dovico languished in a dungeon for eight
years before dying.
SEEALSO: Leonardo da Vinci; Sforza, Cate-
rina; Sforza, Francesco; Visconti dynasty
Shakespeare, William .......................
(1564–1616)
Playwright and poet whose works made
his reputation as the most original and
brilliant writer of the English language.
Born as the son of a glove maker in
Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, Shakespeare
came from a middle-class family. He was
educated in the local grammar school in
the traditional subjects of rhetoric, logic,
Latin, and classical literature. After marry-
ing Anne Hathaway and starting a family,
he left his hometown for London to make
his fortune as an actor and author.
Historians know almost nothing about
Shakespeare’s early years in London but
have speculated that he may have been an
actor or schoolteacher. By 1592, the year
Shakespeare publishedVenus and Adonis,a
long mythological poem, he was well
known in London literary circles as a poet.
Shakespeare was familiar with classical my-
thology and literature and based one of
his early works for the stage,The Comedy
of Errors, on comic plays by the Roman
writer Plautus. Shakespeare’s other plays
from this early period areTwo Gentlemen
of VeronaandLove’s Labour Lost, comedies
of mistaken identity and the trials and
tribulations of love. The author’s complex
plotting and brilliantly inventive language
are used to draw large casts of memorable
characters, whose very human foibles and
eccentricities make them familiar to mod-
ern audiences in any language.
At some time in the 1590s Shakespeare
joined a repertory company, Lord
Chamberlain’s Men. At this time, the
popular theater was gaining widespread
acceptance among all classes of English
society, and plays were coming to be ac-
cepted as a worthy pursuit of talented
writers, including Shakespeare’s contem-
poraries Christopher Marlowe and Ben
Jonson. Shakespeare went well beyond the
ordinary playwrights of his day, however,
in creating epics such asHenry VIandRi-
chard III, plays that combined theatrical
dramatics with recent English history.
The Lord Chamberlain’s Men relied on
Shakespeare as a writer, financial backer,
and actor. In 1599 the company built the
Globe Theatre on the south bank of the
Thames River, a large stage surrounded on
three sides by the audience, and open to
the sky. For the company ShakespeareThe title page of “Much Ado About Noth-
ing” from the First Folio (1623) edition of
Shakespeare’s plays.
Shakespeare, William