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114-625: The theatre was a "collaborative project" between Antonin Artaud, Robert Aron and Roger Vitrac that "emerged from [their] collective interests." They named the theatre after Alfred Jarry, "a key figure in the French avant-garde known for his aggressive and biting satire of bourgeois social mores", best known for his play Ubu Roi . Between June 1927 and January 1929, the Theatre Alfred Jarry staged seven productions over four seasons. They did not have

228-668: A Turkish galley , at another frozen in ice in Norway and at one more the King of Poland . Ubu Roi follows and explores his political, martial and felonious exploits. "There is", writes Taylor, "a particular kind of pleasure for an audience watching these infantile attacks. Part of the satisfaction arises from the fact that in the burlesque mode which Jarry invents, there is no place for consequence. While Ubu may be relentless in his political aspirations, and brutal in his personal relations, he apparently has no measurable effect upon those who inhabit

342-717: 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 . In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio , the Droeshout engraving was published. Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey . Most playwrights of

456-536: A gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory; and from November 1614, he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall . After 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613. His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher , who succeeded him as the house playwright of the King's Men. He retired in 1613, before the Globe Theatre burned down during

570-651: A playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men , later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI of Scotland to the English throne. 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 even certain fringe theories as to whether

684-647: A French-language production of Ubu Roi, directed by Declan Donnellan and designed by Nick Ormerod . The production was presented across Europe, Russia, the United-States and Mexico. It was live-streamed worldwide from the Lincoln Center in New York on 26 July 2015. According to The New York Times "the Cheek by Jowl production asks us to see Jarry’s play through the eyes of a sulky, moody, sexually tormented adolescent, who

798-427: 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. Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London. John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been

912-524: A cardboard horse's head in certain scenes, "as in the old English theatre", for he intended to "write a guignol ". He thought a "suitably costumed person would enter, as in puppet shows, to put up signs indicating the locations of the various scenes". He also wanted costumes with as little specific local colour reference or historical accuracy as possible. Ubu Roi was followed by Ubu Cocu ( Ubu Cuckolded ) and Ubu Enchaîné ( Ubu in Chains ), neither of which

1026-402: 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. 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

1140-596: A country schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars 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. Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area. It is not known definitively when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on

1254-485: A definitive version. By the time Jarry wanted Ubu Roi published and staged, the Morins had lost their interest in schoolboy japes, and Henri gave Jarry permission to do whatever he wanted with them. Charles, however, later tried to claim credit, but it had never been a secret that he had had some involvement with the earliest version. The music was composed and performed at the premiere by Claude Terrasse . The first word of

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1368-619: A highly popular version of Ubu Roi directed by Michael Meschke, with scenery by Franciszka Themerson. Ubu Roi was translated into Serbian in 1964 by Ljubomir Draškić and performed at the Atelje 212 theatre in Belgrade for the next 20 years, until Zoran Radmilović , who played Père Ubu, died. The play was so successful that it was adapted into a movie in 1973. Ubu Roi was translated into Czech by Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich as Král Ubu , and premiered in 1928 at Osvobozené divadlo . The play

1482-568: A literary banquet, where the fictional Comte de Passavant introduces him as the author of Ubu Roi , saying of the literary set, "They have dubbed him a genius because the public have just damned his play. All the same, it's the most interesting thing that's been put on the stage for a long time". Joan Miró used Ubu Roi as a subject of his 50 lithographs in 1940 called the Barcelona Series . These pictures could be Ubu Roi but they also satirise General Franco and his generals after he had won

1596-431: A merry meeting and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted", 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." He was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married

1710-448: A more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day. Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen , probably with John Fletcher . 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 . Two plays not included in

1824-450: A naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd Upon the sightless couriers of the air." 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. No single play marks

1938-788: 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. 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. Published in 1609,

2052-475: A physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Judith had married Thomas Quiney , a vintner , two months before Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on 25 March 1616; the following day, Thomas Quiney, his new son-in-law, was found guilty of fathering an illegitimate son by Margaret Wheeler, both of whom had died during childbirth. Thomas was ordered by the church court to do public penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment for

