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102-504: As well as the plays of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries, TAW produces new work from living artists and develops creative links with theatre-makers. TAW will celebrate its 50 anniversary in March 2016. In December 1963, ten members organized a theatre play and put through a programme – An Evening with Young Actors – which included Edna St. Vincent Millay's Aria da Capo , scenes from Twelfth Night and Macbeth , The Valiant and

204-717: 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

306-651: 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

408-476: 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

510-402: 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

612-596: 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

714-420: A dramatized reading of Hamlet , Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock . Raj Bisaria produced and directed all the plays, and decided to register a theatre group with a managing body and using local talent. A bilingual group theatre (English and Hindi), the central concern the development of a genuine interest in theatre-craft and creating within its scope, a theatre-consciousness, an ability to appreciate

816-448: 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

918-450: 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

1020-788: 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,

1122-748: 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 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

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1224-588: 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

1326-793: A range of plays from the US and England, major European plays and Indian plays drawn from various regional languages and Hindi. The productions have been interspersed with workshops, talks, arts shows and exchange programmes. TAW mounted on stage the plays by European, American and Indian playwrights; its repertory including a selection from William Shakespeare , G.B. Shaw , Sartre, Ionesco, Christopher Fry, Arthur Miller , Tennessee Williams , Noël Coward , Ronald Duncan, Rattigan, Harold Pinter , Peter Shaffer , Jean Anouilh , Maxwell Anderson , Mohan Rakesh , Badal Sircar, Adya Rangacharya , Dharamvir Bharati , Shesh and Mohit Chatterjee and productions of Ann Jellicoe, Edward Albee and Orton, which proved too radical in

1428-664: A rich source for filmmakers; Akira Kurosawa adapted Macbeth and King Lear as Throne of Blood and Ran , respectively. Other examples of Shakespeare on film include Max Reinhardt 's A Midsummer Night's Dream , Laurence Olivier 's Hamlet and Al Pacino 's documentary Looking For Richard . Orson Welles , a lifelong lover of Shakespeare, directed and starred in Macbeth , Othello and Chimes at Midnight , in which he plays John Falstaff , which Welles himself called his best work. Andha Yug Andha Yug ( Hindi : अंधा युग, The Age of Blindness or The Blind Age )

1530-401: A society that turns away from its wisdom culture and instead succumb to the logic of the moment that can be easily swayed by emotions. Bharati uses the war of Mahabharat to make an anti-war statement and raises questions regarding moral uprightness in the wake of Partition-related atrocities, loss of faith and national identity. Some directors have used it to bring out contemporary issues like

1632-525: A three-bill presentation, in November, 1967. These were crucial productions as TAW’s audience wavered between shocked admiration and shocked disgust. Raj Bisaria invited Delhi groups to produce, under TAW’s auspices, plays in Hindi with a view to making local groups conscious of the potentialities and challenges of Hindi theatre. TAW’s first Hindi play was Baqi Itihas , a translation of Badal Sircar’s Bengali play on

1734-562: A thrust stage. It was a non-realistic presentation, using giant slides and specially designed music, the first production of the kind in the country. Baqi Itihas was followed by a wide range of plays in translation from English, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, in addition to those originally in Hindi; Andha Yug , Suno Janmejaya, Aadhe-Adhure, The Cave Dwellers, Antigone , Garbo , Candida , The Father , Sleuth , Barefoot in Athens The Caretaker , The Public Eye etc. Apart from

1836-605: 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 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

1938-461: 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

2040-487: A worthy topic for tragedy. Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events, but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds. His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success. Critic George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson as "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes." John Milton , considered by many to be

2142-587: Is a 1953 verse play written in Hindi , by renowned novelist, poet, and playwright Dharamvir Bharati (1926–1997). Set in the last day of the Great Mahabharat war, the five-act tragedy was written in the years following the 1947 partition of India atrocities, as allegory to its destruction of human lives and ethical values. It is a metaphoric meditation on the politics of violence and aggressive selfhood and that war dehumanized individuals and society. Thus both

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2244-577: 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

2346-494: Is for theatre and allied performing arts; its members are to be exposed to workshop methods of representation. TAW was to be a training organization and then a performing group, with its motto ‘training before performance’ . Its philosophy is "your right is to work only, but never the fruit thereof. Let not the fruit of action be your object, nor let your attachment be to inaction." – Sri Krishna to sorrowing Arjuna (The Bhagvadgita, chapter II - 47) A token grant has been given by

2448-417: 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

2550-409: 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 the needs of

2652-525: 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

2754-421: Is perhaps relevant that the bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609. The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed during extended outbreaks of 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

2856-425: 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 ,

2958-575: 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

3060-504: 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 ,

3162-662: 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 ... 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 the Blackfriars indoor theatre . Extant records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that his association with

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3264-519: 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,

