William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is the worlds greatest poet and greatest dramatist, but we know very little about him.

Stratford-upon-Avon is Shakespeares birth place. At the time of his life Stratford-upon-Avon was a flourishing market town of about 2000 people.

His father, Jhon Shakespeare, was a businessman. His mothers name was Mary Arden. She came from a local family. We also know that Shakespeare attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford, where he studied Latin, Rhetoric, History, and some Greek.

In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. They had three children, Susanna, and the twins, Hamnet and Judith.

After 1587, when five touring companies of actors visited Stratford, Shakespeare went to London to become an actor and writer. He soon become very rich. His plays had enormous success.

Robert Greene, the dramatist refers to him as an upstart crow. Beautified with our feathers, and being an absolute He was connected with one of the most successful companies of actors in london, the Lord Chamberlains Men, where Skakespeare was both an actor and the principal playwright.

Among the actors of the company there were the famous Richard Burbage, (who created the roles of Hamlet, King Lear and Othello), Will Kempe and Robert Arnim, who acted Shakespeares clowns and fools.

The Globe, one of the best known of Elizabethan theatres was built by the Chamberlains Men in 1599. Shakespeare at the first wrote poetry, Venus and Adonis - 1953, and the Rape of Lucrece- 1954, two poems dedicated to his patron, the Earl of Southampton.

The 154 Sonneets were published in 1609, apparently without his authorization.

As his death, in 1616, no colected edition of his 37 plays had been published. The following lines are engraved on his tombstone in Stratford church: Good frend for iesus sake forbeare to digg the dust encloased heare bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones and curst be he yt moves my bones Shakespeare, more than any other writer, made full use of the great resources of the English language.

Shakespeare in his work used about twenty-five thousand words, while the average Englishman uses about five thousand words in the normal employment of English.

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