William Shakespeare: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Shakespeare worked as a jobbing playwright and shareholder in a commercial London theatre business, plundering Ovid, Plutarch and English chronicle history, and competing weekly with Marlowe, Jonson and Middleton. This mix traces the sources he ransacked, the rival dramatists he answered, the Elizabethan song culture woven into his scripts, and the operas and films his plots later generated.

The Kynda mix for William Shakespeare

• Key Influence · Metamorphoses (translated by Arthur Golding) by Ovid (1567). Golding's English Ovid was standard grammar-school and popular reading in Shakespeare's youth, and Ovidian myth saturates his work: Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece take their stories from Ovid, the Pyramus and Thisbe playlet in A Midsummer Night's Dream burlesques a Metamorphoses tale, and Prospero's renunciation speech in The Tempest closely echoes Medea's incantation as Golding rendered it.
• Influencia Obscura · The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke (1562). Brooke's long poem, itself derived from Bandello via Boaistuau, is the direct source of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare keeps the feuding houses, the friar, the nurse and the sleeping potion but compresses months into days and transforms Brooke's moralising narrator into lyric urgency. Almost unread today outside source studies, it is the buried scaffolding beneath the most performed love story in the language.
• Local Roots · Volpone by Ben Jonson (1606). Jonson wrote for the same London playhouses and companies; Shakespeare acted in Jonson's Every Man in His Humour with the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Volpone shows the rival aesthetic — classical unities, satiric city comedy, moral scourging — against which Shakespeare's looser romance structures stand out. Jonson later supplied the memorial poem in the 1623 Folio calling him soul of the age.
• Beyond the Medium · The First Booke of Songes or Ayres by John Dowland (1597). Dowland's lute songs define the melancholy sound-world contemporary with Shakespeare's tragedies and were sung in the same households that read his sonnets. Shakespeare's scripts are full of song cues — Feste, Ophelia, Desdemona's willow song — that depended on this repertory of solo voice and lute, and Dowland's cultivated melancholy is the exact musical register of Hamlet's Denmark.
• Peer · Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (1592). Born the same year as Shakespeare, Marlowe made blank verse a popular theatrical weapon; Tamburlaine and Faustus set the bar the early histories answer. Richard III and Richard II respond to Marlowe's Edward II, and As You Like It quotes his line about the dead shepherd. Marlowe's death in 1593 left the field open just as Shakespeare's narrative poems and mature plays arrived.
• From the Canon · Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1601). Written for the Lord Chamberlain's Men with Richard Burbage in the title role, Hamlet reshapes the revenge formula of Kyd into interior drama, drawing on Belleforest's version of the Amleth legend. Surviving in three substantially different early texts — the 1603 quarto, the 1604 quarto and the 1623 Folio — it is both the longest play in the canon and the most continuously reinterpreted work in world theatre.
• Key Collaborator · The Faithful Shepherdess by John Fletcher (1609). Fletcher succeeded Shakespeare as principal dramatist for the King's Men and collaborated with him on Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen and the lost Cardenio. This pastoral tragicomedy, with its preface defining the genre, shows the taste for romance and courtly artifice that also colours the late plays, and clarifies which hand shaped which scenes in their joint work.
• Legacy · Throne of Blood by Akira Kurosawa (1957). Kurosawa transplants Macbeth into feudal Japan, replacing the witches with a single forest spirit and staging the prophecy through Noh convention and fog-bound Mount Fuji locations. He returned to Shakespeare with Ran, derived from King Lear. The film is the clearest demonstration that Shakespeare's structures survive total translation of language, period and performance tradition intact.

