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William Jardine (24 February 1784 – 27 February 1843) was a Scottish physician and trader who co-founded the Hong Kong based conglomerate Jardine, Matheson & Co. Following his return to England from the Far East, between 1841 and 1843, he was Member of Parliament for Ashburton representing the Whig party.

Educated in medicine at the University of Edinburgh, in 1802 Jardine obtained a diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. The next year, he became a surgeon's mate aboard the Brunswick belonging to the East India Company, and set sail for India. In May 1817, he abandoned medicine for trade.

Jardine was a resident in China from 1820 to 1839. His early success in Canton as a commercial agent for opium merchants in India led to his admission in 1825 as a partner in Magniac & Co., and by 1826 he controlled that firm's Canton operations. James Matheson joined him shortly afterwards with Magniac & Co. reconstituted as Jardine, Matheson & Co. in 1832. After Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexudestroyed 20,000 cases of opium that the British smuggled into China in 1839, Jardine arrived in London that September to press Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston for a forceful response.^[1]

Early life[edit]

Jardine, one of seven children, was born in 1784 on a small farm near Lochmaben, Dumfriesshire, Scotland.^[2] His father, Andrew Jardine (abt. 1750- d. 1793), died when he was nine, leaving the family in some economic difficulty. Though struggling to make ends meet, Jardine's older brother David (1776-1827) provided him with money to attend school. Jardine began to acquire credentials at the age of sixteen. In 1800 he entered the University of Edinburgh Medical School where he took classes in anatomy, medical practice, and obstetrics among others. While his schooling was in progress, Jardine was apprenticed to a surgeon who would provide housing, food, and the essential acquaintance with a hospital practice, with the money his older brother, David, provided. He graduated from the Edinburgh Medical School on 2 March 1802, and was presented a full diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He chose to join the service of the British East India Company and in 1803, at the age of 19, boarded the East IndiamanBrunswick as a surgeon's mate in the East India Company’s Maritime Marine Service.^[3]:208 Taking advantage of his employee's 'cargo privilege', he traded successfully in cassia, cochineal and musk during his 14 years as a surgeon at the firm.^[3]:208

On his first voyage, Jardine met two men who would come to play a role in his future as a drug trafficking merchant. The first was Thomas Weeding, a fellow doctor, and surgeon of the Glatton, one of the other ships in the convoy. The second was 26-year-old Charles Magniac who had arrived in Guangzhou at the beginning of 1801 to supervise his father's watch business in Canton in partnership with Daniel Beale.

By leaving the East India Company in 1817,^[1] Jardine was able to exploit the opportunity afforded by the company's policy of not transporting opium but contracting the trade out to free traders.^[4]:90 Jardine entered into partnership with retired surgeon Thomas Weeding and opium and cotton trader Framji Cowasji Banaji.^[3]:208 The firm did well and established Jardine's reputation as an able, steady and experienced private trader. One of Jardine's agents in Bombay, who would become his lifelong friend, was Parsee opium and cotton trader Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy.^[3]:208 Both men were on the Brunswick when the crew of a French ship forcibly boarded her. Jeejeebhoy long continued as a close business associate of Jardine and that a portrait of Jeejeebhoy hung in Jardines’ Hong Kong office in the 1990s was tribute to that.^[5]

In 1824, a very important opportunity arose for Jardine. Magniac & Co., one of the two most successful agency houses in Canton,^[3]:208 fell into disarray. Hollingworth Magniac, who succeeded his brother Charles Magniac after the latter's death in Paris, was in search of competent partners to join his firm as he was intent on leaving Asia. He was also forced to have his brother, Daniel, resign from the firm after marrying his Chinese mistress. In later years, Jardine had helped Daniel by sending his young son Daniel Francis, his child by his Chinese wife, to Scotland for school. Magniac invited Jardine to join him in 1825 and, three years later, James Matheson joined the partnership.^[3]:208 Magniac returned to England in the late 1820s with the firm in the hands of Jardine and Matheson. Contrary to the practice at the time of retiring partners removing their capital from the firm, Magniac left his capital with the firm in trust to Jardine and Matheson. The firm carried on as Magniac & Co. until 1832 as the name Magniac was still formidable throughout China and India. Magniac wrote of William Jardine:

You will find Jardine a most conscientious, honourable, and kind-hearted fellow, extremely liberal and an excellent man of business in this market, where his knowledge and experience in the opium trafficker and in most articles of export is highly valuable. He requires to be known and to be properly appreciated.

Jardine, Matheson & Co.[edit]

James Matheson joined Magniac & Co. from the firm Yrissari & Co where he was partner. After Francis Xavier de Yrissari's death, Matheson wound up the firm's affairs and closed shop. Yrissari, leaving no heir, had willed all his shares in the firm to Matheson. This created the perfect opportunity for Matheson to join in commerce with Jardine. Matheson proved a perfect partner for Jardine. James Matheson and his nephew, Alexander Matheson, joined the firm Magniac and Co. in 1827, but their association was officially advertised on 1 January 1828. Jardine was known as the planner, the tough negotiator and strategist of the firm and Matheson was known as the organization man, who handled the firm's correspondence, and other complex articles including legal affairs. Matheson was known to be behind many of the company's innovative practices. And both men were a study in contrasts, Jardine being tall, lean and trim while Matheson was short and slightly portly. Matheson had the advantage of coming from a family with social and economic means, while Jardine came from a much more humble background. Jardine was tough, serious, detail-oriented and reserved while Matheson was creative, outspoken and jovial. Jardine was known to work long hours and was extremely business-minded, while Matheson enjoyed the arts and was very eloquent. William C. Hunter wrote about Jardine, 'He was a gentleman of great strength of character and of unbounded generosity.' Hunter's description of Matheson was, 'He was a gentleman of great suavity of manner and the impersonation of benevolence.' But there were similarities in both men. Both men were hardworking, driven and single-minded in their pursuit of wealth.