2166-588: A practical sense of the theatre. Like all playwrights of the time, he dramatised stories from sources such as Plutarch and Holinshed . 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. 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

2280-457: A regular space or company, which changed depending on what was available. The theatre advertised that they would produce Artaud's play Jet de sang in their 1926–1927 season, but it was never mounted and was not premiered until 40 years later. The following actors performed at TAJ: Ubu Roi Ubu Roi ( French: [yby ʁwa] ; "Ubu the King" or "King Ubu") is a play by French writer Alfred Jarry , then 23 years old. It

2394-480: A selling point and began to appear on the title pages . 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). 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

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2508-482: A simple puppet—a school boy's caricature of one of his teachers who personified for him all the ugliness in the world". The poet W. B. Yeats , though he did not understand French, attended the premiere with a companion who interpreted the action for him. He recalled, in his memoir The Trembling of the Veil , his dismay that the play challenged the symbolist, spiritual-themed literature he advocated: "Feeling bound to support

2622-474: A single public performance the next night – caused a riotous response in the audience and denunciatory reviews in the days after. It is considered a wild, bizarre and comic play, significant for the way it overturns cultural rules, norms, and conventions. To some of those who were in the audience on opening night, including W. B. Yeats and the poet and essayist Catulle Mendès , it seemed an event of revolutionary importance, but many were mystified and outraged by

2736-525: A student at the Lycée in Rennes at the age of fifteen, Jarry encountered a brief farcical sketch, Les Polonais , written by his friend Henri Morin, and Henri's brother Charles. This farce was part of a campaign by the students to ridicule their physics teacher, Félix-Frederic Hébert (1832–1917). Les Polonais depicted their teacher as the King of an imaginary Poland, and was one of many plays created around Père Hébé,

2850-461: 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". 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

2964-538: Is clear, however, that Jarry considerably revised and expanded the play. While his schoolmates lost interest in the Ubu legends when they left school, Jarry continued adding to and reworking the material for the rest of his short life. His plays are controversial for their scant respect to royalty, religion and society, their vulgarity and scatology, their brutality and low comedy, and their perceived utter lack of literary finish. According to Jane Taylor, "the central character

3078-577: Is definitively classed as a tragedy. 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. 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. Londoners flocked there to see

3192-417: Is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country. Scholars differ on the exact meaning of Greene's words, 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 "). The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in

3306-467: Is named after the main character. Their 2009 album Long Live Père Ubu! is an adaptation of Jarry's play. Dead Can Dance 's frontman Brendan Perry makes a reference to Père Ubu in the song "The Bogus Man" (on his second solo album Ark ) with the line "Hail, Father Ubu, here comes the Grand Guignol". The figure of Ubu Roi, particularly as depicted by Jarry in his woodcut, appears to have inspired

3420-400: Is notorious for his infantile engagement with his world. Ubu inhabits a domain of greedy self-gratification". Jarry's metaphor for the modern man, he is an antihero – fat, ugly, vulgar, gluttonous, grandiose, dishonest, stupid, jejune , voracious, greedy, cruel, cowardly and evil – who grew out of schoolboy legends about the imaginary life of a hated teacher who had been at one point a slave on

3534-525: Is often used. 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 . "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." The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use, though Hamlet

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3648-427: Is pitilessly judgmental of his elders." In 2014, Toronto 's One Little Goat Theatre Company produced Ubu Mayor: A Harmful Bit of Fun , combining the merde -filled sensibilities of Ubu Roi with the internationally renowned antics, absurdities and obscenities of Toronto's mayor Rob Ford and his brother Doug . In 2016, the play was adapted by Jared Strange into UBU ROY: An American Tale , an updated version of

3762-475: Is the "science of imaginary solutions". The story is a parody of Shakespeare 's Macbeth and some parts of Hamlet and King Lear . As the play begins, Ubu's wife convinces him to lead a revolution, and kills the King of Poland and most of the royal family. The King's son, Bougrelas, and the Queen escape, but the latter later dies. The ghost of the dead king appears to his son and calls for revenge. Back at

