Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was baptized in Holy Trinity Church on April 26, 1564. His actual date of birth is unknown although it was probably a few days before his baptism. The only records of his early life include tax receipts and birth and death records. He probably went to Stratford Grammar School and studied Latin, Greek, the classics, and history. He married Anne Hathaway in 1582 and had his first daughter Susanna in 1593. He and Anne also had twins in 1585 named Hamnet and Judith. No records of him exist from 1582 to 1592.
Plays were very popular in the time that Shakespeare lived and were often performed in London. He wrote 37 five act plays and by 1592 he was in London acting and writing plays. He wrote three different types of plays that included comedies (Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream), tragedies (Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth), and histories (Julius Caesar, Richard III).
List of titles of works based on Shakespearean phr...
Bancroft Basin, near the River Avon, Stratford
English: Birth place of William Shakespeare, Strat...He wrote 154 sonnets in the 1590s, probably when the Theaters were closed due to plague and the sonnets were publishes in 1609.
Shakespeare owned part of the Globe Theater although the Bubonic Plague closed down theaters for long periods of time. He was an actor/stockholder in Lord Chamberlain's Men, the most famous acting company in London at the time. His son, Hamnet died in 1596. He retired to Stratford fairly wealthy and bought "New Place", an estate in Stratford in 1597.
Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616.
"Good friend of Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here
Blest be the man that spares these stones
And curs'd be he that moves my bones."
was written on his tombstone.