Both men were also known to have continuously sent money home to less fortunate family members in Scotland and to have helped nephews by providing them work within the firm. Upon the death of his older brother, David, Jardine set up a fund for his brother's widow and arranged schooling for his four sons. In a letter to Magniac, Jardine wrote,

My only Brother has a very large family, three or four of them Boys, and as he has not the means of providing for them all, in the way I wish to see them provided for, I am desirous of having one of them here, to commence in the office, and work his way, by industry and application to business.

All four of David's sons moved on to work with Jardine, Matheson & Co. in Hong Kong and South China, starting as clerks and eventually becoming partners or managing partners or taipan in the firm.

But, it was their reputation for business probity, innovative management and strict fiscal policies that sustained their partnership's success in a period where businesses operated in a highly volatile and uncertain environment where the line between success and bankruptcy was extremely thin. Jardine was known for his legendary imperiousness and pride. He was nicknamed by the locals 'The Iron-headed Old Rat'^[6] after being hit on the head by a club in Guangzhou. Jardine, after being hit, just shrugged off the injury with dour resilience. He had only one chair in his office in the 'Creek Hong' in Canton,^[2] and that was his own. Visitors were never allowed to sit, to impress upon them that Jardine was a very busy man. Jardine was also known as a crisis manager. In 1822, during his visit to the firm's Guangzhou office, he found the local office in management crisis, with employees in near mutiny against the firm's officers. Jardine then proceeded to take temporary control and succeeded in putting the office in order in just a matter of days. Also a shrewd judge of character, Jardine was even able to persuade the Rev. Charles Gutzlaff, a Prussian missionary, to interpret for their ship captains during coastal smuggling of opium, using the idea that the reverend would best gather more converts during these smuggling operations. Matheson claimed to own the only piano in Asia and was also an accomplished player. He was also responsible for removing one of the firm's ship captains for refusing to offload opium chests on the Sabbath, Matheson observed, 'We have every respect for persons entertaining strict religious principles, but we fear that very godly people are not suited for the drug trade.'

On 1 July 1832, Jardine, Matheson & Co., a partnership between Jardine and Matheson as senior partners, and Magniac, Alexander Matheson, Jardine's nephew Andrew Johnstone, Matheson's nephew Hugh Matheson, John Abel Smith, and Henry Wright, as the first partners, was formed in China, taking the Chinese name 'Ewo' (怡和) pronounced 'Yee-Wo' and meaning 'Happy Harmony'. The name was chosen as it had been use by the former Ewo Hong run by Chinese merchant Howqua, a business with an impeccable reputation.^[7] The firm's operations included smuggling opium into China from Malwa, India, trading spices and sugar with the Philippines, exporting Chinese tea and silk to England, factoring and insuring cargo, renting out dockyard facilities and warehouse space, trade financing and other numerous lines of business and trade. In 1834, Parliament ended the monopoly of the British East India Company on trade between Britain and China. Jardine, Matheson & Co. took this opportunity to fill the vacuum left by the East India Company. With its first voyage carrying raw silk, but ironically no tea, the ship Sarah (now owned by Thomas Weeding, but previously owned in partnership by Weeding, Jardine and Cowasjee) left for England, becoming the first free trader to arrive in England after the monopoly ceased. Jardine Matheson then began its transformation from a major commercial agent of the East India Company into the largest British trading hong (洋行), or firm, in Asia.William Jardine was now being referred to by the other traders as 'Tai-pan' (大班), a Chinese colloquial title meaning 'Great Manager'.

Jardine wanted the opium trafficking to expand in China. In 1834, working with the Chief Superintendent of Trade representing the British Empire, William, Lord Napier, tried unsuccessfully to negotiate with the Chinese officials in Canton. The Chinese Viceroy ordered the Canton offices where Napier was staying to be blockaded and the inhabitants including Napier to be held hostages. Lord Napier, a broken and humiliated man, was allowed to return to Macao by land and not by ship as requested. Suffering a fever, he died a few days later.

Jardine, who had good relations with Lord Napier, a Scottish peer, and his family, then took the initiative to use the debacle as an opportunity to convince the British government to use force to further open trade. In early 1835 he ordered James Matheson to leave for Britain to persuade the Government to take up strong action to further open up trade in China. Matheson accompanied Napier's widow to England using an eye-infection as an excuse to return home. Matheson in England then extensively travelled to meet with several parties, both for government and for trade, to gather support for a war with China. Though in some ways unsuccessful in his forays in England, he was brushed aside by the 'Iron Duke' (Duke of Wellington), the then British Foreign Secretary, and reported bitterly to Jardine of being insulted by an arrogant and stupid man. But his activities and widespread lobbying in several forums including Parliament bore the seeds that would eventually lead to war in a few years.

Departure from China and breakdown of relations[edit]

Matheson returned to China in 1836 to prepare to take over the firm as Jardine was preparing to fulfill his temporarily delayed retirement. Jardine left Canton on 26 January 1839 for Britain^[3]:209 as retirement but in actuality to try to continue Matheson's work. The respect shown by other foreign opium traffickers to Jardine before his departure can be best illustrated in the following passage from a book by William C. Hunter.

A few days before Mr. Jardine’s departure from Canton, the entire foreign community entertained him at a dinner in the dining room of the East India Company’s Factory. About eighty persons of all nationalities, including India, were present, and they did not separate until several hours after midnight. It was an event frequently referred to afterwards amongst the residents, and to this day there are a few of us who still speak of it.

