윌리엄 셰익스피어의 성품 연구 —전기적 사실을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper aims at examining the biographical facts of Shakespeare to understand his personality. This study mainly focuses on the documents about Shakespeare, but they may be insufficient for this research because there rarely remain the formal materials about him. However, we can get them from four sources of information: his works, the comments, tradition and gossip, and documentary records. Through those materials, we can guess that Shakespeare was a kind, gentle, and sociable man. Though Robert Greene attacked Shakespeare indirectly in his article, none of his contemporaries except Greene spoke ill of him. He behaved himself and had a touch of humanity in his words and behavior. The contemporaries who knew him complimented him using the word “gentle.” Apart from his kind nature, he had a rational and practical attitude. While he worked as a dramatist in London, he did not live a dissipated life. On the contrary, he managed his property and increased it successfully. As a result, he became the owner of a mansion, The New Place, and a rich man possessing the large farmland at Stratford-upon-Avon. On this ground, Shakespeare seems to have been a kind, ‘gentle,’ and sociable person, and besides a man of complex personality with a rational and practical attitude.