Was shakespeare really shakesp

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorHigh School, 12th grade February 2008

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The Truth William Shakespeare was born in April, 1564, the oldest son of John Shakespeare. His father, a glove maker, trader, and landowner, married Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowner of Wilmcote. William Shakespeare married Ann Hathaway in November, 1582, and six months later their daughter, Susanna, was born. Two other children were born, the twins Hamnet and Judith, in February, 1585. Sometime after this he joined a troupe of players and made his way to London. As a member of London's leading theater company, the Lord Chamberlain's Company, he wrote plays and eventually became a sharer in the Globe theater. He was so successful that in 1596 he successfully renewed his father's application for a grant of arms, and the following year he bought and restored New Place, the second-largest house in Stratford. Shakespeare semi-retired from London life some time around 1610. He died 23 April 1616, disposing of his large estate in his will.

These, are the facts of Shakespeare's life. Anti-Stratfordians claim that this William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was not the author of the plays and poems that contain his name, but the evidence for Shakespeare's authorship is abundant and wide-ranging for the era in which he lived, much more abundant than the comparable evidence for most other play writers. A strong, tight web of evidence shows that a real person named William Shakespeare wrote the poems and plays attributed to him; that a real person named William Shakespeare was an actor in the company that produced the plays attributed to him; that the actor was the same William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon; that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was part-owner of the Globe Theater, where his acting company produced the plays written by him; and that those who knew the writer of the plays and poems...