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During Shakespeare’s time, the English cared little about keeping biographical information unrelated to affairs of the church or state. In addition, playwriting was not a highly regarded occupation, and so people saw little point in recording the lives of mere dramatists. However, a number of records exist that deal with Shakespeare’s life. They include church registers and accounts of business dealings. Although these records are few and incomplete by modern standards, they provide much information. By relating these records to various aspects of English history and society, scholars have constructed a believable and largely comprehensive account of Shakespeare’s life. However, gaps remain. Perhaps the most frustrating gap is the general absence of personal papers that might provide access to the playwright’s thoughts and feelings. As a result, biographers almost always examine the plays and poems for autobiographical clues.

Shakespeare’s parents belonged to what today would be called the middle class. John Shakespeare, William’s father, was a glove maker who owned a shop in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon. Stratford is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) northwest of London in the county of Warwickshire. John Shakespeare was a respected man in the town and held several important positions in the local government.

William Shakespeare’s mother was born Mary Arden. She was the daughter of a farmer but related to a family of considerable social standing in the county. John Shakespeare married Mary Arden about 1557. The Ardens were Roman Catholics. Mary may also have been a Catholic, but the Shakespeares publicly belonged to the Church of England, the state church.

Early years. William Shakespeare was born in the small market town of Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, the third of eight children. The register of Holy Trinity, the parish church in Stratford, records his baptism on April 26. According to the custom at that time, infants were baptized about three days after their birth. Therefore, the generally accepted date for Shakespeare’s birth is April 23.

The Shakespeares were a family of considerable local prominence. In 1565, John Shakespeare became an alderman. Three years later, he was elected bailiff (mayor), the highest civic honor that a Stratford resident could receive. Later, he held several other civic posts. But toward the end of his life, John Shakespeare had financial problems.

Beginning at about the age of 7, William probably attended the Stratford grammar school with other boys of his social class. The school’s highly qualified teachers were graduates of Oxford University. Students spent about nine hours a day in school. They attended classes the year around, except for three brief holiday periods. The teachers enforced strict discipline and physically punished students who broke the rules. The students chiefly studied Latin, the language of ancient Rome. Knowledge of Latin was necessary for a career in medicine, law, or the church. In addition, the ability to read Latin was considered a sign of an educated person. Young Shakespeare may have read such outstanding ancient Roman authors as Cicero, Ovid, Plautus, Seneca, Terence, and Virgil.

In spite of the long hours he spent in school, Shakespeare’s boyhood was probably not all boring study. As a market center, Stratford was a lively town. In addition, holidays provided popular pageants and shows, including plays about the legendary outlaw Robin Hood and his merry men. By 1569, traveling companies of professional actors were performing in Stratford. Stratford also held two large fairs each year, which attracted numerous visitors from other counties. For young Shakespeare, Stratford could thus have been an exciting place to live.

Stratford also offered other pleasures. The fields and woods surrounding the town provided opportunities to hunt and trap small game. The River Avon, which ran through the town, had fish to catch. Shakespeare’s poems and plays show a love of nature and rural life. This display undoubtedly reflects his childhood experiences and his love of the Stratford countryside.

Marriage. On Nov. 27, 1582, Shakespeare received a license to marry Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a local farmer. The two families knew each other, but the details of the relationship between William and Anne have been a source of speculation. At the age of 18, William was young to marry, while Anne at 26 was of normal marrying age. The marriage appears to have been hurried, and the birth of their first child, Susanna, in May 1583 came only six months after marriage. Some scholars have suggested that William may have been forced to marry Anne because she was pregnant. However, birth and marriage records indicate that many women in England at that time were already pregnant before they married, and so Shakespeare’s marriage was not unusual. Early in 1585, Anne gave birth to twins, Judith and Hamnet. The record of baptism marks the start of an important gap in the documentary evidence of Shakespeare’s life.

The lost years. Scholars have referred to the period between 1585 and 1592, when Shakespeare was called an “upstart” by a London writer, as the “lost years.” Scholars have proposed a number of theories about his activities during that time. But what is certain is that some time before 1592 Shakespeare arrived in London and began to work in the theater.

By 1592, Shakespeare apparently attracted the hostile attention of a jealous rival. Robert Greene was a university-trained writer who was among the first to attempt to make a career of writing for the stage and the commercial press. Greene’s Groats-Worth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance, a pamphlet published after Greene’s death in 1592, contains a harsh reference to Shakespeare. The English playwright Henry Chettle prepared the pamphlet for publication and may have been the true author. A passage in the pamphlet addressed to playwrights says:

… an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger’s heart wrapped in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum [Jack of all trades], is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.

