@@QuickFacts @@startDate=February 15, 2014 --- The Complete Art of Poetry, a book written in 1718 by Charles Gildon, features a section called Shakespeariana, which is the first ever published collection of Shakespearean quotations. --- @@seeAlso=/biography/shakespearechildren.html Shakespeare had three children. The first child born was Susanna, christened on May 26, 1583, and twins arrived in January, 1585. They were baptized on February 2 of that year and named Hamnet and Judith. Tragically, Hamnet died on August 11, 1596, at the age of eleven. We do not know the cause of his death. --- @@seeAlso=/sonnets/sonnetintroduction.html The majority of Shakespeare's sonnets (1-126) are addressed to a young man, with whom the poet has an intense romantic relationship. The poet spends the first seventeen sonnets trying to convince the young man to marry and have children; beautiful children that will look just like their father, ensuring his immortality. --- @@seeAlso=/playanalysis/1henryIVcommentary.html Henry Bolingbroke, the eldest son of John of Gaunt and the grandson of King Edward III, was born on April 3, 1367. Henry usurped the throne from the ineffectual King Richard II in 1399, and thus became King Henry IV, the first of the three kings of the House of Lancaster. --- @@seeAlso=/biography/londondisease.html One of the worst outbreaks of smallpox occurred two years before Shakespeare's birth, in 1562. Queen Elizabeth herself, then 29, was attacked by the virus that causes high fever, vomiting, excessive bleeding, and pus-filled scabs that leave deep pitted scars. Although the Queen recovered she was rendered completely bald and forced to wear an extra thick layer of make-up made from white lead and egg whites. --- @@seeAlso=/biography/shakespeareburial.html Shakespeare is buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in his hometown of Stratford, Warwickshire. His gravestone bears an epitaph which Shakespeare himself supposedly wrote. --- @@seeAlso=/biography/shakespearemarriage.html Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway in 1582. When Shakespeare married Hathaway he was still a minor, while she was twenty-six and already several months pregnant. --- @@seeAlso=/faq/macbethfaq/weirdsisters.html The Three Witches in Macbeth are called the weird sisters in many editions of the play. In the Folio edition the spelling is weyward. Our modern-day meaning of weird, i.e., odd or strange, is not really accurate. Weird here comes from the Anglo-Saxon wyrd, and means fate or destiny. Thus the weird sisters are foretellers of Macbeth's fate. --- @@seeAlso=/biography/shakespeareparents.html Shakespeare's father, John, was a prominent member of Stratford. He married Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, sometime between 1556 and 1558. John Shakespeare was elected to many civic positions including chamberlain of the borough in 1561, alderman in 1565, and high bailiff in 1568. --- @@seeAlso=/keydates/chronologyofcontent2.html The historical time of King Lear is roughly 800 BC, making it the second-earliest setting of any of Shakespeare's plays. So which is the earliest? --- @@seeAlso=/sources/macbethsources.html Shakespeare lived during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I, ruler from 1558 to 1603, and King James I, ruler from 1603 to 1625. --- @@seeAlso=/biography/shakespeareactor.html Shakespeare bought the second-largest house in his home town for a sum of £60. The house was over 100 years old when Shakespeare moved in and it came with ten fireplaces and two barns. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust acquired what was left of the once-magnificent property in 1892. --- @@seeAlso=/plays/1kh4scenes.html 1 Henry IV opens with the troubled Henry Bolingbroke trying to deal with his new role as king. He decides to place his focus on a massive crusade to the Holy Land. --- @@seeAlso=/biography/shakespeareancestry.html Richard Shakespeare, Shakespeare's paternal grandfather, was a farmer in the small village of Snitterfield, located four miles from Stratford. Records show that Richard worked on several different farms which he leased from various landowners. Coincidentally, Richard leased land from Robert Arden, Shakespeare's maternal grandfather. --- @@seeAlso=/biography/wordsinvented.html Shakespeare was familiar with seven foreign languages and often quoted them directly in his plays. His