Welcome to the Deep Dive. Our mission here is
simple. Take the stack of sources on history's
most towering figures, distill the essential
knowledge, and deliver it to you, the learner,
in one fascinating conversation. And today, we
are tackling a giant, I mean really the giant
of literature, arguably the fundamental architect
of the modern English language itself, William
Shakespeare. Right. universally acknowledged
isn't he greatest writer in english world's preeminent
dramatist england's national poet often called
the bard of avon yeah that title alone tells
you something we have so much ground to cover
today our deep dive is really focused on tracing
the uh the established facts of his life you
know what we actually know and analyzing that
revolutionary evolution of his writing style
we can sort of track it across three major creative
phases definitely And crucially, we need to unpack
those enduring historical controversies and,
well, the gaps, the things that still persist
centuries after his death. The sheer scale of
his output is just astounding. It's essential
context, really, for understanding his global
impact, his extant works. What is it, something
like 39 plays? Yeah, 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three
long narrative poems, and various other verses.
It's incredible. And when we talk about global
influence, you have to consider this staggering
fact. His plays have been translated into every
major living language. Over 80, I read, including
constructed ones like Esperanto and even Klingon.
Klingon, that says it all, doesn't it? And they're
performed more often than those of any other
playwright worldwide. He is, simply put, the
single most influential writer in the Western
canon, period. Okay, so let's unpack this first.
Let's leave the, you know, the bright lights
of London for a moment and go back to where it
all began. Stratford -upon -Avon, Warwickshire,
a provincial market town. That's right. Shakespeare
was born and raised there, and his background
was, well, solid, if not exceptionally privileged.
He wasn't aristocracy. But his family did have
some local distinction. Oh, yeah. His father,
John Shakespeare, was a successful glover. uh
delton hides too but more importantly he served
as an alderman and at one point bailiff which
was basically the town's chief magistrate right
exactly so william grew up in an environment
where you know civic duty and commercial success
were uh were key components of life not just
farming and his mother mary arden she came from
an affluent landowning family so that sort of
tied him to the local gentry a step up maybe
and biographers they always loved that neat historical
symmetry around his birth and death dates. Ah,
yes. The date paradox. He was baptized on April
26th, 1564, but his birth date is traditionally
observed on April 23rd, which is St. George's
Day. And the same day he died in 1616. Exactly.
The 23rd of April is an observance scholars kind
of lean into, mostly because of that symmetry,
but the actual birth record. Doesn't survive.
Just the baptism. And in that era, baptism usually
followed birth pretty quickly. Yeah, typically
three days or so after birth, which makes the
23rd a very reasonable guess, you know, but it's
not confirmed. Just tradition. Okay, now his
education. This is another area where we don't
have hard records, but the consensus is he was
extensively educated locally. What does that
really tell us about the foundation for, well,
for everything that came later? it tells us he
didn't need oxford or cambridge to become the
bard basically he likely attended the king's
new school right there in stratford a free grammar
school yes mandated by royal decree and following
a really rigorous curriculum this wasn't just
you know learning your abcs no it was intensive
latin wasn't it oh very much so latin grammar
rhetoric classical authors like ovid seneca cicero
the boys would have been translating constantly
learning how to construct formal arguments, being
exposed to sophisticated poetic models, it really
provides the perfect explanation for all those
classical and historical illusions that just
saturate his later work. Right, you don't need
a university library if you've got Ovid drilled
into you from a young age. Pretty much, yeah.
Okay, so the personal drama seems to kick in
when he's just 18. He marries Anne Hathaway.
Who is eight years his senior, which was a bit
unusual, maybe? And these circumstances are always
described as suggesting haste. Why? What's the
actual evidence beyond just... You know, speculation.
Well, the evidence lies in the legal paperwork,
essentially. The license was issued by the Consistency
Court of the Diocese of Worcester, which wasn't
the standard route. Okay. And more crucially,
the marriage bans, that's the public notice of
intent to marry, they were read only once instead
of the usual three Sundays. Ah, cutting corners.
Exactly. Reducing that notification period was
a specific, deliberate action, and it was often
taken when there was urgency involved, usually.
usually a pregnancy that needed to be legitimized
before the birth. And that urgency seems immediately
confirmed, doesn't it? Their first child, Susanna,
was born only six months later. May 1583. Yeah,
six months is pretty definitive. It's part of
that human drama that sometimes gets, you know,
glossed over when we just focus on the poetry.
Sure. And after Susanna, they had twins. Hamnet
and Judith, born in 1585. And tragically, Hamnet
died when he was just 11 in 1596. Right in the
middle of Shakespeare's most productive period.
Absolutely. That loss must have been profound.
And you can certainly argue it colored the works
that followed, especially perhaps the writing
of Hamlet not long after. OK, so the period immediately
following the birth of the twins from about 1585
until he suddenly pops up in London print in
1592. That's the seven year gap. That's the famous
chasm scholars call the lost years. Lost years.
It sounds so dramatic. Well, it is a fascinating
historical blank canvas precisely because the
official records just. dry up completely for
seven years which naturally means people fill
in the blanks oh inevitably this lack of documentation
gave rise to all sorts of colorful um but largely
unsubstantiated legends that have become part
of the whole shakespeare mythos let's touch on
a few of those the big one is that he had to
flee stratford because he was in trouble with
the law Yeah, the deer poaching story. This is
the most famous anecdote, really. It was recounted
by Nicholas Rowe, who was Shakespeare's first
formal biographer back in the early 18th century.
So quite a bit later. Oh, yes. The story claims
Shakespeare was involved in poaching deer on
the estate of a local bigwig, Sir Thomas Lucy.
And apparently the prosecution was so severe
that Shakespeare legged it to London. And supposedly
took revenge by writing a nasty poem about Lucy.
