A surprisingly sparse paper trail offers only scattered clues on the obscure life of William Shakespeare, one of the world's most influential dramatists. The exact date of Shakespeare's birth in 1564 is unknown. However, it is customary to celebrate his birth on April 23rd, the same day of his death fifty-two years later. Growing up in Stratford-upon-Avon, ninety-six miles outside of London, Shakespeare's world was one of high infant mortality, rampant disease, an average life expectancy of thirty years, an influential monarchy, and a growing popularity of the theater. Marrying Anne Hathaway in 1582, a woman eight years his senior, Shakespeare soon fathered three known children. He ventured to London in the late 1580s, competing with fellow playwrights Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson for theater space, reputation, and audiences.
Shakespeare wrote an average of two plays per year for a company called Lord Chamberlain's Men. A new playhouse named the Globe, which opened in 1599 on the banks of the Thames River, soon became the famous home stage of Shakespeare's theatrical masterworks. In his popular tragedy, Hamlet, the young Prince Hamlet vows to remember his murdered father, saying, "'Remember thee? / Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat / In this distracted globe.'" (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 95-97) Many scholars interpret this reference as a playful nod to the Globe theater and its audience (Greenblatt, 1686).
Perhaps Shakespeare's best-known tragedy, Hamlet is a play fraught with questions. As critic Stephen Greenblatt asks, "Why does Hamlet delay avenging the murder of his father by Claudius, his father's brother? How much guilt does Hamlet's mother, Gertrude...bear in this crime? How trustworthy is the ghost of Hamlet's father ...? Is vengeance morally justifiable in this play, or is it to be condemned? What exactly is the ghost...? Why is the ghost, visible to everyone in the first act, visible only to Hamlet in Act 3? Is Hamlet's madness feigned or true, a strategy masquerading as a reality or a reality masquerading as a strategy?" (Greenblatt, 1659).
Scholars estimate that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in 1600. The ambiguity of the composition's history results largely from three conflicting versions of the text, all published at different times. As Greenblatt notes, the play and all its versions seem designed to breed uncertainty.
Hamlet is a play of unanswered questions written by a playwright whose life remains largely obscure. Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. He was buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church. Legend has it that Shakespeare penned the very epitaph under which his coffin still rests. It reads,
"Good friend for Jesus' sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here: Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones."
Bibliography
Greenblatt, Stephen. "General Introduction." The Norton Shakespeare. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY: 1997, p. 1-74.
Greenblatt, Stephen. "Hamlet." The Norton Shakespeare. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY: 1997, p. 1659-1667.
Shakespeare, William. "Hamlet". The Norton Shakespeare. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY: 1997.
Woolf, Henry Bosley, ed. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. G. & C. Merriam Co., Springfield, MA: 1980
