Context
William Shakespeare is England’s most celebrated dramatist and poet. His works have been translated into 80 languages, including Star Trek’s Klingon.
He gave us uniquely vivid ways in which to express hope and despair, sorrow and rage, love and lust.
Words and phrases
Scholars have argued over just how many words and phrases Shakespeare actually coined, and how many he merely popularised by bedding them down in a memorable plot.
If you’ve ever been “in a pickle”, waited “with bated breath”, or gone on “a wild goose chase”, you’ve been quoting from The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet respectively.
If you refer to jealousy as "the green-eyed monster” you’re quoting from Othello, or if you describe someone as having “a heart of gold” you have borrowed from Henry V.
Early life
Despite his influence, much of Shakespeare’s life is a mystery.
He was born in 1554, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabeth had recently converted England to Protestantism and Shakespeare’s parents had been Catholics. The tension between the new and old religions can be seen in much of his work.
William’s father - John Shakespeare - was a member of the borough council of Stratford-upon-Avon. William was the third of eight children, though his two elder siblings did not survive childhood.
Shakespeare probably attended the local grammar school. Its curriculum included Greek classics, plays in Latin and religious education. Shakespeare drew on these sources in his later work.
He probably attended school until about the age of 15. There is no record of him going to university.
Teenage father
Shakespeare was only 18 when he married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway in 1582. She was three months pregnant with their first child.
Lost years
The years 1585 to 1592 are lost years. At some point Shakespeare went to London - leaving his family in Stratford - and established himself as a playwright and actor. Some claim he worked as a teacher, an apprentice butcher or a lawyer’s clerk during this time. A century later his first biographer suggested he fled to London to escape punishment for deer poaching.
Upstart crow
In a pamphlet published in 1592 the playwright Robert Greene called Shakespeare - now a playwright himself - an "upstart crow”. Greene accused Shakespeare of reaching above his rank compared with university-educated writers such as Christopher Marlowe and Greene himself.
Fame
In 1598, Love's Labour's Lost was Shakespeare's first work to be published with his name on the title page, suggesting it was now a selling point. His work attracted royal attention - he acted in several performances before Queen Elizabeth I.
In 1609, Shakespeare published 154 sonnets which explored themes of love, sex and beauty. He probably started them in 1592 when plague closed the theatres.
The end
Shakespeare died in 1616.
There are no contemporary accounts of his death. He made his will a month before he died, stating that he was in “perfect health”.
Fifty years later the vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote that Shakespeare died of a fever contracted after a “merry meeting” where he “drank too hard”.