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.
Richard Burbage leases the Blackfriars Theatre to six of his fellow actors, including Shakespeare. Pericles, Prince of Tyre
1609
Shakespeare’s Sonnets published.
1610
A great drought in England
Cymbeline
1611
Chapman completes his great translation of the Iliad, the story of Troy.Authorized Version of the Bible published.
A Winter’s Tale The Tempest
1612
Webster’s The White Devil first staged.
Shakespeare’s brother, Gilbert, dies.
1613
Globe theatre burnt down during a performance of Henry VIII (the firing of small cannon set fire to the thatched roof). Webster’s Duchess of Malfi first staged.
Henry VIII Two Noble Kinsmen Shakespeare buys a house at Blackfriars.
1614
Globe Theatre rebuilt in ‘far finer manner than before’.
1616
Ben Jonson publishes his plays in one volume.Raleigh released from the Tower in order to prepare an expedition to the gold mines of Guiana.
Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith, marries Thomas Quiney. Death of Shakespeare on his birthday, April 23rd.
1618
Raleigh returns to England and is executed on the charge for which he was imprisoned in 1603.
1623
Publication of the Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays
There exists a curious paradox when it comes to the life of William Shakespeare. He easily has more words written about him than any other famous English writer, yet we know the least about him. This inevitably means that most of what is written about him is either fabrication or speculation. The reason why so little is known about Shakespeare is that he wasn’t a novelist or a historian or a man of letters. He was a playwright, and playwrights were considered fairly low on the social pecking order in Elizabethan society. Writing plays was about providing entertainment for the masses – the great unwashed. It was the equivalent to being a journalist for a tabloid newspaper.
In fact, we only know of Shakespeare’s work because two of his friends had the foresight to collect his plays together following his death and have them printed. The only reason they did so was apparently because they rated his talent and thought it would be a shame if his words were lost.
Consequently his body of work has ever since been assessed and reassessed as the greatest contribution to English literature. That is despite the fact that we know that different printers took it upon themselves to heavily edit the material they worked from. We also know that Elizabethan plays were worked and reworked frequently, so that they evolved over time until they were honed to perfection, which means that many different hands played their part in the active writing process. It would therefore be fair to say that any play attributed to Shakespeare is unlikely to contain a great deal of original input. Even the plots were based on well known historical events, so it would be hard to know what fragments of any Shakespeare play came from that single mind.
One might draw a comparison with the Christian bible, which remains such a compelling read because it came from the collaboration of many contributors and translators
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