John Keats Wa: Who Was William Shakespeare?

John Keats waWilliam Shakespeare, often called England's national
poet, is considered the greatest dramatist of all time. His works are
loved throughout the world, but Shakespeare's personal life is
shrouded in mystery.
Who Was William Shakespeare?
William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright and actor of the Renaissance era. He was
an important member of the King’s Men company of theatrical players from roughly 1594
onward.
Known throughout the world, Shakespeare's writings capture the range of human emotion and
conflict and have been celebrated for more than 400 years. And yet, the personal life of William
Shakespeare is somewhat a mystery.
There are two primary sources that provide historians with an outline of his life. One is his work
— the plays, poems and sonnets — and the other is official documentation such as church and
court records. However, these provide only brief sketches of specific events in his life and yield
little insight into the man himself.
Shakespeare’s Lost Years
There are seven years of William Shakespeare's life where no records exist after the birth of his
twins in 1585. Scholars call this period the "lost years," and there is wide speculation on what he
was doing during this period.
One theory is that he might have gone into hiding for poaching game from the local landlord, Sir
Thomas Lucy. Another possibility is that he might have been working as an assistant
schoolmaster in Lancashire.
It's generally believed he arrived in London in the mid- to late 1580s and may have found work
as a horse attendant at some of London's finer theaters, a scenario updated centuries later by the
countless aspiring actors and playwrights in Hollywood and Broadway.
The King's Men
By the early 1590s, documents show William Shakespeare was a managing partner in the Lord
Chamberlain's Men, an acting company in London with which he was connected for most of his
career.
Considered the most important troupe of its time, the company changed its name to the King's
Men following the crowning of King James I in 1603. From all accounts, the King's Men
company was very popular. Records show that Shakespeare had works published and sold as
popular literature.
Although the theater culture in 16th century England was not highly admired by people of high
rank, some of the nobility were good patrons of the performing arts and friends of the actors.
Actor and Playwright
By 1592, there is evidence William Shakespeare earned a living as an actor and a playwright in
London and possibly had several plays produced.
The September 20, 1592 edition of the Stationers' Register (a guild publication) includes an
article by London playwright Robert Greene that takes a few jabs at William Shakespeare:
"...There is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a
Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and
being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country,"
Greene wrote of Shakespeare.
Beyond his precise sense of the difficulties presented him in his

own literary-historical moment, he developed with unparalleled
rapidity, in a relative handful of extraordinary poems, a rich,
powerful, and exactly controlled poetic style that ranks Keats,
with the William Shakespeare of the sonnets, as one of the
greatest lyric poets in English.
Keats was said to have been born in his maternal grandfather’s
stable, the Swan and Hoop, near what is now Finsbury Circus, but
there is no real evidence for this birthplace, or for the belief that
his family was particularly poor. Thomas Keats managed the
stable for his father-in-law and later owned it, providing the
family an income comfortable enough for them to buy a home and
send the older children, John and George (1797-1841), to the
small village academy of Enfield, run by the liberal and gifted
teacher John Clarke. Young Tom Keats (1799-1818) soon followed
them. Although little is known of Keats’s early home life, it
appears to have been happy, the family close-knit, the
environment full of the exuberance and clamor of a big-city stable
and inn yard. Frances Keats was devoted to her children,
particularly her favorite, John, who returned that devotion
intensely. Under Keats’s father the family business prospered.
At the age of eight Keats entered Enfield Academy and became

friends with young Charles Cowden Clarke, the fifteen-year-old
son of the headmaster. He was not a shy, bookish child; Clarke
remembered an outgoing youth, who made friends easily and
fought passionately in their defense: “He was not merely the
‘favorite of all,’ like a pet prize-fighter, for his terrier courage; but
his high-mindedness, his utter unconsciousness of a mean motive,
his placability, his generosity, wrought so general a feeling in his
behalf, that I never heard a word of disapproval from any one,
superior or equal, who had known him.” On the night of 15 April
1804, when Keats had been in school less than a year, an accident
occurred that would alter his life and proved to be the first in a
series of losses and dislocations that would pursue him
throughout his brief life. His father was seriously injured when his
horse stumbled as he rode home, and he died the next day. The
shock to the family was great, emotionally and financially. Within
two months of her husband’s death, Frances Keats had moved the
children to her mother’s home and remarried; but the marriage
soon proved disastrous, and it appears that, after losing the
stables and some of her inheritance to her estranged husband,
William Rawlings, the poet’s mother left the family, perhaps to live
with another man. She had returned by 1808, however, broken
and ill; she died of tuberculosis (as had her brother just a few
months before) in March 1809. John became the oldest male in his
family, and, to the end of his life, felt a fiercely protective loyalty to
his brothers and sister, Fanny Keats. His most thoughtful and
moving letters on poetry’s relation to individual experience, to
human suffering and spiritual development, were written to his
brothers.
At school, Keats drew closer to the headmaster, John Clarke, and

his son, Cowden. He became, in fact, one of Clarke’s favorite pupils,
reading voraciously and taking first prizes in essay contests his
last two or three terms. In some part this new academic interest
was a response to his loneliness after his mother’s death. But he
had by then already won an essay contest and begun translating
Latin and French. Keats’s love for literature, and his association of
the life of imagination with the politics of a liberal intelligentsia,
really began in Clarke’s school. It was modeled on the Dissenting
academies that encouraged a broad range of reading in classical
and modern languages, as well as history and modern science;
discipline was light, and students were encouraged to pursue their
own interests by a system of rewards and prizes. Clarke himself
was a friend of the radical reformers John Cartwright and Joseph
Priestley and subscribed to Leigh Hunt’s Examiner, which Cowden
Clarke said, “no doubt laid the foundation of [Keats’s] love of civil
and religious liberty.”
Keats’s sense of the power and romance of literature began as the
Clarkes encouraged him to turn his energy and curiosity to their
library. Cowden Clarke recalled his reading histories, novels,
travel stories; but the books “that were his constantly recurrent
sources of attraction were Tooke’s ‘Pantheon,’ Lamprière’s
‘Classical Dictionary,’ which he appeared to learn, and Spence’s
‘Polymetis.’ This was the store whence he acquired his intimacy
with the Greek mythology.” On his own, Keats translated most of
the Aeneid and continued learning French. Literature for him was
more than a dreamy refuge for a lonely orphan: it was a domain
for energetic exploration, “realms of gold,” as he later wrote,
tempting not only as a realm of idealistic romance but also of a
beauty that enlarges our imaginative sympathies. All through his
life his friends remarked on his industry and his generosity:
literature for Keats was a career to be struggled with, fought for,
and earned, for the sake of what the poet’s struggle could offer
humankind in insight and beauty. This impression recurs often in
accounts of Keats, this pugnacity of one who fought his way into
literary circles, and this compassion for others that justifies the
literary career.

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John Keats waWilliam Shakespeare, often called England's national

Shakespeare’s Lost Years

The King's Men

Actor and Playwright

Beyond his precise sense of the difficulties presented him in his

At the age of eight Keats entered Enfield Academy and became

At school, Keats drew closer to the headmaster, John Clarke, and

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