WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

William Shakespeare(1564-1616) was a famous poet, playwright and actor. Although he was 52 years old when he died, Shakespeare wrote a variety of poems.

Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a sucessful career in London as actor, writer and partowner of a playing company. Many of this plays were published in edition of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime.

Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day, he wrote them in a stylised language that doesn't always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the drama. The poetry depends on extended, sonmetimes elaborate metaphors and concert, the language is often rethorical.

Most of his known work was between 1589 and 1613, his early plays were primarily comedies and histories, he then wrote mainly tragedies. In his last phase he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances. Shakespeare's work inspired other writers such as Miguel de Cervantes, Albert Brooke, Hector Boece, Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens. The american novelist Herman Melville's monologues are inspired in Shakespeare's, his captain Alhab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero inspired by King Lear. Scholars have identified 20.000 pieces of music liked to Shakespeare's work. Shakespeare has also inspired many pinters including the Romantics and the  Pre-Raphaelite. The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli even translated Macbeth into German