vocabulary was the largest of any writer, at over twenty-four thousand words. --- @@seeAlso=/plays/kinsmenintro.html The Two Noble Kinsmen is listed as one of Shakespeare's plays although it must be noted that all but a few scholars believe it not to be an original work by Shakespeare. The majority of the play was probably written by John Fletcher, who was a prominent actor and Shakespeare's close friend. Fletcher succeeded Shakespeare as foremost dramatist for the King's Men (the successor to the Chamberlain's Men). --- @@seeAlso=/plays/falstaff.html Falstaff, generally held to be Shakespeare's greatest comic character, appears in 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. A character named Sir John Fastolfe appears in 1 Henry VI, but he is not the jolly Falstaff featured in the above-mentioned plays. --- @@seeAlso=/biography/elizabethanclothes.html So great was the Elizabethan demand for wigs made from human hair that "children with handsome locks were never allowed to walk alone in the London streets for fear they should be temporarily kidnapped and their tresses cut off." --- @@seeAlso=/plays/richardiiiscenes.html Edward IV, son of Richard Plantagenet (the Duke of York), is Richard III's brother and is on the throne at the beginning of the play. Edward is not around long -- he dies in Act 2, indirectly from Richard III's malicious schemes. --- The Earl of Richmond defeats Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, and is then offered Richard's crown. Thus Richmond becomes Henry VII, the first Tudor king. --- The average length of a play in Elizabethan England was 3000 lines. With 4,042 lines and 29,551 words, Hamlet is the longest Shakespearean play (based on the first edition of The Riverside Shakespeare (1974)). With 1,787 lines and 14,369 words, The Comedy of Errors is the shortest Shakespearean play (also based on the first edition of The Riverside Shakespeare). --- @@seeAlso=/keydates/kingtimeline1.html Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the most captivating and complex figures in history. In 1152, Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet (later to become Henry II). Their son, John, was born in 1167 and is the title character of Shakespeare's history play. --- @@seeAlso=/plays/macbeth_1_2.html The historical Duncan's reign began November 25th, 1034 and ended August 14th, 1040. He was the eldest son of Crinan the Thane and was 33 years old when he succeeded his maternal grandfather, Malcolm II. He was murdered by Macbeth, a commander in his army, at Bothnagowan and buried in Iona. He fathered three sons, Malcolm, Donald Bane, and Melmare. --- @@seeAlso=/faq/shakespearedrinking.html Malmsey, a rich and sweet wine brought to England from Greece in the 16th century, is now produced on the island of Madeira. Shakespeare writes about Malmsey many times, but the most famous reference to Malmsey in all of literature can be found in Richard III (1.4.153). --- @@seeAlso=/plays/othello/stagehistoryothello.html Tragically, during a performance of Othello at Covent Garden in 1833, Edmund Kean collapsed on stage into the arms of his son who was playing Iago, and died a few weeks later. --- @@seeAlso=/plays/macbeth/astorhouse.html In 1849, two competing productions of Macbeth were held on the same night in New York City. The result was the worst disaster in theatre history. --- @@seeAlso=/plays/romeoandjuliet/romeoqueenmab.html An atomy is the smallest particle of matter (an atom). The most famous use of the word atomy in the plays is found in Mercutio's Queen Mab speech in Romeo and Juliet (1.4). --- @@seeAlso=/biography/shakespearesiblings.html Shakespeare's parents, Mary Arden and John Shakespeare, had eight children. Shakespeare had two sisters named Joan, one born in 1558 and the other in 1569. No one knows first-born Joan’s exact date of death, but it is assumed that she died in infancy. Second-born Joan survived her famous brother by more than 30 years. --- According to Shakespearean scholar Jackson J. Campbell, although Troilus and Cressida is today classified as a comedy, the editors of the First Folio originally scheduled the play to be included in the section containing the tragedies. Due to a conflict with the printer, however, Troilus and Cressida was published after the rest of the tragedies, and thus was placed in between the histories and the tragedies, after Henry VIII and before