1564–1616
Actor-playwright of the London stage whose histories, comedies, and tragedies became a second scripture for later centuries. His English still feels like thought happening in public.
Expanded character into a nearly inexhaustible inwardness and made blank verse the instrument of a national theater.
Play · c. 1601
William Shakespeare
A Danish prince is charged by a ghost to avenge a murder and spends five acts thinking, acting, and failing to keep thought and action apart. The court becomes a stage of surveillance.
Tragedy
Play · c. 1606
William Shakespeare
An aging king divides his kingdom by a love-test and is driven into storm and madness. The play strips authority until only bare need remains.
Tragedy
Lyric sequence · 1609
William Shakespeare
A sequence of love, rivalry, time, and making that refuses a simple plot. Beauty is argued with, lent to verse, and watched as it fades.
Sonnets