William Shakespeare

Biography

The river Avon baptized him on 26 April 1564, though the curtain probably rose a few days earlier. Son of a yeoman-turned-glove-maker and a minor-aristocrat mother, the boy learned his verbs and his Latin amid Stratford’s grammar-school benches, quitting at fifteen just as his father’s purse mysteriously deflated. Family property clung on, but respectability wobbled: an autumn romance with Anne Hathaway—eight years his senior, already carrying his child—ended in a November 1582 wedding. Susanna arrived in spring 1583; twins Hamnet and Judith followed in January 1585. By 1592 the provincial husband had mutated into a London name—actor, playwright, and gossip-column enigma. Plague shuttered the playhouses for two seasons; Shakespeare apparently hit the road, perhaps soldiering, perhaps butchering rumors, certainly dedicating two narrative poems—Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece—to the young Earl of Southampton. When the boards reopened in December 1594 he stepped back on as a sharer in the freshly minted Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the company that would keep his loyalty (and profits) for life. In 1596 he bought his father the right to a family crest—social ascent in silver and gold—then buried eleven-year-old Hamnet the same year. 1597 saw him acquire New Place, Stratford’s largest house, while 1598’s quarto of Love’s Labour’s Lost finally slapped “William Shakespeare” on a title page; by then London already called him the brightest star in its theatrical sky. Somewhere in that dazzling decade he threaded 154 sonnets onto private paper. 1599 brought timber, thatch, and a tenth-share in the Globe on Bankside; 1603 brought a new king and a royal patent for the newly styled King’s Men. After 1603 his own acting name vanishes from cast lists. Around 1612 he retreated to Stratford, trading houses, fields, and malt, but the quill never fully cooled. He died on 23 April 1616—cause unrecorded, voice unspent.