Early lifeEven though no birth records exist. church records indicate that a William Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford -upon -Avon on April 26, 1564. From this, it is believed he was born on or near April 23, 1564, and this is the date scholars acknowledge as William Shakespeare's birthday.
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Who Was He |
William Shakespeare is best known for his plays – although he was also an accomplished poet and actor. A remarkable fact about Shakespeare plays is that scholars can’t agree on how many he actually wrote.
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His History
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Born to John Shakespeare a glovemaker and tradesman, and Mary Arden the daughter of an affluent farmer, William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. At that time, infants were baptized three days after their birth but scholars believe that Shakespeare was born on April 23 the same day on which he died at age 52. As the third of eight children young William grew up in this small town 100 miles northwest of London, far from the cultural and courtly center of England.
Shakespeare attended the local grammar school, King's New School, where the curriculum would have stressed a classical education of Greek mythology, Roman comedy, ancient history, rhetoric, grammar, Latin, and possibly Greek. Throughout his childhood, Shakespeare's father struggled with serious financial debt. Therefore, unlike his fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe, he did not attend university. Rather, in 1582 at age 18, he married Anne Hathaway, a woman eight years his senior and three months pregnant. Their first child, Susanna, was born in 1583 and twins Hamnet and Judith, came in 1585. In the seven years following their birth, the historical record concerning Shakespeare is incomplete, contradictory, and unreliable; scholars refer to this period as his “lost years.” In a 1592 pamphlet by Robert Greene, Shakespeare reappears as an “upstart crow” flapping his poetic wings in London. Evidently it did not take him long to land on the stage. Between 1590 and 1592, Shakespeare's Henry VI series, Richard III, andThe Comedy of Errors were performed. When the theaters were closed in 1593 because of the plague, the playwright wrote a narrative poem, Venus and Adonisand and probably began writing his richly textured sonnets. One hundred and fiftyfour of his sonnets have survived, ensuring his reputation as a gifted poet. By 1594, he had also written, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Love's Labor's Lost. |