The line “Tiger’s heart wrapped in a Player’s hide” echoes a line spoken by the Duke of York in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part III. The line is “O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide.” The pun on Shakespeare’s name makes the object of attack clear. Whether written by Greene or Chettle, this passage indicates that Shakespeare was in 1592 an actor who also wrote plays. He was successful enough to provoke the scorn and jealousy of competitors who considered themselves socially and culturally superior.

His work in theater companies. After arriving in London, Shakespeare began an association with one of the city’s repertory theater companies. These companies consisted of a permanent cast of actors who presented a variety of plays week after week. The companies had aristocratic patrons, and the players were technically servants of the nobles who sponsored them. But the companies were commercial operations that depended on selling tickets to the general public for their income.

Scholars do not know which of the various companies first employed Shakespeare. Scholars have noted connections between Shakespeare’s early plays and a number of plays that were performed by the Queen’s Men, a company that played in Stratford in 1587. What is certain is that by 1594 Shakespeare was a sharer in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. As a sharer, Shakespeare was a stockholder in the company and entitled to a share in the company’s profits.

The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were one of the most popular companies in London. In large part because of Shakespeare’s talents, they would go on to become the dominant company in England during the late 1500’s and early 1600’s. Shakespeare’s position as sharer allowed him to achieve a level of financial success unmatched by other dramatists of the age, many of whom lived in poverty. Most playwrights were free-lancers who were paid a one-time fee for their plays and usually worked for several companies. After 1594, Shakespeare maintained a relationship with a single company.

His first poems. From mid-1592 to 1594, London authorities frequently closed the theaters because of repeated outbreaks of plague. Without the income provided by acting and playwriting, Shakespeare turned to poetry. In 1593, Venus and Adonis became the first of Shakespeare’s works to be published. The publisher was Richard Field, a native of Stratford who may have known Shakespeare in childhood. As was customary at the time, Shakespeare dedicated his volume to a noble patron, in this case Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. Venus and Adonis proved to be extremely popular and was reprinted at least 15 times in Shakespeare’s lifetime.

In 1594, Field printed Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece. The book’s dedication to Southampton suggests a closer acquaintance between the writer and the aristocrat. The volume was not as popular as Venus and Adonis, but it still sold well. Seven editions had been published by 1632. Despite the commercial success of these early publications, Shakespeare made no effort to make a career of poetry. When the theaters reopened, he returned to acting and playwriting.

Throughout the 1590’s, Shakespeare’s reputation continued to grow. From 1594 to 1608, he was fully involved in the London theater world. In addition to his duties as a sharer and actor in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, he wrote an average of almost two plays a year for his company. During much of this period, Shakespeare ranked as London’s most popular playwright, based on the number of times his plays were performed and published. But his reputation was largely that of a popular playwright, not of a writer of unequaled genius.

Few people gave Shakespeare the praise that later generations heaped on him. An exception was the English clergyman and schoolmaster Francis Meres. In 1598, Meres wrote Palladis Tamia: Wit’s Treasury, a book that has become an important source of information about Shakespeare’s career. In this book, Meres said of Shakespeare: “As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latins: so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage.” Although Meres’s praise did not represent everyone’s opinion, it indicates that Shakespeare had become an established writer by at least the late 1590’s.

Shakespeare’s name did not appear on his earliest published plays, but the 1598 edition of Love’s Labour’s Lost includes his name on the title page. Later editions prominently advertise his authorship, in some cases falsely. In 1599, a printer named William Jaggard published The Passionate Pilgrim, a collection of 20 poems supposedly written by Shakespeare. However, the volume offered only five sonnets by Shakespeare, three taken from Love’s Labour’s Lost. By the end of the 1590’s, Shakespeare’s reputation was being used to sell books. And he had not yet written most of his great tragedies, such as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth.

By the late 1590’s, Shakespeare not only had become an established writer but also had become prosperous. In October 1596, John Shakespeare was granted a coat of arms, an emblem symbolic of family history, about 25 years after his initial application. Most scholars have suggested that William Shakespeare renewed the application on his father’s behalf and paid the necessary fees. To have a coat of arms was an important mark of social standing in England at that time. Certainly Shakespeare was eager to establish himself in Stratford. In May 1597, he purchased New Place, one of the town’s two largest houses. Shakespeare obviously remained a Stratford man at heart in spite of his busy, successful life in London. Records of business dealings and of minor lawsuits reveal that he preferred to invest most of his money in Stratford rather than in London.

