William Shakespeare

By Author: MEREDITH
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William Shakespeare (1564 -1616), who is perhaps the greatest writer in the history of the world, was looked upon in his own day as little more than a maker of popular plays. Yet in his plays lies the key to his greatness.

Shakespeare was born in 1564,far from the world of the stage, in the little English town of Stratford on the River Avon. He is usually believed to have been born on April 23, but all that is known for certain is that he was baptized on Sunday, April 26. Stratford was a busy little town, and Shakespeare's father, a prosperous Tag Heuer Replica businessman, served for a time as its mayor, Shakespeare was brought up in a comfortable house on Henley Street along with several small brothers and sisters.

All the boys in Stratford went to the same grammar school as soon as they could read and write, and all of them learned the same subject: Latin. An education was not intended for use in those days, and perhaps Shakespeare was fortunate that he did not go on to a university. Instead, at 18 he married a woman named Ann Hathaway. ...
... She was 8 years older than he was and the daughter of a neighboring farmer. They had three children in the next 2 years, a girl named Susanna and then twins named Hamlet and Judith.

After the birth of the twins in 1585, there is no record of what Shakespeare was doing until he is mentioned, in 1592, as a London actor. Acting was a difficult profession in those days, needing many years of training, and only the best actors in England found work in London. So Shakespeare must have spent those 7 years learning his profession, since he was a successful actor in London by the time he was 28.

It was in London, not Stratford, that Shakespeare got his education, learning not only the ways of the theatre but nearly everything else. It was in London that he found the books he read and the people he met—the foreigners, the old soldiers, the courtiers, the whole lively civilization of the late Renaissance. London was a port city of 250,000 people, and Shakespeare could not have come to it at a better time.

Many actors of the period were playwrights also, and by 1592 Shakespeare had written several plays. They are clearly the work of a young man, but they already show his great variety and his gift for pleasing an audience. His greatest popular success was a series of three plays called Henry VI.

The London theatres were closed in 1592 because of a Tag Heuer Carrera Replica plague, and Shakespeare turned to another kind of writing. He wrote two narrative poems which were handsomely printed and greatly admired by the critics. Shakespeare could have continued with writing poems. Instead, he turned back to the life of the stage as soon as the theatres rezoned in 1594. He joined a newly-formed acting company and never left them until he retired from the theatre itself