(baptized April 26, 1564, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, Eng.—died April 23, 1616, Stratford-upon-Avon) British poet and playwright, often considered the greatest writer in world literature. He spent his early life in Stratford-upon-Avon, receiving at most a grammar-school education, and at age 18 he married a local woman, Anne Hathaway. By 1594 he was apparently a rising playwright in London and an actor in a leading theatre company, the Lord
Chamberlain's Men (later King's Men); the company performed at the
Globe Theatre from 1599. The order in which his plays were written and performed is highly uncertain. His earliest plays seem to date from the late 1580s to the mid-1590s and include the comedies
Love's Labour's Lost,
The Comedy of Errors,
The Taming of the Shrew, and
A Midsummer Night's Dream; history plays based on the lives of the English kings, including
Henry VI (parts 1, 2, and 3),
Richard III, and
Richard II; and the tragedy
Romeo and Juliet. The plays apparently written between 1596 and 1600 are mostly comedies, including
The Merchant of Venice,
The Merry Wives of Windsor,
Much Ado About Nothing, and
As You Like It, and histories, including
Henry IV (parts 1 and 2),
Henry V, and
Julius Caesar. Approximately between 1600 and 1607 he wrote the comedies
Twelfth Night,
All's Well That Ends Well, and
Measure for Measure, as well as the great tragedies
Hamlet (probably begun in 1599),
Othello,
Macbeth, and
King Lear, which mark the summit of his art. Among his later works (about 1607 to 1614) are the tragedies
Antony and Cleopatra,
Coriolanus, and
Timon of Athens, as well as the fantastical romances
The Winter's Tale and
The Tempest. He probably also is responsible for some sections of the plays
Edward III and
The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Shakespeare's plays, all of them written largely in iambic pentameter verse, are marked by extraordinary poetry; vivid, subtle, and complex characterizations; and a highly inventive use of English. His 154 sonnets, published in 1609 but apparently written mostly in the 1590s, often express strong feeling within an exquisitely controlled form. Shakespeare retired to Stratford before 1610 and lived as a country gentleman until his death. The first collected edition of his plays, or First Folio, was published in 1623. As with most writers of the time, little is known about his life and work, and other writers, particularly the 17th earl of Oxford, have frequently been proposed as the actual authors of his plays and poems.
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
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