William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is the most celebrated writer in the English language. An actor and shareholder in a London theatre company, he wrote some thirty-seven plays, from Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream to Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest, as well as 154 sonnets. His plays are performed in more countries, and more often, than those of any other playwright.
Works
Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry V, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Macbeth, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night
From Stratford to London
Shakespeare was baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon, a market town in Warwickshire, on 26 April 1564. His father, John, was a glover who became bailiff of the town; his mother, Mary Arden, came from a family of landowners. He probably attended the local grammar school, where boys learned Latin from Ovid, Virgil and Terence. At eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years older; they had a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith.
Nothing is known of his life between 1585 and 1592, the so-called lost years. By 1592 he was in London and well enough known as a playwright to be attacked by a rival, Robert Greene, as an 'upstart crow'. When the theatres closed because of plague in 1593–94, he published two long narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton.
The Lord Chamberlain's Men and the Globe
In 1594 Shakespeare became a founding member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the company in which he worked for the rest of his career as actor, playwright and shareholder. In 1599 the company built the Globe on the south bank of the Thames, using timber from their old theatre. When James I came to the throne in 1603, he took the company under his own patronage, and they became the King's Men.
Writing for a company he part-owned gave Shakespeare a rare security: he knew his actors, wrote parts for the clown Will Kemp and later Robert Armin, and for the leading tragedian Richard Burbage, who created Hamlet, Othello and Lear. From 1609 the company also played at the indoor Blackfriars theatre, which suited the quieter, more musical late plays.
Comedies, histories, tragedies
His first works were histories drawn from English chronicles, such as the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III, and comedies such as The Comedy of Errors. In the late 1590s came the great romantic comedies, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and Twelfth Night, and the second cycle of histories, from Richard II to Henry V.
Between about 1600 and 1608 he wrote the tragedies that made his reputation for later centuries: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra. His last plays, Pericles, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, mix tragedy and comedy in stories of loss, separation and reconciliation. His Sonnets, published in 1609, address a young man and a mysterious 'dark lady'.
The First Folio and his legacy
Shakespeare retired to Stratford, where he had bought New Place, one of the largest houses in the town. He died on 23 April 1616 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church. Seven years later two of his fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, collected thirty-six of his plays in a single volume, the First Folio of 1623. Eighteen of them, including Macbeth, Twelfth Night and The Tempest, had never been printed before.
Ben Jonson wrote in the Folio that Shakespeare was 'not of an age, but for all time'. He is credited with the first recorded use of many English words and phrases, and his plays have been translated into every major language. In the nineteenth century some began to doubt that a glover's son from Stratford could have written them, but scholars overwhelmingly accept his authorship.
Anecdotes
A bed in his will
Shakespeare's will, drawn up in 1616, leaves most of his property to his daughter Susanna. His wife Anne is mentioned only once, in a line added between others: he leaves her his 'second best bed with the furniture'. The bequest has puzzled readers for centuries. Some see it as a slight; others point out that the best bed was usually kept for guests, and that the second best was the marital bed.
The Globe burns down
On 29 June 1613, during a performance of Henry VIII, a cannon fired for the king's entrance set fire to the thatched roof of the Globe. Within an hour the theatre had burned to the ground. According to a letter of the time, nobody was hurt except a man whose breeches caught fire, which was put out with a bottle of ale. The Globe was rebuilt the next year, this time with a tiled roof.
Hamnet
In August 1596 Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet, died in Stratford at the age of eleven; the cause is unknown. A few years later his father wrote Hamlet, whose hero bears almost the same name: Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable spellings at the time. No document says whether the grief and the play are connected, but the coincidence has inspired novels and plays.
Frequently asked questions
When did Shakespeare live?
He was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon and died there on 23 April 1616. His birthday is traditionally celebrated on 23 April, the same day as his death and Saint George's Day, but his exact date of birth is not recorded.
How many plays did Shakespeare write?
Around thirty-seven or thirty-eight, depending on how collaborations are counted. Thirty-six appear in the First Folio of 1623; Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen, written with other playwrights, are usually added.
What are Shakespeare's most famous plays?
Among the tragedies, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear; among the comedies, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night; and The Tempest, often seen as his farewell to the stage.
Did Shakespeare really write his plays?
Yes, according to almost all historians and literary scholars. Documents of his time name him as the author, his fellow actors published his plays, and other writers praised or mocked him by name. The doubts raised from the nineteenth century onwards rest on no contemporary evidence.