Publisher's Synopsis
William Shakespeare Biography describes the life of William Shakespeare. From birth to death Shakespeare Biography describes all that is known about Shakespeare's life from available documentation including court and church records, marriage certificates and criticisms by Shakespeare's rivals.
Though William Shakespeare is recognized as one of literature's greatest influences, very little is actually known about him. What we do know about his life comes from registrar records, court records, wills, marriage certificates and his tombstone. Anecdotes and criticisms by his rivals also speak of the famous playwright and suggest that he was indeed a playwright, poet and an actor.
In all likelihood, Shakespeare wrote the 154 verse pieces that constitute his Sonnets at an early juncture in his career, and after 1598 or so, he abandoned both the sonnet form and the composition of non-dramatic poetry. Shakespeare's motives in engaging in this genre at a time when he had already written several plays were undoubtedly related to a short-lived fad in the court of Queen Elizabeth. In 1591, a year or two before Shakespeare began to write sonnets, Sir Philip Sydney Astrophel and Stella sonnet cycle was first published, and its immediate popularity among Elizabethan aristocrats inaugurated a vogue that many other poets tried to exploit. In short order, Samuel Daniel (Delia, 1592), Michael Drayton (Ideas Mirrour, 1594) and Edmund Spenser (Amoretti, 1595) authored sonnet cycles.
By the time that Shakespeare's Sonnets was published in 1609, however, and probably years before, the enthusiasm of courtly patrons for sonnet cycles had evaporated. By then, Shakespeare had established his renown as a dramatist and dedicated his artistic labor exclusively to the theater. Modern readers may find it surprising that Shakespeare's Sonnets were not popular during the seventeenth or the early eighteenth centuries. The sonnets were not included in the authoritative First Folio of 1623 published after Shakespeare's death. There are very few allusions to Shakespeare having every written sonnets during the century after his death. In fact, the sonnets were not incorporated into Shakespeare's official canon until 1790.