shakespeare

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616)[a] was an English poet and playwright, widely

regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist.[1] He is often called

England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays,[b] 154

sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living

language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.[2]

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, who bore

him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career

inLondon as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known

as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records

of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality,

religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.[3]

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and

histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. He then wrote
mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest

examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and

collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy

during his lifetime. In 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his

dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.

Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights

until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-

worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry".[4] In the twentieth

century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His

plays remain highly popular today and are constantly performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political

contexts throughout the world.