BESTSELLING INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE (Special Nook Edition) Bestseller Guide and Introduction to Shakespeare's Life and Plays [Including Analysis of ALL THE MAJOR PLAYS incl. ROMEO AND JULIET HAMLET KING LEAR MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING OTHELLO] NOOKBook

BESTSELLING INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE
(Special Nook Edition)

Bestseller Guide and Introduction to Shakespeare's Life and Plays

[Including Analysis of ALL THE MAJOR PLAYS incl. ROMEO AND JULIET HAMLET KING LEAR MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING OTHELLO]

NOOKBook


EXCERPT:


"Shakespeare's Birth and Parentage

The record of baptism of April 26, 1564, is the only evidence we possess of the date of Shakespeare's birth. It is probable that the child was baptized when only two or three days old. The poet's tomb states that Shakespeare was in his fifty-second year when he died, April 23, 1616. Accepting this as strictly true, we cannot place the poet's birthday earlier than April 23, 1564. There is a tradition, with no authority, that the poet died upon his birthday.

John Shakespeare, the poet's father, sold the products of near-by farms to his fellow-townsmen. He is sometimes described as a glover, sometimes as a butcher; very likely he was both. A single reference, half a century later than his day, preserves for us a picture of John Shakespeare. The note reads: "He [William Shakespeare] was a glover's son. Sir John Mennes saw once his old father in his shop, a merry-cheekt old man, that said, 'Will was a good honest fellow, but he durst have crackt a jesst with him att any time.'"

John Shakespeare's father, Richard Shakespeare, was a tenant farmer, who was in 1550 renting his little farm at Snitterfield, four miles north of Stratford, from another farmer, Robert Arden of Wilmcote. John Shakespeare married Mary Arden, the daughter of his father's rich landlord, probably in 1557. He had for over five years been a middleman at Stratford, dealing in the produce of his father's farm and other farms in the neighborhood. In April, 1552, we first hear of him in Stratford records, though only as being fined a shilling for not keeping his yard clean. Between 1557 and 1561 he rose to be ale tester (inspector of bread and malt), burgess (petty constable), affeeror (adjuster of fines), and finally city chamberlain (treasurer).

Eight children were born to him, the two eldest, both daughters, dying in infancy. William Shakespeare was the third child, and eldest of those who reached maturity. During his childhood his father was probably in comfortable circumstances, but not long before the son left Stratford for London, John Shakespeare was practically a bankrupt, and had lost by mortgage farms in Snitterfield and Ashbies, near by, inherited in 1556 by his wife.


Shakespeare's Education

William Shakespeare probably went to the Stratford Grammar School, where he and his brothers as the sons of a town councilor were entitled to free tuition. His masters, no doubt, taught him Lilly's Latin Grammar and the Latin classics,--Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Cicero, Seneca, and the rest,--and very little else. If Shakespeare ever knew French or Italian, he picked it up in London life, where he picked up most of his amazing stock of information on all subjects. Besides Latin, he must have read and memorized a good deal of the English Bible.


Shakespeare's Marriage

In the autumn of 1582 the eighteen-year-old Shakespeare married a young woman of twenty-six. On November 28, of that year two farmers of Shottery, near Stratford, signed what we should call a guarantee bond, agreeing to pay to the Bishop's Court £40, in case the marriage proposed between William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway should turn out to be contrary to the canon--or Church--law, and so invalid. This guarantee bond, no doubt, was issued to facilitate and hasten the wedding. On May 26, 1583, Shakespeare's first child, Susanna, was baptized. His only other children, his son Hamnet and a twin daughter Judith, were baptized February 2, 1584-5. It is probable that soon after this date Shakespeare went to London and began his career as actor, and afterwards as writer of plays and owner of theaters."


TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE
AN INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE
CHAPTER I
AN OUTLINE OF SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE
CHAPTER II
ENGLISH DRAMA BEFORE SHAKESPEARE
CHAPTER III
THE ELIZABETHAN THEATER
CHAPTER IV
ELIZABETHAN LONDON
CHAPTER V
SHAKESPEARE'S NONDRAMATIC WORKS
CHAPTER VI
THE SEQUENCE OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS
CHAPTER VII
SHAKESPEARE'S DEVELOPMENT AS A DRAMATIST
CHAPTER VIII
THE CHIEF SOURCES OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS
CHAPTER IX
HOW SHAKESPEARE GOT INTO PRINT
CHAPTER X
THE PLAYS OF THE FIRST PERIOD--IMITATION AND EXPERIMENT
CHAPTER XI
THE PLAYS OF THE SECOND PERIOD--COMEDY AND HISTORY
CHAPTER XII
THE PLAYS OF THE THIRD PERIOD--TRAGEDY
CHAPTER XIII
THE PLAYS OF THE FOURTH PERIOD--ROMANTIC TRAGI-COMEDY
CHAPTER XIV
FAMOUS MISTAKES AND DELUSIONS ABOUT SHAKESPEARE