England’s most talented and well know poet and dramatist was born on April 23, 1564, at Stratford-upon-Avon, located in the cetre of England. His father, John, was a glove-maker and wool dealer involved with money lending. His mother Mary Arden was the daughter of a Farmer. William was the third out of eight children whom all died young. His father became Mayor in 1568, after serving on the town council for many years. William went to a junior school before going to the Grammar School when he was 7.
There he learned how to speak and write Latin. No one knows what he did after he left school at the age of 14. In November 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. He was 18 and she was 26. They had 3 children. May 1583 they had Susanna then two years later had twins, Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet died at the age of 11. Susanna married a physician in 1607, and Shakespeare’s other daughter married to a vintner in 1616. There was a gap in his life where no one had any evidence of him or his wife. Between 1585 and 1592.
All people know, is that he left Stratford for London either in 1586 or 87. His reputation was established in London around 1592. His first play he wrote was in 1593, it was called Venus and Adonis. He became a “gentleman” after inheriting his fathers coat-of-arms, even though actors were generally looked at as rogues and vagabonds. He probably wrote his 154 sonnets during this time as well. They were published later on in 1609. His success in London made him very wealthy so he moved into a large home in Stratford.
Some of his plays were: Henry VI, Richard III, The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love’s Labor’s Lost, and Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King John, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra. He was accused for corrupting the English language. Shakespeare died at the age of 52, in Stratford, on the same day he was born but in 1616. His widowed wife later on died in 1623.
