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Shakespeare: Deaths
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Although the amount of factual knowledge available about Shakespeare is surprisingly large for one of his station in life, many find it a little disappointing, for it is mostly gleaned from documents of an official character. Dates of baptisms, marriages, deaths, and burials; wills, conveyances, legal processes, and payments by the court—these are the dusty details. There are... many contemporary allusions to him as a writer, and these add a reasonable amount of flesh and blood to the biographical skeleton.
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In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on erotic themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton. In Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus; while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin.[113] Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses,[114] the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust.[115] Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote A Lover's Complaint. Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects.[116] The Phoenix and the Turtle, printed in Robert Chester's 1601 Love's Martyr, mourns the deaths of the legendary phoenix and his lover, the faithful turtle dove.
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Shakespeare quickly rose to such importance in his profession as to provoke the attacks of disappointed rivals. In 1592, Robert Greene makes bitter allusion to his name, accuses him of plagiarism, and plainly shows that envy dictated the attack. The scurrilous pamphlet containing this accusation was published after Greene's death, and evidently provoked criticism by its meanness. Chettle, its editor, promptly published an apology, in which he says of Shakespeare, -- "I am as sorry as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because myself have seene his demeanor no less civill than he exclent in the quality he professes: besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing which argues his honesty, and his facetious [felicitous] grace in writing that approoves his art."
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In 1596 Shakespeare's father was granted a coat-of-arms, and it is likely that in this matter the dramatist took the initiative with the College of Arms in London. On his father's death in 1601, he inherited the arms and the right to style himself a gentleman, even though, at the time, actors were generally regarded as rogues and vagabonds.
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Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death.[63] Sometime before 1623, a monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil.[64] A stone slab covering his grave is inscribed with a curse against moving his bones.
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The first of Shakespeare's great tragedies. The plot of this story: pure and tragic love, is known throughout the world. The deaths of Romeo and Juliet are in many ways necessary: their families are enemies, and death appears to be the only way out of their hopeless situation. The tragedy is deeply sad and moving.
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