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William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon, Warwick- shire, to Jon Shakespeare and Mary Arden, on April 23, 1564. His father was a prosperous wool and leather merchant. John and Mary had already been married for 13 years when William was born. We can presume he grew up on Henley Street, some one hundred miles from London. We know that the King's New Grammar School taught basic reading and writing. We assume William attended this school since it existed to educate the son of Stratford but we have no definite proof. A bond certificate reveals that William married Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582. He was eighteen at the time and Anne was 26 and pregnant with their first child. William daughter was baptized in May of 1583 and according to baptism records reveal that twins Hamnet and Judith were born in February of 1592. He settled in London, and earned a reputation as an actor and playwright. William wasn't really attached to one theater and today we would call him a "Free-lance". Such theaters include The Curtain, The Theater, and The Rose. In 1594, a new company of actors called The Lord Chamberlain's Men was formed, and William was one of the shareholders. Evidence that the great Bard was also a poet comes from his first poem Venus and Adonis in the Stationer's Registrar on April 18, 1593.
The playwright registered his second poem The Rape of Lucrece by name on May 9, 1594. Hamnet, William's oldest son died in 1596 at the age of eleven. At age 15, William purchased the New Place. This was one of the most prominent and desired properties in all of Stratford being the second largest house in town. Given his father's known financial hardship from 1576, William must either have used his own money to buy this expensive property or his father had placed money in his son's name. It is possible William might have bought this prominent property with money from his plays. It is estimated that roughly fifteen of his 37 plays would have been written and performed by 1597!
Later in 1598, William and his fellow actors built their own theater, The Globe, which broke away from the traditional rectangular shape of the inns and its yard. In 1599, in a collection entitled "The Passionate Pilgrim", two of his poems had been printed without William's permission. Looking for work in London, just four days ride way from Stratford, William is believed to have left his family back home for some twenty years whilst he pursued his craft. Court records of a dispute between William's landlord Christopher Mountjoy and his son-in-law Stephen Belott confirm that William was living in London around 1601. The playwright's name is recorded in the court records when he gave testimony in 1612 concerning Mountjoy and Belott's dispute. Interestingly, in 1601, he bought roughly 107 acres of arable land with twenty acres of pasturage for 20 pounds in Old Stratford. In 1603, The Lord Chamberlains men regrouped, renamed The King's Men, and James I became their patron. He only returned back to his family in 1609, having visited only during the forty day period of Lent when theatres though open well into the start of Lent would later close in accordance with the traditional banning of all forms of diversionary entertainment around this important Easter event. William made his greatest financial gain in 1605 when he purchased leases of real estate near Stratford. This investment of some four hundred and forty pounds doubled in value and earned him 60 pounds income each year. Some academics speculate that this investment gave the Bard the time he needed to write plays uninterrupted and we know that he was indeed thought of as a businessman in the Stratford area... Records reveal that the great Bard revised his will on March the 25th, 1616. Less than a month later, he died on April the 23rd, 1616. Literature's famous Bard is buried at the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. He infamously left his second-best bed to his wife Anne Hathaway and little else, giving most of his estate to his eldest daughter Susanna who has married a prominent and distinguished physician named John Hall in June 1607. This was not as callous as it seems; the Bard's best bed was for guests; his second-best bed was his marriage bed... His will also named actors Richard Burbage, Henry Condell and John Hemminges, providing proof to academics today that William was involved in theatre. The Bard's direct line of descendants ended some 54 years later until Susanna's daughter Elizabeth died in 1670.
Written upon William Shakespeare's tombstone is an appeal that he be left to rest in peace with a curse on those who would move his bones... Good friend, for Jesusī sake forbeare To digg the dust enclosed here! Blest be ye man that spares thes stones And curst be he that moues my bones. Translated this reads as: Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbear To dig the dust enclosed here; Blest be the man that spares these stones And curst he that moves my bones.
Shakespeare's Plays:
| All's Well That Ends Well | As You Like It | The Comedy of Errors | ||||||
| Cymbeline | Love's Labours Lost | Measure for Measure | ||||||
| The Merry Wives of Windsor | The Merchant of Venice | A Midsummer Night's Dream | ||||||
| Much Ado About Nothing | Pericles, Prince of Tyre | Taming of the Shrew | ||||||
| The Tempest | Troilus and Cressida | Othello | ||||||
| Twelfth Night | Two Gentlemen of Verona | Julius Caesar | ||||||
| Richard III Antony and Cleopatra | Henry VI, Part I | Henry VIII |