What influenced William Shakespeare

• Christopher Marlowe. Wikipedia states Shakespeare's early plays were influenced by Marlowe. (also via Doctor Faustus) “The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe” (Wikipedia)
• Thomas Kyd. Wikipedia states Shakespeare's early plays were influenced by Kyd. (also via The Spanish Tragedy) “The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe” (Wikipedia)
• Raphael Holinshed. Shakespeare's history plays drew heavily on Holinshed's Chronicles. (also via The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande) “His first histories , which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland” (Wikipedia)
• The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd (1587). The Spanish Tragedy (Thomas Kyd) — ghost for William Shakespeare “The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Seneca. Shakespeare's early plays influenced by Seneca's drama. “and by the plays of Seneca” (Wikipedia)
• Metamorphoses (translated by Arthur Golding) by Ovid (1567). Metamorphoses (translated by Arthur Golding) (Ovid) — titan for William Shakespeare “Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses, the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (translated by Thomas North) by Plutarch (1579). The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (translated by Thomas North) (Plutarch) — titan for William Shakespeare “This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death; and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—w…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande by Raphael Holinshed (1587). The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande (Raphael Holinshed) — titan for William Shakespeare “His first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for t…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke (1562). The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (Arthur Brooke) — ghost for William Shakespeare (wikidata.org)
• Palace of Pleasure by William Painter (1566). Palace of Pleasure (William Painter) — ghost for William Shakespeare (wikidata.org)
• The First Booke of Songes or Ayres by John Dowland (1597). The First Booke of Songes or Ayres (John Dowland) — culture for William Shakespeare
• The First Booke of Ayres by Thomas Morley (1600). The First Booke of Ayres (Thomas Morley) — culture for William Shakespeare
• Geoffrey Chaucer (1343). Bloom argued Shakespeare owed a debt to Chaucer.