3876-425: Is the question ". Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, Othello and Lear are undone by hasty errors of judgement. 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. In Othello , Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him. In King Lear ,

3990-585: Is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the " Bard of Avon " (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations , consist of some 39 plays , 154 sonnets , three 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. Shakespeare remains arguably

4104-575: 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. 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". Few analysts believe that

4218-867: The American Repertory Theater in 1995 and was remounted at ART the following year. The play was adapted for the Czech film Král Ubu , directed by F. A. Brabec in 1996. The film received three Czech Lion Awards . Sherry C. M. Lindquist's adaptation was performed in Chicago, at The Public Theater in New York City, at the International Festival of Puppet Theater, and at the Edison Theater, St. Louis, Missouri, by Hystopolis Productions, Chicago, from 1996 to 1997. Jane Taylor adapted Ubu Roi as Ubu and

4332-542: 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, 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. Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, beginning in 1594, and by 1598, his name had become

4446-504: The First Folio , a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson , a former rival of Shakespeare, who hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time". Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare , an alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker) originally from Snitterfield in Warwickshire , and Mary Arden ,

4560-526: The King's Men . 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 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

4674-519: The Shrew ' s story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences. 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. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy,

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4788-457: The Spanish Civil War . In her book Linda McCartney's Sixties: Portrait of an Era , Linda McCartney mentions that Paul had become interested in avant-garde theatre and immersed himself in the writings of Jarry. This is how McCartney discovered the word " pataphysical ", which he used in the lyrics of his song " Maxwell's Silver Hammer ". The American experimental rock group Pere Ubu

4902-490: The end of lines , with the risk of monotony. 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: Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay Worse than

5016-523: The American Empire and the liberation of Puerto Rico. The play was adapted and directed by Dash Kruck as part of Vena Cava Production's 2013 mainstage season. Performed in Brisbane, Australia , the adaptation made cultural political references to Queensland's Premier Campbell Newman , even including him in the show's promotional poster. In 2013, the international theatre company Cheek by Jowl created

5130-582: The Chorus in Henry V , though scholars doubt the sources of that information. 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. He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the same year his company constructed

5244-500: 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. 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

5358-489: The Globe Theatre there. 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 women's wigs and other headgear. Nicholas Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated by Samuel Johnson , that Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years before his death". He

5472-691: The King Ubu Gallery existed at 3119 Fillmore Street in San Francisco. Founded by Robert Duncan , Jess Collins, and Harry Jacobus, the gallery was an important institution until it was replaced by the Six Gallery , where Allen Ginsberg first read "Howl." Alfred Jarry is one of the few real figures to appear among the many literary characters in Les Faux-Monnayeurs ( The Counterfeiters , 1925), by André Gide . In Part III, Chapter 8, Jarry attends

5586-448: 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. The others had already appeared in quarto versions—flimsy books made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves. No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies". Alfred Pollard termed some of

5700-421: The London stage by 1592. By then, he was sufficiently known in London to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit from that year: ... 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 ,

5814-588: The Savage God.'” In 1936 Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński , the great Polish modernist and prolific writer and translator created in Polish Ubu Król czyli Polacy ("King Ubu, otherwise, The Poles"). Some of his phraseology in the play has passed into the language. In 1990, at the invitation of the Munich Opera , Krzysztof Penderecki wrote an opera buffa on Jarry's theme entitled Ubu Rex , staged on 8 July 1991 for

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5928-495: The Shakespeare family. Shakespeare bequeathed the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna under stipulations that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body". The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying. The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct line. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who

6042-510: The Shrew , and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare's earliest period. His first histories , which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland , dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty . The early plays were influenced by

6156-572: The Truth Commission (1998), a play addressing the emotional complexities revealed by the process of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission , which was formed in response to the atrocities committed during apartheid . In Poland the play was adapted for the film Ubu Król (2003) by Piotr Szulkin , highlighting the grotesque nature of political life in Poland immediately after

