Chapter Seventy-Seven: Romeo and Juliet

Greene's bashing is the earliest record of Shakespeare's theatre career. Biographers believe that his career may have begun in the mid-1580s and at any time before Green's comments.

From 1594 onwards, Shakespeare's plays were performed only in the Cabinet Ministers' Company, a playwright-formed troupe of which Shakespeare was a shareholder, and later became the leading theatre company in London.

After the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, the new King James I bestowed the company with the Royal Seal and renamed it the King's Company.

In 1599, one of the company's partners built their own theatre, the Globe Theatre, on the south bank of the River Thames. In 1608, they also took over the Blackfriars' Theater. Shakespeare's record of property purchases and investments shows that the troupe made him rich.

In 1597 he bought the second largest house in Stratford-upon-Avon, and in 1605 he invested part of the parish tithes in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Beginning in 1594, some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quario. By 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title page.

Shakespeare became a successful playwright and continued to perform in his own plays and those of others. Shakespeare's name appears in the cast lists of the Ben and Jonson plays, published in 1616, such as "Personalities of Difference" (1598) and "Sijanus" (1603).

His name does not appear in the cast of Jonsson's 1605 Forphornnay, which some scholars believe is a sign that his career as an actor is nearing an end.

However, the First Folio, a collection of Shakespeare's plays, published in 1623, lists Shakespeare as one of the main actors in all plays. Some of these plays were staged for the first time after Forponnais, although we can't confirm the exact roles he played.

In 1610, John Davis of Hereford wrote that he played a monarchical role. In 1709, Rowe continued the traditional view that Shakespeare played the soul of Hamlet's father. Later conventional wisdom holds that he also played Adam in "Everybody" and Chorus in "Henry V", but many scholars doubt the reliability of these sources.

Shakespeare spent half of his time in London and the other half in Stratford-upon-Avon. In 1596, a year before he bought a new house in his hometown, Shakespeare lived in the suburb of St. Helen on the north bank of the River Thames.

In 1599 he moved to the south bank of the river. In the same year, the troupe built the Globe Theatre there. Year 1604. He moved again to an area north of St. Paul's Cathedral on the north bank of the river, with a lot of fancy houses. He rented a house from a man named Christophe Manjoy, a French Huguenot who made wigs and other headdresses for women.

After 1606 and '07, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays. No new works appeared after 1613. His last three plays are likely to be completed in collaboration with John Fletcher. Fletcher became the lead playwright of the King's Company after Shakespeare.

Rowe was the first biographer to be traditionally considered to have Shakespeare retire to Stratford-upon-Avon a few years before his death. But stopping all work was rare in those days, and Shakespeare continued to London.

In 1612, he was summoned by the court. Witnesses in a lawsuit involving Manjoy's daughter Mary in a matrimonial property contract. In March 1613 he purchased a pavilion in the Friar's Abbey, and from November 1614 he spent several weeks in London with his son-in-law, John Hall.

Two days after his death, Shakespeare was buried in the high altar of St. Trinity's Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. Sometime before 1623, a memorial tombstone and his bust were erected on the north wall, and the portrait carved Shakespeare was in the making.

The inscription compares him to Nestor in Greek mythology, the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, and the ancient Roman poet Virgil. A stone slab covers his tombstone, in order to remove the curse that came with moving his bones.

Shakespeare's creative career is usually divided into four phases.

Until the mid-1590s, he wrote mainly comedies, with Roman and Italian influences, while writing historical dramas in the popular chronicle tradition.

His second phase begins with the tragedy Romeo and Juliet circa 1595 and ends with the tragedy Julius Caesar in 1599. During this period, he wrote his most famous comedies and historical plays.

From about 1600 to about 1608 was his "tragic period", and Shakespeare's work was dominated by tragedy.

From about 1608 to 1613, he wrote mainly tragicomedy, known as Shakespeare's late legendary plays.

The earliest surviving works of Shakespeare are the trilogy of Richard III and Henry VI, written in the early 1590s, when historical dramas were all the rage. However, it is difficult to date Shakespeare's works to date, and analysis of the original texts suggests that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also be Shakespeare's early works.

His first historical play, drawing material from Raphael Hollingshead's 1587 edition of the Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, dramatized the devastating consequences of corrupt rule and interpreted it as proof of the origins of the Tudhar dynasty.

Their composition is influenced by the works of other Elizabethan playwrights, notably Tomaskidd and Christopher Marlowe, but also by the tradition of medieval drama and Seneca plays.

The Comedy of Errors is also based on a traditional story, but no source for The Taming of the Shrew has been found, even though the title of the work is the same as that of another play based on folklore. Like the two best friends in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," the story of "The Taming of the Shrew," in which men cultivate women's independent spirit, has sometimes puzzled modern critics and directors.

Shakespeare's early classical and Italian comedies, which contained tight plots and precise comedic sequences, turned to his successful romantic comedy style after the mid-1590s. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a synthesis of romance, fairy magic, and not over-the-top comical.

His next play, The Merchant of Venice, which depicts the vengeful Jewish usurer Shylock, reflects Elizabethan ideas, but racist views may be felt by modern viewers.

The wit and playfulness of Much Ado About Nothing, the charming countryside of All Are Happy, and the vivid revelers of Twelfth Night make up Shakespeare's classic comedy series.

After the cheerful Richard II, written almost entirely in poetic style, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the historical plays Henry IV Part I, Part II, and Henry V in the late 1590s. His characters become more complex and nuanced, and he is able to switch between humorous and serious scenes, jumping between poetry and prose to complete his narrative maturity.

This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, a well-known romantic tragedy depicting sexual agitation, love, and death, and Julius Caesar, based on Thomas North's 1579 adaptation of the biographies of the Roman Greek writer Plutarch, creating a new form of drama.

James Shapiro, a scholar of Shakespeare, believes that in Julius Caesar, various clues of politics, characters, nature, events, and even Shakespeare's own creative process are intertwined and interpenetrate. (To be continued......)