death and summer life, with Autumn and Spring as transitional phases in between.
The great chain of being was also in place, it was a belief that everything in the universe had its own place in the world. The surreal was on top which included archangels and cherubs, then planets, then different classes of men, with the king at its head, then animals then plants and, finally, minerals. The great chain of being was threatened by the scientific discoveries that were taking place in astronomy and science. It was believed that a break in the chain of being would cause a universal catastrophe; this is shown in Macbeth with the death of King Duncan and the events that follow.
So in conclusion the Shakespearean age was one of great change. People were both scared, excited and confused and many scientists and explorers were giving people a greater understanding of the world that surrounded them, things began to be able to be explained scientifically and with facts rather than some divine right of the gods, it was a time when the old ways that had supported them for hundreds of years were able to finally be questioned.
