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William Shakespeare
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Shakespeare (shâk´spîr), William
1564-1616
English playwright and poet whose body of works is considered the greatest in English literature. His plays, many of which were performed at the Globe Theatre in London, include historical works, such as Richard II, comedies, including Much Ado about Nothing and As You Like It, and tragedies, such as Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. He also composed 154 sonnets. The earliest collected edition of his plays, the First Folio, contained 36 plays and was published posthumously (1623).
- Shakespear´ean or Shakespear´ian adjective & noun

Shakespeare, William

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616, English dramatist and poet, considered the greatest of all playwrights; b. Stratford-upon-Avon. He was the son of a Stratford businessman and probably attended the local grammar school, acquiring a grounding in the classics. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. They had three children. Little else is known of his life before 1592, when he appeared as a playwright in London. He may have been a member of a traveling theater group, and some evidence in his early style suggests he may have been a schoolmaster. In 1594 he became an actor and playwright for the Lord Chamberlain's Men (the King's Men under James I). It is thought that he played supporting roles, e.g., the Ghost in Hamlet. In 1599 he became a part owner of the Globe Theatre, and in 1608 of the Blackfriars Theatre. He retired to Stratford in 1613.

Shakespeare, William (The Plays)
The chronology of the plays is uncertain, but style and content analysis give a reasonable approximation of their order. They fall roughly into three periods. In the first are history plays, beginning with the three parts of Henry VI, and comedies. At this stage Shakespeare's historical tragedies (Titus Andronicus) lack depth of characterization and are somewhat bombastic. The comedies are essentially classical imitations, with strong elements of FARCE (The Comedy of Errors). The last play in this first period, Romeo and Juliet (c.1594), evidences Shakespeare's maturing talent. The versification is more complex, and rhythms reflect the speaker's state of mind, a technique he developed with increasing subtlety. In the second period, from Richard II (c.1595) through Twelfth Night (c.1599), Shakespeare produced histories and tragedies in which characterization and practical elements are successfully blended. In the COMEDIES of this period he moved away from farce toward idyllic ROMANCE (As You Like It). The third period, from 1600, saw the appearance of Shakespeare's major TRAGEDIES, beginning with Hamlet, and "problem plays." The tragedies, after Othello, present clear oppositions of order to chaos, and good to evil, on all levels. The style becomes increasingly compressed and symbolic. Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest are tragicomedies, with full tragic potential but a harmonious resolution through grace, a term with divine as well as artistic implications. Shakespeare has been criticized for failing to propound a philosophy, but the enduring appeal of his plays lies in his human vision, which recognizes the complexity of moral questions, and in the unparalleled richness of his language.
Shakespeare, William (Sources and Editions)

Eighteen of the plays appeared in print during Shakespeare's life, but the source for all except Pericles and Two Noble Kinsmen (of dubious authorship) is the First Folio of 1623. The plays were first published with act and scene divisions and stage directions by Nicholas ROWE (1709). Two major sources used by Shakespeare were Raphael HOLINSHED's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577) for the English historical plays, and Sir Thomas North's translation (1579) of PLUTARCH's Lives. He altered many other source materials to suit his purposes.

Shakespeare, William (The Poetry)
Shakespeare would be well known for his poetry alone. His first published works were the narratives Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594). The love poem The Phoenix and the Turtle appeared in 1601. But his major achievement is the Sonnets (1609, written in the 1590s). In them Shakespeare exercises his talent for compressing meaning, fully realized in his later work. Addressed (numbers 1-126) to the unidentified "W.H." and (numbers 127-152) to the mysterious "dark lady," the SONNETS treat the themes of time, mutability, and death, and their transcendence through love and art.

the Francis Bacon connection

"...life expectancy in Shakespeare's day was about 30 years.  (That's why Shakespeare wrote of himself so often as aging and declining in sonnets written when he was only in his early 30s.)  In England, 100 years ago, life expectancy was still less than 40 years among members of the working class.  It was 60 around the turn of the century of this country.  It is now 72.  Even if Bjorksten, Segall, Phedra, and the hundreds of other longevity researchers are overly optimistic, even if we can raise lifespan only 50 per cent in this generation, that still means that you will probably live at least 30 years past the projected 72."
- Robert Anton Wilson - _The Illuminati Papers_  (1980) 

• April 23 - William Shakespeare was born and died on this date. Most of Shakespeare is known to us through the first folio published in 1623.
• David McConnell started the California Perfume Company (CPC) in 1886. Today the company is known as Avon, which he named after his favorite playwright William Shakespeare, and Stratford on Avon.

Researchers are investigating whether the secret of the Bard's creativity was his dope-smoking, according to the Independent on Sunday newspaper.

Pipes found at Shakespeare's home in Stratford-upon-Avon, central England, are being tested for traces of the drug, the paper said.