The Qing government was pleased to hear of Jardine's departure, then, being were more familiar with Jardine as the trading head and were quite unfamiliar with Matheson, proceeded to stop the opium trafficker. Lin Zexu, appointed specifically to suppress the drug trafficking in Guangzhou, stated, 'The Iron-headed Old Rat, the sly and cunning ring-leader of the opium smugglers has left for The Land of Mist, of fear from the Middle Kingdom's wrath.' He then ordered the surrender of all opium and the destruction of more than 20,000 cases of opium in Guangzhou, representing 50 per cent of the entire trade in opium in 1838.^[4]:91 He also ordered the arrest of opium trafficker Lancelot Dent, the head of Dent and Company (a rival company to Jardine Matheson). Lin also wrote to Queen Victoria, to submit in obeisance in the presence of the Chinese Emperor.

War and the Chinese surrender[edit]

Having arrived in London in September 1839,^[3]:209 Jardine’s first order of business was to meet with Lord Palmerston. He carried with him a letter of introduction written by Superintendent Elliot that relayed a few of his credentials to Palmerston,

This gentleman has for several years stood at the head of our commercial community and he carries with him the esteem and kind wishes of the whole foreign society, honourably acquired by a long career of private charity and public spirit.

In 1839, Jardine successfully persuaded the British Foreign Minister, Lord Palmerston, to wage war on China, giving a full detailed plan for war, detailed strategic maps, battle strategies, the indemnifications and political demands from China and even the number of troops and warships needed. Aided by Matheson's nephew, Alexander Matheson (1805–1881) and MP John Abel Smith, Jardine met several times with Palmerston to argue the necessity for a war plan. This plan was known as the Jardine Paper. In the 'Jardine Paper', Jardine emphasized several points to Palmerston in several meetings and they are as follows: There was to be complete compensation for the 20,000 chests of opium that Lin had confiscated, the conclusion of a viable commercial treaty that would prevent any further hostilities, and the opening of further ports of trade such as Fuzhou, Ningbo, Shanghai, and Keeson-chow. It was also suggested by Jardine that should the need arise to occupy an island or harbor in the vicinity of Guangzhou. Hong Kong would be perfect because it provided an extensive and protected anchorage. As early as the mid-1830s, the island of Hong Kong had already been used for transhipment points by Jardine Matheson and other firms' ships. Jardine clearly stated what he thought would be a sufficient naval and military force to complete the objectives he had outlined. He also provided maps and charts of the area. In a well calculated recommendation letter to Parliament, creating a precedent now infamously known as 'Gunboat Diplomacy', Jardine states:

No formal Purchase, -- no tedious negotiations,...A firman insistently issued to Sir F. Maitland authorizing him to take & retain possession is all that is necessary, & the Squadron under his Command is quite competent to do both,...until an adequate naval and military force...could be sent out from the mother Country. When All this is accomplished, -- but not till then, a negotiation may be commenced in some such Terms as the following - You take my opium - I take your Islands in return - we are therefore Quits, --& thenceforth if you please let us live in friendly Communion and good fellowship. You cannot protect your Seaboard against Pirates & Buccaneers. I can - So let us understand Each other, & study to promote our mutual Interests.

Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary who succeeded Wellington, decided mainly on the 'suggestions' of Jardine to wage war on China. In mid-1840, a large fleet of war ships appeared on the China coast and with the first cannon fire aimed at a British ship, the Royal Saxon, the British started the first of the Opium Wars. British warships destroyed numerous shore batteries and enemy warships, laid waste to several coastal forts, indiscriminately bombarding town after town with heavy cannon fire, even pushing up north to threaten the Imperial Palace in Beijing itself. The Imperial Government, forced to surrender, gave in to the demands of the British. Richard Hughes, in Hongkong: A Borrowed Place, A Borrowed Time, stated 'William Jardine would have made his mark as admirably as a soldier as he did as a Tai-pan.' Lord Palmerston wrote,

To the assistance and information which you and Mr. Jardine so handsomely afforded us it was mainly owing that we were able to give our affairs naval, military and diplomatic, in China those detailed instructions which have led to these satisfactory results.

In 1843, the Treaty of Nanking was signed by official representatives of both Britain and China. It allowed the opening of five major Chinese ports, granted extraterritoriality to foreigners and their activities in China, indemnification for the opium destroyed and completed the formal acquisition of the island of Hong Kong, which had been officially taken over as a trading and military base since 26 January 1841, though it had already been used years earlier as a transhipment point. Trade with China, especially in the illegal opium, grew, and so did the firm of Jardine, Matheson & Co., which was already known as the Princely Hong for being the largest British trading firm in East Asia.

By 1841, Jardines had 19 intercontinental clipper ships, compared to close rival Dent and Company with 13. Jardines also had hundreds of small ships, lorchas and small smuggling craft for coastal and upriver smuggling. In 1841, Jardine was elected to the House of Commons, a WhigMember of Parliament (MP) representing Ashburton in Devon.^[3]:209 He was also a partner, along with Magniac, in the merchant banking firm of Magniac, Smith & Co., later renamed Magniac, Jardine & Co.,^[8] the forerunner of the firm Matheson & Co. Despite his nominal retirement, Jardine was still very much active in business and politics and built a townhouse in 6 Upper Belgrave Street, then a new upscale residential district in London near Buckingham Palace. He had also bought a country estate, Lanrick Castle, in Perthshire, Scotland.^[3]:209

Death and legacy[edit]

In late 1842, Jardine's health had rapidly deteriorated possibly from pulmonary oedema. In the latter part of the year, Jardine was already bedridden and in great pain. He was assisted by his nephew, Andrew Johnstone and later on by James Matheson in his correspondence. Despite his illness, Jardine was still very active in keeping an eye on business, politics and current affairs, and continued to welcome a steady stream of visits from family members, business partners, political associates and his constituents. He died on 27 February 1843, just three days after his 59th birthday, one of the richest and most powerful men in Britain and Member of Parliament. Jardine's funeral was attended by a very large gathering of family, friends, government and business personalities, many of whom Jardine had helped in his lifetime.

