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William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
is generally considered to be the greatest playwright and poet that has ever lived. His appeal is universal and his works
have been translated, read, and analyzed throughout the world. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, many poems, and 37 plays which
have been grouped into comedies, histories, and tragedies. He was born to John Shakespeare and mother Mary Arden some time
in late April 1564 in Stratford. There is no record of his birth, but his baptism was recorded by the church, thus his birthday
is assumed to be the 23 of April. His father was a prominent and prosperous alderman in the town of Stratford, and was later
granted a coat of arms by the College of Heralds. All that is known of Shakespeare's youth is that he presumably attended
the Stratford Grammar School, and did not proceed to Oxford or Cambridge. The next record we have of him is his marriage to
Anne Hathaway in 1582. The next year she bore a daughter for him, Susanna, followed by the twins Judith and Hamnet two years
later.
Shakespeare entertained
the King and the people until June 19, 1613, when a canon fired from the roof of the theatre for a performance of Henry VIII
set fire to the thatch roof and burned the theatre to the ground. The audience ignored the smoke from the roof at first, being
to absorbed in the play, until the flames caught the walls and the fabric of the curtains. Amazingly there were no casualties,
and the next spring the company had the theatre "new builded in a far fairer manner than before." Although Shakespeare invested
in the rebuilding, he retired from the stage to the Great House of New Place in Statford that he had purchased in 1597, and
some considerable land holdings ,where he continued to write until his death in 1616 on the day of his 52nd birthday.
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