,,I hate ingratitude more in a man

than lying , vainness , babbling, drunkenness,

or any taint of vice whose strong corruption
inhabits our frail blood.

Introduction
Biography
Photo Album
Facts
The Last Will & Testament
Brothers & Sisters ,Parents , Ancestors

Shakespeare is renowned as the English playwright and poet whose body

of works is considered the greatest in history of English literature.
Surprisingly for the world's greatest playwright, we actually know very little about
Shakespeare's life. What few details we have come from church records, land titles
and the written opinions of others. Very little is known about young Shakespeare.
We know that Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564 and it is assumed that
he was born on April 23, 1564. We also know that in 1582 at age eighteen,
Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, an older women who was twenty six at the
time. Shakespeare left Stratford for London to make his fortune roughly fours years
later.
Shakespeare headed to London sometime in 1586, there already was an established
community of playwrights.By 1595, Shakespeare was suffiently successful to be
named as one of the more senior members of the Lord Chamberlain's men, an
acting company that performed frequently before court. This was no small honor;
this prominent theatre company later became the royal company called the King's
Men, making Shakespeare an official playwright to the King of England.
Shakespeare's works are often divided into four periods beginning with what is
referred to as an experimental period starting around 1591 and ending around 1593
which includes Titus Andronicus, Love's Labour's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of
Verona, The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew.

The second period ending around 1601, marks the establishment of

Shakespeare and includes the tragedy Romeo and Juliet, the
comedies, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Much
Ado about Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor and the history plays,
Henry IV, Parts I and II, Henry V, Richard II, King John and Julius Caesar.
The third period ending around 1610 marks perhaps the apex of
Shakespeare's work with the tragedies, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King
Lear but also comedies such as Twelfth Night, All's Well that Ends Well
and the epic history play, Antony and Cleopatra.
The final period ends around 1611 with the plays, Cymbeline, Henry
VIII and romances such as The Tempest and The Winter's Tale.
The Shakespeare we read today comes from The First Folio of 1623
written by fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell to preserve
Shakespeare's legacy. Amazingly, no original manuscripts survive
reflecting the fact that many of these manuscripts were written purely
for performance and were not regarded as pieces of literary work

William Shakespeare
Biography

William Shakespeare Biography describes the life of William

Shakespeare. From birth to death, Shakespeare Biography

describes all that is known about Shakespeare's life from
available documentation including court and church records,
marriage certificates and criticisms by Shakespeare's rivals.
Shakespeare (1564-1616): Who was he?
Though William Shakespeare is recognized as one of literatures
greatest influences, very little is actually known about him. What we do
know about his life comes from registrar records, court records, wills,
marriage certificates and his tombstone. Anecdotes and criticisms by
his rivals also speak of the famous playwright and suggest that he was
indeed a playwright, poet and an actor.
Date of Birth? (1564)
William was born in 1564. We know this from the earliest record we
have of his life; his baptism which happened on Wednesday, April the
26th, 1564. We dont actually know his birthday but from this record
we assume he was born in 1564. Similarly by knowing the famous
Bard's baptism date, we can guess that he was born three days earlier
on St. Georges day, though we have no conclusive proof of this.

 William marries an older woman. (1582)

A bond certificate dated November the 28th, 1582, reveals that an

eighteen year old William married the twenty-six and pregnant

Anne Hathaway. Barely seven months later, they had his first
daughter, Susanna. Anne never left Stratford, living there her
entire life.
The Bard's children. (1583 & 1592)
Baptism records show that Williams first child, Susanna was
baptized in Stratford sometime in May, 1583. Baptism records
again reveal that twins Hamnet and Judith were born in February
1592. Hamnet, William's only son died in 1596, just eleven years
old. Hamnet and Judith were named after Williams close friends,
Judith and Hamnet Sadler. William's family was unusually small in a
time when families had many children to ensure parents were
cared for in later years despite the very high mortality rates of
children and also their life expectancy in the 1500s.

