Zhang Wei.
This year marks the 460th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth. Due to the severe lack of first-hand information, Shakespeare remains a mystery to the world. Does the world's greatest writer and the most controversial exist?Did he write those works?The voices of skepticism have never ceased. So where did all the information about Shakespeare's life come from in the first place?What is the basis of the Shakespeare we talk about in our textbooks, books, and articles?I'm afraid few people will think about this problem, and everyone is in the same way.
The first text of Shakespeare is believed to have been the first folio of 1623, Shakespeare's Plays, which included 36 of Shakespeare's plays, excluding the present-day known as Perrychris, Prince of Tyre, on which later reviews of Shakespeare's works were based. It opens with a dedication from Ben Joneson, a rising star and rival of Shakespeare in the theater world, who does not hesitate to praise Shakespeare, and subtly mentions Shakespeare's profession, place of life, era of life, level of education, appreciation of monarchs, dramatists of the same era, and high status of drama in passionate verses. Ben Jonson, who called Shakespeare the soul of his time, the father of theatre and the master of poetry, likened him to a swan on the River Avon flying to the Thames (i.e., life in London), a description that strongly refutes the notion that Shakespeare in Stratford is not the Shakespeare of London. Jonson thinks that Shakespeare did not know much Latin, let alone Greek, but that his talent overshadowed "the majestic pen power of Lili, the mischievous Kidd, and Marlowe", and that "he did not belong to one era, but to all centuries" (translated by Bian Zhilin). However, this is only a brief mention in the poem, and the life is not specific. In 1641, Jonson praised Shakespeare in The Discovery of Man and His Way of Life, praising him for his honesty, his openness and freedom of nature, his outstanding imagination, his insights, and his elegant expressions, and his mastery and eloquence in many respects.
The real specific mention of Shakespeare's life is the preface to the six-volume Shakespeare Collected Works compiled by the English playwright Nicholas Rowe in 1709, "The Author's Life", which for the first time tried to write Shakespeare's life story, and produced a 40-page background overview, about 1,000 words of 8,000 words specifically about Shakespeare's life. According to Law's records, William Shakespeare, the eldest of John Shakespeare's ten children, was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-on-Avon, where he learned a little Latin and later dropped out. He married Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a well-to-do yeoman farmer. He had gone to the village of Charlector to poach the deer in Sir Lucy's manor, and was sued because Shakespeare felt that Sir Lucie was abusing his power, so he wrote limericks to satirize it, which angered Sir Lucie even more, and the lawsuit became more intense, and Shakespeare had to leave his hometown and take refuge in London. In London, he wrote, acted and played the ghost of Hamlet. Shakespeare's friendship with the Earl of Sampton and the Earl of Essex was so close that the words of the speaker at the beginning of Act 5 of Henry V were dedicated to the Earl of Essex. Rowe said that Shakespeare learned a little French, which is shown in Henry V. Shakespeare retired to his hometown to meet friends, died at the age of 53, and was buried north of the high altar of the cathedral in Stratfordtown, where he wrote an inscription warning the world not to dig up his grave. The eldest daughter, Suzanne, married the prestigious Dr. Hall, and they gave birth to their only daughter, who married first Nash and later John Bernard. But Luo is also suspected of speculation and even mistakes in his narrative. He speaks of Shakespeare's daughters as three, but actually two, and Law describes the last scene of Henry VIII as "Henry VII", and believes that Shakespeare wrote only one long poem, "Venus and Adonis".
Although Nicholas Rowe's record is less accurate, he at least sketches the backbone of Shakespeare's life. Later generations took this as a basis, like a snowball, constantly researching and adding branches and leaves, so they gradually shaped the image of Shakespeare we see today. Some famous biographies of Shakespeare in later generations such as Halliwell Phillip's The Life of Shakespeare, Sidney Lee's The Life of William Shakespeare, Edmund Chambers's William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, Samuel Schellnbauman's Shakespeare: A Record of Life, Anthony Burgess's Shakespeare, Peter Ackroyd's Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt's Worldwell: A New Biography of Shakespeare, Stanley Brown's Shakespeare. Wells's "Shakespeare's Dramatic Life", Charles Williams's "Shakespeare's Biography", Bill Bryson's "Shakespeare: The World Is a Stage", and so on, all refer to this original record. Scholars who study Shakespeare's life have said that every biography of Shakespeare is 5% fact plus 95% conjecture, and some biographers even like to say that conjecture is a sure fact, and it seems that the impulse to move from a subjunctive mood to a declarative tone is always strong.
In addition, Shakespeare's birth baptism, marriage, burial records and tombstones at the Holy Trinity Church in Stratfordtown, as well as his six different signatures (from the will, marriage deed, etc.), are also strong evidence of the original information. The six signatures are "willmshaksp", "williamshakespe", "wmshakspe", "williamshakspere", "willmshakspere" and "williamshakspeare". Interestingly, he never used William Shakespeare's spelling, which is now in vogue. Of course, the current spelling should be from the first folio.
Regarding Shakespeare's copyright, Luo mentions 33 in "The Author's Life", excluding "King Lear", "Cymbeline", "The Two Gentlemen of Verona", and "One Newspaper and One Newspaper". Because of the lack of Shakespeare's manuscripts, the authorship of Shakespeare was debated in later generations, and without the existence of an informative book of the Wise Men, there would be no consensus. Published in 1598 (Shakespeare's lifetime) by Francis Merres, it is 700 pages long, and he confirms that Shakespeare wrote the comedies The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Error, The Futility of Love, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice, and the tragedies Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, King John, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet. In other words, the fact that Shakespeare had written these works by 1598 is a powerful refutation of the "anti-Shakespeare" view that they were written by Shakespeare.
There is so little primary material about Shakespeare that if any physical object can be found, it will be a great discovery. Anthony Burgess once famously said, "If we had to choose between discovering a new play by Shakespeare and discovering one of his laundry orders, we would vote for his dirty laundry every time." This shows how desperately people were to get Shakespeare's primary material, and how precious the original information provided by the First Folio, Ben Jonson, and Rowe was.
*: Wen Wei Po).