 William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a small country town in England on April 23rd, 1564.
He was the third of eight children. Very little is known about Shakespeare's early life, and his later works have inspired a number of interpretations. TS Eliot wrote that "I would suggest that none of the plays of Shakespeare has a meaning, although it would be equally false to say that a play of Shakespeare is meaningless."
Shakespeare is assumed to have been educated at Stratford Grammar School, and he may have been a teacher. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married a local girl, Anne Hathaway (died 1623), who was eight years older. They had three children: Susanna, the eldest and twins Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son died at an early age.
About 1582 Shakespeare joined as an actor one or several companies of players. By 1584 he emerged as a rising playwright in London, and soon became a central figure in Londonīs leading theater company, the Lord Chamberlainīs, renamed later as the Kingīs Men. He wrote many great plays for the group and Hamlet was first printed in 1603. It is Shakespeare's largest drama (4042 lines), based on a lost play known as the Ur-Hamlet.
Plague outbreaks during the late 1590's caused London authorities to close public theaters, and it was during this period that Shakespeare began writing poems and sonnets.
Shakespeare was known in his day as a very quick writer and produced 39 plays, but not everyone liked his work. Voltaire wrote: "Shakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays please only in London and Canada", but most celebrated him as a talented playwright.
The Tempest, often considered Shakespeare's farewell to his theatrical art, inspired Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, and Jean Sibelius, who wrote music for it in 1926.
About 1610 Shakespeare returned to his birthplace, where he had a house, called New Place, and lived out his days as a country gentleman. He died in 1616 at the age of 52.
The has been some debate about the authenticity of Shakespeare's work. Some argue that Christopher Marlowe, another 16th century writer, actually wrote the plays, but most scholars agree that Shakespeare was the author.
The Oxford English Dictionary credits Shakespeare with the contribution of more than 500 new words to the English language. Some of the words and phrases he invented include "assassination", "eventful", "lackluster", "rival" and "fair play", "a foregone conclusion" and "to catch cold". [edit]
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