6270-649: The Vernal & Sere Theatre staged a world-premiere adaptation in Atlanta, Georgia called UBU , which imagined the titular character of King Ubu as a principal walking the halls of a quintessential American school and called into question the fundamental system by which the United States governs and instructs its citizenry. In 1923, the Dadaist pioneer Max Ernst produced a painting entitled Ubu Imperator . Between 1952 and 1953,

6384-499: The act of writing, began to infuse each other". 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 . Many critics believe that Shakespeare's tragedies represent the peak of his art. Hamlet has probably been analysed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which begins " To be or not to be; that

6498-594: The age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596. 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. Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years". Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe , Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted

6612-434: The authority engendered by success. The title is sometimes translated as King Turd ; however, the word "Ubu" is actually merely a nonsense word that evolved from the French pronunciation of the name "Hebert", which was the name of one of Jarry's teachers, the satirical target and inspiration of the first versions of the play. Jarry made some suggestions regarding how his play should be performed. He wanted King Ubu to wear

6726-476: 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. 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. Shakespeare combined poetic genius with

6840-497: The character Oogie Boogie in Tim Burton 's animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas . Television producer Gary David Goldberg named his dog Ubu and his production company Ubu Productions after Ubu Roi. Australian band Methyl Ethel 's song "Ubu" contains references to the play. William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( c. 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright , poet and actor. He

6954-452: The character that, in Jarry's hands, eventually evolved into King Ubu. Les Polonais was performed as a marionette play by the students at their homes in what they called the "Theatre des Phynances", named in honor of Père Hébert's lust for "phynance" (finance), or money. This prototype for Ubu Roi is long-lost, so the true and complete details of the authorship of Ubu Roi may never be known. It

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7068-487: The daughter of an affluent landowning family . He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon , where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day . This date, which can be traced to William Oldys and George Steevens , has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616. He was the third of eight children, and

7182-621: The door for what became known as modernism in the 20th century, and as a precursor to Dadaism , Surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd . Ubu Roi was first performed in Paris on December 10, 1896, by Aurélien Lugné-Poe 's Théâtre de l'Œuvre at Nouveau-Théâtre (today, the Théâtre de Paris), 15, rue Blanche, in the 9th arrondissement . The play – scheduled for an invited "industry" run-through followed by

7296-415: 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

7410-464: The eldest surviving son. Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford, a free school chartered in 1553, 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

7524-415: The equally romantic The Merchant of Venice , contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock , which reflects dominant Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences. The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing , the charming rural setting of As You Like It , and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. After

7638-626: The fall of communism. The play was translated by David Ball in The Norton Anthology of Drama in 2010, and performed at the University of Virginia the same year. Inspired by the black comedy of corruption within Ubu Roi , the Puerto Rican absurdist narrative United States of Banana (2011) by Giannina Braschi dramatizes, with over-the-top grotesque flourishes of " pataphysics ", the fall of

7752-665: 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 . The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing , among other characters. He was replaced around 1600 by Robert Armin , who played roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It and

7866-466: The famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death; and Julius Caesar —based on Sir Thomas North 's 1579 translation of Plutarch 's Parallel Lives —which introduced a new kind of drama. According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro , in Julius Caesar , "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on

7980-422: The farcical world which he creates around himself. He thus acts out our most childish rages and desires, in which we seek to gratify ourselves at all cost". The derived adjective "ubuesque" is recurrent in French and francophone political debate. Both Ubu Cocu and Ubu Roi have a convoluted history, going through decades of rewriting and, in the case of the former, never arriving, despite Jarry's exertions, at

8094-456: The first part of Henry IV , Leonard Digges recording, "Let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest ... and you scarce shall have a room". 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 . The Globe opened in autumn 1599, with Julius Caesar one of

8208-634: The first plays staged. Most of Shakespeare's greatest post-1599 plays were written for the Globe, including Hamlet , Othello, and King Lear . 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 . After 1608, they performed at

8322-472: The fool in King Lear . In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that Henry VIII "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and ceremony". 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. In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell , two of Shakespeare's friends from

8436-433: 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. Critics praise the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time. 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

