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The Life and Works of William Shakespeare

Satisfactory Essays

William Shakespeare was born the third child and the first son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. It is estimated that he was born on April 22 or 23 of 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon and he died on April 23 of 1616. For that reason it is typically said that his birthday was also on April 23(Lee 8). He married Anne Hathaway and they had three children. William Shakespeare was a man of many talents who wrote numerous pieces in his lifetime. He wrote comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances. Shakespeare also wrote both plays and poems. From 1601-1608, many of Shakespeare’s plays showed “Jacobean characteristics…”meaning that the “comedies were few in number and lack joyous affirmation(Bevington 63).” Many of his first pieces showed his background of “classical reading(Bevington 48).” Robert Greene made an attack on Shakespeare, also being the first allusion to him, in one of his works saying that Shakespeare was “a Jack-of-all-trades-actor, playwright, poet, and theatrical handyman in the directing and producing of plays(Bevington 50).” Though this was an attack on Shakespeare, it does show just how many different things that he did in his lifetime. Shakespeare had a style that was all his own. He had similarities in his work to other works of the same time period but still his are different also. Shakespeare is still well known today and even after almost four millennia since his death, his works are still taught in many schools. Shakespeare is best known for his plays.

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