A scurrilous ballad, yes. It's a great story,
isn't it? Fits that idea of the young rebellious
poet sticking it to the establishment, but factually
totally unproven. Right. What about his supposed
first job in London? The horse -minding story.
Ah, yeah. Another 18th century tale suggested
he started right at the bottom, on the fringes
of the theater world. Not as an actor or writer,
but literally minding the horses of the wealthy
theater patrons outside the playhouses. Plausible,
I suppose. Entirely plausible as a starting point
for, you know, an unknown young man trying to
get a foothold. But again, zero contemporary
evidence to confirm it. Just hearsay. And then
there's the more sort of professional speculation,
the idea he might have been a schoolmaster. That
comes from a note by the antiquarian John Aubrey,
who claimed Shakespeare worked as a country schoolmaster
during this period. Which led to that whole complicated
William Shakespeare theory. Exactly. In the 20th
century, scholars picked up on Aubrey's note
and connected it to a Lancashire landowner, Alexander
Houghton. Houghton was a known Catholic recusant
and his 1581 will mentioned a William Shakespeare.
OK. So the theory was maybe our William Shakespeare
used the name Shakespeare and was employed as
a schoolmaster or maybe even an actor within
the Houghton household, which could also subtly,
you know, link him to Catholic sympathies during
that hidden period. But the big problem is the
name, right? The reality is Shakespeare was a
relatively common name in Lancashire back then.
It's suggestive. It's intriguing. But it's not
proof. Not even close. We have to be really clear.
These stories, they provide context for the kind
of life he might have lived, the sort of things
young men did. But they are all hearsay collected
decades, sometimes centuries after his death.
Those seven years, they remain largely a historical
mystery. Which makes his sudden explosive arrival
in the London scene all the more dramatic, really.
Exactly. And his arrival isn't marked by some
triumphant debut playbill. No, it's marked by
a really vicious literary attack in 1592. Right.
This is the earliest surviving mention of him
in print from Robert Greene. That's the one.
From Greene's rival playwright in his pamphlet,
Grote's Worth of Wit, which was actually published
just after Greene died. Well, Greene's attack
is crucial, isn't it? Because it proves Shakespeare
was already active and, well... Successful enough
to make rivals really jealous. Vitally important.
Green doesn't even use his name, does he? But
he uses that unmistakable pun calling him the
only shake scene in a country. There's no doubt
who he means. And the source of Green's bitterness
seems pretty clear. Class snobbery and Shakespeare's
perceived lack of a formal university education.
Oh, absolutely. Green had a master of arts from
Cambridge. He clearly resented this guy, Shakespeare,
achieving success without that university background.
He called him an upstart crow, beautified with
our feathers. Suggesting he was just copying
or stealing from supposedly superior writers.
Precisely. Taking the best bits from the university
wits, as they were known. But the most pointed
insult, the real kicker, was calling him Johannes
Factotum. Which means jack of all trades. Yes,
but it wasn't the compliment we might think of
today like being versatile. Green was basically
accusing Shakespeare of being an ambitious, arrogant
tinkerer. Someone trying his hand at everything,
comedy, tragedy, history, and daring to think
he could match the work of the classically trained
guys like himself, Thomas Nash, Christopher Marlowe.
The subtext is basically, You're just a common
actor trying to write like your betters. That's
exactly the subtext. Stay in your lane, essentially.
But despite green sour grapes, Shakespeare's
career just took off, didn't it? By 1594, he
wasn't just writing plays. He became a fundamental
part of the business structure of his acting
company. The Lord Chamberlain's men, yes. And
this is probably the single most important factor
in explaining his later financial success. He
became a sharer. A part owner. A part owner,
exactly. Most playwrights back then were just
paid a one -time fee for a script, which meant
they had to constantly churn out new stuff just
to survive. A pretty precarious living. Very.
But as a sharer, Shakespeare got a cut of the
company's profits, not just a playwright's fee.
And importantly, he'd get profits from revivals
of his older hits, too. So he was literally invested
in the company's success. That structure insulated
him from that constant grind of the single payment
system. Completely. And it made him wealthy.
Wealthy enough to make significant investments
back in his hometown. Right. Like buying new
place in Stratford in 1597. Which was the second
largest house in the whole town. Think about
that. This demonstrates serious accumulated wealth
far beyond what a typical playwright could manage.
Bigger than the house he grew up in. Much bigger.
And later, in 1605, he further diversified his
income by investing in a share of the parish
tithes, basically a kind of real estate investment
generating steady income. This dual existence
is just fascinating. He's at the absolute cultural
core of London theatre, writing these masterpieces.
But he's also constantly maintaining and investing
in his Stratford life, like a successful merchant.
He had remarkable business acumen. And it extended
to the theater infrastructure itself, too. The
Globe Theater. Yes. He was one of the partners
who funded and built the iconic Globe in 1599.
And later, when the company needed a winter venue,
they were renamed the Kingsmen after getting
a royal patent from James I in 1603. Right. King
James. They took over the Blackfriars Indoor
Theater in 1608. He wasn't just an author. He
was effectively a theatrical mogul, a producer,
an investor. And even with all this writing and
managing the business. In his side, he apparently
never stopped acting. Seems not. He continued
to perform. We see his name in the cast list
for plays written by his rivals, including Ben
Johnson's Every Man in His Humor and Segenis'
His Fault. Which tells us he remained a physical
presence in the company, known to his peers as
an actor, too. Definitely. Still part of the
troupe. And we have that lovely little anecdote,
though maybe apocryphal, that he played the ghost
of Hamlet's father. Yeah, that tradition was
passed down by early biographers. It's fitting,
isn't it? The greatest writer perhaps playing
one of the most atmospheric, short, but incredibly
impactful roles in his own masterpiece gives
you a sense of his connection to the stagecraft.