 William applies for a Coat of Arms. (1596)

Records with the College of Heralds, reveal William applied for a

coat of arms. Despite a lack of proof, he was granted his request.

Later in 1599 he applied for his mothers coat of arms to be added
to his own.
William buys major residential property. (1597)
At age 15, William purchased the New Place. This was one of the
most prominent and desired properties in all of Stratford being the
second largest house in town. Given his father's known financial
hardship from 1576, William must either have used his own money
to buy this expensive property or his father had placed money in his
sons name. It is possible William might have bought this prominent
property with money from his plays. It is estimated that roughly
fifteen of his 37 plays would have been written and performed by
1597!
Will flats in London. (Circa 1601-1604)
Court records of a dispute between William's landlord Christopher
Mountjoy and his son-in-law Stephen Belott confirm that William was
living in London around 1601. The playwright's name is recorded in
the court records when he gave testimony in 1612 concerning
Mountjoy and Belotts dispute. Interestingly, in 1601, he bought
roughly 107 acres of arable land with twenty acres of pasturage for
20 pounds in Old Stratford.

 The Bard's last words...

Written upon William Shakespeares tombstone is an appeal that he

be left to rest in peace with a curse on those who would move his
bones...
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.
Translated this reads as:
Good friend, for Jesus sake, forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here;
Blest be the man that spares these stones
And curst he that moves my bones.
Did Shakespeare write the 37 plays and 154 sonnets
credited to him?
The evidence above proves William existed but not that he was a
playwright nor an actor nor a poet. In fact recently some academics
who call themselves the Oxfords argue that Stratford's celebrated
playwright did not write any of the plays attributed to him. They
suggest that he was merely a businessman and propose several
contenders for authorship, namely an Edward de Vere.

Photo Album

William Shakespeare
Facts
William Shakespeare facts are few and far between. While we

know alot about the playwright's works, Shakespeare facts

concerning the Bard's personal life are less forthcoming.
Nobody knows Shakespeares true birthday. The closest we can come is
the date of his baptism on April the 26th, 1564. By tradition and
guesswork, William is assumed to have been born three days earlier on
April the 23rd, a date now commonly used to celebrate the famous
Bard's birthday.
The Bard coined the phrase, "the beast with two backs" meaning
intercourse in his play Othello.
Shakespeare invented the word "assassination".
There are only two authentic portraits of William today; the widely used
engraving of William Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout first published on
the title page of the 1623 First Folio and the monument of the great
playwright in Stratford's Holy Trinity Church in Stratford.
There were two Shakespeare families living in Stratford when William
was born; the other family did not become famous.

Shakespeare, one of literatures greatest figures, never attended university.

Of the 154 sonnets or poems, the playwright penned, his first 26 were said to
be directed to an aristocratic young man who did not want to marry. Sonnets
127 - 152 talk about a dark woman, the Bard seems to have had mixed
feelings for.
Most academics agree that William wrote his first play, Henry VI, Part One
around 1589 to 1590 when he would have been roughly 25 years old.
The Bard is believed to have started writing the first of his 154 sonnets in 1593
at age 29. His first sonnet was Venus and Adonis published in the same year.
William lived through the Black Death. This epidemic that killed over 33,000 in
London alone in 1603 when Will was 39, later returned in 1608.
The Bard lost a play. The play Cardenio that has been credited to the Bard and
which was performed in his life, has been completely lost to time. Today we
have no written record of its story whatsoever.
The Great Bard suffered breech of copyright. In 1609, many of his sonnets
were published without the bards permission.
The famous playwright died in 1616 at the age of 52. He wrote on average 1.5
plays a year since he first started in 1589. His last play The Two Noble
Kinsmen is reckoned to have been written in 1613 when he was 49 years old.