Jardine, a bachelor, willed his estate to his siblings and his nephews. An older nephew, Andrew Johnstone, administered Jardine's issue. His other nephews David, Joseph, Robert and Andrew Jardine, all sons of Jardine's older brother David, continued to assist James Matheson in running Jardines. Matheson retired as taipan in 1842 and handed over control of the firm to his nephew Sir Alexander Matheson, who was also known as of the same capacity and competence as the elder Jardine and Matheson. David Jardine, another nephew of Jardine, became taipan after Sir Alexander Matheson and was one of the first two unofficial members appointed to the Legislative Council in Hong Kong.^[9]:261 David in turn would hand over to his brother Sir Robert control of the firm. Joseph succeeded Robert as taipan.

Sir Robert Jardine (1825–1905) is the ancestor of the Buchanan-Jardine branch of the family. A descendant of Sir Robert, Sir John Buchanan-Jardine, sold his family's 51% holding in Jardine, Matheson and Co. for $84 million at the then prevailing exchange rate in 1959. A great-nephew of Jardine who would be taipan from 1874 to 1886, William Keswick (1834–1912), is the ancestor of the Keswick branch (pronounced Ke-zick) of the family. Keswick is a grandson of Jardine's older sister, Jean Johnstone. Keswick was responsible for opening the Japan office of the firm in 1859 and also expanding the Shanghai office. James Matheson returned to England to fill up the Parliament seat left vacant by Jardine and to head up the firm Matheson & Co., previously known as Magniac, Jardine & Co., in London, a merchant bank and Jardines' agent in England. In 1912, Jardine, Matheson & Co. and the Keswicks would eventually buy out the shares of the Matheson family in the firm although the name is still retained. The company was managed by several of Jardine's family members and their descendants throughout the decades, including the Keswicks, Buchanan-Jardines, Landales, Bell-Irvings, Patersons, Newbiggings and Weatheralls.

Notable Jardines Managing Directors or Tai-pans included Sir Alexander Matheson, 1st Baronet, David Jardine, Robert Jardine, William Keswick, James Johnstone Keswick, Ben Beith, David Landale, Sir John Buchanan-Jardine, Sir William Johnstone 'Tony' Keswick, Hugh Barton, Sir Michael Herries, Sir John Keswick, Sir Henry Keswick, Simon Keswick and Alasdair Morrison. There was a point in time in the early 20th century that the firm had two 'Tai-pans' at the same time, one in Hong Kong and one in Shanghai, to effectively manage the firm's extensive affairs in both locations. Both tai-pans were responsible only to the senior partner or proprietor in London who was normally a retired former tai-pan and an elder member of the Jardine family.

Today, the Jardine Matheson Group is still very much active in Hong Kong, being one of the largest conglomerates in Hong Kong and its largest employer, second only to the government. Several landmarks in present-day Hong Kong are named after the firm and the founders Jardine and Matheson like Jardine's Bazaar, Jardine's Crescent, Jardine's Bridge, Jardine's Lookout, Yee Wo Street, Matheson Street, Jardine House and the Noon Day Gun. In 1947, a secret Trust was formed by members of the family to retain effective control over the company. Jardine, Matheson and Co. offered its shares to the public in 1961 under the tenure of Hugh Barton and was oversubscribed 56 times. The Keswick family, in consortium with several London-based banks and financial institutions, bought out the controlling shares of the Buchanan-Jardine family in 1959, but subsequently sold most of the shares during the 1961 public offering, retaining only about 10% of the company. The company had its head office redomiciled to Bermuda in 1984 under the tenure of Simon Keswick.

The present Chairman of Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd, Sir Henry Keswick, who is based in the UK, was the company's tai-pan from 1970 (aged 31) to 1975 and was the 6th Keswick to be tai-pan of the company. His brother Simon was the company's taipan from 1983 to 1988 and is the 7th Keswick to be tai-pan. Both brothers are the 4th generation of Keswicks in the company. The organizational structure of Jardines has changed almost totally, but members of Jardine's family still control the firm through a complex cross-shareholding structure, several allied shareholders and a secretive 1947 Trust.

Family tree[edit]

See also[edit]

• Buchanan-Jardine baronets - branch of Jardine family from William's brother David Jardine.

Notes[edit]

1. ^ ^abGrace, Richard J.. 'Jardine, William (1784–1843)'. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004 ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37595. Accessed 29 April 2010.
2. ^ ^abKeswick, Maggie; Weatherall, Clara (2008). The thistle and the jade:a celebration of 175 years of Jardine Matheson. Francis Lincoln Publishing. ISBN9780711228306. p.18 Online version at Google books
3. ^ ^abcdefghijLe Pichon, Alain (2012). May Holdsworth; Christopher Munn (eds.). Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography. Hong Kong University Press. ISBN9789888083664.
4. ^ ^abNapier, Priscilla (1995). Barbarian Eye, Lord Napier in China 1834. London: Brassey's.
5. ^'Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy: China, William Jardine, the Celestial, and other HK connections'. The Industrial History of Hong Kong Group. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
6. ^Palmer, Roundell, 1st Earl of Selborne (1840). Statement of Claims of the British Subjects Interested in Opium Surrendered to Captain Elliot at Canton for the Public Service. Cornhill, London: Pelham, Richardson. p. 128, Memorial of Hew Kew, August 1836.
7. ^Cheong, W.E. (1997). The Hong merchants of Canton: Chinese merchants in Sino-Western trade. Routledge. ISBN0700703616. p.122 Online version at Google books
8. ^'William Jardine'. Stanford University. Archived from the original on 12 August 2011. Retrieved 27 March 2011.
9. ^Norton-Kyshe, James William (1898). History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong. I. London: T Fisher Unwin.