It does. We should also probably mention collaboration,
right? Mm -hmm. The idea of the lone genius wasn't
quite the norm then. No, collaboration was very
common for playwrights, especially later in their
careers. And Shakespeare definitely worked with
others. The evidence points strongly to him working
with John Fletcher, particularly late in his
career. On plays like Henry VIII? Henry VIII
and The Two Noble Kinsmen, yes. Those are generally
accepted as collaborations, likely with Fletcher.
Okay, so fast forward a bit. Around 1613, Shakespeare
seems to have retired, moved back to Stratford
full -time. This was before the Globe actually
burned down later that year. Yes, the timing
suggests he was already stepping back before
the fire. And retirement from all work was pretty
uncommon then for someone of his age and status,
still relatively young. So why would he step
away? He was wealthy, successful. Well, if you
look at the context of his working life in London,
one major factor becomes tragically clear. The
bubonic plague. Ah, the theater closures. Exactly.
Between just May 1603 and February 1610, that's
less than seven years, London's public playhouses
were forced to close for over 60 months due to
recurring plague outbreaks. Sixty months. That's
five full years out of seven. Imagine trying
to run a profitable theater company under those
conditions, the constant uncertainty, the massive
financial drain, not to mention the very real
risk of infection. It likely drove him to towards
the relative safety and stability of his big
house and investments back in Stratford. Makes
perfect sense. Okay, so he dies on April 23,
1616, aged 52, that traditional birthday date
again. What's intriguing is that he signed his
will just a month before and apparently described
himself as being in perfect health. Yeah, the
will suggests he wasn't anticipating imminent
death. We have no confirmed contemporary source
for the actual cause. But, as always with Shakespeare.
The speculation is more colorful. Much more colorful.
About half a century later, John Ward, who was
the vicar of Stratford at the time, wrote down
the local legend. The merry meeting. That's the
one. The story goes that Shakespeare died of
a fever he contracted after a merry meeting,
drinking too hard with his literary pals Ben
Johnson and Michael Drayton. A rather bohemian
end for the man who became the respectable Stratford
property owner. It is, isn't it? Whether it's
true or not, who knows? But it's the story that's
stuck. His legal legacy is mostly contained in
that will. He left the bulk of his pretty sizable
estate to his elder daughter, Susanna. Right.
And sadly, his direct line actually ended not
too long after. His granddaughter, Susanna's
daughter Elizabeth Barnard, died without any
children in 1670. So no direct descendants after
that. But the most famous and endlessly debated
part of that will is the specific bequest to
his wife, Anne. Item, I give unto my wife my
second best bed with the furniture. That specific
line. My second best bet. It sounds like a snub,
doesn't it? Has it always been interpreted that
way? It's launched centuries of academic and
popular debate. Was it a calculated insult or
maybe a gesture of profound affection? How could
it be affection? Well, the argument for it being
an insult suggests that Anne... as the widow,
was automatically entitled by law to one third
of his estate anyway, which would typically include
the best bed in the house. So specifically leaving
her only the second best bed could be seen as
a pointed slight, maybe hinting their relationship
was strained. OK, that makes sense. What's the
counter argument? The opposing view, which is
actually quite popular now, argues that the best
bed in a prosperous household was often kept
in the guest chamber reserved for honored visitors.
Ah, like the formal parlor furniture. Exactly.
Whereas the second best bed would have been the
actual marital bed, the one used by the couple,
the intimate one, rich with sentimental meaning.
Hmm. So maybe it was a meaningful gift. It's
possible. The ambiguity is perfect, isn't it?
It ensures the debate just keeps going, reflecting
that wider uncertainty we have about their personal
relationship. Fascinating. Regardless of Anne's
inheritance, his final resting place was carefully
secured, wasn't it? Buried in the chancel of
Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. Prime position,
yes. And his epitaph is surely one of the most
famous curses in all of literature. Designed
to stop anyone moving his bones. Explicitly.
It's a powerful four -line appeal carved right
into the stone slab over his grave. It reads,
It's worked, apparently. It seems to have. Even
during extensive church restorations in the 21st
century, they used ground -penetrating radar
and everything, but his grave itself was carefully
left untouched. Nobody wanted to risk that curse.
Okay, let's move now from the man himself to
his monumental literary output. And the first
thing we run into is a pretty significant challenge,
figuring out what he actually wrote down, textual
instability. It's incredible, isn't it? Hard
to imagine now the greatest writer in the language
maybe not overseeing the definitive publication
of his own works. So the closest we get to a
definitive text is posthumous. Yes, the famous
first folio of 1623, published seven years after
his death. by his fellow actors, John Heminges
and Henry Condell. Friends and colleagues from
The King's Men. Exactly. And this was a monumental
effort, really a labor of love and memory. It
contained 36 plays, and crucially, 18 of those
had never been printed before. Without the folio,
we might have lost works like Macbeth, Twelfth
Night, Julius Caesar. Unthinkable. But before
the folio, many plays only existed in these quarto
editions, flimsy little books. That's right.
Quarto editions often printed quite haphazardly
during his lifetime. And these are the source
of so many headaches for scholars trying to establish
a reliable text. Why were they so unreliable?
Well, the folio editors themselves, Heminges
and Kondal, they referred to some of these earlier
quartos as stolen and surreptitious copies. That's
the term they used. These are what scholars later
called the bad quartos. The thinking is they
weren't based on Shakespeare's own manuscripts
or official playhouse prompt books. Instead,
they were likely rough reconstructions. How they
reconstruct them. Possibly taken down by actors
trying to remember their lines and cues, maybe
even transcribed hastily by someone sitting in
the audience during a performance. Imagine trying
to reconstruct Hamlet purely from memory. The
potential for errors, omissions, and just general
garbling is immense. So that means for some plays
we might have fundamentally conflicting versions.
