Of the rabuplic of uzbekistan samarqand state institute of foreign languages english faculty II

Chapter 1. Life and works of Shakespeare
1.1Brief account of the life of Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The parish register records his baptism on April 26. His father, John Shakespeare, was a prominent person in Stratford (according to some sources, he traded in leather goods) and held various positions in the city government, up to the bailiff (estate manager). The mother was the daughter of a small landed nobleman from Warwickshire, descended from an ancient family of Arden Catholics.
William was the third child in the family, he had two older sisters and three younger brothers.
By the end of the 1570s, the family went bankrupt and around 1580 William had to leave school and start working.
In November 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. In May 1583 their first child was born - daughter Susan, in February 1585 - twins son Hamnet and daughter Judith.
There is no documentary evidence of what Shakespeare did from 1585 to 1592.
The knowledge of maritime affairs shown in Shakespeare's plays has allowed some researchers to speculate that he was a sailor for some time.
It became popular to say that Shakespeare joined one of the theater companies in London, which performed on tour in Stratford.
Starting in the 1590s, Shakespeare wrote independent plays, giving them to different theaters, and also reworked other people's plays by order of the troupe. In 1592, he is indirectly mentioned in a pamphlet by the London playwright Robert Greene, who warns his friends about an actor who has the audacity to write plays himself.

Until 1593, Shakespeare did not publish anything, in 1593 he published the poem "Venus and Adonis", dedicating it to the Duke of Southampton, the patron saint of literature. The poem was a great success and was published eight times during the author's lifetime. In the same year, Shakespeare joined Richard Burbage's Lord Chamberlain's troupe, where he worked as an actor, director and playwright.

Theatrical activities under the auspices of Southampton quickly brought him wealth. His father, John Shakespeare, after several years of financial difficulties, received the right to a coat of arms in the Heraldic Chamber. The granted title gave Shakespeare the right to sign "William Shakespeare, gentleman."
In 1592-1594 the London theaters were closed due to the plague. During an involuntary pause, Shakespeare created several plays - the chronicle "Richard III", "The Comedy of Errors" and "The Taming of the Shrew". In 1594, after the opening of theaters, Shakespeare joined the Lord Chamberlain's new troupe.
In 1595-1596 he wrote the tragedy Romeo and Juliet, the romantic comedies A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice.
The playwright was doing well - in 1597 he bought a large house with a garden in Stratford, where he moved his wife and daughters (the son died in 1596) and settled himself after he left the London stage.
In the years 1598-1600, the peaks of Shakespeare's work as a comedian were created - "Much Ado About Nothing", "As You Like It" and "Twelfth Night". At the same time, he wrote the tragedy "Julius Caesar" (1599).
In 1599, Shakespeare became one of the owners, playwright and actor of the newly opened Globe Theatre. In 1603, King James took Shakespeare's troupe under direct patronage - it became known as the Servants of His Majesty the King, and the actors were considered as courtiers as valets. In 1608, Shakespeare became a shareholder in the lucrative London Blackfriars Theatre.

With the advent of the famous "Hamlet" (1600-1601), the period of great tragedies of the playwright began. In 1601-1606 Othello (1604), King Lear (1605), Macbeth (1606) were created. Shakespeare's tragic worldview also left its mark on those works of this period that do not belong directly to the genre of tragedy - the so-called "bitter comedies" "Troilus and Cressida" (1601-1602), "All is well that ends well" (1603- 1603), Measure for Measure (1604).

In 1606-1613, Shakespeare created tragedies based on ancient subjects "Antony and Cleopatra", "Coriolanus", "Timon of Athens", as well as romantic tragicomedies, including "The Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest", and the late chronicle
"Henry VIII ".
What is known about Shakespeare's acting is that he played the roles of the Ghost in Hamlet and Adam in the play As You Like It. He played a role in the play by Ben Jonson "Everyone in his own way." Shakespeare's last attested performance on stage was in his own play, The Sejanus. In 1613 he left the stage and settled in his house in Stratford.
On April 23, 1616, William Shakespeare died in Stratford.
The playwright was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, where he had previously been baptized.
Shakespeare's works were not collected during his lifetime. Separately printed poems, a collection of sonnets. The plays originally appeared in the so-called pirated editions with corrupted text, followed, as a rule, by an edition prepared by the author in the form of a refutation. After Shakespeare's death, through the efforts of his actor friends John Heming and Henry Condell, the first complete edition of his works was prepared, including 36 plays, the so-called First Folio, 18 of which had not previously been published.

For more than two centuries after Shakespeare's death, no one doubted Shakespeare's authorship. Since 1850, doubts have arisen about the authorship of the playwright, which are still shared by many today. The source for biographers of Shakespeare was his will, which speaks of houses and property, but not a word about books and manuscripts. There are many supporters of the negative statement - Shakespeare from Stratford could not be the author of such works, because he was uneducated, did not travel, did not study at the university. Stratfordians (supporters of the traditional version) and anti-Stratfordians have made many arguments. More than two dozen candidates for "Shakespeare" were proposed, among the most popular applicants were the philosopher Francis Bacon and Shakespeare's predecessor in the transformation of dramatic art Christopher Marlowe, also called the Earls of Derby, Oxford, Rutland.

