The Sonnets - Уильям Шекспир

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television studio. We can see when we look back to his time that he used his instrument, the Elizabethan theatre, to the full, but placed his ultimate reliance on the communication between his imagination and that of his audience through the medium of words. It is, above all, his rich and wonderful use of language that must have made play-going at that time a memorable experience for people of widely different kinds. Fortunately, the deep satisfaction of appreciating and enjoying Shakespeare’s work can be ours also, if we are willing to overcome the language difficulty produced by the passing of time.

       Shakespeare: A Timeline

      Very little indeed is known about Shakespeare’s private life; the facts included here are almost the only indisputable ones. The dates of Shakespeare’s plays are those on which they were first produced.

1558 Queen Elizabeth crowned.
1561 Francis Bacon born.
1564 Christopher Marlowe born. William Shakespeare born, April 23rd, baptized April 26th.
1566 Shakespeare’s brother, Gilbert, born.
1567 Mary, Queen of Scots, deposed. James VI (later James I of England) crowned King of Scotland.
1572 Ben Jonson born. Lord Leicester’s Company (of players) licensed; later called Lord Strange’s, then the Lord Chamberlain’s and finally (under James) the King’s Men.
1573 John Donne born.
1574 The Common Council of London directs that all plays and playhouses in London must be licensed.
1576 James Burbage builds the first public playhouse, The Theatre, at Shoreditch, outside the walls of the City.
1577 Francis Drake begins his voyage round the world (completed 1580). Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland published (which Shakespeare later used extensively).
1582 Shakespeare married to Anne Hathaway.
1583 The Queen’s Company founded by royal warrant. Shakespeare’s daughter, Susanna, born.
1585 Shakespeare’s twins, Hamnet and Judith, born.
1586 Sir Philip Sidney, the Elizabethan ideal ‘Christian knight’, poet, patron, soldier, killed at Zutphen in the Low Countries.
1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, beheaded. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (Part I) first staged.
1588 Defeat of the Spanish Armada. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (Part II) first staged.
1589 Marlowe’s Jew of Malta and Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy (a ‘revenge tragedy’ and one of the most popular plays of Elizabethan times).
1590 Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Books I–III) published.
1592 Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Edward II first staged. Witchcraft trials in Scotland. Robert Greene, a rival playwright, refers to Shakespeare as ‘an upstart crow’ and ‘the only Shake-scene in a country’. Titus Andronicus Henry VI, Parts I, II and III Richard III
1593 London theatres closed by the plague.Christopher Marlowe killed in a Deptford tavern. Two Gentlemen of Verona Comedy of Errors The Taming of the Shrew Love’s Labour’s Lost
1594 Shakespeare’s company becomes The Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Romeo and Juliet
1595 Raleigh’s first expedition to Guiana. Last expedition of Drake and Hawkins (both died). Richard II A Midsummer Night’s Dream
1596 Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Books IV–VI) published. James Burbage buys rooms at Blackfriars and begins to convert them into a theatre. King John The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare’s son Hamnet dies. Shakespeare’s father is granted a coat of arms.
1597 James Burbage dies, his son Richard, a famous actor, turns the Blackfriars Theatre into a private playhouse. Henry IV (Part I) Shakespeare buys and redecorates New Place at Stratford.
1598 Death of Philip II of Spain Henry IV (Part II) Much Ado About Nothing
1599 Death of Edmund Spenser. The Globe Theatre completed at Bankside by Richard and Cuthbert Burbage. Henry V Julius Caesar As You Like It
1600 Fortune Theatre built at Cripplegate.East India Company founded for the extension of English trade and influence in the East. The Children of the Chapel begin to use the hall at Blackfriars. Merry Wives of Windsor Troilus and Cressida
1601 Hamlet
1602 Sir Thomas Bodley’s library opened at Oxford. Twelfth Night
1603 Death of Queen Elizabeth. James I comes to the throne. Shakespeare’s company becomes The King’s Men. Raleigh tried, condemned and sent to the Tower
1604 Treaty of peace with Spain Measure for Measure Othello All’s Well that Ends Well
1605 The Gunpowder Plot: an attempt by a group of Catholics to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
1606 Guy Fawkes and other plotters executed. Macbeth King Lear
1607 Virginia, in America, colonized. A great frost in England. Antony and Cleopatra Timon of Athens Coriolanus Shakespeare’s daughter, Susanna, married to Dr. John Hall.
1608 The company of the Children of the Chapel Royal (who had performed at Blackfriars for ten years) is disbanded. John Milton born.Notorious pirates executed in London.

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