William Shakespeare (1564 to 1616) was an English playwright, poet, and actor, considered by many the greatest writer in the English language. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, in the heart of England, and was baptized on April 26, 1564; the exact date of his birth is not known, and April 23 is the traditional date. His father, John Shakespeare, was a glover who held municipal offices; his mother, Mary Arden, came from a family of rural landowners. Most biographers believe he attended the town's free school, but no enrollment record survives.
At eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, and they had three children. Between 1585 and 1592 there are almost no documents about him, a period scholars call the lost years. By 1592 he was known in London, and the writer Robert Greene attacked him that year in a pamphlet as an upstart who dared to compete with the authors of the day. From 1594 his plays were staged by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, of which he was a shareholder; in 1599 the company built the Globe theater, and in 1603, with the accession of James I to the throne, it came to be called the King's Men.
He wrote about 39 plays, among comedies, history plays, and tragedies, such as Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, in addition to 154 sonnets and long narrative poems. Around 1613, at 49, he is believed to have retired. He died in Stratford on April 23, 1616, at 52, and was buried two days later in the Holy Trinity church.
Much of the work reached us only thanks to the First Folio of 1623, organized by two company colleagues, John Heminges and Henry Condell. It gathered 36 texts, of which 18 were appearing in print for the first time. In the volume, the playwright Ben Jonson wrote that Shakespeare was "not of an age, but for all time."
On Clavis: Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth.