William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor from Stratford-upon-Avon who wrote around 38 plays, 154 sonnets and four longer poems, and is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language.
No letters or diaries written by him survive. What we know comes from parish registers, legal papers, property deeds, his will and the words of people who knew him. From those records a clear outline emerges: a glover’s son from a market town who became an actor, the leading playwright of his company and a part-owner of its theaters, and who returned home a wealthy man.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts of Shakespeare’s life for quick reference.
Early Life in Stratford
Shakespeare grew up in a prosperous market town in Warwickshire, in a family that rose and then stumbled.
He was baptized in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, on April 26, 1564, the third of eight children and the eldest son. His father, John Shakespeare, was a glover and wool dealer who rose through the town’s offices to become bailiff, the equivalent of mayor, in 1568. His mother, Mary Arden, came from a family of landowners in nearby Wilmcote. From the late 1570s John fell into debt and withdrew from public life, so William grew up knowing both civic respectability and money trouble.
No school records survive, but as the son of a town official he was entitled to attend the King’s New School in Stratford, and he almost certainly did. Its pupils studied Latin grammar and rhetoric and read Roman authors such as Ovid, Virgil and Seneca, writers whose influence runs all through his work. He did not go to university. Our guide to his early life and education covers these years in detail.
Marriage and Children
Shakespeare married young, and he had three children before he turned twenty-one.
In November 1582, at eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, a farmer’s daughter from the village of Shottery, who was about eight years older. Their daughter Susanna was baptized in May 1583, and the twins Hamnet and Judith in February 1585. Hamnet died in August 1596, aged eleven. The cause is not recorded. Readers have often looked for echoes of that loss in the plays, but the connection cannot be proved.
Anne and the children appear to have stayed in Stratford while Shakespeare worked in London. More about the family, including what became of Susanna and Judith, is in our article on his marriage and family life.
The Lost Years
After the twins were baptized in 1585, Shakespeare disappears from the records for seven years.
Nothing documents where he was or what he did between 1585 and 1592. Later writers filled the gap with stories: that he was a schoolmaster in the country, that he fled Stratford after poaching deer, that he held horses outside a London theater. None of these can be confirmed. What is certain is that by 1592 he was in London and already known as a playwright. Our article on the lost years weighs the main theories.
Actor, Playwright and Shareholder in London
In London, Shakespeare built a career that combined acting, writing and ownership, which was unusual even among his peers.
The first mention of him in London comes in 1592, when the writer Robert Greene sneered at an “upstart crow” who thought himself “the only Shake-scene in a country.” London’s playhouses, among them The Theatre, The Curtain and The Rose, drew audiences from apprentices to aristocrats, and the demand for new plays was constant. By 1594 Shakespeare was a founding member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the company he would stay with for the rest of his career. He acted in its productions, wrote around two plays a year for it, and held a share in its profits.
That share set him apart. Most playwrights of the time sold each script to a company for a one-off fee and had no further stake in it. As a shareholder, Shakespeare earned a portion of the company’s income from every performance, which gave him a steady living and, eventually, the wealth he took back to Stratford. He was a working professional, writing for particular actors, particular stages and a paying audience.
In 1599 the company built the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames, using timbers from The Theatre, their old playhouse, and Shakespeare was one of its owners. After James I came to the throne in 1603, the company became the King’s Men, under royal patronage. From about 1609 it also played at the Blackfriars, an indoor theater lit by candles, with a smaller and wealthier audience. The Globe burned down in 1613 during a performance of Henry VIII and was rebuilt the next year. His London years are covered in full in Shakespeare’s career in London.
The Plays
Shakespeare wrote in every major genre of his theater, and his work falls roughly into four overlapping periods.
In the early 1590s he wrote history plays such as the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III, and early comedies including The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The later 1590s brought Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice and the mature comedies, including Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. The great tragedies followed between about 1600 and 1608: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. His final plays, written from about 1608 to 1613, are the romances Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest, which turn from tragedy toward loss, reunion and forgiveness.
Like most playwrights of his time, he rarely invented his plots. He adapted histories, Italian stories, classical sources and older plays, as our guide to his sources and influences shows. Some plays were collaborations: his late plays Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen were written with John Fletcher. The exact number of plays attributed to him varies, which is why counts range from 37 to 39. For how the plays are built, see our guides to his comedies, his tragedies and his major themes.