Absolutely. King Lear is probably the most dramatist
example. The 1608 quarto version and the 1623
folio version are so radically different in structure.
the sequence of scenes, even the final fates
of major characters that modern editions like
the Oxford Shakespeare actually feel compelled
to print both versions separately. Wow. So it
suggests maybe Shakespeare was still revising
his plays long after they were first performed,
or the folio represents a later, more polished
theatrical version. It raises profound questions,
doesn't it? What even is the intended or final
version of a masterpiece when you have such variation?
It's a constant challenge for editors and directors.
Okay, so the first folio gave us those basic
classifications we still use, comedies, histories,
and tragedies. But later criticism added more
nuance, right? Yes, those broad categories proved
a bit too restrictive as critical analysis developed,
especially in the 19th and 20th centuries. For
instance, the critic Frederick S. Boas coined
the term problem plays back in 1896. Problem
plays. What makes them a problem? He used it
to describe works like Measure for Measure or
All's Well That Ends Well. Plays whose overall
temper or themes meant they couldn't be neatly
pigeonholed as comedies. They contain dark, morally
ambiguous or disturbing elements that kind of
resist a simple, happy, comedic resolution. So
the problem isn't really with the writing itself.
It's more about the lack of a tidy, moral or
emotional ending. Exactly. Measure for Measure,
for instance, ends with a forced, rather uneasy
marriage proposal, not genuine romantic joy.
While Boas initially tried to classify Hamlet
as a problem play too, it's now pretty definitively
seen as a tragedy. And there's another category
for the ladle plays. Yes. Edward Dowden later
classified the final group of plays, like The
Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline as romances,
sometimes called tragic comedies. Because they
blend tragic elements with... Magic. and happier
endings. Right. They often blend grave themes
like loss, jealousy, and injustice with elements
of the supernatural or improbable coincidences,
but they ultimately move towards reconciliation
and forgiveness, a very different feel from the
bleakness of the great tragedies. Okay, let's
try and trace the evolution of his dramatic genius
through these phases, starting with the early
period, roughly 1589 to 1594. This period is
really dominated by his earliest histories, the
three parts of Henry VI, Richard III, and his
first attempts at comedy, like the Comedy of
Errors or The Two Gentlemen of Verona. And the
style here is often highly conventional for the
time, very rhetorical, lots of elaborate wordplay,
clearly influenced by earlier Elizabethan dramatists
like Marlowe, but also by medieval drama traditions
and the bloody revenge tragedies of the Roman
playwright Seneca. And some of these earliest
works. Well, they can present genuine ethical
hurdles for modern audiences, can't they? Oh,
without a doubt. The Two Gentlemen of Verona,
for instance, contains a scene near the end where
one character seems to offer his beloved to his
friend who just tried to rape her. It's deeply
unsettling to modern sensibilities. And the taming
of the shrew. Yes, with its focus on systematically
breaking down a woman's independent spirit is
also frequently performed today only with significant
reservations or radical reinterpretations to
try and mitigate. the misogyny. But by the mid
1590s, we start to see a definite shift, right?
into that more complex romantic atmosphere we
really associate with his genius. Absolutely.
This is the era of the glorious romantic comedies.
You get a Midsummer Night's Dream, which masterfully
blends magical fairy realms with witty, confused
human lovers. And a huge development in character
and language. Yes, much more integration of complex
characters, deeper psychology, and also incredibly
rich prose comedy. This phase is really defined
by the introduction of Sir John Falstaff in the
Henry VIII plays. One of the greatest comic creators.
in all of literature. Absolutely. His sheer vitality,
his wit, his amorality, he almost overwhelms
the historical narrative he's part of. And this
period culminates dramatically, doesn't it? First
with Romeo and Juliet around 1595. The quintessential
romantic tragedy defined by youthful passion,
feuding families, and that devastating ending.
Pure high romance and tragedy combined. And then
a few years later, around 1599, Julius Caesar.
Which feels different again. It's a massive turning
point. The literary critic James Shapiro really
nailed it when he said that in Caesar, the various
strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary
events began to infuse each other. So it's moving
beyond just romance or history into political
philosophy, inner turmoil. Exactly. It's a drama
focused on political dilemmas, conspiracy, betrayal,
and the psychological weight of those choices.
It really marks the transition to the absolute
peak of his art, the great tragedies. Okay, here
we go. The period from roughly 1600 to about
1608. This is where it gets truly transformative,
producing Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth.
What's the key structural difference here separating
these? from what came before. I think they moved
decisively away from those more externalized
Senecan revenge plots, though revenge is still
present, obviously towards incredibly deep internal
existential psychological exploration. Exploring
the fatal flaw. Yes. The core tragic structures
are often built around the protagonist's fatal
flaw, but executed with just breathtaking variation
and depth. Consider the huge difference between
the intensely introverted intellectual Hamlet
whose fatal flaw is perhaps overthinking. Indecision.
That hesitation famously voiced in To Be or Not
to Be. Precisely. Compare that to Othello or
Lear. They are undone not by hesitation, but
by a catastrophic, hasty error of judgment. Impulsive
action based on flawed perception. Othello's
flaw being his susceptibility to Iago's manipulation,
his overwhelming sexual jealousy, leading him
to murder the innocent Desdemona. Right. And
Lear's fatal error is that incredibly rash decision
at the start, abandoning his power, demanding
false declarations of love from his daughters,
banishing the one who truly loves him, Cordelia,
which unleashes just... unspeakable suffering
and cosmic chaos. And Macbeth. How does that
fit? Macbeth, which is the shortest and maybe
the most intensely compressed of the tragedies,
is distinct again. It's driven not just by Macbeth's
own ambition, but by that powerful external supernatural
element. The witches and their prophecies combine
with this incredibly vivid psychological depiction
of guilt that eventually consumes both Macbeth
and Lady Macbeth. The sheer poetic intensity
in these plays is just unmatched. Unbelievable.