3366-490: 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

3468-539: The Annapolis Brass Quintet in 1981. With its motto training before performance , TAW has been conducting comprehensive theatre workshops since 1966, for young theatre aspirants. Its training primarily focuses on psychological and realistic acting , with special attention on voice and body . As of 2015 over 100 acting and theatre workshops have been organised by TAW. William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( c. 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616)

3570-500: 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

3672-492: The Government of India – sufficient to meet the expenditure for one production. William Shakespeare's Othello was the first play performed by the group, on 12 February 1966. It was adapted to be played by four actors, all British, and directed by Raj Bisaria, in the English language. TAW has mounted over eighty major theatre productions till now. They have included performances both in English and Hindustani, and have included

3774-495: The Great Mahabharata War, which devastated the kingdom of Kauravas , the feuding cousins of Pandavas , their capital the once-magnificent Hastinapur lay burning, in ruins, the battlefield of Kurukshetra was strewn with corpses, and skies filled with vultures and death laments. Fatalities were on both sides as cousins killed each other. The survivors were left grieving and enraged as they continued to blame each other for

3876-495: 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

3978-421: 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 ,

4080-510: 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

4182-611: The Sun, 1952), are classics of Hindi literature . The latter was adapted into a film by Shyam Benegal in 1992. Originally written as a radio play , the play was first broadcast by the All India Radio (public radio) and immediately drew attention. Playwright and theatre director Satyadev Dubey heard of the play and met Bharati when the latter had dropped in to see Dubey's Hindi adaptation of Albert Camus 's Cross Purposes , as Sapne . Recognizing its potential, Dubey walked around with

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4284-499: 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

4386-642: 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

4488-463: The backdrop of the ruins of Feroz Shah Kotla , Delhi and then Purana Quila 's tiered steps in the 70s. It brought in a new paradigm in Indian theatres. The music for this production was given by noted composer Vanraj Bhatia . In the coming years, the play attracted many directors and was staged across the country, including Mohan Maharishi , Ram Gopal Bajaj , and Bhanu Bharti . M.K. Raina staged

4590-476: 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

4692-518: 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

4794-439: 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 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

4896-417: The consequences, when a society fails to stop a cycle of revenge and instead choose a redemptive path, which is always available even in worst of scenarios. This is shown by Krishna's presence amid the mindlessness of fellow human beings. It was only when they collectively reject the voice of wisdom that denigration of war step upon them, leading to wide-scale bloodshed. The story hints at the perils that await

4998-505: The context of existing provincial attitudes which TAW is trying to change. The TAW started its venture in English language with Shakespeare's Othello in 1966, Christopher Fry's poetic play A Phoenix too Frequent and Eugène Ionesco ’s absurdist play The Lesson in 1967. In 1967 Raj Bisaria decided to produce and direct Jean-Paul Sartre 's existentialist In Camera , Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Aria Da Capo and Ronald Duncan’s translation of 12th century classic Abelard and Heloise in

5100-465: The cousins before war, remains the moral centre of the play. Even in his failure he presents options that are ethical and just and reminds us that a higher or sacred way is always accessible to human beings even in the worst of times. The play ends with the death of Krishna. Bharati constructed the play using western drama tradition and early Indian drama, found in Sanskrit drama. Andha Yug highlights

5202-487: 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

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5304-530: The destruction. No one was willing to view it as a consequence of their own moral choices. Ashwatthama , son of guru Dronacharya , in one last-ditch act of revenge against the Pandavas, releases the ultimate weapon of destruction — the Brahmastra , which promises to annihilate the world. No one comes forward to condemn it: Ethics and humanity have been the first casualties of the war. Krishna who mediated between

5406-415: 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

5508-518: The drama of ideas and technique. Bisaria financed the project, selected members for the committee, picked out a group of four English actors and helpers, and established what has since then been called Theatre Arts Workshop. Thus in 1966, Theatre Arts Workshop ( TAW ) was founded by Raj Bisaria, as a president and artistic director, with the aim of creating interest in dramatic arts among the young, and help them to develop an insight into acting, direction and allied arts. The name ‘Theatre Arts Workshop’

5610-464: 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

5712-415: 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

5814-665: 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

5916-466: 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

6018-511: 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

6120-634: 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

6222-472: 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

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6324-425: The house playwright of the King's Men. He retired in 1613, before the Globe Theatre burned down during 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 ,

6426-544: 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

6528-424: 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

6630-426: 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

6732-429: The later plays, however. In Shakespeare's late romances , he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre. Shakespeare's work has made a significant and lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation , plot, language , and genre. Until Romeo and Juliet , for example, romance had not been viewed as

