William Shakespeare

We know surprisingly little about Shakespeare, the man. Everything we do know comes from church documents and legal papers.

He was born on the 23rd April 1564, and married Anne Hathaway on 28th November 1582. They had three kids between them, a daughter called Susanna, and twins called Hamnet and Judith.

The following ten years are a bit of a mystery, but turned up in London and started acting in a theatre group called the Pembroke’s Men.

Shakespeare’s acting career

His early plays proved popular, and he rapidly made a name for himself on the London stage with works like Henry VI, The Comedy of Errors, and Titus Andronicus.

In 1594 he joined a better group called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and a wrote a series of very famous plays – Romeo and Juliet, Richard II and Love’s Labour’s Lost amongst them.

Unfortunately, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were a theatre group without a theatre, as the Great Plague had swept through the city and shut down most major public gatherings. So plans were made to build a better stage on the south side of the river.

Globe Theatre

The new Globe Theatre opened up in 1598, but this burnt down to the ground in 1613 when a dozy stagehand shot a cannon at the roof during a production of Henry VIII. It was reopened in 1614, but was demolished by the Puritans in 1642.

It was later remade to the original design in 1997.

Shakespeare’s death

Shakespeare’s final plays two were written in 1613, after which he retired back to Stratford. He died in April 1616 at the age of fifty-two, and was buried on the 25th.

The epitaph on his grave reads:

Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

• Historical pictures
• Famous quotes

Pictures of William Shakespeare

^{Shakespeare’s ‘First Folio’William Shakespeare}

Famous quotes by William Shakespeare

O Romeo, Romeo! – wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name.
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn by love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

_{Romeo and Juliet – Act 2, Scene 2}

Is this a dagger I see before me,
The handle pointed towards my hand?
Come, let me clutch thee:
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

_{Macbeth – Act 2, Scene 1}

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; And, by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream.

_{Hamlet – Act 3, Scene 1}

William Shakespeare – Related articles…

Globe Theatre
London’s Globe Theatre is a perfect reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Elizabethan playhouse.