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{{About|the poet and playwright|other persons of the same name|William Shakespeare (disambiguation)|other uses of "Shakespeare"|Shakespeare (disambiguation)}}
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{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2014}}
{{Use British English|date=January 2014}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
| name = William Shakespeare
| image = Shakespeare.jpg<!--Please see the talk page before making any changes to the portrait-->
(contracted; show full)roughout his career, with ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'' perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles.<ref>{{Harvnb|Clemen|2005b|loc=63}}.</ref> By the time of ''Romeo and Juliet'', ''[[Richard II (play)|Richard II]]'', and ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'' in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself.


[[File:Pity.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|''[[Pity (William Blake)|Pity]]'' by [[William Blake]], 1795, [[Tate Britain]], is an illustration of two similes in ''Macbeth'':<br>''"And pity, like a naked new-born babe,<br>Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd<br>Upon the sightless couriers of the air."''<ref>{{harvnb|de Sélincourt|1909|loc=174}}</ref>]]
Shakespeare's standard poetic form was [[blank verse]], composed in [[iambic pentameter]]. In practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the [[End-stopping|end of lines]], with the risk of monotony.<ref>{{Harvnb|Frye|2005|loc=185}}.</(contracted; show full)[[Category:People from Stratford-upon-Avon]]
[[Category:People of the Elizabethan era]]
[[Category:People of the Stuart period]]
[[Category:Shakespeare family|William]]
[[Category:Sonneteers]]
[[Category:King's Men (playing company)]]
[[Category:English male dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:English male poets]]-->