Okay. So after that peak, we reach his final
phase, the romances or tragic comedies from about
1608 to 1613. We mentioned Cymbeline, The Winter's
Tale, The Tempest. And the collaborations fit
in here, too. That's right. These plays definitely
have a grave tone often. They feature separation,
jealousy, tyranny, supposed deaths, profound
loss. So they aren't light comedies. Well, they
end differently. Ultimately, yes. They resolve
into themes of reconciliation, forgiveness, the
restoration of lost. children. Often with a sense
of wonder or magic, it's a clear move away from
the nihilism or bleakness that permeates the
great tragedies. Was he also maybe responding
to changing theatrical tastes? Very likely. These
plays also show Shakespeare reacting to the fashions
of the Jacobian court, which increasingly favored
elaborate staging and spectacle masks, music,
special effects. In Cymbeline, for instance,
you get stage directions calling for the god
Jupiter to descend in thunder and lightning,
sitting upon an eagle. Wow. Very different from
the stark stage of the earlier Globe. Very different.
More suited to the indoor Blackfriars Theatre,
perhaps. It shows him still adapting, still experimenting,
right to the end of his solo career. The plays
obviously cemented his stage legacy. But his
poetry, especially the narrative poems and the
sonnets, they gave us a different view of his
literary ambition, didn't they? And were written
during specific circumstances. That's right.
They were primarily produced or at least published
during those periods when the plague forced the
London theaters to close. His two long narrative
poems, Venus and Adonis, and The Rape of Lucrece,
were published in 1593 and 1594, respectively.
And both were dedicated to the same person. Yes,
both dedicated to Henry Rilesley, the third Earl
of Southampton, a young, wealthy, and culturally
influential nobleman who many believe was Shakespeare's
patron during this period, possibly supporting
him financially when the theaters were dark.
And these poems tackle quite strong, complex
sexual themes, don't they? They really do. Venus
and Adonis explores the goddess Venus's aggressive,
almost desperate pursuit of the beautiful but
reluctant young Adonis. It deals with themes
of desire, rejection, and maybe the destructive
nature of obsessive love. And the rape of Lucrece.
That one is much darker, much more tragic. It
graphically recounts the story from Roman history
of the virtuous noblewoman Lucretia being raped
by Tarquin. It explores uncontrolled lust, the
violation of chastity, moral confusion. honor
and ultimately the profound psychological trauma
of sexual violence leading to lucrece's suicide
these must have caused quite a stir they were
literary blockbusters in their day hugely popular
reprinted multiple times they really established
shakespeare as a major poet in his own right
separate from his work for the stage showed his
versatility okay and then we have the sonnets
Published later in 1609, but probably written
earlier. That's the general belief, yes. The
writer Francis Mears mentioned Shakespeare's
sugarite sonnets among his private friends way
back in 1598. This suggests they were circulating
in manuscript form for years, likely intended
for a select private readership, not necessarily
for publication. And structurally, they fall
into two famous contrasting sequences. Broadly,
yes. The first, larger sequence, Sonnets 1126,
is addressed to, or concerns, a beautiful and
aristocratic young man, often referred to as
the fair youth. The poems explore themes of love,
beauty, time, mortality, and urging the young
man to marry and have children to preserve his
beauty. And the second sequence. Sonnets 127
-152 are addressed to or concern a woman often
called the Dark Lady. She is depicted as being
conventionally unattractive by Elizabethan standards,
dark hair, dark eyes, dark complexion, possibly
married, and the relationship described is often
tormented, sensual, and filled with betrayal
and self -loathing. The final two sonnets are
adaptations of classical epigrams. These sonnets
are the source of just endless speculation, aren't
they? Particularly about identity. The I speaking
in the poem is meant to be Shakespeare himself.
fair youth and dark lady real people? That's
the million -dollar question. We simply don't
know for sure, and honestly, that ambiguity is
a huge part of their enduring power and fascination.
They feel intensely personal, yet they resist
easy biographical decoding. And the mystery is
compounded by that strange dedication in the
1609 edition. Oh, yes, the dedication to a mysterious
Mr. W .H., who is described as the only begetter
of the poems, who was Mr. W .H.'s scholars. have
proposed dozens of candidates. Henry Raisley,
reversing the initials, William Herbert, Earl
of Pembroke, even William Hall, the printer's
assistant. Nobody knows for sure. And we don't
even know if Shakespeare authorized the publication.
No, it's quite likely they were published without
his direct involvement or permission, possibly
by the publisher Thomas Thorpe. who somehow got
hold of a manuscript copy, another layer of mystery.
But what we do know is their immense critical
impact. Oh, absolutely. Regardless of the biographical
riddles, they are universally praised as just
a profound, intimate, and technically brilliant
meditation on the great human concerns. Love
in all its forms, passionate, platonic, obsessive,
desire, beauty, procreation, betrayal, the destructive
power of time, the search for immortality through
poetry. They contain some of the most famous
lines in English. That's Sonnet 18, yeah. Their
influence is just immeasurable. But arguably,
the real technical revolution. The innovation
that truly defined modern English trauma lies
in his mastery and manipulation of blank verse
within the plays themselves. Yes, I think that's
right. His earliest style, as we sort of touched
on, was often highly conventional, very rhetorical.
If you look at early works like Titus Andronicus
or even parts of Richard III, the sentences often
end quite obediently right at the end of the
ten syllable line break. Creating a very regular
maybe even monotonous rhythm. It can feel that
way sometimes, yes, almost end -stopped. The
speeches can feel more like formal orations delivered
line by line rather than capturing the flow of
natural thought or conversation. So how did he
break free from that? How did he transform that
basic structure, unrhymed iambic pentameter,
into something so dynamic and revolutionary?
