Very little is known for certain about William Shakespeare. What we do know about his life comes from registrar records, court records, wills, marriage certificates and his tombstone in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon.
Traditionally his birthday is celebrated three days earlier, on 23 April, St George's Day. In John bought the main part of the house in Henley Street which is now known as the 'Birthplace' and their family, including William, grew up there see photo. John's principal business was that of a glover, but he also traded as a wool and corn merchant, and he is recorded in as being involved in money-lending. William's father, John Shakespeare, was an affluent glove maker, tanner and wool dealer who owned property in Stratford.
For a number of years he played a prominent role in the municipal life of the town. He served on the town council and was elected bailiff mayor. However, around John Shakespeare was beset by severe financial difficulties and he was forced to mortgage his wife's inheritance. William's mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a prosperous farmer, Robert Arden, who had left her some land in Wilmcote, near Stratford.
John and Mary Shakespeare had eight children: four daughters, of whom only one Joan survived childhood. William was the eldest of the four boys. William almost certainly went to one of Stratford's 'petty' or junior schools where he would have learnt his letters with the help of a hornbook. From the age of seven or thereabouts, he would have progressed to the King's New School where the emphasis would have been on Latin, it still being the international language of Europe in the s.
Shakespeare probably left school at the age of 14 or The classical writers studied in the classroom influenced Shakespeare's plays and poetry; for example, some of his ideas for plots and characters came from Ovid's tales, the plays of Terence and Plautus, and Roman history. It is not known what Shakespeare did when he left school, probably at the age of 14, as was usual.
In , when he was 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. She was Their first child, Susanna, was born in May Twins, Hamnet and Judith, were christened in February From until , very little is known about Shakespeare. These are generally referred to as 'The Lost Years'. Their daughter Elizabeth, Shakespeare's first grandchild, was born in In , just months before his death, Shakespeare's daughter Judith married Thomas Quiney, a Stratford vintner.
The family subsequently died out, leaving no direct descendants of Shakespeare. For several years after Judith and Hamnet's arrival in , nothing is known for certain of Shakespeare's activities: how he earned a living, when he moved from Stratford, or how he got his start in the theater. Following this gap in the record, the first definite mention of Shakespeare is in as an established London actor and playwright, mocked by a contemporary as a "Shake-scene. The next year, in , Shakespeare published a long poem, Venus and Adonis.
The first quarto editions of his early plays appeared in For more than two decades, Shakespeare had multiple roles in the London theater as an actor, playwright, and, in time, a business partner in a major acting company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men renamed the King's Men in Over the years, he became steadily more famous in the London theater world; his name, which was not even listed on the first quartos of his plays, became a regular feature—clearly a selling point—on later title pages.
On Shakespeare Documented: Primary-source materials relating to Shakespeare as a playwright, actor, and shareholder. Shakespeare prospered financially from his partnership in the Lord Chamberlain's Men later the King's Men , as well as from his writing and acting. He invested much of his wealth in real-estate purchases in Stratford and bought the second-largest house in town, New Place , in Among the last plays that Shakespeare worked on was The Two Noble Kinsmen , which he wrote with a frequent collaborator, John Fletcher, most likely in He died on April 23, —the traditional date of his birthday, though his precise birthdate is unknown.
We also do not know the cause of his death. His brother-in-law had died a week earlier, which could imply infectious disease, but Shakespeare's health may have had a longer decline. The memorial bust of Shakespeare at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford is considered one of two authentic likenesses, because it was approved by people who knew him.
The bust in the Folger's Paster Reading Room, shown at left, is a copy of this statue. The other such likeness is the engraving by Martin Droeshout in the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays, produced seven years after his death by his friends and colleagues from the King's Men. On Shakespeare Documented: Original copy of Shakespeare's last will and testament.
On Shakespeare Documented: A timeline of Shakespeare's life. Our main building is closed for a multi-year renovation. All Folger programs and events will be held at other venues during construction.
You are here Home Shakespeare Shakespeare's Life. Camden was a man of quite humble social origins — like Shakespeare himself, whose father was a maker of gloves and leather goods in Stratford. Eulogies were delivered at Oxford and published along with other tributes in a memorial volume soon after his death. At Westminster his body was escorted to the Abbey on 19 November by a large retinue of mourners, led by 26 poor men wearing gowns, followed by soberly attired gentlemen, esquires, knights, and members of the College of Arms, the hearse being flanked by earls, barons, and other peers of the realm, together with the Lord Keeper, Bishop John Williams, and other divines.
There were particular reasons, then, why Camden should have been accorded a rather grand funeral of his own. At this quite extraordinary moment in the history of English letters and intellectual exchange there was more than one contender for that title. He fulfilled in exemplary fashion, as Shakespeare curiously did not, the Renaissance ideal of what a poet should strive to be. Earlier English poets had been mourned at their passing, if not in these terms and not on this scale, then with more enthusiasm than was evident at the death of Shakespeare.
The deaths of Thomas Wyatt and Michael Drayton were similarly lamented. Within months of his death a volume of 33 poems was in preparation and a dozen additional elegies had appeared in print.
With his death, as more than one memorialist declared, English poetry itself now seemed also to have died. No one had spoken in these terms at the death of Shakespeare. To take one last example: at the death in of the dramatist William Cartwright whose works and whose very name are barely known to most people today — Charles I elected to wear black, remarking that.
Why should Shakespeare at his death have been so neglected? Early in his reign, so Dudley Carleton reported,. The first holy days we had every night a public play in the great hall, at which the King was ever present, and liked or disliked as he saw cause: but it seems he takes no extraordinary pleasure in them.
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