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Globe Theatre

The Globe Theatre. As was customary, Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, rented performance space. For most of the 1590’s, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men performed in a building called The Theatre. The English actor and theatrical manager James Burbage had built the structure on leased land. Burbage was the father of the famous actor Richard Burbage, star of the Chamberlain’s Men. After a disagreement with the landlord, the company was forced to find new accommodations. Richard Burbage and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men dismantled The Theatre and moved it across the River Thames to a new site in Southwark. There they used the old timbers to erect a new theater called the Globe Theatre. The Globe could accommodate 3,000 spectators.

Shakespeare was one of six shareholders who signed the lease for the new site in 1599. He thus became part of the first group of actor-sharers to also be theater owners. Although this arrangement meant considerable financial risk, it also promised to be profitable if the new theater was a success. The Globe proved to be a wise investment, and it remained a home to Shakespeare’s acting company until the religious reformers known as Puritans closed the theaters in 1642, during the English Civil War.

The King's Men. In 1603, Queen Elizabeth I died and was succeeded by her cousin James VI of Scotland. As king of England, he became James I. James enjoyed and actively supported the theater. He issued a royal license to Shakespeare and his fellow players, which allowed the company to call itself the King’s Men. In return for the license, the actors entertained the king at court on a more or less regular basis.

James’s support came at a convenient time. An outbreak of plague in 1603 had closed the theaters for long periods, making theatrical life uncertain. In fact, James’s entry into London as king had to be postponed until 1604 because of the plague.

When James finally made his royal entry into London, the King’s Men accompanied him. The members of the company were officially known as grooms of the chamber. In spite of this title and the name King’s Men, the actors were not actually friends of the king. Their relationship to the royal court was simply that of professional entertainers.

The King’s Men achieved unequaled success and became London’s leading theatrical group. In 1608, the company leased the Blackfriars Theatre for 21 years. The theater stood in a heavily populated London district called Blackfriars. The Blackfriars Theatre had artificial lighting, mainly candles. The theater was probably heated and served as the company’s winter playhouse. The King’s Men performed at the Globe during the summer.

The period from 1599 to 1608 was a time of extraordinary literary activity for Shakespeare. During these years, he wrote several comedies and almost all the tragedies that have made him famous. Shakespeare’s masterpieces during this period include the comedies Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night; the history Henry V; and the tragedies Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello.

The sonnets. In 1609, a London publisher named Thomas Thorpe published a book called Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The volume contained more than 150 sonnets that Shakespeare had written over the years. Scholars have long been curious about the book’s puzzling dedication. It reads, in modernized spelling: “To the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets Mr. W. H.” We do not know whether these are Shakespeare’s or Thorpe’s words, nor do we know the identity of the mysterious W. H. For additional information on the sonnets, see the section Shakespeare’s poems.

During his last eight years, Shakespeare was the sole author of only three plays—Cymbeline, The Tempest, and The Winter’s Tale. He collaborated with John Fletcher, another English dramatist, in writing three more plays. In the past, some scholars argued that The Tempest, written about 1610, was Shakespeare’s last play. Such a theory was encouraged by the presence in the play of passages that sound like a farewell to the stage. However, in 1612 and 1613, Shakespeare worked closely with Fletcher, who replaced him as the chief dramatist for the King’s Men, on Cardenio (now lost), King Henry VIII, and Two Noble Kinsmen. In addition, Shakespeare purchased a house in the Blackfriars district of London in 1613. The evidence thus suggests that Shakespeare gradually reduced his activity in London rather than ending it abruptly.

By 1612, Shakespeare had become England’s most successful playwright. He apparently divided his time between Stratford and London. He had lodgings in London at least until 1604 and probably until 1611. Such family events as his daughter Susanna’s marriage in 1607 and his mother’s death in 1608 would likely have called him back to Stratford. By 1612, he may have spent much of his time in the comforts of New Place in Stratford.

On Feb. 10, 1616, Shakespeare’s younger daughter, Judith, married Thomas Quiney, the son of his Stratford neighbor Richard Quiney. Six weeks later, Shakespeare revised his will. Within a month, he died. He was buried inside the Stratford parish church. His monument records the day of death as April 23, the generally accepted date of his birth.

Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, died in 1596 at the age of 11. The playwright’s daughter Susanna had one child, Elizabeth, who bore no children. Shakespeare’s daughter Judith gave birth to three boys, but they died before she did. Shakespeare’s last direct descendant, his granddaughter Elizabeth, died in 1670.