BIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

 William Shakespeare was born in the market-town of Stratford in the year 1564, April 23.  His father, John Shakespeare had his own business with nine children.  Shakespeare attending King's New School at Stratford-upon-Avon between the age of four or five.  And according to the curriculum of various other schools in England during this period,  it is assumed that he learned grammar and some Latin while attending this school.  How long he attended this school is uncertain, but it is believed that he had to forgo his education to assist his father at home.  In 1582 he married  Anne Hathaway and hey had a daughter and  twins, a boy and a girl.  The boy did not survive.  Then from this period up until 1592 is referred to by scholars as the "Lost Year", for very little is recorded of Shakespeare's life.  However, there have been a number of "legends" that have sought to fill the numerous gaps in his biography, knitting together an illustrious portrayal of a figure, that was so prominent in the literary society that followed his death.   Apparently he arrived in London sometime in the late 1580.  Then came into the company of Lord Chamberlains men in the 1590's.  It was in 1593 that a  fellow Stratfordian printed Venus and Adonis, and a year later the Rape of Lucrece.   Although it is assumed that there were various writings to precede it, Venus and Adonis  is the earliest printed copy to survive.  A number of the play's that bear his name, or are assumed to be written by him were published soon after.  For example:  In 1594, Titus Andronicus , Henry VI, and a less familiar version of The Taming of The Shrew were published anonymously; The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York was published in 1595; Romeo and Juliet  , Richard II, and Richard III were published in 1597; then Love's Labour's Lost, and Henry IV  in 1598.  However, many of the 36 plays that are currently attributed to him were published following his death.  Shakspere purchased the 'New Place' estate in 1598.  During this same year he was listed as having illegally held 80 bushels of malt or corn during a shortage.   Then in 1599, he became partners with the Burbage brothers and five others in the Globe theatre.  He continued acting during this period, appearing in the play's 'Every Man in his Humour' and 'Sejanus ' written by Ben Jonson.  Following this period, he made numerous investments in his home town of Stratford, which include: vacant land, a pasture and a cottages with a garden.  Then in 1613, Shakspere was among a group who purchased another theatre, Henry Walker's Blackfriars Gate-House.  His life quietly came to an end three years later, one month following the writing of his will.  Oddly, it was minus the fanfare one might expect to follow the death of such a prolific poet and dramatist.

Shall I Compare Thee

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's   day?
Thou are more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:

But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 

Let me confesse that we two must be twaine, 
Although our vndeuided loues are one: 
So shall those blots that do with me remaine, 
Without thy helpe, by me be borne alone. 
In our two loues there is but one respect, 
Though in our liues a seperable spight, 
Which though it alter not loues sole effect, 
Yet doth it steale sweet houres from loues delight, 
I may not euer-more acknowledge thee, 
Least my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, 
Nor thou with publike kindnesse honour me, 
Vnlesse thou take that honour from thy name: 
 But doe not so, I loue thee in such sort, 
 As thou being mine, mine is thy good report

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Sonnet XXXIII

 Full many a glorious morning have I see
    Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
    Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
    Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
    Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
    With ugly rack on his celestial face,
    And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
    Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
    Even so my sun one early morn did shine
    With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;
    But out, alack! He was but one hour mine;
    The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
    Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
    Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth

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     But be contented: when that fell arrest
    Without all bail shall carry me away
    My  life hath in this line some interest,
    Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.
    When thou reviewest this, thou dost review
    The very part was consecrate to thee.
    The earth can have but earth, which is his due,
    My spirit is thine, the better part of me.
    So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,
    The prey of worms, my body being dead,
    The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,
    Too base of thee to be remembered.
    The worth of that, is that which it contains,
    And that is this, and this with thee remains.

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    Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
    As I foretold you, were all spirits and
    Are melted into air, into thin air:
    The cloud-capp'd towers, the great globe itself,
    Yea, all which inherit, shall dissolve
    And, like this insubstantial pagent faded,
    Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
    As dreams are made on, and our little life
    Is rounded with a sleep.

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    O! How much more doth beauty beauteous seem
    By that sweet ornament which doth truth give!
    The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
    For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
    The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
    As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
    Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
    When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
    But, for their virtue only is their show,
    They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade;
    Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
    Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
    And so of you, Beauteous and lovely youth,
    When that shall vade, my verse distill your truth.

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To Be or Not To Be

    To be, or not to be: that is the question:
    Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
    The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
    Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
    And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
    No more; and by a sleep to say we end
    The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
    That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
    Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
    To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
    For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
    When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
    Must give us pause: there's the respect
    That makes calamity of so long life;
    For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
    The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
    The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
    The insolence of office and the spurns
    That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
    When he himself might his quietus make
    With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
    To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
    But that the dread of something after death,
    The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
    No traveller returns, puzzles the will
    And makes us rather bear those ills we have
    Than fly to others that we know not of?
    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
    And thus the native hue of resolution
    Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
    And enterprises of great pith and moment
    With this regard their currents turn awry,
    And lose the name of action.

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    Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
    So far from variation or quick change?
    Why with the time do I not glance aside
    To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
    
    Why write I still all one, ever the same,
    And keep invention in a noted weed,
    That every word doth almost tell my name,
    Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
           
    O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
    And you and love are still my argument;
    So all my best is dressing old words new,
    Spending again what is already spent:
         For as the sun is daily new and old,
         So is my love still telling what is told.                

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Sonnet CVII

    Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
    Of the wide world dreaming on things no come,
    Can yet the lease of my true love control,
    Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
    The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured
    And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
    Incertainties now crown themselves assured
    And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
    Now with the drops of this most balmy time
    My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,
    Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
    While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes:
    And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
    When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

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Thou Winter Wind 

      Blow, blow, thou winter wind:
      Thou art not so unkind
      As man's ingratitude;
      Thy tooth is not so keen,
      Because thou art not seen,
      Although thy breath be rude.
      Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
      Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
      Then heigh-ho, the holly!
      This life is most jolly.

      Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
      That dost not bite so ngh
      As benefits forgot:
      Though thou the watters warp,
      Thy sting is not so sharp
      As friend remembered not.
      Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
      Most friendship is feigning, most love mere folly:
      Then heigh-ho, the holly!
      This life is most Jolly.
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