Coriolanus. --- @@seeAlso=/plays/macbeth/macbethglossary/macbeth1_1/macbethglos_owlshriek.html In Renaissance England the hoot of an owl flying over one's house was an evil omen, and meant impending death for someone inside. Shakespeare refers to the owl as the "fatal bellman" because it was the bellman's job to ring the parish bell when a person in the town was near death. "This was called the "passing bell," and was a signal for all hearers to pray for the dying person. --- @@seeAlso=/biography/shakespeareboss.html The Master of Revels, deputy to the Lord Chamberlain, headed the Revels Office, the department of the royal household responsible for the coordination of theatrical entertainment at court. To perform at court was the ultimate goal of every Elizabethan theatre company and, even if certain renegade companies did not desire to gain a royal audience, they had little choice but to pretend to shape their every action to this end. --- @@seeAlso=/essays/shakespeareaudience.html Most of Shakespeare's poorer audience members, referred to as groundlings, would pay one penny (which was almost an entire day's wage) to stand in front of the stage, while the richer patrons would sit in the covered galleries, paying as much as half a crown each for their seats. In 1599, Thomas Platter, a Swiss doctor visiting London from Basel, reported the cost of admission in his diary. --- @@seeAlso=/theatre/globe.html Elizabethan playhouses were open to the public eye at every turn, and scenery could not be changed in between scenes because there was no curtain to drop. --- @@seeAlso=/faq/kingsmen.html In 1603, Queen Elizabeth I died and James the VI of Scotland became the new monarch, King James I of England. James loved the arts and was very generous to actors, playwrights, and other performers of the day. In particular, James I loved the theatre, and was captivated by Shakespeare's acting troupe, the Chamberlain's Men. --- @@seeAlso=/biography/shakespeareeducation.html At the time Shakespeare lived in Stratford the village had approximately 2000 residents. --- @@seeAlso=/faq/imagesofshakespeare.html The Chandos portrait of Shakespeare is named after its owners, the Dukes of Chandos. Some believe that Shakespeare's friend and fellow actor Richard Burbage painted it and gave it to Joseph Taylor, an actor with the King's Men. Taylor then left the painting to William Davenant, the man who claimed to be Shakespeare's illegitimate son. --- @@seeAlso=/faq/shakespearedrinking.html English grapes were not adequate for winemaking so they imported their wines from France, Spain, and Greece. Sack, a sweet wine fortified with brandy (known today as sherry), was most popular with the Elizabethans. --- @@seeAlso=/biography/willkempe.html William Kempe was one of the most beloved clowns in the Elizabethan theatre, but he left the Chamberlain's Men suddenly in 1599. The reason for his departure is not documented, although many believe that he was asked to leave due to his chronic improvising, and that Shakespeare made reference to this in Hamlet (3.2). --- @@seeAlso=/plays/edwardIII.html The term apocrypha is given to the collection of twelve plays that some scholars believe to be Shakespeare's, but are not officially part of the current canon of works because no real proof of authenticity has ever been brought forth. The twelve apocryphal plays are: Locrine, The London Prodigal, The Puritan, Thomas, Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle, Arden of Feversham, A Yorkshire Tragedy, The Birth of Merlin, Edward III, Fair Em, Mucedorus, and The Merry Devil of Edmonton. --- @@seeAlso=/plays/richardiii_1_3.html The Elizabethans believed the flame of a candle would burn bright blue if a spirit entered the room. When, in Shakespeare's Richard III, the ghost of Buckingham visits Richard he whispers, "The lights turn blue" (5.3.181). --- @@seeAlso=/plays/macbeth_1_3.html The First Witch in Shakespeare's Macbeth says "But in a sieve I'll thither sail" (1.3). Along with a bubbling cauldron, toads, eye of newt, and an occasional family of apes (be sure to read Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust), one would find a sieve in the kitchen of every competent witch. Using their brooms as oars, witches would set sail in sieves and journey over rough waters. A text written in 1591, Newes from Scotland, reports 200 witches at one time traveling across the sea in their sieves.