He was 52 years old and had retired to Stratford three years before. This dearth of biographical information is due primarily to his station in life; he was not a noble, but the son of John Shakespeare, a leather trader and the town bailiff. He probably attended the grammar school in Stratford, where he would have studied Latin and read classical literature.
He did not go to university but at age 18 married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his senior and pregnant at the time of the marriage. Their first daughter, Susanna, was born six months later, and in William and Anne had twins, Hamnet and Judith. The first reference to Shakespeare as a London playwright came in , when a fellow dramatist, Robert Greene, wrote derogatorily of him on his deathbed.
It is believed that Shakespeare had written the three parts of Henry VI by that point. In , William Shakespeare bought a large house in Stratford. In , after producing his great historical series, the first and second part of Henry IV and Henry V, he became a partner in the ownership of the Globe Theatre. The beginning of the 17th century saw the performance of the first of his great tragedies, Hamlet.
The next play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, was written at the request of Queen Elizabeth I , who wanted to see another play that included the popular character Falstaff. Tradition has it that William Shakespeare died on his birthday, April 23, , though many scholars believe this is a myth.
Church records show he was interred at Trinity Church on April 5, In his will, he left the bulk of his possessions to his eldest daughter, Susanna. However, there is very little evidence the two had a difficult marriage. What seems to be true is that William Shakespeare was a respected man of the dramatic arts who wrote plays and acted in some in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
Beginning with the Romantic period of the early s and continuing through the Victorian period, acclaim and reverence for William Shakespeare and his work reached its height. In the 20th century, new movements in scholarship and performance have rediscovered and adopted his works.
Two years later, on February 2, , twins Hamnet and Judith were born. Hamnet later died of unknown causes at age There are seven years of Shakespeare's life where no records exist after the birth of his twins in Scholars call this period the "lost years," and there is wide speculation on what he was doing during this period.
One theory is that he might have gone into hiding for poaching game from the local landlord, Sir Thomas Lucy. Another possibility is that he might have been working as an assistant schoolmaster in Lancashire.
It's generally believed he arrived in London in the mid- to late s and may have found work as a horse attendant at some of London's finer theaters, a scenario updated centuries later by the countless aspiring actors and playwrights in Hollywood and Broadway.
By the early s, documents show Shakespeare was a managing partner in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, an acting company in London with which he was connected for most of his career. Considered the most important troupe of its time, the company changed its name to the King's Men following the crowning of King James I in From all accounts, the King's Men company was very popular.
Records show that Shakespeare had works published and sold as popular literature. Although the theater culture in 16th century England was not highly admired by people of high rank, some of the nobility were good patrons of the performing arts and friends of the actors. By , there is evidence Shakespeare earned a living as an actor and a playwright in London and possibly had several plays produced. The September 20, edition of the Stationers' Register a guild publication includes an article by London playwright Robert Greene that takes a few jabs at Shakespeare: " There is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country," Greene wrote of Shakespeare.
Scholars differ on the interpretation of this criticism, but most agree that it was Greene's way of saying Shakespeare was reaching above his rank, trying to match better known and educated playwrights like Christopher Marlowe , Thomas Nashe or Greene himself. Early in his career, Shakespeare was able to attract the attention of Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, to whom he dedicated his first and second published poems: "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece" By , Shakespeare had already written and published 15 of his 37 plays.
Civil records show that at this time he purchased the second-largest house in Stratford, called New House, for his family. It was a four-day ride by horse from Stratford to London, so it's believed that Shakespeare spent most of his time in the city writing and acting and came home once a year during the day Lenten period, when the theaters were closed. By , Shakespeare and his business partners built their own theater on the south bank of the Thames River, which they called the Globe Theater.
In , Shakespeare purchased leases of real estate near Stratford for pounds, which doubled in value and earned him 60 pounds a year. This made him an entrepreneur as well as an artist, and scholars believe these investments gave him the time to write his plays uninterrupted.
Shakespeare's early plays were written in the conventional style of the day, with elaborate metaphors and rhetorical phrases that didn't always align naturally with the story's plot or characters. However, Shakespeare was very innovative, adapting the traditional style to his own purposes and creating a freer flow of words. With only small degrees of variation, Shakespeare primarily used a metrical pattern consisting of lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse, to compose his plays.
Traditionally his birthday is celebrated three days earlier, on 23 April, St George's Day. In John bought the main part of the house in Henley Street which is now known as the 'Birthplace' and their family, including William, grew up there see photo. John's principal business was that of a glover, but he also traded as a wool and corn merchant, and he is recorded in as being involved in money-lending.
William's father, John Shakespeare, was an affluent glove maker, tanner and wool dealer who owned property in Stratford. For a number of years he played a prominent role in the municipal life of the town.
He served on the town council and was elected bailiff mayor. However, around John Shakespeare was beset by severe financial difficulties and he was forced to mortgage his wife's inheritance.
William's mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a prosperous farmer, Robert Arden, who had left her some land in Wilmcote, near Stratford. John and Mary Shakespeare had eight children: four daughters, of whom only one Joan survived childhood. William was the eldest of the four boys. William almost certainly went to one of Stratford's 'petty' or junior schools where he would have learnt his letters with the help of a hornbook. From the age of seven or thereabouts, he would have progressed to the King's New School where the emphasis would have been on Latin, it still being the international language of Europe in the s.
Shakespeare probably left school at the age of 14 or The classical writers studied in the classroom influenced Shakespeare's plays and poetry; for example, some of his ideas for plots and characters came from Ovid's tales, the plays of Terence and Plautus, and Roman history. It is not known what Shakespeare did when he left school, probably at the age of 14, as was usual.
In , when he was 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. She was
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