Well, first he mastered it completely. He understood
the underlying pulse of the iambic pentameter,
that da -dum -da -dum -da -dum -da -dum rhythm.
And then, once he had that mastery, he started
to intentionally, artfully break it. How so?
He introduced run -on lines, what critics call
enjambment, where the grammatical sense or phrase
spills over the line break, forcing the reader
or actor to continue without a pause. He varied
the position of the caesura, the natural pause
within the line. He used feminine endings. with
an extra unstressed syllable. He incorporated
irregular pauses, hesitations, interruptions,
and elliptical constructions where words are
deliberately omitted. This sounds quite technical,
maybe, but the impact on conveying psychology
must be profound. It is absolutely the difference
between writing formal poetry and writing believable
human speech. The constant variation, the deviation
from the perfect metronomic beat is what mimics
the way human thought actually works. Sometimes
flowing, sometimes halting, sometimes rushed,
sometimes contemplative, emotionally charged.
Can you give an example of where we really hear
this? Oh, all over the later plays, but Hamlet's
introspection is a prime example. Think of that
bit where he's describing his unease. Sir, in
my heart there was a kind of fighting that would
not let me sleep. See how fighting carries over?
Then methought I lay worse than the mutines and
the bilboes, rashly, and praise be rashness for
it. Let us know. Our indiscretion sometimes serves
us well. The pauses, the dashes, the run -ons,
it perfectly mirrors his troubled racing mind.
You can almost hear the character thinking, can't
you? It's not just reporting thoughts, it is
the thought process. Exactly. This incredible
ability to vary rhythm and integrate poetic genius
with a deep practical sense of how actors speak
on stage allowed him to take existing plots,
often borrowed pretty freely from sources like
Plutarch's Lives for the Roman Plays or Holinshed's
Chronicles for the In - He wasn't just translating
the story to the stage. No way. He created multiple
centers of interest, complex subplots, ensured
dynamic pacing, and most importantly, he elevated
simple narrative or historical chronicle into
profound psychological drama by letting us hear
the characters think and feel through this incredibly
flexible verse. And he also used these incredibly
vivid, concrete analogies that just stick in
your mind, didn't he? Making the abstract tangible.
Yes. Think of that description of pity in Macbeth,
the one the artist William Blake... later illustrated
so powerfully, and pity, like a naked newborn
babe striding the blast or heaven's cherubim
horsed upon the sightless careers of the air.
He makes an abstract concept like pity into this
vulnerable, powerful, almost terrifying image,
that sheer genius making the language work on
multiple levels simultaneously. So the legacy
of this stylistic innovation, combined with the
sheer depth of character and story. It secured
his place not just in English literature, but
as a foundational global cultural figure. It
seems almost impossible to overstate his influence.
It really is essentially boundless. He fundamentally
expanded the dramatic potential of both characterization
and genre. Before Romeo and Juliet, for instance,
romance wasn't really considered a weighty enough
topic for high tragedy. He made it so. And the
soliloquy. He transformed that, too. Completely.
He moved it way beyond just being a clumsy device
to convey plot information to the audience. Now
I must go and kill the king. He turned the soliloquy
into this intimate, unparalleled window into
a character's deepest psychological processes,
their doubts, fears, motivations, their very
consciousness. And the impact just ripples outwards,
doesn't it? Yeah. Through pretty much every other
art form imaginable. Oh, absolutely. Novelists
from Herman Melville. I mean, Captain Ahab and
Moby Dick is a classic Shakespearean tragic hero,
clearly inspired by King Lear Macbeth through
Charles Dickens, William Faulkner. They were
all profoundly steeped in Shakespearean drama,
character types and plotting. And music. Film.
Don't even get me started. There are literally
tens of thousands of pieces of music linked to
his works. Just think of Giuseppe Verdi's great
operas, Macbeth, Otello, Falstaff, or Felix Mendelssohn's
famous incidental music for A Midsummer Night's
Dream. Sergei Prokofiev's iconic ballet score
for Romeo and Juliet. It goes on and on. And
film adaptations are countless. Countless. And
not just direct adaptations. Think of the great
Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, his masterpieces
Throne of Blood, based on Macbeth, and Ran, based
on King Lear. They prove that Shakespeare's core
narratives are entirely universal, capable of
transcending language, culture, and time. Even
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis,
drew heavily on Shakespearean psychology, didn't
he? particularly Hamlet. Yes, Freud used Hamlet
extensively in developing his theories of the
Oedipus complex and human nature. He saw Shakespeare
as having an intuitive grasp of the unconscious
mind long before psychoanalysis existed. And
then, of course, there's the language itself.
He didn't just use English. He actively shaped
it. He literally forged the modern English lexicon
in many ways. Samuel Johnson, when compiling
his seminal dictionary of the English language
in the mid -18th century, quoted Shakespeare
more often than any other author by far, effectively
canonizing his usage. And so many everyday expressions
we use without even thinking about it. They come
straight from Shakespeare, with bated breath.
That's from The Merchant of Venice. A foregone
conclusion, Othello. Break the ice, the taming
of the shrew. Let's touch briefly on his critical
reception over the centuries. Even in his own
time, his genius was recognized, wasn't it? Despite
Green's attack. Yes, fairly early on. Francis
Marers, writing in 1598 in a survey of English
writers called Palladus Tamiya, called Shapespere
most excellent in both comedy and tragedy, comparing
him favorably to classical authors like Palladus
and Seneca. And Ben Johnson, his friend and rival,
gave the ultimate verdict. He did. Despite their
professional rivalry and Johnson's own more classical
leanings, he wrote that amazing commendatory
verse preface to the first folio, famously declaring
Shakespeare was not of an age but for all time.
That really set the tone for centuries to come.
