William Shakespeare's triple-threat career as playwright, poet and actor spanned a little more than 20 years, from the early 1590s to about 1613. Few historical records survive, and over the centuries many facts about his life and writings have been lost, or have become intertwined with legends and guesswork. Scholars look for Shakespeare's influences in the records that exist, and make inferences from his 37 plays, 154 sonnets and several epic poems.
Dramatic Times
Born in 1564, Shakespeare lived during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I, a period that included such events as the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and the subsequent execution of Guy Fawkes in 1606. European explorers brought back wonders from far-off lands. Scientists and publishers rearranged the ways people thought about the world. London, already a big city when Shakespeare arrived, became a metropolis and center of culture. There would have been plenty of stimulation for a playwright.
Literary License
Like other playwrights, Shakespeare turned to earlier authors for basic plots. "Othello" came from an Italian novella by Cinthio. One source for "Romeo and Juliet" was a 1562 poem by Albert Brooke titled "The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet." He based "Macbeth" on Holinshed's "Chronicles (Macbeth)" and Hector Boece's 1527 "Scotorum Historiae." Most of the plays are founded in stories that already existed in some form, but Shakespeare gave them new life.
Plays Within Plays
Many of the supporting characters in Shakespeare's plays are entertainers---actors, musicians, clowns, jesters---and their dialogue reflects Shakespeare's more than 20 years on the stage and behind the scenes as a theatrical producer and impresario. He employs a play-within-a-play technique in both "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Hamlet." He seems to have drawn a lot of inspiration from fellow actors. Some of his best lines are references to the dramatic arts: "The play's the thing," for example, and "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."
Another Author?
Some skeptics point to prominent figures of the time (including Sir Francis Bacon, Edward DeVere, and even Queen Elizabeth) as possible ghost writers of Shakespeare's work. They say Shakespeare did not have enough education or experience of the wider world to have come up with such a wide range of stories, characters and settings--let alone the majestic language in which the tales are told.
But T.W. Baldwin, author of "William Shakspeare's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke in Two Volumes," attacks the idea that Shakespeare lacked foundation for his work. Son of a well-to-do official in the market town of Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare would have received solid instruction in Latin and Greek literature and the Bible. The plays are steeped in allusions to the classical stories he would have learned in school, Baldwin says.
Rich Influence
Like Baldwin, most modern authorities reject the idea of another author. According to scholars Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine of the Folger Shakespeare Library, "Part of the richness of Shakespeare's work is the influence felt there of the various worlds in which he lived: the world of metropolitan London, the world of small-town and rural England, the world of the theater, and the worlds of craftsmen and shepherds."
