About William Shakespeare Poets are admired and respected for a variety of reasons.

Whether its because of accomplishments theyve made throughout their lives or just by their work; inspiring us. The words they put on paper make us see things from a different perspective. One poet that inspires many with his words is William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare is one of the most known writers in the entire world, Shakespeare is the second most quoted writer in the English language after the various writers of the Bible. He accomplished many things in his life, including composing and writing 37 plays and 154 sonnets. While he was writing the plays at such a pace he was also conducting a family life, a social life and a full business life, running an acting company and a theatre. Shakespeares early life began with his birth, his actual birthdate, unfortunately, is unkown. However, we do know that he was baptized on April 26th, 1564 in the town of Stratford-uponAvon in south Warwickshire, England. He is 3rd the son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. John was an alderman and a successful glover. Shakespeare had seven siblings. They were: Joan (1558); Margaret (1562); Gilbert (1566); Joan II (1569); Anne (1571); Richard (1574) and Edmund (1580). He went to Stratford Grammar school in his youth and did not proceed to Oxford or Cambridge. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1583. It turns out Anne was already pregenant when they got married. William was 18 and Anne was 26. About 6 months later, on May 26, 1583, their first child, Susanna was born.Two years afterwards, their twins Judith and Hamnet were born. Hamnet died later on of unkown causes at 11 years old.

For the seven years following the birth of his twins, William Shakespeare disappears from all records, finally turning up again in London some time in 1592. This period is known as The Lost Years. This time sparked a lot of controversy on what exactly it was the Shakespeare was up to. Some think he had a problem with poaching and was forced to move out of Startford after an incident happened in which he got caught. Shakespeare moved from Stratford to London and was recognized as an actor, poet and playwright. He had been acting and writing and possibly had several plays produced by that time. By the early 1590s, documents show William Shakespeare was a managing partner in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, an acting company in London. In 1603, after King James I was crowned, the group changed its name to The Kings Men. The Kings men was very popular and records show that by this time Shakespeare already had some works published and sold as popular literature. By the time it was 1597 William had published 15 out of 37 plays that he wrote in total. Records show that at this time he bought the second largest house in Stratford for his family, which shows that he was doing well economically, most likely because of his writings and their rising popularity. Evidently Shakespeare acquired some envy early on, as shown by the critical attack of Robert Greene, a London playwright, in 1592: "...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, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." Scholars have different ideas on what this criticism actually meant, but most agree that it was Greene's way of saying Shakespeare was reaching above his level,

trying to match better known and educated playwrights like Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe or Greene himself. Shakespeare's accomplishments are apparent when studied against other playwrights of this time. His company was the most successful in London in his day. He had plays published and sold in octavo editions, or "penny-copies" to the more literate. By 1599, William Shakespeare and his business partners built their own theater on the south bank of the Thames River, which they called the Globe. In 1605, Shakespeare purchased leases of real estate near Stratford for 440 pounds, which doubled in value and earned him 60 pounds a year. This made him a good entrepreneur as well as a good artist. Scholars believe these investments gave him the time to write his plays without interruption. William Shakespeare's early plays were written in the accustomed style of the day, with elaborate metaphors and exaggerated phrases that didn't always flow naturally with the story's plot or characters. However, Shakespeare was very contemporary with his writing style, adapting the traditional style to his own purposes and creating a freer flow of words. With only small degrees of variety, Shakespeare mainly used a rhythmic pattern consisting of lines of unrhymed blank verse, to compose his plays. At the same time, there are passages in all the plays that deviate from this and use forms of poetry or simple essays.

With the exception of "Romeo and Juliet," William Shakespeare's first plays were mostly histories written in the early 1590s. "Richard II" and "Henry VI," parts 1, 2, and 3 and "Henry V" act out the destructive results of weak or corrupted rulers and have been interpreted by drama historians as Shakespeare's way of justifying the origins of the Tudor dynasty.

Shakespeare also wrote a couple of comedies during his early period: the romantic comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream," the romantic "Merchant of Venice," the wit of "Much Ado About Nothing," the charming "As You Like It," and Twelfth Night. Other plays, possibly written before 1600, were "Titus Andronicus," "The Comedy of Errors," "The Taming of the Shrew" and "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." It was in William Shakespeare's later period, after 1600, that he wrote the tragedies "Hamlet," "King Lear," "Othello" and "Macbeth." In these, Shakespeare's characters present vivid impressions of human character that are timeless and universal. Possibly the best known of these plays is "Hamlet," with its display of betrayal, avengement, and incest. In William Shakespeare's final period, he wrote tragic-comedies. Among these are "Cymbeline," "The Winter's Tale," and "The Tempest." Though gloomier in tone than the comedies, they are not the dark tragedies of "King Lear" or "Macbeth" because they end with relationship make-ups and forgiveness. Church records show that Shakespeare was interned at Trinity Church on April 5, 1616. Although there is a rumor that he died on his speculated birthday April 23, but scholars think this rumor to be a myth. In his will, he left the bulk of his possessions to his eldest daughter, Susanna. Though entitled to a third of his estate, little seems to have gone to his wife, Anne, to whom he bestowed his "second-best bed." This has drawn speculation that she had fallen out of favor, or that the couple was not close. However, there is very little evidence the two had a difficult marriage. Other scholars note that the term "second-best bed" often refers to the bed belonging to the household's master and mistress--the marital bed--and the "first-best bed" was reserved for guests.

What seems to be true is that William Shakespeare was a respected man of the dramatic arts who wrote plays and acted in some in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. But his reputation as a dramatic genius wasn't recognized until the 19th century. Beginning with the Romantic period of the early 1800s and continuing through the Victorian period, acclaim and reverence for William Shakespeare and his work reached its height. In the 20th century, new movements in scholarship and performance have rediscovered and adopted his works. Today, his plays are highly popular and constantly studied and reinterpreted in performances with diverse cultural and political contexts. The genius of Shakespeare's characters and plots are that they present real human beings in a wide range of emotions and conflicts that transcend their origins in Elizabethan England.