William never published any of his plays. We read his plays today only
because his fellow actors John Hemminges and Henry Condell, posthumously
recorded his work as a dedication to their fellow actor in 1623, publishing 36
of Williams plays. This collection known as The First Folio is the source from
which all published Shakespeare books are derived and is an important proof
that he authored his plays.
William was born to a Stratford tanner named John Shakespeare. His mother
Mary was the daughter of a wealthy gentleman-farmer named Robert Arden.
Legend has it that at the tender age of eleven, William watched the pageantry
associated with Queen Elizabeths visit to Kenilworth Castle near Stratford
and later recreated this scene many times in his plays.
Unlike most famous artists of his time, the Bard did not die in poverty. When
he died, his will contained several large holdings of land.
Few people realize that aside from writing 37 plays and composing 154
sonnets, William was also an actor who performed many of his own plays as
well as those of other playwrights (Ben Jonson).
As an actor performing his own plays, William performed before Queen
Elizabeth I and later before James I who was an enthusiastic patron of his
work.
Will wrote lewd comments about woman. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliets nurse
crudely tells Juliet "thou (you) wilt (will) fall backward when thou (you) hast
(have) more wit" (Act I, Scene III, Line 41), by which she means Juliet will
learn to fall or lie on her back (have sex) when she is older.

Will dabbled in property development. At age 18, he bought the second most
prestigious property in all of Stratford, The New Place and later he doubled
his investment on some land he bought near Stratford.
Even Shakespeare had his critics. One called Robert Greene described the
young playwright as an "upstart young crow" or arrogant upstart, accusing him
of borrowing ideas from his seniors in the theatre world for his own plays.
Williams 126th poem contains a farewell, to "my lovely boy" a phrase taken to
imply possible homosexuality by some postmodern Shakespeare academics.
The Bard's will gave most of his property to Susanna, his first child and not to
his wife Anne Hathaway. Instead his loyal wife infamously received his
"second-best bed".
The Bard's second best bed wasnt so bad, it was his marriage bed; his best
bed was for guests.
Until The First Folio was published seven years after his death in 1616, very
little personal information was ever written about the Bard..
William was known as a keen businessman to many in his home town of
Stratford.
Suicide occurs an unlucky thirteen times in Shakespeares plays. It occurs in
Romeo and Juliet where both Romeo and Juliet commit suicide, in Julius
Caesar where both Cassius and Brutus die by consensual stabbing, as well
as Brutus wife Portia, in Othello where Othello stabs himself, in Hamlet where
Ophelia is said to have "drowned" in suspicious circumstances, in Macbeth
when Lady Macbeth dies, and finally in Antony and Cleopatra where suicide
occurs an astounding five times (Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras and
Eros).

Anti-Semitism also crops up. The Jewish moneylender Shylock in the

Merchant of Venice is portrayed as greedy and calculating. At the plays
conclusion he is forced to change religion to Christianity as punishment for
wanting "a pound of flesh" from Antonio who agreed to this if his friend
forfeited a debt to Shylock. Being a Jew is used as a curse in Henry the
First, Part Two (Act II, Scene IV, Line 178), in The Two Gentlemen of
Verona (Act II, Scene V, Line 53), The Merchant of Venice, Anthony and
Cleopatra, Much Ado about Nothing , Macbeth and The Merry Wives of
Windsor.
The Bard's characters frequently debase those of colored skin. In Loves
Labours Lost, the character King Ferdinand, King of Navarre, racially
remarks that "Black is the badge of hell, the hue of dungeons and the scowl
of night" (Act IV, Scene III, Lines 254-255).
William was popular with King James I. Englands ruler following Elizabeth I
was so taken with the Bards skill that he gave his acting company, The Lord
Chamberlains Men a patent allowing them to perform and also made these
actors Grooms of Chamber. The Bard returned the favor by renaming his
company, The Kings Men. This title made William a favorite for Court
performances and made him a favorite with the new King of England.
William Shakespeare is one of the most identifiable icons of England.
Others include members of Englands Royal family, Westminister Abbey, Big
Ben, and red double-decker buses.

The Last Will & Testament of William Shakespeare

Preparation of the Last Will and Testament

On 25th March 1616, just a weeks before his death on 25th April 1616, Shakespeare
made his last Will and Testament. There is no evidence to explain the cause of his
death but it was clear, by his act of making a Will, that William Shakespeare was
aware that he probably did not have very long to live. He must have arranged to see
his attorney and made the following Last Will and Testament.
The Last Will and Testament of William Shakespeare
To his Daughter, Judith in his will
He left 100 to his daughter Judith for a marriage portion and another 50 if she
renounce any claim in the Chapel Lane cottage near New Place previously purchased
by Shakespeare.
He left another 150 to Judith if she lived another three years, but forbade her
husband any claim to it unless he settled on her lands worth the 150.
If Judith failed to live another three years, the 150 was to have gone to
Shakespeare's granddaughter Elizabeth Hall.
He also left Judith a silver bowl
To his Sister, Joan in his will
He left 30 to his sister Joan Hart
He permitted her to stay on for a nominal rent in the Western of the two houses on
Henley Street, which Shakespeare himself inherited from his father in 1601.
To his nephews in his will
He left each of Joan's three sons 5.
To his granddaughter, Elizabeth in his will
He left all his silver plate, except the silver bowl left to Judith, to his granddaughter
Elizabeth.

To the Poor of Stratford in his will

He left 10 to the poor of Stratford
To his Friends in his will
He left his sword and various small bequests to local friends.
His lifelong friend Hamnet Sadler was specifically mentioned to enable him to buy
a memorial ring
His friends, "my fellows John Hemynges Richard Burbage & Henry Cundell,"
were named leaving them 26s..8d to also "buy them Ringes."
To his Wife, Anne in his will
The only mention that Shakespeare specifically makes of his wife was to leave her
his "second best bed."
It is, however, understood that it would have been her right, through English
Common Law, to one-third of his estate as well as residence for life at New Place
To his Daughter, Susanna and Son-in-Law Dr, John Hall in his will
"All the Rest of my Goods, Chattels, Leases, Plate, Jewels & Household stuff
whatsoever after my debts and Legacies paid & my funeral expenses discarded"
Williams son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, oversaw his final days and treatment.
The Death of William Shakespeare
The illness that took his life is still a mystery. As previously mentioned
Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, and was buried on April 25 in the Holy Trinity
Church graveyard in Stratford-upon-Avon

Joan ( Sister )
Joan, the first child of Mary and John would have brought great joy to the young, and
ambitious couple, only to be dealt a terrible blow shortly after her birth. Joan was a popular
name for the common folk in England at this time, being a derivative of the name Jane
which would have been given to members of the nobility. Joan Shakespeare she was
baptized in Stratford on September 15, 1558 at the end of the reign of Bloody Mary. Her
father was a successful trader and had taken his first step on the political ladder and
received a civic appointment in Stratford as Ale-taster. This might sound strange to us but
in the Elizabethan era basic hygiene was practically unknown. People washed infrequently,
men urinated in the living room and most houses had a refuse heap outside their front
doors. The water was dangerous to drink at the best of times, so ale or wine depending on
your class, was the safest option. But there was an even greater danger - the Black Death,
also referred to as the plague. There were repeated outbreaks of the plague which was often
transmitted by the fleas that lived on animals. So farmers and the retailers of farm produce,
such as animal hides, were in constant danger of contracting the Black Death. The disease
could also be air bound and transmitted from an infected person's breath. It was in this
environment that the baby, Joan , lived and sadly contracted the deadly disease and died
just two short months after her birth. An unknown sister to the Bard. There was political
and religious turmoil in the country at this time, following the death of the staunch
Catholic, Bloody Mary, however, Queen Elizabeth I acceded the throne on 17th November
1558 and the family of the Bard including all of his brothers and sisters moved from the
Tudor era to the Elizabethan period.