References[edit]

• William Jardine and other Jardine tai-pans are fictionally portrayed in author James Clavell's popular fiction novels Tai-Pan (1966), Gai-Jin (1993), Noble House (1981) and Whirlwind (1987).
• China Trade and Empire: Jardine, Matheson & Co. and the Origins of British Rule in Hong Kong 1827-1843 by Alain Le Pichon
• Jardine Matheson Archives Cambridge Library
• Jardine Matheson: Traders of the Far East by Sir Robert Blake
• The Thistle and the Jade by Maggie Keswick

Further reading[edit]

• Richard J. Grace. Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson (McGill-Queen's University Press; 2014) 476 pages.

External links[edit]

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by William Jardine

William Shakespeare (bapt. 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616)^[a] was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist.^[2][3][4] He is often called England's national poet and the 'Bard of Avon'.^[5][b] His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays,^[c]154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.^[7]

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.^[8][9][10] Such theories are often criticised for failing to adequately note that few records survive of most commoners of the period.

Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613.^[11][12][d] His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. Until about 1608, he wrote mainly tragedies, among them Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language.^[2][3][4] In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy in his lifetime. However, in 1623, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that included all but two of his plays.^[13] The volume was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Jonson presciently hails Shakespeare in a now-famous quote as 'not of an age, but for all time'.^[13]

Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, Shakespeare's works have been continually adapted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain popular and are studied, performed, and reinterpreted through various cultural and political contexts around the world.

• 1Life
• 2Plays
• 3Poems
• 7Works
• 8Speculation about Shakespeare
• 10Notes and references

Life

Early life

William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker) originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer.^[14] He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual date of birth remains unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day.^[15] This date, which can be traced to a mistake made by an 18th-century scholar, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616.^[16][17] He was the third of eight children, and the eldest surviving son.^[18]

Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford,^[19][20][21] a free school chartered in 1553,^[22] about a quarter-mile (400 m) from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic Latin text was standardised by royal decree,^[23][24] and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar based upon Latin classical authors.^[25]

At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage.^[26] The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times,^[27][28] and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583.^[29] Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585.^[30] Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596.^[31]

After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the 'complaints bill' of a law case before the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589.^[32] Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's 'lost years'.^[33] Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him.^[34][35] Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London.^[36]John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster.^[37] Some 20th-century scholars have suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain 'William Shakeshafte' in his will.^[38][39] Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.^[40][41]

London and theatrical career

It is not known definitively when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592.^[42] By then, he was sufficiently known in London to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit:

... there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.^[43]

Scholars differ on the exact meaning of Greene's words,^[43][44] but most agree that Greene was accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match such university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Greene himself (the so-called 'University Wits').^[45] The italicised phrase parodying the line 'Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide' from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, along with the pun 'Shake-scene', clearly identify Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used here, Johannes Factotum ('Jack of all trades') refers to a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the more common 'universal genius'.^[43][46]

Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's work in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks.^[47][48][49] After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London.^[50] After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new King James I, and changed its name to the King's Men.^[51]

'All the world's a stage,
and all the men and women merely players:
they have their exits and their entrances;
and one man in his time plays many parts ...'

—As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7, 139–142^[52]

In 1599, a partnership of members of the company built their own theatre on the south bank of the River Thames, which they named the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Extant records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that his association with the company made him a wealthy man,^[53] and in 1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, invested in a share of the parish tithes in Stratford.^[54]

Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, beginning in 1594, and by 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title pages.^[55][56][57] Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus His Fall (1603).^[58] The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for Jonson's Volpone is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end.^[47] The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of 'the Principal Actors in all these Plays', some of which were first staged after Volpone, although we cannot know for certain which roles he played.^[59] In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that 'good Will' played 'kingly' roles.^[60] In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father.^[35] Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It, and the Chorus in Henry V,^[61][62] though scholars doubt the sources of that information.^[63]

Throughout his career, Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford. In 1596, the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames.^[64][65] He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the same year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there.^[64][66] By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There, he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear.^[67][68]

Later years and death

Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated by Johnson, that Shakespeare retired to Stratford 'some years before his death'.^[69][70] He was still working as an actor in London in 1608; in an answer to the sharers' petition in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage stated that after purchasing the lease of the Blackfriars Theatre in 1608 from Henry Evans, the King's Men 'placed men players' there, 'which were Heminges, Condell, Shakespeare, etc.'.^[71] However, it is perhaps relevant that the bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609.^[72][73] The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed during extended outbreaks of the plague (a total of over 60 months closure between May 1603 and February 1610),^[74] which meant there was often no acting work. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time.^[75] Shakespeare continued to visit London during the years 1611–1614.^[69] In 1612, he was called as a witness in Bellott v. Mountjoy, a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary.^[76][77] In March 1613, he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory;^[78] and from November 1614, he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall.^[79] After 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613.^[80] His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher,^[81] who succeeded him as the house playwright of the King's Men.^[82]

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52.^[f] He died within a month of signing his will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in 'perfect health'. No extant contemporary source explains how or why he died. Half a century later, John Ward, the vicar of Stratford, wrote in his notebook: 'Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted',^[83][84] not an impossible scenario since Shakespeare knew Jonson and Drayton. Of the tributes from fellow authors, one refers to his relatively sudden death: 'We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went'st so soon / From the world's stage to the grave's tiring room.'^[85][g]

He was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607,^[86] and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare's death.^[87] Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on 25 March 1616; the following day, his new son-in-law, Thomas Quiney was found guilty of fathering an illegitimate son by Margaret Wheeler, who had died during childbirth. Thomas was ordered by the church court to do public penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment for the Shakespeare family.^[87]

Shakespeare bequeathed the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna^[88] under stipulations that she pass it down intact to 'the first son of her body'.^[89] The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying.^[90][91] The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct line.^[92][93] Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one-third of his estate automatically.^[h] He did make a point, however, of leaving her 'my second best bed', a bequest that has led to much speculation.^[95][96][97] Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been the matrimonial bed and therefore rich in significance.^[98]

Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death.^[99][100] The epitaph carved into the stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in 2008:^[101]

Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,
To digg the dvst encloased heare.
Bleste be yͤ man yͭ spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yͭ moves my bones.^[102][i]

(Modern spelling: Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, / To dig the dust enclosed here. / Blessed be the man that spares these stones, / And cursed be he that moves my bones.)