The Poems and Sonnets
Before most of his plays reached print, Shakespeare was known to readers as a poet.
When plague closed London’s theaters for long stretches in 1592 to 1594, he published two long narrative poems, Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594), both dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton. Venus and Adonis was reprinted more often in his lifetime than any of his plays. The shorter The Phoenix and the Turtle followed in 1601.
In 1598 the writer Francis Meres mentioned Shakespeare’s “sugred Sonnets among his private friends.” The full sequence of 154 was published in 1609, together with A Lover’s Complaint. The sonnets are addressed to a young man and to a woman readers call the Dark Lady, and who both of them were is still unknown. See our guides to the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady, and to patronage and publication in his time.
Wealth and Standing
The theater made Shakespeare rich, and he spent much of his wealth in Stratford.
In 1596 his father was granted a coat of arms, which made the family gentlemen. The next year William bought New Place, one of the largest houses in Stratford, and over the following years he bought land and a share of local tithes. The records also show him taking small debtors to court. The paperwork presents a careful businessman as well as a poet.
Later Life and Death
Around 1613 Shakespeare stopped writing for the stage and spent his last years in Stratford.
His daughter Susanna had married the physician John Hall in 1607, and Judith married Thomas Quiney in February 1616. Shakespeare signed his will in March 1616, famously leaving Anne his “second-best bed.” The will deals carefully with his property and family, and says nothing at all about his plays or manuscripts. He died on April 23, 1616, aged 52. The cause of his death is unknown. He was buried in Holy Trinity Church, where his gravestone warns: “Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear / To dig the dust enclosed here.” His direct line ended in 1670 with the death of his granddaughter Elizabeth. More is in our article on his later life and death.
The First Folio
Seven years after his death, two friends made sure most of his plays would survive.
In 1623 the actors John Heminges and Henry Condell, who had worked alongside him in the King’s Men, published Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, now known as the First Folio. It collected 36 plays, and 18 of them, including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night and The Tempest, had never been printed before. Without it they might well have been lost. The volume opens with a poem by Ben Jonson that calls Shakespeare “Soul of the age!” and declares, “He was not of an age, but for all time!” Our guide to the quarto and folio editions explains how his work reached print.
The Authorship Question
Since the nineteenth century, some people have claimed that someone else wrote Shakespeare’s works.
The candidates proposed include Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford and Christopher Marlowe. Scholars overwhelmingly reject these theories. The man from Stratford is named as the author on title pages, in the records of his company, in the First Folio prepared by his colleagues, and in the tributes of writers who knew him, including Jonson. Our article on the authorship question sets out the claims and the evidence.
Why Shakespeare Endures
Four centuries on, his work is still read, performed and quoted more than any other writer’s in English.
Part of the reason is his language. He wrote in supple blank verse and lively prose, and many of his words and phrases are still in everyday use. Part is his range: kings and clowns, lovers and murderers all get a voice, and even his villains are allowed to make their case. And part is that his plays leave room for interpretation, so every generation can stage and read them differently without breaking them.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Shakespeare’s life, answered briefly.
When Was Shakespeare Born?
His exact birth date is unknown. He was baptized on April 26, 1564, and his birthday is traditionally celebrated on April 23, the same date as his death in 1616.
How Did Shakespeare Die?
No one knows. A Stratford vicar, John Ward, wrote about fifty years later that Shakespeare died of a fever after a “merry meeting” with the poets Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson, but that is a story told long after the fact.
How Many Plays Did Shakespeare Write?
Around 38. The First Folio collected 36, and counts range from 37 to 39 depending on which collaborations are included, such as The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Who Was Shakespeare’s Wife?
Anne Hathaway, from Shottery near Stratford. They married in 1582 when he was eighteen and she was about twenty-six, and she outlived him, dying in 1623.
Does Shakespeare Have Living Descendants?
No direct ones. His son Hamnet died as a boy, and his last direct descendant, his granddaughter Elizabeth, died in 1670 without children.
Explore His Life
Three articles that take each part of his life in more depth.