But his reputation wasn't always universally
sky high and unquestioned. No, it fluctuated
a bit. During the Restoration period in the later
17th century, neoclassical critics like Thomas
Reimer actually rated him below Johnson and Fletcher.
finding his work too wild, too irregular, violating
the classical rules of drama. Who defended him
then? It was the great poet and critic John Dryden
who offered the most powerful rebuttal. Dryden
famously stated that while he admired Johnson,
he loved Shakespeare. He argued that Shakespeare
possessed a kind of natural learning, a genius
that transcended rigid rules. And then the Victorians
maybe went too far the other way. You could say
that. The Victorian era saw such intense, almost
uncritical work. of Shakespeare, what George
Bernard Shaw famously mocked as bardolatry, that
it provoked a reaction. Shaw himself was quite
critical, wasn't he? Very witty and provocative
in his critiques, yes. But then modernist writers
like T .S. Eliot in the early 20th century sort
of rediscovered Shakespeare, embracing his complexity,
his ambiguity, even his perceived primitiveness,
finding it spoke powerfully to the modern condition.
His relevance just keeps getting reaffirmed for
every new generation. Okay. For all this established
genius, this monumental legacy, we absolutely
have to acknowledge the controversies and the
unresolved speculations that continue to generate
passionate interest and sometimes heated debate,
even today. We do. And let's address the most
famous, most persistent one first. The authorship
question. Right. The idea that William Shakespeare
of Stratford didn't actually write the plays
and poems attributed to him. Exactly. These doubts
arose relatively late, actually not really gaining
traction until the mid -19th century, about 230
years after his death. They were largely fueled
by the perceived gaps in his biographical record
and a kind of snobbery. Snobbery about his education
and social class. Largely, yes. The argument
often boils down to. How could a mere grammar
school educated man from the provinces, the son
of a glover, possibly possess the vast knowledge
of law, history, foreign languages, court life,
philosophy, falconry, etc. that is displayed
so dazzlingly in the plays? So who are the main
alternative candidates proposed? We should probably
name the big ones while stressing the mainstream
view. Absolutely. It's crucial to state up front
that the overwhelming consensus among literary
historians and Shakespeare scholars, based on
the surviving contemporary documentary evidence,
theater records, payments, witness accounts,
the folio preface, his Stratford Monument, is
that William Shakespeare of Stratford did write
the works. However... However, the alternative
theories persist. Who's candidate number one,
usually? Francis Bacon. Sir Francis Bacon is
often the earliest prominent candidate. He was
a renowned philosopher, scientist, lawyer, courtier,
and statesman, undeniably a man of vast intellect
and learning. Proponents argue he had the necessary
knowledge and perhaps used sophisticated ciphers
hidden within the text to conceal his authorship,
maybe because playwriting was seen as a slightly
disreputable activity for a man of his public
standing. Okay. Candidate number two, Christopher
Marlowe. Marlow makes sense in some ways because
he was Shakespeare's chief rival in the early
1590s, a brilliant university wit, an established
poet and playwright of genius, Tamburlaine, Dr.
Faustus. The issue is, Marlow officially died
in a supposed tavern brawl in Deptford in 1593,
just as Shakespeare's career was really taken
off. So the theory requires his death to have
been faked. Yes. Marlowe enthusiasts often subscribe
to the idea that his death was staged, perhaps
due to his alleged activities as a government
spy, allowing him to continue writing in secret
under the convenient cover of Shakespeare's name.
The stylistic similarities between Marlowe and
early Shakespeare are also sometimes cited. And
finally, the candidate who seems most popular
among skeptics today, Edward de Vere, the 17th
Earl of Oxford. De Vere has become the leading
alternative candidate for many. The Oxfordian
theory suggests that De Vere, a highly educated,
traveled aristocrat with known literary interests,
intimate knowledge of court life, Italy, falconry,
music, all things reflected prominently in the
plays, was the true author. And the argument
is he needed a front man. Yes, that aristocratic
disdain for print publication, especially for
the popular stage, meant he needed a commoner,
Shakespeare, to act as a plausible front for
his work. Supporters point to parallels between
De Vere's life events and incidents in the plays.
It's essential, though, to reiterate. Absolutely
essential. While these theories are fascinating
and keep generating books and documentaries,
almost all mainstream Shakespeare scholars and
literary historians regard the authorship question
as a fringe theory, lacking any substantive contemporary
documentation. to overturn the wealth of evidence
pointing to William Shakespeare of Stratford
-upon -Avon. It seems to be a question driven
more by a romantic dissatisfaction with the surviving
records and maybe some class bias rather than
by compelling evidence. I think that's a fair
assessment, yes. The historical evidence for
Shakespeare's authorship is consistent and cumulative,
even if it's not as detailed as we might wish.
Okay, let's move to another area of speculation.
His private religious beliefs. This was a time
of huge religious turmoil in England, wasn't
it? Catholics versus Protestants. Intense turmoil
and persecution, particularly for Catholics.
And the evidence around Shakespeare is typically
contradictory and ambiguous. We know his mother,
Mary Arden, came from a prominent Warwickshire
family with known Catholic sympathies who maintained
recusant connections, meaning they refused to
attend Anglican services. And his father, too.
There was that document. Yes, there's evidence,
though the document itself is now lost, suggesting
his father, John Shakespeare, may have signed
a kind of secret Catholic statement of faith
late in his life. Furthermore, some scholars
find subtle pro -Catholic sentiments or coded
language woven into the plays, particularly around
themes of martyrdom, old faith rituals, or purgatory,
which was a Catholic doctrine. But what's the
evidence for his Protestant conformity? Because
officially, he lived and died an Anglican. The
official records are clear on that front. He
was baptized, married, and buried in the Protestant
Church of England. His children were raised Anglican.
His will uses standard Protestant preamble language.
