William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to a successful,
middle-class, glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon: England. Shakespeare attended
grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582 he
married Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his
family to travel to London to work as an actor and playwright. Public and
critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare eventually became the most
popular playwright in England and part-owner of the Globe Theatre. His career spanned
the reigns of Elizabeth I (who ruled 1558–1603) and James I (who ruled
1603–1625), and he was a favourite of both monarchs. James I granted
Shakespeare’s company the greatest possible compliment by bestowing its members
the title of ‘King’s Men’. Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to
Stratford and died in 1616 at the age of 52. At the time of Shakespeare’s
death, literary luminaries such as Ben Jonson hailed his works as timeless,
which has proved an accurate assumption. Both his legacy and quantity of work
are immense, with 37 plays and 154 sonnets to his name. A number of Shakespeare’s
plays seem to have transcended even the category of classics they have fallen
into, becoming so greatly influential as to profoundly affect the course of
Western literature and culture with permanence.
Written in the mid-1590s, presumably shortly before
Shakespeare turned to Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one
of his strangest plays, and it marks a departure from his earlier works and
from others of the English Renaissance that were typically realistic. The range
of references in the play is among its most extraordinary attributes:
Shakespeare draws on sources as various as Greek mythology (Theseus, for
instance, is loosely based on the Greek hero of the same name, and the play is littered
with references to Greek Gods and Goddesses); English folk lore (the character
of Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, was a popular figure in sixteenth-century
stories); and the theatrical practices of Shakespearian London (the craftsmen’s
play refers to and parodies many conventions of English Renaissance theatre,
such as men playing the roles of women).
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