The Sonnets

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was born at Stratford upon Avon in April, 1564. He was the third child, and eldest son, of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. His father was one of the most prosperous men of Stratford, who held in turn the chief offices in the town.In December, 1582, Shakespeare married Ann Hathaway, a farmer's daughter; their first child Susanna was baptized on May 6, 1583, and twins, Hamnet and Judith, on February 22, 1585. Little is known of Shakespeare s early life; but it is unlikely that a writer who dramatized such an incomparable range and variety of human kinds and experiences spent his early manhood entirely ina country town. There is one popular theory that he fled from Stratford because he was in trouble for deer stealing, another that he was for some time a schoolmaster.From 1592 onwards the records are much fuller. In March, 1592, the Lord Strange s players produced a new play at the Rose Theatre called <i>Harry the Sixth</i>, which was very successful, and was probably the <i>First Part of Henry VI</i>. In the autumn of 1592 Robert Greene, the best known of the professional writers, as he was dying wrote a letter to three fellow writers in which he warned them against the ingratitude of players in general, and in particular against an upstart crow who supposes he is as much 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. This is the first reference to Shakespeare, and the whole passage suggests that Shakespeare had become suddenly famous as a playwright.</p>In April, 1593, Shakespeare published his poem <i>Venus and Adonis</i>, which was dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton: it was a great and lasting success, and was reprinted nine times in the next few years. In May, 1594, his second poem, <i>The Rape of Lucrece</i>, was also dedicated to Southampton.</p>In 1593, theaters were mostly shut down due toa severe outbreak of the plague; but in the autumn of 1594 the playing companies were reorganized, and Shakespeare became a member of the Lord Chamberlain s company, which appeared at the Theatrein Shoreditch.Shakespeare had already written the three parts of <i>Henry VI</i>, <i>Richard III</i>, <i>Titus Andronicus</i>, <i>The Two Gentlemen of Verona</i>, <i>Love s Labour s Lost</i>, <i>The Comedy of Errors</i>, and <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i>. Soon afterwards he wrote the first of his greater plays <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> and he followed this success in the next three years with <i>A Midsummer Night s Dream</i>, <i>Richard II</i>, and <i>The Merchant of Venice</i>. The two parts of <i>Henry VI</i>, introducing Falstaff, the most popular of all his comic characters, were written in 1597 8.</p>The company left the Theatre in Shoreditch in 1597 owing to disputes over a renewal of the ground lease, and went to appear at the Curtain in the same neighborhood. The disputes continued throughout 1598, and at Christmas the players settled the matter by demolishing the old Theatre and re-erecting a new playhouse on the south bank of the Thames, near Southwark Cathedral. This playhouse was named the Globe. The expenses of the new building were shared by the chief members of the Company, including Shakespeare, who was now a man of some means. In 1596 he had bought New Place, a large house in the center of Stratford, for 60, and through his father purchased a coat-of-arms from the Heralds, which was the official recognition that he and his family were gentlefolk.</p>By the summer of 1598 Shakespeare was recognized as the greatest of English dramatists. Booksellers were printing his more popular plays, at times even in pirated or stolen versions. Shortly before the Globe was opened, Shakespeare had comple