Research Paper on Shakespeare

Drew Ewing Mrs. Stevenson English II November 6th, 2012 Shakespeare William Shakespeare is one of the most well respected and time honored man of all time. His unique style, mysterious life and amazingly written sonnets make him the most studied and analyzed men to ever walk the planet. William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-upon-Avon, he was baptized on April 26th 1564, but his actual birth date is unknown. Shakespeare was the third child of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. William had two older sisters, Judith and Joan, and three younger brothers, Richard, Gilbert and Edmund.Not a lot is known of Shakespeare’s childhood, which is part of the reason everyone is so skeptical of his ability to have written everything he wrote. It is generally assumed that he went to the local grammar school, the King's New School, for most of his childhood. Shakespeare did not attend a university. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, he had three children with her, a daughter named Susan na, and twins Hamnet and Judith. In 1585 he started a career as an actor, play writer, and a part owner of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, also known as The Kings Men.By the early 1590’s it is believed that Shakespeare had already written some plays and had a successful career as an actor. Sometime in 1589, Shakespeare wrote his first play, Henry VI. Between his marriage and writing this play, he moved to London. Shakespeare was not an immediate and universal success but with the the plays Richard III, Henry VI, The Comedy of Errors, and Titus Andronicus written Shakespeare became a popular playwright by the 1950’s. The year 1593, marked a huge point in his career as a playwright.By the end of that year, he scored a very important friend and fan in the Earl of Southampton and his Venus and Adonis was published. It is one of the first of Shakespeare’s works to be printed and it was a very big success. Many people believe that Shakespeare started his work as a poet and that he wrote the majority of his famous sonnets in the 1590’s as well. In 1594, Shakespeare made a return theater and became one of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which was a group of actors who eventually became the KIng’s men.He was very successful at with this group and became very famous through his plays and acting in some of them. He remained associated with the organization until his death. Many people considered acting and playwrighting a very notable career it was seen as a form of entertainment and not a profession that should be wanted. Even with so many people that did not think that Shakespeare career was one that should be granted a lot of money he still ended up being very wealthy and acquired a lot of money, which he used to by a house in Stratford for his parents.This house was the second largest in the town and was considered to be the nicest. â€Å"In 1596, Shakespeare applied for a coat of arms for his family, in effect making himself a gent leman. †(Biography of William Shakespeare 1) The coat of arms was a way for people to kind of show their family off, it was only given to people that had a lot of money and were considered to be very successful. Shakespeare died at age 52 on the 23rd of April in 1616, at this time he was already a very famous playwright and he was well known in all of England.Shakespeare was buried at the Holy Trinity Church. His epitaph that was carved into the stone that was covering his grave has a curse on it against anyone that moves his bones, when the church was renovated in 2008 the workers were very careful not to disturb his remains in fear of getting cursed. Shakespeare’s writing style is definitely unique and is widely accepted as easy to recognize. He used a very common rhythm for his day, the iambic pentameter. â€Å"Shakespeare used a metrical pattern consisting of lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter, called blank verse.Shakespeare's sonnets are written in iambic pentame ter, Shakespeare's style of writing and meter choice were typical of the day, and other writings of the time influenced how he structured his compositions. †(Mabillard) One of the things Shakespeare was best at was being able to make his characters seam human, he was able to show that they aren’t just characters in a story, but that they were real people that could be sympathized with. Many scholars believe this is why even to this day, his works are considered to be some of the best orks of literature, and audience’s are still captivated by his works. Shakespeare made his characters development directly intertwined with the plot, which made his characters seem even more real. â€Å"Shakespeare's characters were complex and human in nature, he changed what could be accomplished with drama. † (Frye 118) Shakespeare’s sonnets are considered to be some of the greatest and most eloquent poems in all of English literature. So by analyzing his genius in p oetry and style, scholars and ordinary readers alike, try to understand the genius in the poet.There is very little known of Shakespeare’s personal life or feelings he had about himself. This being so a lot of scholars focus on his style and way of saying things to try and get a better understanding of Shakespeare the person. Many scholars have tried to get an insight into shakespeare by analyzing how and what he wrote. Many poets use poetry as a way to express their feelings and emotions, so readers of Shakespeare should be able to start to grasp a picture of who he was by reading his poetry and paying attention to the similarities and unique differences of his work to the norm of the day.Shakespeare’s style was a blend of contemporary and pure originality that makes him such a powerful poet. Sonnet 18 is one of Shakespeare’s most famous and critically acclaimed poems. By just reading it, the poem sounds like it is just a poem that praises the beauty of of a wo men. But if you take it a step farther and look deeper you can start to see just how impacting of a person that Shakespeare is writing about. The language in this sonnet is also extremely original, it is very different from the other sonnets.It is not loaded with alliteration or any other kind of poetic device, and the poem is not excessively wordy, it flows and gets its very powerful and majestic point across. As Shakespeare liked to do in his sonnets a lot every line ends with some form of punctuation, which in turn makes it dramatic and very suspenseful. Shakespeare starts the poem with a question in the very first line asking to compare the woman he is writing about to a summer’s day. Basically he is posing the question if he should compare the beauty of the beloved to the beauty of a summer’s day.The second line of the poem says â€Å"Thou art more lovely and more temperate. † Shakespeare uses the word temperate to mean moderate or modest, like it is averag e in amount. He is emphasizing how much he loves her and how beautiful she is. When Shakespeare uses the words â€Å"rough winds† in line 3 i think that he is using that as a metaphor for the flaws in this women, but that there are not any flaws in her, but there are in summer, so he can not really compare her to a summers day, because in his eyes she is flawless.In lines four and five Shakespeare continues to point out the imperfections of summer, in that it ends, but her beuaty does not. In the sixth line he tells how sometimes the sun is not hot enough, or the opposite in line five, that it can sometimes be too hot, but again, that is not the case with his beloved. Shakespaere finally just says the summer can not ever be perfect in lines seven and eight. He starts to come back to the women’s beauty in line nine, by using the words â€Å"eternal summer†, stasting that her beauty is everlasting and it will never go away like summer’s does.In the next thr ee lines, he portrays a picture of this women, and that even though she will grow old and may not be healthy she will never lose her beauty. And in the final two lines of the sonnet Shakespeare says that her beauty will never go away, because everytiime someone reads this poem they will think about her. Shakespeare is the one of the most famous and well respected writers and poets of all time. From his mysterious life, to his unique writing style, his amazing and time lasting plays, and his sonnets, he is an international phenomenon for as long as his plays and sonnets can be read.Shakespeare is the best and one of the most interesting men that has ever lived. Works Cited Frye, Roland Mushat. Shakespeare: The Art of the Dramatist. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Print. Greenblatt, Steven. â€Å"Shakespeares Leap. † New York Times. New York Times, 12 Sept. 2004. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. . GradeSaver. *Biography of William Shakespeare | List of Works, Study Guides & Essays*. GradeSave r, 30 November 2012 Web. 30 November 2012. Mabillard, Amanda. Shakespeare's Writing Style. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. (6 November 2012) . Magill, Frank N. Masterplots II. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem, 1986. Print.