Some time before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil.^[103] In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published.^[104]

Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.^[105][106]

Plays

Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, and critics agree that Shakespeare did the same, mostly early and late in his career.^[107]

The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI, written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date precisely, however,^[108][109] and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare's earliest period.^[110][108] His first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,^[111] dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty.^[112] The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca.^{[113][114][115]}The Comedy of Errors was also based on classical models, but no source for The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though it is related to a separate play of the same name and may have derived from a folk story.^[116][117] Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve of rape,^{[118][119][120]} the Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences.^[121]

Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his most acclaimed comedies.^[122]A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes.^[123] Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic Merchant of Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, which reflects Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences.^[124][125] The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing,^[126] the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies.^[127] After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his mature work.^{[128][129][130]} This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death;^[131][132] and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which introduced a new kind of drama.^[133][134] According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in Julius Caesar, 'the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to infuse each other'.^[135]

In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called 'problem plays' Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends Well and a number of his best known tragedies.^[136][137] Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, Hamlet, has probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which begins 'To be or not to be; that is the question'.^[138] Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, the heroes of the tragedies that followed, Othello and King Lear, are undone by hasty errors of judgement.^[139] The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves.^[140] In Othello, the villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him.^[141][142] In King Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia. According to the critic Frank Kermode, 'the play-offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty'.^{[143][144][145]} In Macbeth, the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies,^[146] uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful king and usurp the throne until their own guilt destroys them in turn.^[147] In this play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic structure. His last major tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, contain some of Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies by the poet and critic T.S. Eliot.^{[148][149][150]}

In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, as well as the collaboration, Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors.^[151] Some commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day.^{[152][153][154]} Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.^[155]

Performances

It is not clear for which companies Shakespeare wrote his early plays. The title page of the 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus reveals that the play had been acted by three different troupes.^[156] After the plagues of 1592–93, Shakespeare's plays were performed by his own company at The Theatre and the Curtain in Shoreditch, north of the Thames.^[157] Londoners flocked there to see the first part of Henry IV, Leonard Digges recording, 'Let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest ... and you scarce shall have a room'.^[158] When the company found themselves in dispute with their landlord, they pulled The Theatre down and used the timbers to construct the Globe Theatre, the first playhouse built by actors for actors, on the south bank of the Thames at Southwark.^[159][160] The Globe opened in autumn 1599, with Julius Caesar one of the first plays staged. Most of Shakespeare's greatest post-1599 plays were written for the Globe, including Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.^{[159][161][162]}

After the Lord Chamberlain's Men were renamed the King's Men in 1603, they entered a special relationship with the new King James. Although the performance records are patchy, the King's Men performed seven of Shakespeare's plays at court between 1 November 1604, and 31 October 1605, including two performances of The Merchant of Venice.^[62] After 1608, they performed at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre during the winter and the Globe during the summer.^[163] The indoor setting, combined with the Jacobean fashion for lavishly staged masques, allowed Shakespeare to introduce more elaborate stage devices. In Cymbeline, for example, Jupiter descends 'in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. The ghosts fall on their knees.'^[164][165]

The actors in Shakespeare's company included the famous Richard Burbage, William Kempe, Henry Condell and John Heminges. Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.^[166] The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, among other characters.^[167][168] He was replaced around 1600 by Robert Armin, who played roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It and the fool in King Lear.^[169] In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that Henry VIII 'was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and ceremony'.^[170] On 29 June, however, a cannon set fire to the thatch of the Globe and burned the theatre to the ground, an event which pinpoints the date of a Shakespeare play with rare precision.^[170]

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Textual sources

In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's friends from the King's Men, published the First Folio, a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It contained 36 texts, including 18 printed for the first time.^[171] Many of the plays had already appeared in quarto versions—flimsy books made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves.^[172] No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First Folio describes as 'stol'n and surreptitious copies'.^[173] Nor did Shakespeare plan or expect his works to survive in any form at all; those works likely would have faded into oblivion but for his friends' spontaneous idea, after his death, to create and publish the First Folio.^[174]

Alfred Pollard termed some of the pre-1623 versions as 'bad quartos' because of their adapted, paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed from memory.^{[172][173][175]} Where several versions of a play survive, each differs from the other. The differences may stem from copying or printing errors, from notes by actors or audience members, or from Shakespeare's own papers.^[176][177] In some cases, for example, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, and Othello, Shakespeare could have revised the texts between the quarto and folio editions. In the case of King Lear, however, while most modern editions do conflate them, the 1623 folio version is so different from the 1608 quarto that the Oxford Shakespeare prints them both, arguing that they cannot be conflated without confusion.^[178]

Poems

In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on sexual themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus; while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin.^[179] Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses,^[180] the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust.^[181] Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote A Lover's Complaint. Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects.^{[182][183][184]}The Phoenix and the Turtle, printed in Robert Chester's 1601 Love's Martyr, mourns the deaths of the legendary phoenix and his lover, the faithful turtle dove. In 1599, two early drafts of sonnets 138 and 144 appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim, published under Shakespeare's name but without his permission.^{[182][184][185]}

Sonnets

Published in 1609, the Sonnets were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed. Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership.^[186][187] Even before the two unauthorised sonnets appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599, Francis Meres had referred in 1598 to Shakespeare's 'sugred Sonnets among his private friends'.^[188] Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence.^[189] He seems to have planned two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a married woman of dark complexion (the 'dark lady'), and one about conflicted love for a fair young man (the 'fair youth'). It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial 'I' who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with the sonnets 'Shakespeare unlocked his heart'.^[188][187]

'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate ...'

—Lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.^[190]

The 1609 edition was dedicated to a 'Mr. W.H.', credited as 'the only begetter' of the poems. It is not known whether this was written by Shakespeare himself or by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, whose initials appear at the foot of the dedication page; nor is it known who Mr. W.H. was, despite numerous theories, or whether Shakespeare even authorised the publication.^[191] Critics praise the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time.^[192]

Style

Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in a stylised language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the drama.^[193] The poetry depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical—written for actors to declaim rather than speak. The grand speeches in Titus Andronicus, in the view of some critics, often hold up the action, for example; and the verse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona has been described as stilted.^[194][195]

'And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of the air.'^[196]

However, Shakespeare soon began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. The opening soliloquy of Richard III has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama. At the same time, Richard's vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soliloquies of Shakespeare's mature plays.^[197][198] No single play marks a change from the traditional to the freer style. Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles.^[199] By the time of Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself.

Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter. In practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines, with the risk of monotony.^[200] Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet. Shakespeare uses it, for example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind:^[201]

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly—
And prais'd be rashness for it—let us know
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well ...

After Hamlet, Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies. The literary critic A. C. Bradley described this style as 'more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical'.^[202] In the last phase of his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve these effects. These included run-on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length.^[203] In Macbeth, for example, the language darts from one unrelated metaphor or simile to another: 'was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed yourself?' (1.7.35–38); '... pity, like a naked new-born babe/ Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air ...' (1.7.21–25). The listener is challenged to complete the sense.^[203] The late romances, with their shifts in time and surprising turns of plot, inspired a last poetic style in which long and short sentences are set against one another, clauses are piled up, subject and object are reversed, and words are omitted, creating an effect of spontaneity.^[204]

Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a practical sense of the theatre.^[205] Like all playwrights of the time, he dramatised stories from sources such as Plutarch and Holinshed.^[206] He reshaped each plot to create several centres of interest and to show as many sides of a narrative to the audience as possible. This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama.^[207] As Shakespeare's mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and distinctive patterns of speech. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however. In Shakespeare's late romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre.^[208][209]

Influence

Shakespeare's work has made a lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, and genre.^[210] Until Romeo and Juliet, for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy.^[211]Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events, but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds.^[212] His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success. Critic George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson as 'feeble variations on Shakespearean themes.'^[213]

Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens. The American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King Lear.^[214] Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare's works. These include three operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff, whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays.^[215] Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites. The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a friend of William Blake, even translated Macbeth into German.^[216] The psychoanalystSigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular, that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature.^[217]

In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling, and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now,^[218] and his use of language helped shape modern English.^[219]Samuel Johnson quoted him more often than any other author in his A Dictionary of the English Language, the first serious work of its type.^[220] Expressions such as 'with bated breath' (Merchant of Venice) and 'a foregone conclusion' (Othello) have found their way into everyday English speech.^[221][222]

Critical reputation

—Ben Jonson^[223]

Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he received a large amount of praise.^[224][225] In 1598, the cleric and author Francis Meres singled him out from a group of English writers as 'the most excellent' in both comedy and tragedy.^[226][227] The authors of the Parnassus plays at St John's College, Cambridge, numbered him with Chaucer, Gower, and Spenser.^[228] In the First Folio, Ben Jonson called Shakespeare the 'Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage', although he had remarked elsewhere that 'Shakespeare wanted art'.^[223]

Between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson.^[229]Thomas Rymer, for example, condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic with the tragic. Nevertheless, poet and critic John Dryden rated Shakespeare highly, saying of Jonson, 'I admire him, but I love Shakespeare'.^[230] For several decades, Rymer's view held sway; but during the 18th century, critics began to respond to Shakespeare on his own terms and acclaim what they termed his natural genius. A series of scholarly editions of his work, notably those of Samuel Johnson in 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790, added to his growing reputation.^[231][232] By 1800, he was firmly enshrined as the national poet.^[233] In the 18th and 19th centuries, his reputation also spread abroad. Among those who championed him were the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal, and Victor Hugo.^[234][j]

During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German Romanticism.^[236] In the 19th century, critical admiration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered on adulation.^[237] 'That King Shakespeare,' the essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1840, 'does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying signs; indestructible'.^[238] The Victorians produced his plays as lavish spectacles on a grand scale.^[239] The playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw mocked the cult of Shakespeare worship as 'bardolatry', claiming that the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare obsolete.^[240]

The modernist revolution in the arts during the early 20th century, far from discarding Shakespeare, eagerly enlisted his work in the service of the avant-garde. The Expressionists in Germany and the Futurists in Moscow mounted productions of his plays. Marxist playwright and director Bertolt Brecht devised an epic theatre under the influence of Shakespeare. The poet and critic T.S. Eliot argued against Shaw that Shakespeare's 'primitiveness' in fact made him truly modern.^[241] Eliot, along with G. Wilson Knight and the school of New Criticism, led a movement towards a closer reading of Shakespeare's imagery. In the 1950s, a wave of new critical approaches replaced modernism and paved the way for 'post-modern' studies of Shakespeare.^[242] By the 1980s, Shakespeare studies were open to movements such as structuralism, feminism, New Historicism, African-American studies, and queer studies.^[243][244] In a comprehensive reading of Shakespeare's works and comparing Shakespeare literary accomplishments to accomplishments among leading figures in philosophy and theology as well, Harold Bloom has commented that 'Shakespeare was larger than Plato and than St. Augustine. He encloses us because we see with his fundamental perceptions.'^[245]

Works

Classification of the plays

Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed according to their folio classification as comedies, histories, and tragedies.^[246] Two plays not included in the First Folio, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, are now accepted as part of the canon, with today's scholars agreeing that Shakespeare made major contributions to the writing of both.^[247][248] No Shakespearean poems were included in the First Folio.