6834-501: 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 ,

6936-473: 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

7038-426: 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

7140-902: The most important English poet after Shakespeare, wrote in tribute: "Thou in our wonder and astonishment/ Hast built thyself a live-long monument." Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy , William Faulkner , and Charles Dickens . The American novelist Herman Melville 's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero , inspired by King Lear . Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare's works, including Felix Mendelssohn 's overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream and Sergei Prokofiev 's ballet Romeo and Juliet . His work has inspired several operas, among them Giuseppe Verdi 's Macbeth , Otello and Falstaff , whose critical standing compares with that of

7242-428: 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

7344-433: 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

7446-548: 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

7548-467: The perils of self-enchantment in an anti-war allegory. It explores human capacity for moral action, reconciliation, and goodness in times of atrocity and reveals what happens when individuals succumb to the cruelty and cynicism of a blind, dispirited age. When a ruler, epitomized by a blind Dhritarashtra (physically and also by his ambition for his son Duryodhana ), in an equally blind society fail its own side and that of their loved ones. It elaborates on

7650-463: 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

7752-656: The play in Berlin and the Festival of India in the USSR in 1987, Ratan Thiyam staged it in an open-air performance in Tonga, Japan, on 5 August 1994, a day before the 49th anniversary of atomic bombing of Hiroshima . Other noted productions have been by directors Arvind Gaur , Girish Tiwari (Girda) , and Bijon Mondal (2010), who gave it a contemporary twist, accompanied by fusion band. A notable production in 2010 at Feroze Shah Kotla ruins included

7854-478: 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

7956-452: 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

8058-466: 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

8160-531: The role of diplomacy of the world. I suddenly understood as if in a flash of revelation that when a man surrenders his selfhood and challenges history he can change the course of the stars. The lines of fate are not carved in stone. They can be drawn and redrawn at every moment of time by the will of man. Dharamvir Bharati (1926–1997), was a renowned Hindi novelist, poet, and playwright. His novels, Gunahon Ka Devta (The God of Sins, 1949) and Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda (The Seventh Horse of

8262-513: The script for nearly 10 years trying to get it done. Dubey had been running 'Theatre Unit' (a theatre group started by Ebrahim Alkazi who moved to Delhi in 1962 as director of National School of Drama , Delhi), After staging it himself in 1962, Dubey sent the script to Alkazi. Though many found the play lacking action, Alkazi believed, "action is not rushing around. It’s inward growth." Alkazi's production made history in modern Indian theatre , when he staged first Andha Yug in 1963, first amidst

8364-475: 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

8466-400: The sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart". Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate ... 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 the foot of the dedication page; nor

8568-702: The source plays. Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites , while William Hogarth 's 1745 painting of actor David Garrick playing Richard III was decisive in establishing the genre of theatrical portraiture in Britain. The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli , a friend of William Blake , even translated Macbeth into German. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular, that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature. Shakespeare has been

8670-489: 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,

8772-654: 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

8874-489: The theatre TAW also introduced other allied performing arts for the very first time, like Irshad Panjatan’s Indian mime in 1967, and modern dance by America’s Murray Louise Dance Company in 1968, Indian classical dance by Sonal Mansingh in 1970, Om Shivpuri’s Hindi theatre group Dishanter in 1973, Richard Schechners’ environmental theatre presentation of Mother Courage and Her Children from New York in 1976, and painting exhibition of R.S. Bisht's miniatures in 1973 and

8976-402: The vicar of Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had 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

9078-505: The victor and the vanquished lose eventually. The anti-war play first created sensation as a radio play at Allahabad All India Radio . This led to its production by Mumbai-based theatre director, Satyadev Dubey (1962), and subsequent famous production by theatre doyen Ebrahim Alkazi against the backdrop of historical monuments in Delhi (like Feroz Shah Kotla and Purana Qila ). It became "a national theatrical event"; his 1963 production

9180-504: 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

9282-429: 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

9384-459: 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,

9486-482: The world's stage to the grave's tiring room." He was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married 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

9588-633: Was an English playwright , poet and actor. He 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

9690-541: Was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in Playwriting (Hindi) in 1988, given by Sangeet Natak Akademi , India's National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama. "When will this bloodbath end? Oh what a war which no one wins and loses both foe and friend.." Andha Yug is based on the ancient Sanskrit epic, Mahabharata written by Ved Vyasa . The play begins on the eighteenth and last day of

9792-530: 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 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

9894-563: 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 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

9996-552: Was ordered by the church court to do public penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment for 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

10098-535: 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

10200-561: Was seen by then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru . It was subsequently staged by numerous directors and in many Indian languages. As part of the "theatre of the roots" movement which started in Indian theatre in the 1950s, which tried to look into Indian epics and myths for form, inspiration and content, Andha Yug is today recognised as the "play that heralded a new era in Indian theatre" and standard repertoire of Hindi theatre . Dharamvir Bharati wrote only this one play during his career and

10302-460: 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

10404-536: Was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated by Samuel Johnson , that Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years before his death". He 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

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