His company, the king's men, performed frequently
before the staunchly Protestant monarch James
I. So, impossible to definitively nail down his
private beliefs. Pretty much impossible. Scholars
find evidence pointing both ways. It seems most
likely he conformed publicly to the established
church, as was legally required and practically
necessary for his career. But his family background
and the nuanced treatment of religious themes
in his plays suggest he was certainly deeply
aware of, and perhaps sympathetic to, the Catholic
predicament. The plays themselves are generally
ambiguous enough to speak across the religious
divide, which might have been intentional. Another
key area of endless speculation. His sexuality.
fueled almost entirely by those sonnets we discussed.
Almost entirely, yes. The sonnets are the primary
source text for this debate. The intense, passionate,
sometimes anguished language used in the sequence
addressed to the fair youth leads some readers
to interpret this as clear evidence of romantic,
possibly erotic, love for a young man. But that's
not the only way to read that language. No. Other
critics argue forcefully that this kind of intense,
effusive language was characteristic of idealized
platonic male friendship during the Renaissance,
and doesn't necessarily imply a physical or sexual
relationship in the modern sense. They emphasize
the cultural context of the time. And meanwhile,
you have the Dark Lady sonnets. Exactly. The
26 sonnets addressed to the mysterious Dark Lady
are often cited as undeniable evidence of intense,
physical, and often deeply troubled heterosexual
liaison. The language there is explicitly sexual,
full of desire, guilt, and betrayal. So the texts
themselves support a range of interpretations.
They really do. You can find evidence in the
sonnets to support arguments for same -sex desire,
passionate heterosexual relationships, or perhaps
complex emotional states that don't fit neatly
into modern categories. Ultimately, the sonnets
reflect the complexity and contradictions of
human love and desire rather than providing a
clear biographical statement about Shakespeare's
personal orientation. Which, again, leaves room
for endless interpretation. Finally, what about
the most basic thing? What did the man actually
look like? We still don't have a definitive contemporary
written description of his appearance, do we?
Isn't that amazing? For arguably the most famous
person of his era, no contemporary description
survives saying if he was tall or short, fair
or dark, thin or stout. Nothing. So we rely primarily
on just two key images, both created just after
his death. That's right. The first and arguably
most important is the Drew Shout engraving. This
is the portrait printed on the title page of
the first folio in 1623. And Ben Jonson vouched
for it. He did. In his poem printed alongside
it in the folio, Jonson explicitly praised the
engraver, Martin Druchout, for hitting his face
accurately. That endorsement from someone who
knew Shakespeare well gives it immense credibility,
even if stylistically it looks a bit stiff to
us now. And the second key image. is his funerary
monument, the sculpted bust erected in Holy Trinity
Church in Stratford, likely commissioned by his
family fairly soon after his death, probably
before 1623. It shows a rather prosperous, slightly
plump man quill in hand, again, presumably approved
by those who knew what he looked like. But what
about the most famous painting often associated
with him, the Chandos portrait? Ah, the Chandos
portrait. It's now held by the National Portrait
Gallery in London, and it certainly looks more
like our romantic image of a poet earring, slightly
disheveled look. It has, as one expert put it,
the strongest claim of any of the known contenders
to be a genuine portrait of Shakespeare painted
from life. Based on what? Based on its plausible
dating to the early 17th century and its provenance,
which can potentially be traced back through
owners who had connections to Shakespeare's circle.
However, its attribution is not definitively
proven, and it's not without its own controversies
and questions. So even his face remains slightly
elusive. Like so much else about the man himself.
No portrait was definitively commissioned by
him or his immediate family while he was alive
and clearly labeled as him, which is just another
one of those fascinating biographical gaps surrounding
the world's most famous writer. Hashtag outro.
So what does this all mean for us trying to understand
Shakespeare today? We've traced this astonishing
trajectory, haven't we? From the son of a Stratford
Glover whose own life seemed to start in a bit
of haste. To becoming a London theater sharer,
a shrewd businessman who achieved revolutionary
wealth and status through his stake in the company.
We've seen that incredible evolution of his literary
output from those early, often conventional histories
and comedies through the glorious romantic period,
peaking with those monumental psychological tragedies.
And then ending with those strange, beautiful,
reconciling romances. All of it driven by that
absolute mastery of blank verse that bent the
English language to his will and essentially
created modern dramatic speech. And this trajectory,
this output produced an undeniable, almost overwhelming
impact, not just on literature and drama, but
on the very texture of global culture, on our
language, on how we understand ourselves. We
know him, in essence, through his texts. They
are the most detailed, the most intimate records
we really have of his inner life, his concerns,
his genius. But maybe. Maybe it's precisely the
gaps in the records of the man, those long lost
years, the contradictory hints about his inner
religious or sexual beliefs, the slightly opaque
nature of his business dealings, and even his
appearance perhaps. It's those blank spaces that
actually allow his art to feel so perpetually
relevant, so universal. That's a really interesting
point because those gaps allow every generation,
every culture, every individual reader or audience
member to sort of project their own concerns,
their own struggles onto the creator, finding
echoes of themselves in the work precisely because
the author himself remains slightly out of focus.
Indeed. And the one thing we can definitively
say about the Bard, ironically, is that he spent
his entire career giving his characters from
Hamlet to Juliet to Lear to Rosalind clearer
and more varied motivations, as Samuel Johnson
noted, than any writer before him. He showed
us the inner workings of the human heart. Yet
history, or just the random survival of documents,
ultimately failed to grant those same clear motivations,
that same transparency, to Shakespeare himself.
Which leaves us perhaps with this final provocative
thought for you to ponder. What does it truly
mean that the writer who arguably defined human
inwardness for the modern world, who gave us
the very language to describe the troubled soul,
existential doubt, the complexities of love and
jealousy remains in his own person, so profoundly
opaque, so resistant to easy understanding, even
after centuries of intense scrutiny. That is
the deep dive for today.