Dr Frances Thackeray, head of palaeontology at the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria, South Africa, believes there is evidence of Shakespeare's drug habit in his work, the paper said.

Thackeray points to the Bard's use of complex imagery of darkness and mental journeys as evidence of drug-induced visions, according to the Independent.

In a paper written for the Shakespearean Society of Southern Africa, he said: "There are very few literary scholars who have recognised the potential link between Shakespeare and hallucinogenic stimuli.

"A close reading of his sonnets and some other lines suggests that he was aware of them and may have experienced the effects himself."

He added: "This project has Stratford agog."

Thackeray and a colleague, Professor Nick van der Merwe, have asked Pretoria police laboratories to analyse the contents of several clay pipes retrieved from New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare lived until his death in 1616.

Cannabis was first cultivated in England in 400 AD and in the 16th and 17th centuries was commonly used to produce hemp for ships' ropes and canvas.

film _Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace_ (vhs/ntsc)

Like a Shakespearean play, this film's final dialogue is a rhyming couplet:

"Always two there are, no more, no less: a master and an apprentice."

"But which was destroyed? The master or the apprentice?" 

• _The Purple Testament_ (mpg)(256kmegs)
• first aired: 2/12/60
• A soldier unexpectedly acquires the power to recognize death in the faces of men about to die in battle.
• outro: From William Shakespeare, Richard the Third, a small excerpt. The line reads, 'He has come to open the purple testament of bleeding war.' And for Lieutenant William Fitzgerald, A Company, First Platoon, the testament is closed. Lieutenant Fitzgerald has found the Twilight Zone.
• _The Bard_ (vhs/ntsc)
• first aired: 5/23/63
• face: Burt Reynolds as Rocky Rhodes
• "You've just witnessed opportunity, if not knocking, at least scratching plaintively on a closed door. Mr. Julius Moomer, a would-be writer who, if talent came twenty-five cents a pound, would be worth less than car fare. But, in a moment, Mr. Moomer, through the offices of some black magic, is about to embark on a brand-new career. And although he may never get a writing credit on the Twilight Zone, he's to become an integral character in it."

Julius Moomer uses a black magic book to summon Shakespeare, who then writes a brilliant teleplay for TV. Moomer becomes a celebrity which angers Shakespeare. He watches a rehearsal of his script and is shocked by the changes made and leaves. Moomer is enlisted to write a two-and-half-hour television show on history. He thinks he's lost, until he remembers the black magic book, and enlists the aid of several characters from the past.

"Mr. Julius Moomer, a streetcar conductor with delusions of authorship. And if the tale just told seems a little tall, remember a thing called poetic license - and another thing called the Twilight Zone."

I asked the spirits to show me Shakespeare. They said, "okay" (they are not always so accomodating). He was a magical being of great size and power, made of energy. There were a million spirits in the form of fizzy colored lights dancing around him, like tiny Japanese lanterns or candleflames, helping him as he wrote, his pen scrawling across the quantum Void. James Joyce was there as well - he was like a little pendant resting on Shakespeare's desk. I recognized that part of the artist's spirit went directly into their creations. Their spiritual power depended on the earthbound public's continued desire for their work. That is the deeper meaning of the artist's quest for immortality.

- Daniel Pinchback - _Breaking Open The Head_ (online version)

• _Ran_ (vhs/ntsc) (1985) is a Akira Kurosawa's adaptation of _King Lear_, transferred to medieval Japan
• 604 track _Touch The Sun_ MP3 by Sundog
• sampel: "Upwards, upwards, into the sky. Flying higher and higher, until I feel like I could touch the Sun."  - from _To Be Or Not To Be_
• 604 track _Shakesphere_ MP3 (vK) by Dienzephalon off of s/t on Liquid Audio (2001)

• "all the world's indeed a stage, we are merely players, preformers and portrayers..." - _Limelight_ MP3 by Rush off of _Moving Pictures_ 12" (1980)
• "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players"; from _As You Like It_, Act II, Scene 7, lines 139—167)
• track _Escalation_ MP3 (192k) by Coil off of _The Angelic Conversation on Threshold (1994)
• Judi Dench reads Shakespeare's Sonnet XXX:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
• Miranda, daughter of Prospero the Magician in _The Tempest_
• Sunrise performance of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ at TAZ _The Alchemical Wedding_6/12/00, Brixton, U.K.
• techno set - _Live @ Shakespeare Salzburg, Austria 3/18/00 (propaganda mix series)_ MP3 (truncated 20:04) by Inigo Kennedy
• adult contemporary dance pop entity Shakespeare's Sister
  • member: former Bananarama Siobahn Fahey
• 604 track _Intelligent Machines_ by MFG
• sample: "If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" - _The Merchant of Venice_, III:1

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