In the late 19th century, Edward Dowden classified four of the late comedies as romances, and though many scholars prefer to call them tragicomedies, Dowden's term is often used.^[249][250] In 1896, Frederick S. Boas coined the term 'problem plays' to describe four plays: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and Hamlet.^[251] 'Dramas as singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies', he wrote. 'We may, therefore, borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of today and class them together as Shakespeare's problem plays.'^[252] The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use, though Hamlet is definitively classed as a tragedy.^{[253][254][255]}

Speculation about Shakespeare

Authorship

Around 230 years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship of the works attributed to him.^[256] Proposed alternative candidates include Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.^[257] Several 'group theories' have also been proposed.^[258] Only a small minority of academics believe there is reason to question the traditional attribution,^[259] but interest in the subject, particularly the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, continues into the 21st century.^{[260][261][262]}

Religion

Shakespeare conformed to the official state religion,^[k] but his private views on religion have been the subject of debate. Shakespeare's will uses a Protestant formula, and he was a confirmed member of the Church of England, where he was married, his children were baptised, and where he is buried. Some scholars claim that members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time when practising Catholicism in England was against the law.^[264] Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, certainly came from a pious Catholic family. The strongest evidence might be a Catholic statement of faith signed by his father, John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in the rafters of his former house in Henley Street. However, the document is now lost and scholars differ as to its authenticity.^[265][266] In 1591, the authorities reported that John Shakespeare had missed church 'for fear of process for debt', a common Catholic excuse.^{[267][268][269]} In 1606, the name of William's daughter Susanna appears on a list of those who failed to attend Easter communion in Stratford.^{[267][268][269]} Other authors argue that there is a lack of evidence about Shakespeare's religious beliefs. Scholars find evidence both for and against Shakespeare's Catholicism, Protestantism, or lack of belief in his plays, but the truth may be impossible to prove.^[270][271]

Sexuality

Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 1583. Over the centuries, some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical,^[272] and point to them as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than romantic love.^{[273][274][275]} The 26 so-called 'Dark Lady' sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.^[276]

Portraiture

No written contemporary description of Shakespeare's physical appearance survives, and no evidence suggests that he ever commissioned a portrait, so the Droeshout engraving, which Ben Jonson approved of as a good likeness,^[277] and his Stratford monument provide perhaps the best evidence of his appearance. From the 18th century, the desire for authentic Shakespeare portraits fuelled claims that various surviving pictures depicted Shakespeare. That demand also led to the production of several fake portraits, as well as misattributions, repaintings, and relabelling of portraits of other people.^[278]

See also

Notes and references

Notes

1. ^Dates follow the Julian calendar, used in England throughout Shakespeare's lifespan, but with the start of the year adjusted to 1 January (see Old Style and New Style dates). Under the Gregorian calendar, adopted in Catholic countries in 1582, Shakespeare died on 3 May.^[1]
2. ^The 'national cult' of Shakespeare, and the 'bard' identification, dates from September 1769, when the actor David Garrick organised a week-long carnival at Stratford to mark the town council awarding him the freedom of the town. In addition to presenting the town with a statue of Shakespeare, Garrick composed a doggerel verse, lampooned in the London newspapers, naming the banks of the Avon as the birthplace of the 'matchless Bard'.^[6]
3. ^The exact figures are unknown. See Shakespeare's collaborations and Shakespeare Apocrypha for further details.
4. ^Individual play dates and precise writing span are unknown. See Chronology of Shakespeare's plays for further details.
5. ^The crest is a silver falcon supporting a spear, while the motto is Non Sanz Droict (French for 'not without right'). This motto is still used by Warwickshire County Council, in reference to Shakespeare.
6. ^Inscribed in Latin on his funerary monument: AETATIS 53 DIE 23 APR (In his 53rd year he died 23 April).
7. ^Verse by James Mabbe printed in the First Folio.^[85]
8. ^Charles Knight, 1842, in his notes on Twelfth Night.^[94]
9. ^In the scribal abbreviations ye for the (3rd line) and yt for that (3rd and 4th lines) the letter y represents th: see thorn.
10. ^Grady cites Voltaire's Philosophical Letters (1733); Goethe'sWilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795); Stendhal's two-part pamphlet Racine et Shakespeare (1823–25); and Victor Hugo's prefaces to Cromwell (1827) and William Shakespeare (1864).^[235]
11. ^For example, A.L. Rowse, the 20th-century Shakespeare scholar, was emphatic: 'He died, as he had lived, a conforming member of the Church of England. His will made that perfectly clear—in facts, puts it beyond dispute, for it uses the Protestant formula.'^[263]

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External links

• Shakespeare Documented an online exhibition documenting Shakespeare in his own time
• William Shakespeare at the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Open Source Shakespeare complete works, with search engine and concordance
• First Four Folios at Miami University Library, digital collection
• Shakespeare's sonnets, poems, and texts at Poets.org
• Shakespeare's Words the online version of the best selling glossary and language companion
• Shakespeare's Will from The National Archives
• Works by William Shakespeare set to music: free scores in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• William Shakespeare on IMDb
• Works by William Shakespeare at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about William Shakespeare at Internet Archive
• Works by William Shakespeare at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Discovering Literature: Shakespeare at the British Library
• William Shakespeare at the British Library
• 'Shakespeare and Literary Criticism', BBC Radio 4 discussion with Harold Bloom and Jacqueline Rose (In Our Time, 4 March 1999).
• 'Shakespeare's Work' BBC Radio 4 discussion with Frank Kermode, Michael Bagdanov and Germaine Greer (In Our Time, 11 May 2000).
• 'Shakespeare's Life', BBC Radio 4 discussion with Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland and Grace Ioppolo (In Our Time, 15 March 2001).
• Newspaper clippings about William Shakespeare in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW