person1564–1616

Shakespeare

Disciplines:

Summary

English playwright and poet — author of 37 plays and 154 sonnets — the greatest writer in the English language — whose work is the largest single influence on English literature, the English language itself, and world drama.

Core Contribution

Creates the largest single contribution to English literature and language — Shakespeare's plays and sonnets invented approximately 1,700 English words (bedroom, generous, lonely, obscene, zany), established theatrical conventions still standard today, and provided the primary literary vocabulary for psychology (Freud named the Oedipus and Hamlet complexes), politics, and moral philosophy.

Key Spikes & Highlights

Left his wife his second-best bed — the only specific bequest to Anne Hathaway in Shakespeare's will is the second-best bed (presumably the marital bed; the best bed was for guests); this has generated more biographical speculation than any other document detail in English literary history and remains unresolved after 400 years
No manuscript in his hand survives for any of the plays — Shakespeare is the most studied writer in Western history and we have six signatures and nothing else; the plays survive only through the 1623 First Folio compiled by his colleagues; the gap between his cultural primacy and the documentary evidence for his life is the largest in literary history

Notable Works & Achievements

Hamlet

King Lear

Macbeth

Othello

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The Tempest

Sonnets

Historical Influences

Plutarch Holinshed's Chronicles Christopher Marlowe

Intellectual Lineage

Stratford-upon-Avon Grammar school Marriage at 18 London Globe Theatre King's Men Stratford

Contemporaries & Peers

Christopher Marlowe Ben Jonson John Donne

Minds Influenced

English language Western drama Novel

Intellectual Posterity

37 plays 154 sonnets Globe Theatre 1,700 invented English words Hamlet Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Falstaff

Discussing

Shakespeare

Ask anything about Shakespeare — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.

person1564–1616

Shakespeare

Disciplines:

Summary

Core Contribution

Key Spikes & Highlights

Left his wife his second-best bed — the only specific bequest to Anne Hathaway in Shakespeare's will is the second-best bed (presumably the marital bed; the best bed was for guests); this has generated more biographical speculation than any other document detail in English literary history and remains unresolved after 400 years
No manuscript in his hand survives for any of the plays — Shakespeare is the most studied writer in Western history and we have six signatures and nothing else; the plays survive only through the 1623 First Folio compiled by his colleagues; the gap between his cultural primacy and the documentary evidence for his life is the largest in literary history