Give a brief Life-Sketch of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Ans.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)

Birth and Parentage: No authentic date of Shakespeare’s birth can possibly be given. He was, however, baptised on April 26, 1564, at the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, probably three or four days after his birth. It is, therefore, generally believed that the poet was born on April 22 or 23, 1564. William Shakespeare was the third and the eldest surviving child of his parents, John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. John Shakespeare was originally a butcher by profession, but later rose to a prosperous businessman by the help of the property of his wife. At the time of the poet’s birth, his father was very rich and held for one year ‘the highest office in the Corporation, that of bailiff’, and became afterwards the chief alderman of the municipality of Stratford.

His Education: William Shakespeare was sent to the Grammar School of Stratford for his early education, where, to borrow a phrase from Ben Jonson, he learnt his ‘small Latin and less Greek’. In a few years, however, the fortunes of his father began to decline and he fell into heavy debt and had to mortgage his wife’s property. The boy Shakespeare was, therefore, compelled to leave the school at the age of thirteen to assist his father in the declining business of a butcher.

Shakespeare As a Poet: Shakespeare is the greatest poet in the world because he was equally good and also unsurpassed in epic, narrative and lyric poetry. Shakespeare’s Henry V is a great historical epic. It has been made popular as a national anthem in Five Acts. The Tempest and A Mid Summer Night’s Dream are examples of his excellent lyrics. His Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, which are indeed two great poems and not dramas like the works mentioned above, have been highly appreciated by all scholars and critics throughout the world. Beside Lucrece and Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare has introduced rhymed lines or verses, particularly into his comedies. Some of the songs of his comedies and tragedies are popular. They rank with any of the best songs in the world just as Shakespeare’s blank verse an rank with the blank verse of any of the greatest poets in the world. The characteristic features of his poetry are its music, imaginative quality, rhythm and imagery. In his poems, he has revealed practically all the mysteries of human life, all the thoughts, passions, emotions of the human heart and mind.