Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and died in 1616. He married Anne Hathaway in 1582 and had three children: Susanna and the twins Hamnet and Judith. By the early 1590s he had established himself in London as a writer and actor.

Shakespeare was associated with the acting company The Lord Chamberlain's Men, later renamed the King's Men. His plays were performed in venues including the Globe Theatre. He produced plays and poems across genres, including 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and several narrative poems. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and histories, often blending elements and exploring themes such as love, ambition, power, fate, and mortality. He used iambic pentameter and blank verse and contributed many phrases and turns of expression to the English language.

Notable works include tragedies such as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth; comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and As You Like It; and histories such as Richard II and Henry V. His sonnets, published in 1609, address love and the passage of time as well as beauty and mortality.

Shakespeare's collected works were published in the First Folio of 1623, compiled by his colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell. His writings have had a lasting influence on literature and theatre worldwide, shaping dramatic technique, narrative voice, and the English language. While the authorship of his works is generally accepted, a minority of theories have proposed alternate authorship.