Shakespeare, the Transcendent and Unbounded Genius

Shakespeare is hailed as the Transcendent and Unbounded Genius.  Why does he is called so?  It cannot be answered simply as you may have so many reasons to share.  Astounding number of studies are undergone all over the world aiming at even a little knowledge about his life enlighten the world more.  However our knowledge about his life is something cloudy or misty.

His birth as per the church records is in 1564 at Stratford Upon-Avon in the county of Warwick as the eldest son of John Shakespeare and Mary Ardren.  John Shakespeare was a prosperous farmer, wool and timber merchant, and butcher of the village who has later rose to the position of Justice of the Peace and High Bailiff of the town.  Shakespeare must have assisted his father in litigation and this way acquired the legal knowledge which has surprised all his renders.  He was admitted to the Grammar School at the age of nine and there he learnt, “Small Latin and Less Greek”.  He often played truant, took part in the village games which receive honourable mention in his plays.  The beautiful landscape of his native village must have made a deep impression upon the boy, for his colourful memories can be seen scattered in his works here and there. It is evident that critics have praised him for his “astonishing store of natural knowledge”.  It is also supposed that in his teens his family passed through a crises and his father who lost all positions became an insolvent debtor.

At the age of nineteen he signed a marriage contract with Anne Hathway, some eight years his senior.  His married life, on the basis of some passages in his plays, considered as an unhappy one.  After becoming the father of three children, he left with a popular company of wandering players who visited Stratford. 

It is only in 1591, we hear about Shakespeare as a new playwright, ‘an upstart crow” who has become a formidable rival to all playwrights of that time.  There are some speculations about his becoming of a playwright.  He passed his dramatic apprenticeship, “working at the odd jobs given to him by the theatrical companies, dining at the ordinary of taverns, gazing on courtly processions and spectacles, seeing new types of characters and hearing new stories day by day”(Raleigh).  Then he tried his hand at acting and was soon a successful actor.  The coarse and worthless plays of the time disgusted him, and he began his dramatic career by re-casting existing plays and changing them beyond recognition.  The theatre managers were soon impressed by his intelligence and observance and his emergence as a great playwright was rapid. 

Shakespeare’s dramatic career extends over a period of nearly twenty-two years, from 1590 to 1612.  During this period, the dramatist worked hard producing, over most of the time, about two plays a year, besides two poems-“Rape of Lucrece” and “Venus and Adonis”- and a sequence of 154 sonnets.  A study of his plays, in chronological order reveals a gradual development of his mind and art.  Shakespeare in 1590 is quite different from Shakespeare in 1600, and from Shakespeare in 1610.  To emphasize this gradual growth of his art, Prof. Dowden has divided his dramatic career into four parts, each showing a definite advance over the previous one.