Very little is known for certain about William Shakespeare. What we do know about his life comes from registrar records, court records, wills, marriage certificates and his tombstone.
William Shakespeare was baptised on 26th April 1564 at Holy Trinity in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Traditionally his birthday is celebrated three days earlier, on 23rd April - St George’s Day.
In the 1500s, Stratford was a tranquil market town of some 200 houses situated in a wooded valley. It was famous for its fairs. London was two days away on horseback. Oxford, Worcester and Warwick were all within striking distance.
William’s father, John Shakespeare, was an affluent glove maker, tanner and wool dealer who owned property in Stratford. For a number of years he played a prominent role in the municipal life of the town. He served on the town council and was elected bailiff (Mayor). Around 1576, however, John Shakespeare was beset by severe financial difficulties and he was forced to mortgage his wife’s inheritance.
William’s mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a prosperous farmer, Robert Arden, who had left her some land in Wilmcote, near Stratford. The Ardens boasted one of the most venerable names in Warwickshire. They had been ‘lords of Warwick’ before the Norman Conquest, though in the sixteenth century Shakespeare’s immediate family were wealthy yeoman rather than gentry.
John and Mary Shakespeare had eight children: four daughters, of whom only one (Joan) survived childhood. William was the eldest of the four boys.
William almost certainly went to one of Stratford’s ‘petty’ or junior schools where he would have learnt his letters with the help of a hornbook. From the age of seven or thereabouts, he would have progressed to an excellent school, the King’s New School. Now known as King Edward VI’s School, it is a grammar school for boys. The emphasis would have been on Latin, it being the international language still of Europe in the 1500s. School days were long starting at 6 or 7am and finishing at 5pm. Boys went to school six days a week, most weeks of the year. Shakespeare probably left school at the age of 14 or 15.
In 1582, when he was 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. She was twenty six. Anne was the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, Richard Hathaway of Hewlands Farm in nearby Shottery.
Their first child, Susanna, was born in May 1583. Twins, Hamnet and Judith, were christened in February 1585.
From 1585 until 1592, very little is known about Shakespeare. These are generally referred to as ‘The Lost Years’. There has been much speculation about these years. Some say Shakespeare became a schoolmaster, others an actor. There is a story of Shakespeare poaching deer from Charlecote Park, which was owned by the wealthy Lucy family.
By 1592 we know that Shakespeare was in London where he was singled out by a rival dramatist, Robert Greene in his bitter deathbed pamphlet, A Groats-worth of Witte, in which Greene calls Shakespeare “an upstart crow”. London in the 1590s was a vibrant and expanding town. It was an important port and the Thames a major thoroughfare. Sixteenth century London was alive with painters, actors and writers. The theatre was becoming an institution popular with all social classes.
Plague broke out in London in 1593, forcing the theatres to close. Shakespeare turned to writing poetry. In 1593 Shakespeare published an erotic poem, Venus and Adonis, dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, a young courtier and favourite of Queen Elizabeth.
Shakespeare's earliest plays included Henry VI parts 1, 2 & 3, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Titus Andronicus.
The sonnets were also written about this time, though they were not published until 1609, when they were dedicated to “Mr W.H”. These 154 poems describe the devotion of a character, often identified as the poet himself, to a beautiful youth (“Mr W.H”, possibly) whom he urges to marry and propagate. They are also addressed to a mysterious and faithless woman, with whom the poet is infatuated. The first 126 poems record the poet’s love for the young man, the ‘Master-Mistress’ of his affections, whom he addresses in the extravagant terms of Renaissance male friendship. His love though is sometimes spurned or unrequited. Sonnets 127 to 154 are addressed to the “dark lady” who has betrayed the poet by loving other men, including the young man of the earlier poems. Experts still argue about the identities of the three characters and whether the sonnets tell us about Shakespeare’s life or not.
1593 was also the year in which Christopher Marlowe was killed in an inn in Deptford. The official story is the he was stabbed in the eye, apparently after an argument over the bill but the truth may lie in the sinister world of Elizabethan espionage for Marlowe, the son of a Canterbury cobbler, was employed by the crown as a spy. Born in the same year as Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe was a precocious genius. The author of The Jew of Malta, Tamburlaine the Great, Dr Faustus, Edward IIand The Massacre at Paris, he played a key role in the development of truly great drama in Elizabethan England.
In 1594, Shakespeare became a founding member, actor, playwright and shareholder of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Richard Burbage was the company’s leading actor. He played roles such as Richard III, Hamlet, Othello and Lear. Under James VI/I, the company was renamed The King’s Men. They performed at court more often than any other company.
In 1596 Shakespeare’s father was granted a coat-of-arms. On his father's death in 1601, William Shakespeare inherited the arms and the right to write the title “gentleman” after his name. Their crest is a falcon shaking a spear. Their motto is non sans droit, ‘Not Without Right’.
In 1598, the author of a book on the arts, Francis Meres, praised Shakespeare for ‘mightily’ enriching the English language and gorgeously investing it in’ rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments’.
Whereas John Shakespeare had lost a fortune, his son managed to amass great wealth in his lifetime. In 1597, he bought New Place, one of the largest properties in Stratford. In 1598, he is listed as a resident of Chapel Street ward, in which New Place was situated. In 1601, when his father died, he may also, as the eldest son, have inherited the two houses in Henley Street. In 1602 Shakespeare paid £320 in cash to William Combe and his nephew John for roughly 107 acres of land in Old Stratford. He also bought a cottage and more land in Chapel Lane. In 1605, for £440, Shakespeare bought a half-interest in a lease of many tithes which brought him an annual interest of £60. When he died in 1616, he was a man of substantial wealth.
Shakespeare's elder daughter, Susanna, married a physician, John Hall in Stratford in 1607. Their only child, a daughter, Elizabeth, was born in 1608, the year in which Shakespeare’s mother died. Judith Shakespeare married a vintner, Thomas Quiney in 1616. They had three sons: Shakespeare Quiney, who died in infancy; Richard (1618-139) and Thomas (1620-1639).
Sometime after 1611, Shakespeare retired to Stratford.
On 25th March 1616, Shakespeare revised and signed his will.
On 23rd April, his presumed birthday, Shakespeare died, aged 52.
On 25th April: Shakespeare is buried at Holy Trinity in Stratford.
Written on his tombstone is an appeal that he be left to rest in peace:
'Good friend, for Jesus´ sake forbeare
To digg the dust enclosed here!
Blest be ye man that spares thes stones
And curst be he that moues my bones.'
Shakespeare’s widow, Anne, died in 1623 and was buried beside him. Shakespeare's family line came to an end with the death of his grand-daughter Elizabeth in 1670.
In 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, John Heminge and Henry Condell (two actors from The King’s Company) had Shakespeare’s plays published by William Jaggard and his son, Isaac. This first folio contained 36 plays (Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen were omitted) and sold for £1.
The authorship debate us a lively one and thinking changes. Some academics believe that plays formerly thought to have been written by Shakespeare alone were in fact co-written. It is now widely accepted that Thomas Middleton (c.1570 - 1627) rather than Shakespeare wrote the Hecate scenes in Macbeth and many believe that Act 1 and Act 4, scene 1 of Titus Andronicus were by George Peele (c.1558 - c.1597).
Sometimes evidence exists to enable precise dating of plays and poems. More often, the information we have is vague. The following, therefore, is a list of approximate dates, based in part upon research by Professor Stanley Wells and Professor Gary Taylor (see Shakespeare: For All Time pg 121 and William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion).
For a chronological list of Shakespeare's works, click here.
For a timeline of the events in Shakespeare's world, click here.