William Shakespeare is considered the greatest English playwright, one of the best playwrights in the world. His plays have been translated into all major languages ​​and to this day form the basis of the world theatrical repertoire. Most of them have been filmed many times.

1.2 Brief description of Shakespeare's work

Among Shakespeare's early works are the tragic love poems Venus and Adonis (1593) and Lucretia (1594), written in the spirit of Renaissance poetry; they brought the author popularity, but Shakespeare gained world recognition as a playwright. The so-called "Shakespearean canon" (plays undeniably belonging to Shakespeare) includes 37 dramas. In the early plays, a bright, life-affirming beginning prevails: the comedies The Taming of the Shrew (1593), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1596), Much Ado About Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor (both 1598), Twelfth Night ( 1600). A humanistic call for mutual tolerance, hope for reason and victory over destructive prejudices are heard in the tragedy Romeo and Juliet (1595) about the broken lives of young lovers who became victims of a long-standing family feud of their families. Over the years, in the works of Shakespeare, based on the vast material of the history and culture of different countries, the awareness of the complexity and inconsistency of being is increasing. In the historical chronicles "Richard III" (1593), "Henry IV" (2 hours, 1597-98), in the tragedies "Hamlet" (1601), "Othello" (1604), "King Lear" (1605), " Macbeth" (1606), in the "Roman" tragedies "Julius Caesar" (1599), "Antony and Cleopatra" (1607), "Coriolanus" (1607), the poet assessed moral, social and political conflicts as eternal laws, according to which the highest human values ​​- kindness, selflessness, honor, justice - inevitably fail.
The most complex and "mysterious" play by Shakespeare is the tragedy "Hamlet". The character of the protagonist has given rise to many different interpretations, each generation discovers something different in him, each researcher tries to explain him in a new way. The weakness of the will and the inconsistency of the hero with the task assigned to him, I saw in Hamlet I.V. Goethe. V.G. Belinsky emphasized in it the discord between dreams and ideas about life and life itself. I.S. Turgenev considered him an egoist and a skeptic. However, one cannot but admire his thirst for justice, readiness for self-sacrifice in the name of truth, courage and sharpness of mind. A.S. Pushkin wrote about the peculiarities of Shakespeare's characters in general: “The faces created by Shakespeare are not, like those of Moliere, types of such and such a passion, such a vice, but living beings, full of many passions, many vices; circumstances develop before the viewer their various characters. In Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote that the task of art is “to hold, as it were, a mirror in front of nature: to show the virtues of her own features, arrogance - her own appearance, and to every age and class - its likeness and imprint.” The feeling of world chaos, which is mentioned in Hamlet, does not leave Shakespeare, the mood of anxiety and unrest caused by a turning point in the life of society at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries was reflected in his later work. The search for a reconciling outcome of dramatic situations led to the creation of the late romantic dramas The Winter's Tale (1611) and The Tempest (1612), in which the playwright seeks to overcome discord and restore the world's lost harmony. In the last plays, Shakespeare said goodbye to the theater audience, like the hero of The Tempest, the magician Prospero, either losing faith in the magic of art, or simply having exhausted its possibilities.
The world significance of Shakespeare's work is explained by the fact that in a fascinating and dynamic stage action, with large strokes, he created a whole gallery of vivid, memorable images. Among them are powerful, straight to the goal, endowed with strong passions, characters, and types prone to constant reflection and hesitation, wise men and scoffers, criminals and simpletons, brave friends and cunning traitors. Both the main and many secondary characters of Shakespeare became household names: Hamlet, Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, Othello, Desdemona, Iago, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Falstaff. Shakespeare, with his thoughts, themes, motives and images, gave impetus to the creation of many works of literature, painting, sculpture, music; his most significant works have been repeatedly filmed.
Shakespeare's contribution to world literature also consisted in his "Sonnets" (1592-1600), 154 lyric-philosophical poems that tell about the author's love for a certain "dark-skinned lady", insidious and masterful, and about his friendship with a certain young man (" blond friend"), who became his rival and for the sake of which he parted with his beloved. Many researchers of Shakespeare's work have tried to reveal the secret of the lyrical heroine of the Sonnets, but so far no one can say for sure who she is: The Sonnets, containing autobiographical motifs, are not the poet's lyrical diary, but primarily a work of art. Poetic mastery, drama, intensity of passions contained in a small poetic form, intense psychologism put the "Sonnets" on a par with Shakespeare's dramatic masterpieces. One of the best translators of sonnets into Russian was S.Ya. Marshak.
In Russia, Shakespeare was first mentioned among famous poets in 1748 by A.P. Sumarokov. Shakespeare firmly entered the national culture from the first half. 19th century Disputes about Shakespeare at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, and in particular the negative attitude towards his work L.N. Tolstoy, did not weaken the influence of the English playwright on the spiritual life of Russians. Shakespeare has become an integral part of Russian culture largely due to excellent translations. It was translated into Russian by A.P. Sumarokov, N.M. Karamzin, A.I. Kroneberg, V.Ya. Bryusov, N.A. Kholodkovsky, T.L. Shchepkina-Kupernik, M.L. Lozinsky, B.L. Parsnip.