Peers and kindred spirits

• Isamu Noguchi. Noguchi designed sets and costumes for a production of King Lear. (via King Lear) “The design was created by Isamu Noguchi for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company's 1955 touring production of Shakespeare's King Lear.” (Victoria and Albert Museum)
• Volpone by Ben Jonson (1606). Volpone (Ben Jonson) — geography for William Shakespeare “Its preface includes a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, who hailed Shakespeare with the now-famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".” (en.wikipedia.org)
• A Chaste Maid in Cheapside by Thomas Middleton (1613). A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (Thomas Middleton) — geography for William Shakespeare “== List of works == === Plays === The Phoenix (1603–1604) The Honest Whore, Part 1 (1604) (co-written with Thomas Dekker) Michaelmas Term (1604) A Trick to Catch the Old One (1605) A Mad World, My Masters (1605) A Yorkshire Tragedy (1605…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (1592). Doctor Faustus (Christopher Marlowe) — peer for William Shakespeare “Scholars differ on the exact meaning of Greene's words, but most agree that Greene was accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match such university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe and Greene hi…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Revenger's Tragedy by Thomas Middleton (1607). The Revenger's Tragedy (Thomas Middleton) — collaborator for William Shakespeare “== List of works == === Plays === The Phoenix (1603–1604) The Honest Whore, Part 1 (1604) (co-written with Thomas Dekker) Michaelmas Term (1604) A Trick to Catch the Old One (1605) A Mad World, My Masters (1605) A Yorkshire Tragedy (1605…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Miguel de Cervantes (1547). Fuentes places Cervantes and Shakespeare within a shared narrative tradition. “Mexican author Carlos Fuentes suggested that Cervantes and his contemporary William Shakespeare form part of a narrative tradition that includes Homer , Dante , Defoe , Dickens , Balzac , and Joyce.” (Wikipedia)
• King's New School, Stratford. Shakespeare is believed to have been educated at this school (studied under institution). “most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford” (Wikipedia)
• Lord Chamberlain's Men. Shakespeare was a member and part-owner of the Lord Chamberlain's Men. “he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men” (Wikipedia)
• King's Men. Shakespeare's company was renamed the King's Men. “later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI of Scotland to the English throne” (Wikipedia)
• Christopher Mountjoy. Shakespeare lodged with Mountjoy, later a witness in a related court case. “There he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of women's wigs and other headgear” (Wikipedia)
• Guthrie McClintic. McClintic staged the production of Romeo and Juliet. (via Romeo and Juliet) “The plav has been staged by Guthrie McClintic, Jo Mielziner designed the settings and costumes.” (Evening Star (Washington, D.C.))
• Jo Mielziner. Mielziner designed sets and costumes for the production. (via Romeo and Juliet) “Jo Mielziner designed the settings and costumes.” (Evening Star (Washington, D.C.))
• Paul Nordoff. Nordoff composed original music for the Cornell production. (via Romeo and Juliet) “Paul NordofT composed the music and Martha Gra ham arranged the dances.” (Evening Star (Washington, D.C.))
• Martha Graham (1894). Graham arranged the dances for the Cornell Romeo and Juliet production. (via Romeo and Juliet) “Paul NordofT composed the music and Martha Gra ham arranged the dances.” (Evening Star (Washington, D.C.))
• Touchstone Guild. The Dramatic Club performed a reading taken from Shakespeare's Macbeth. (via Macbeth) “The tragedy was taken from Macbeth,” (The West Virginia Digest (Charleston, W. Va.))
• Sarah Bernhardt. States Bernhardt achieved early success performing the role of Cordelia in a French translation of King Lear. (via King Lear) “she emerged from laborious obscurity with her first defin ite success ns Cordelia in a French translation of “King t ear" at the tMenn.” (Brownsville Herald (Brownsville, Tex.))
• The River by Duke Ellington (1970). Groups 'The River' with 'Hamlet' as Theatre Guild-sponsored films. (via Hamlet) “It is the thud motion picture <o be selected for sponsorship by he Theatre Guild. “Hamlet” and Henry were the others.” (The Detroit Tribune (Detroit, Mich.))
• Othello (Orson Welles film). The article notes Welles's film is drawn from Shakespeare's masterpiece Othello. (via Othello) “vailler à montage de ce film tiré d’un des plus populaires chefs d’oeuvre de Shakespeare: "Othel lo,"” (Le Messager (Lewiston, Me.))
• Gian Carlo Menotti. Menotti helped Barber revise Antony and Cleopatra. (via Antony and Cleopatra) “a revised version of Antony and Cleopatra , for which Menotti provided collaborative assistance, has enjoyed some success.” (Wikipedia)
• Franco Zeffirelli (1923). Zeffirelli designed the opera’s original production. (via Antony and Cleopatra) “The elaborate production, designed by Franco Zeffirelli , was plagued with technical disasters; it also overwhelmed and obscured Barber's music” (Wikipedia)
• Leontyne Price. Price sang a title role in the opera’s premiere. (via Antony and Cleopatra) “Antony and Cleopatra , which premiered at the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House in 1966 with Leontyne Price and Justino Diaz in the title roles.” (Wikipedia)
• Peter Hall. The cited Macbeth production was Peter Hall’s. (via Macbeth) “In 1967, Derbyshire provided sound design alongside Guy Woolfenden 's score for Peter Hall 's production of Macbeth with the Royal Shakespeare Company .” (Wikipedia)
• Royal Shakespeare Company. Hall’s Macbeth production was with the Royal Shakespeare Company. (via Macbeth) “In 1967, Derbyshire provided sound design alongside Guy Woolfenden 's score for Peter Hall 's production of Macbeth with the Royal Shakespeare Company .” (Wikipedia)
• The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster (1614). The Duchess of Malfi (John Webster) — peer for William Shakespeare (wikidata.org)
• The Faithful Shepherdess by John Fletcher (1609). The Faithful Shepherdess (John Fletcher) — collaborator for William Shakespeare “His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house playwright of the King's Men.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• John Fletcher (1792). Fletcher collaborated with Shakespeare on his last plays. (also via The Faithful Shepherdess)

