William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, the son of John Shakespeare, a glove-maker and alderman, and Mary Arden, whose family were affluent landowners with strong Catholic ties. He was baptised on 26 April 1564, and tradition holds his birthday as 23 April, Saint George's Day. Though no school attendance records survive, most biographers believe he was educated at the King's New School in Stratford, where the curriculum was built around intensive Latin instruction and classical authors.

At 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who was 26 and already pregnant. Their daughter Susanna was baptised in May 1583, followed by twins, Hamnet and Judith, in February 1585. After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare largely disappears from the historical record until he surfaces as part of the London theatre world in 1592. Biographers call this gap the 'lost years', and various stories have been attached to it — that he fled Stratford to avoid punishment for poaching, or that he worked as a schoolmaster — but none of these accounts rest on solid evidence.

By 1592, Shakespeare was established enough in London to attract a hostile mention in print. The playwright Robert Greene mocked him as an 'upstart Crow' who presumed to compete with university-educated writers. The attack, though hostile, confirms Shakespeare was already a recognised presence on the London stage. After the plague years of 1592 to 1593, his plays were performed exclusively by a company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, of which he was a part-owner. When King James I came to the throne in 1603, the company received a royal patent and was renamed the King's Men.

In 1599, members of the company constructed their own playhouse on the south bank of the Thames, naming it the Globe Theatre. Julius Caesar was among the first plays staged there. Shakespeare was not merely a writer for this company — he was a shareholder, an actor, and a businessman. Records of his property investments show he became genuinely wealthy: in 1597 he purchased New Place, the second-largest house in Stratford, and in 1605 he bought a share of parish tithes there.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His earliest plays were histories and comedies — works like Richard III, Henry VI, The Comedy of Errors, and The Taming of the Shrew. The histories drew heavily on Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles and dramatised the consequences of weak or corrupt rule. By the mid-1590s he was writing his most celebrated comedies, including A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and Twelfth Night, works noted for their romantic atmosphere, wordplay, and comic invention.

From the early 1600s, Shakespeare concentrated on tragedies. Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth are considered the pinnacle of this phase and among the finest works in the English language. Each turns on a fatal error or flaw: Hamlet's hesitation, Othello's jealousy stoked by the scheming Iago, Lear's disastrous decision to give up his power, and Macbeth's unchecked ambition. In the final phase of his career, Shakespeare shifted toward tragicomedies — plays like The Winter's Tale and The Tempest — which are graver in tone than his earlier comedies but end with reconciliation rather than catastrophe.

During Shakespeare's lifetime, many of his plays appeared in printed editions of varying reliability. Some of these so-called quarto editions were poorly reproduced, possibly reconstructed from memory by actors or audience members. Shakespeare left no clear indication that he approved or supervised any of these printings. The situation changed in 1623 when two of his fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published a collected edition of his dramatic works now known as the First Folio. It contained 36 plays, 18 of which appeared in print for the first time.

The First Folio's preface included a poem by Ben Jonson, once a rival of Shakespeare's, who declared him 'not of an age, but for all time.' Two further plays — The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre — were not included in the Folio but are now accepted as part of the canon. No Shakespearean poems were included, partly because the collection was assembled by theatre professionals focused on the dramatic work. The Folio stands as the single most important source for Shakespeare's plays, and without it, nearly half of them might have been lost.

Shakespeare retired to Stratford around 1613, the same year the Globe Theatre burned to the ground during a performance of Henry VIII. He died on 23 April 1616 at the age of 52, within a month of signing his will, in which he described himself as being in 'perfect health.' No contemporary source explains the cause of death. He was buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford, and a funerary monument was erected on the church wall sometime before 1623, showing him in the act of writing.

Shakespeare's reputation grew steadily after his death. Samuel Johnson quoted him more than any other author in his landmark Dictionary of the English Language. By 1800 he was firmly established as England's national poet, and his influence spread across Europe, with German writers and translators particularly active in championing his work. Sigmund Freud drew on the psychology of Hamlet when developing his theories of human nature. His plays have been translated into over 80 languages, adapted into operas by Verdi, ballets by Prokofiev, and films by directors from Laurence Olivier to Akira Kurosawa. According to Guinness World Records, his works have sold in excess of four billion copies since his death.