8550-490: The indoor Blackfriars Theatre during the winter and the Globe during the summer. 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." The actors in Shakespeare's company included

8664-424: 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. 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

8778-426: The last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances ) such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest , and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell , two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as

8892-501: The lyrical Richard II , written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, Part 1 and 2 , and Henry V . Henry IV features Falstaff , rogue, wit and friend of Prince Hal. 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. This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet ,

9006-473: The marriage. 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, and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna , baptised 26 May 1583. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith , followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at

9120-483: The meantime, been defeated by the Russians, been abandoned by his followers, and been attacked by a bear. Ubu's wife pretends to be the angel Gabriel, in order to try to scare Ubu into forgiving her for her attempt to steal from him. They fight, and she is rescued by the entrance of Bougrelas, who is after Ubu. Ubu knocks down the attackers with the body of the dead bear, after which he and his wife flee to France , which ends

9234-426: The mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks. After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed at The Theatre , in Shoreditch , 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. 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

9348-428: The most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. 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 ("sharer") of

9462-477: The most spirited party, we have shouted for the play, but that night at the Hotel Corneille I am very sad, for comedy, objectivity, has displayed its growing power once more. I say, 'After Stéphane Mallarmé, after Paul Verlaine, after Gustave Moreau, after Puvis de Chavannes, after our own verse, after all our subtle colour and nervous rhythm, after the faint mixed tints of Conder, what more is possible? After us

9576-433: 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". In

9690-531: The needs of the characters or the drama. 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. "And pity, like

9804-548: 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". In Macbeth , the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies, uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth , to murder

9918-674: The opening of the Munich Opera Festival ; the opera was later mounted in Poland in 2003. The first English translation was Ubu Roi. Drama in Five acts followed by the Song of Disembraining , by Barbara Wright , for which she wrote the preface. It was illustrated by Franciszka Themerson and published by the Gaberbocchus Press in 1951. In 1964 the Stockholm Puppet theatre produced

10032-625: The original play through the lens of the 2016 United States presidential election . The show opened November 3, 2016, in Lubbock, Texas , as the Lubbock Community Theatre's first play in their "LCT After Dark" season. In 2020, the play was adapted and set in modern-day Tasmania , taking place on a purpose-built stage in the Cataract Gorge . In 2020, the play was also adapted into a musical by Kneehigh Theatre company. In February 2020,

10146-506: The palace, Ubu, now King, begins heavily taxing the people and killing the nobles for their wealth. Ubu's henchman gets thrown into prison; who then escapes to Russia , where he has the Tsar declare war on Ubu. As Ubu heads out to confront the invading Russians, his wife tries to steal the money and treasures in the palace. She is driven away by Bougrelas, who is leading a revolt of the people against Ubu. She runs away to her husband, Ubu, who has, in

10260-408: The performance of Henry VIII on 29 June. Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52. 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

10374-463: The period typically collaborated with others at some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, mostly early and late in his career. 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, and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus , The Comedy of Errors , The Taming of

10488-463: The plague (a total of over 60 months closure between May 1603 and February 1610), which meant there was often no acting work. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time. Shakespeare continued to visit London during the years 1611–1614. In 1612, he was called as a witness in Bellott v Mountjoy , a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. In March 1613, he bought

10602-617: The play ("merdre", the French word for "shit", with an extra "r") may have been part of the reason for the response to the play in Paris. At the end of the performance a riot broke out, an incident which has since become "a stock element of Jarry biographia". After this, Ubu Roi was outlawed from the stage, and Jarry moved it to a puppet theatre. Jarry said to the audience in a curtain speech just before that first performance in Paris: "You are free to see in M. Ubu however many allusions you care to, or else

10716-697: The play and created the masks for it. In Lithuania (then part of the USSR) the play was adapted as Karalius Ūbas by director Jonas Vaitkus in 1983. The play was adapted into an opera , with libretto by Michael Finnissy and Andrew Toovey and music by Toovey. It was produced by the Banff Centre Theatre, Canada, in collaboration with Music Theatre Wales, in May 1992, directed by Keith Turnbull. A musical adaptation, Ubu Rock , book by Andrei Belgrader and Shelly Berc, music and lyrics by Rusty Magee , premiered at