MARGARET ( Sister )
John's rise in the Civic world continued and he was elected
as Chamberlain of the Borough of Stratford in 1661.Mary
became pregnant again and gave birth in 1562 to a second
daughter, Margaret. Margaret, was born in 1562 and was
baptized on December 2. This must have been a worrying
time for the new parents following the tragic, early death
of their first daughter, Joan. The name Margaret was also a
popular name in England, a burst in the rise of popularity
would have been due to the fact that it was the name of
one of the sisters of King Henry VIII. Children called
Margaret were often called Meg. Once again family life was
shattered as the little Margaret only lived for one year. The
exact details of her death are not known but it was highly
probable that she died of the Black Death. Another
unknown sister to the Bard.

JOHN SHAKESPEARE ( FATHER ) - THE EARLY YEARS

John Shakespeare was born in 1531. His father, Richard Shakespeare, was a
tenant farmer who worked on various sections of land, one of which was
owned by the wealthy Robert Arden of Wilmecote. John worked as a farmer
with his father but in 1551 he moved to Stratford to set up business trading
in wool, malt and corn. His businesses tied in well with his father with his
father producing the goods and John trading in the retail side. John was
skilled in both leatherworking and the curing and processing of fine leather
to make ladies gloves and purses for the nobility and traded as a Glover and
Whittawer. He bought a house in Henley Street, Stratford , which was
conveniently near the market. It was probable that a shop was attached as
this, as was the usual practice. He also started in the dubious business of
money lending. He obviously started to do very well with all of his various
interests as he then purchased another house in Greenhill Street, Stratford in
1552, five years before he married Mary.
MARY ARDEN ( MOTHER )- THE EARLY YEARS
Mary Arden was born in 1540 as a member of the noble Catholic family of the
Ardens of Park Hall whose family forebears had been given land by William
the Conqueror. The Ardens were one of Warwickshire's most prominent
families, tracing its ancestry back beyond the Norman Conquest to the
Doomsday Book. Mary was the favourite of eight daughters of the widowed
Robert Arden. His second marriage in April 1548 to Agnes Hill, a widow of
another prosperous farmer, added four stepchildren to his own family. The
family home was called Glebe Farm a two-storey Wilmecote farmstead. Mary
was sixteen when her father died and she was named as one of the Executers
of her father's will in which he left her some money and some land in
Wilmecote.

RICHARD SHAKESPEARE - PATERNAL GRANDFATHER AND ANCESTOR OF

WILLIAM
Richard was a tenant farmer in Snitterfield which was a village about four
miles away from Stratford. Between 1530 and 1550 he was penalised many
times for non-attendance at the Manor Court in Warwick and for grazing too
many cattle on Common Land. He apparently chose to pay a 2d fine for nonattendance rather than lose a whole days wages. He left a will
demonstrating strong Catholic beliefs. As a tenant farmer he worked on
various sections of land, one of which was owned by the wealthy Robert
Arden of Wilmecote. The name of Richard's wife is unknown but they had
two sons, Henry and John. Richard's son, John Shakespear, married Mary
Arden the youngest daughter of Robert Arden. The marriage was a very
good one for Richard as he was only a Yeoman and Mary came from an
aristocratic Arden family. One of Shakespeare's definite ancestors.
ROBERT ARDEN - MATERNAL GRANDFATHER AND ANCESTOR OF WILLIAM
Robert Arden was the son of Thomas Arden of Wilmecote (Shakespeare's
maternal great-grandfather). The Ardens were part of the noble Catholic
family of the Ardens of Park Hall whose family forebears had been given
land by William the Conqueror. Robert Arden was married twice. There are
no details of his first wife's name but his second wife was called Agnes Hill,
who already had four daughters by her previous marriage. Robert had eight
daughters and Mary Arden, the youngest, married John Shake-speare and
became the mother of William Shakespear. Mary was sixteen when her father
died and she was named as one of the Executers of her father's will in which
he left her some money and some land in Wilmecote. One of Shakespeare's
definite ancestors.

Realizat de :
Saigiu Theodor
Munteanu Vlad