Who William Shakespeare influenced

• West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein (1957). West Side Story (Leonard Bernstein) — legacy for William Shakespeare (also via Romeo and Juliet) “West Side Story is a contemporary version of Romeo and Juliet , set on the Upper West Side .” (Wikipedia)
• Ben Jonson. Jonson's famous tribute praising Shakespeare in the First Folio preface. (also via Volpone) “Shakespeare wanted art” (Wikipedia)
• William Faulkner. Faulkner names Shakespeare in his answer about influences. (also via Macbeth, The Sound and the Fury) “Flaubert , Balzac —he created an intact world of his own, a bloodstream running through twenty books— Dostoyevsky , Tolstoy , Shakespeare . I read Melville occasionally” (Wikipedia)
• Orson Welles (1915). Macbeth (William Shakespeare) — culture for Orson Welles (via Macbeth, Othello) “Orson Welles , a lifelong lover of Shakespeare, directed and starred in Macbeth , Othello and Chimes at Midnight” (Wikipedia)
• Akira Kurosawa (1910). Macbeth (William Shakespeare) — culture for Akira Kurosawa (via Macbeth, King Lear, Throne of Blood) “Akira Kurosawa adapted Macbeth and King Lear as Throne of Blood and Ran” (Wikipedia)
• Giuseppe Verdi (1813). Verdi's opera Macbeth based on Shakespeare's play. (via Macbeth, Othello, Otello) “His work has inspired several operas, among them Giuseppe Verdi 's Macbeth , Otello and Falstaff” (Wikipedia)
• Throne of Blood by Akira Kurosawa (1957). Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa) — legacy for William Shakespeare (also via Macbeth) “Kurosawa's next project, Throne of Blood , an adaptation of William Shakespeare 's Macbeth” (Wikipedia)
• Felix Mendelssohn (1809). Mendelssohn composed music inspired by Shakespeare's play. (via A Midsummer Night's Dream) “Music by Mendelssohn. With more than one thousand players.” (Evening Star (Washington, D.C.))
• T. S. Eliot (1888). Eliot praised Shakespeare's late tragedies including Antony and Cleopatra. (via Antony and Cleopatra, The Waste Land) “were considered his most successful tragedies by the poet and critic T. S. Eliot” (Wikipedia)
• Duke Ellington (1899). Ellington scored a Shakespeare play production. (via Timon of Athens, The River) “Ellington wrote an original score for director Michael Langham 's production of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada, which opened on July 29, 1963.” (Wikipedia)
• Forbidden Planet by Fred M. Wilcox (1956). The Tempest (William Shakespeare) — titan for Forbidden Planet (via The Tempest) “The characters and isolated setting have been compared to those in William Shakespeare 's The Tempest , and the plot contains certain happenings analogous to the play, leading many to consider it a loose adaptation .” (Wikipedia)
• The Godfather (1972). King Lear (William Shakespeare) — culture for The Godfather (via King Lear) “I really had approached the Corleones more as a royal family. The Godfather is the story of a great king who had three sons, and each got a different part of his palace.” (Cinema Papers (reprinted by Scraps from the Loft))
• Emily Dickinson (1830). The Sonnets (William Shakespeare) — titan for Emily Dickinson (via The Sonnets, Macbeth) “She regularly quoted Shakespeare in her letters to Abiah Root, particularly Macbeth , in the years 1845 and 1850.” (Wikipedia)
• Jim Bridger (1804). Sir George Gore read Shakespeare's plays aloud to Jim Bridger, exposing the frontiersman to Shakespearean literature and drawing his commentary on the stories. “I read Shakespeare aloud and try to draw Old Jim out in re- Ito the story.” (Glacier County Chief (Browning, Mont.))
• Christoph Martin Wieland (1733). Wieland translated Shakespeare's complete works into German. “Christoph Martin Wieland was the first to produce complete translations of Shakespeare's plays in any language” (Wikipedia)
• Bertolt Brecht. Brecht's epic theatre developed under Shakespeare's influence. “The Marxist playwright and director Bertolt Brecht devised an epic theatre under the influence of Shakespeare” (Wikipedia)
• John Milton (1608). Milton's tribute poem to Shakespeare. “Thou in our wonder and astonishment/ Hast built thyself a live-long monument” (Wikipedia)
• August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767). Schlegel translated Shakespeare's plays into German. “the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German Romanticism” (Wikipedia)
• Samuel Johnson (1709). Johnson relied heavily on Shakespeare in his dictionary. “Samuel Johnson quoted him more often than any other author in his A Dictionary of the English Language” (Wikipedia)
• Robert Greene (1558). Greene's pamphlet attacked Shakespeare, evidencing rivalry/connection. “there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide” (Wikipedia)