10830-457: The play's title. Ubu Roi is considered a descendant of the comic grotesque French Renaissance author François Rabelais and his Gargantua and Pantagruel novels. The language of the play is a unique mix of slang code-words, puns and near-gutter vocabulary, set to strange speech patterns. "The beginnings of the original Ubu", writes Jane Taylor , "have attained the status of legend within French theatre culture". In 1888, when he became

10944-459: The play. The action contains motifs found in the plays of Shakespeare : a king's murder and a scheming wife from Macbeth , the ghost from Hamlet , Fortinbras' revolt from Hamlet , the reneging of Buckingham's reward from Richard III , and the pursuing bear from The Winter's Tale . It also includes other cultural references, for example, to Sophocles ' Oedipus Rex ( Œdipe Roi in French) in

11058-478: The pre-1623 versions as " bad quartos " because of their adapted, paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed from memory. Where several versions of a play survive, each differs from the others . The differences may stem from copying or printing errors, from notes by actors or audience members, or from Shakespeare's own papers . In some cases, for example, Hamlet , Troilus and Cressida, and Othello , Shakespeare could have revised

11172-452: The published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence. 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

11286-466: The rightful king and usurp the throne until their own guilt destroys them in turn. 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 . Eliot wrote, "Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from

11400-475: The sexual advances of Venus ; while in The Rape of Lucrece , the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin . Influenced by Ovid 's Metamorphoses , the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust. 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

11514-417: The sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart". Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate ... —Opening lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 . 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

11628-489: The stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in 2008: 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. 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,

11742-654: 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. 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

11856-504: The whole British Museum ." 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. Some commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of

11970-420: The work's seeming childishness, obscenity, and disrespect. It is now seen by some to have opened the door for what became known as modernism in the 20th century. It is a precursor to Dada , Surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd . It is the first of three stylised burlesques in which Jarry satirises power, greed, and their evil practice – in particular the propensity of the complacent bourgeoisie to abuse

12084-429: The works attributed to him were written by others . Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet , Othello , King Lear and Macbeth , all considered to be among the finest works in English. In

12198-459: The works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe , by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca . The Comedy of Errors was also based on classical models, but no source for The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though it has an identical plot but different wording as another play with a similar name. Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona , in which two friends appear to approve of rape,

12312-699: Was banned in Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Soviet invasion . The play was the basis for Jan Lenica 's animated film Ubu et la Grande Gidouille (1976). In 1976–1977 Oakley Hall III translated and adapted Ubu Roi (called Ubu Rex ) and its sequels, and directed them in New York City Off-Off-Broadway and at the Lexington Conservatory Theatre in Lexington, New York . The adaptations starred Richard Zobel , who also produced

12426-494: Was first performed in Paris in 1896, by Aurélien Lugné-Poe 's Théâtre de l'Œuvre at the Nouveau-Théâtre (today, the Théâtre de Paris). The production's single public performance baffled and offended audiences with its unruliness and obscenity . Considered to be a wild, bizarre and comic play, significant for the way it overturns cultural rules, norms and conventions, it is seen by 20th- and 21st-century scholars to have opened

12540-605: Was nearing its end. 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 one cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It , and

12654-441: Was performed during Jarry's 34-year life. One of his later works, a novel/essay on " pataphysics ", is offered as an explanation behind the ideas that underpin Ubu Roi . Pataphysics is, as Jarry explains, "the science of the realm beyond metaphysics". Pataphysics is a pseudo-science Jarry created to critique members of the academy. It studies the laws that "govern exceptions and will explain the universe supplementary to this one". It

12768-535: Was probably entitled to one-third of his estate automatically. He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation. 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. Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death. The epitaph carved into

12882-460: Was standardised by royal decree, and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar based upon Latin classical authors. 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

12996-544: 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.". However, it is perhaps relevant that the bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609. The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed during extended outbreaks of

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