William Shakespeare was an English playwright and poet and widely recognized as the greatest dramatist to ever live. His plays show a great knowledge of human behavior, shown through portrayals of a wide range of characters. He had a large vocabulary, using almost 30,000 different words in his plays. His use of poetry and drama to create a unified effect is recognized as a singular achievement, and his use of poetry in his plays to show human emotion is considered one of the greatest accomplishments in literary history.
Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. He was the third of eight children and was educated at a local grammar school. When he got older, he was apprenticed to a butcher because of his father's financial situation. In 1582, he married Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare left Stratford for London in 1588 and by 1592 had become an established actor and playwright.
While in London, Shakespeare wrote many poems including Venus and Adonis and The Rape Of Lucrece. His Sonnets established his reputation as a gifted and popular poet of the Renaissance. Shakespeare's modern reputation, however, was built mainly on the 38 plays that he apparently wrote, modified, or collaborated on. While he was popular in his time, Shakespeare's plays were mostly little esteemed by his educated contemporaries, who considered the English plays of their day to be vulgar.
Shakespeare's career took off when he bought a share of the profits in his acting company, the Chamberlain's Men, later called the King's men, and its two theaters, the Globe Theatre and the Blackfriars. His plays were presented at the courts of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I more frequently than those of any other dramatist. He only risked falling out of royal favor once when his company performed a play at...