• John Dryden (1631). Dryden compared Jonson and Shakespeare, favoring Shakespeare. “I admire him, but I love Shakespeare” (Wikipedia)
• Harold Bloom (1930). Bloom's assessment of Shakespeare's stature. “Shakespeare was larger than Plato and than St. Augustine . He encloses us because we see with his fundamental perceptions” (Wikipedia)
• Thomas Rymer (1641). Rymer's critical assessment of Shakespeare's style. “Thomas Rymer , for example, condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic with the tragic” (Wikipedia)
• George Steiner (1929). Steiner asserts Shakespeare's overwhelming influence on later English verse drama. “The critic George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Alfred, Lord Tennyson , as "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes"” (Wikipedia)
• Voltaire (1694). States Voltaire was influenced by Shakespeare during his English exile. “He was influenced by the writers of the time and developed an interest in English literature, especially Shakespeare” (Wikipedia)
• Francisco Castillo Najera. Ambassador names Shakespeare as one of his favorite poets. “His favorite poets are the Frenchman, Valery, the pro-democrat poet of Chile, Pablo Neruda, William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe.” (Evening Star (Washington, D.C.))
• Rembrandt (1606). O'Doherty draws a cross-medium comparison between the emotional range of Rembrandt's lighting and the breadth attributed to Shakespeare's work. “Of creating a wide variety of mood and his range is as wide as has been said of Shakespeare.” (Invitation To Art (public broadcasting))
• George Balanchine (1904). Kriegsman places Balanchine on the artistic level of Shakespeare. “to my mind the level of a Shakespeare, of a Milton, of a Dante, of a Bach or a Beethoven.” (The MacNeil/Lehrer Report (public broadcasting))
• Murasaki Shikibu (978). Mulhern compares Murasaki's cultural role to Shakespeare's. “Mulhern says of Murasaki that she is similar to Shakespeare, who represented his Elizabethan England, in that she captured the essence of the Heian court” (Wikipedia)
• Tennessee Williams. Shakespeare is named among the writers Williams admired and referenced. “Williams's writings reference some of the poets and writers he most admired in his early years: Hart Crane , [ 24 ] Arthur Rimbaud , [ 25 ] Anton Chekhov , [ 26 ] William Shakespeare , Clarence Darrow” (Wikipedia)
• Some Like It Hot by Billy Wilder (1959). The text quotes Roger Ebert comparing the screenplay's comic structure to Shakespeare. “Of Some Like it Hot , he writes "The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is Shakespearean in the way it cuts between high and low comedy, between the heroes and the clowns."” (Wikipedia)
• The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot (1922). The Waste Land contains allusions to Shakespeare. “He was long a critic and admirer of Elizabethan and Jacobean verse drama; witness his allusions to John Webster , Thomas Middleton , Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd in The Waste Land .” (Wikipedia)
• Gertrude Stein. Stein read Shakespeare extensively while growing up. “Though Stein found formal schooling in Oakland unstimulating, [ 1 ] she often immersed herself in the writings of Shakespeare , Wordsworth , Scott , Burns , Smollett , Fielding , and others.” (Wikipedia)
• Gnomeo & Juliet. Gnomeo & Juliet is based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. (via Romeo and Juliet) “Parton had a voice role in the comedy family film Gnomeo & Juliet (2011), an animated film with garden gnomes about William Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet .” (Wikipedia)
• Ran. Ran is partly based on Shakespeare's King Lear. (via King Lear) “The script, partly based on Shakespeare's King Lear , depicted a ruthless, bloodthirsty daimyō” (Wikipedia)
• Herman Melville. Melville's Captain Ahab was inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear. (via King Lear) “his Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero , inspired by King Lear” (Wikipedia)
• Sergei Prokofiev (1891). Prokofiev's ballet is based on Shakespeare's play. (via Romeo and Juliet) “Sergei Prokofiev 's ballet Romeo and Juliet” (Wikipedia)
• Henry Fuseli (1741). Fuseli translated Shakespeare's Macbeth into German. (via Macbeth) “The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli , a friend of William Blake , translated Macbeth into German” (Wikipedia)
• Sigmund Freud (1856). Freud drew on Hamlet for his psychoanalytic theories. (via Hamlet) “The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular, that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature” (Wikipedia)
• The Quiet American. Critic likens an explosive scene in the film to Shakespeare's King Lear. (via King Lear) “Fowler rages like King Lear” (Fresh Air (NPR/WHYY))

…and 16 more on the map above.