1.

Shakespeare’s will was slightly strange

The only thing Shakespeare left to his wife in his will was the second-best bed in the house.
His will reads: ‘“I gyve unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture”. The “furniture”
refers to the linen for the bed.

2. One of Shakespeare’s relatives was executed

Edward Arden, a cousin of Shakespeare’s mother, was arrested for reportedly plotting
against Queen Elizabeth I, although there was no clear evidence that he was actually
involved. He was then imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed. Ouch!

3. Shakespeare was not an Elizabethan playwright

Calling Shakespeare an Elizabethan playwright is actually incorrect. The majority of his plays
were written after Queen Elizabeth I’s death, making him a Jacobean writer.

4. Shakespeare often wrote about suicide

Shakespeare seemed to be fond of one particular kind of death – suicide. In fact, suicide
occurs a whopping 13 times in Shakespearean plays.

5. Two of Shakespeare’s plays have been translated

into Klingon
Klingon is the language created for the Star Trek science fiction series. You can
read Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing in the fantasy language.

6. Some moons were named after Shakespeare’s

characters
The moons circling around the planet of Uranus are mostly named after characters from
Shakespeare plays, including Oberon, Ariel, and Juliet.
7. No one’s dared to go close to Shakespeare’s tomb
since 1747
Shakespeare had a poem sketched into his tomb in Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. It
says anyone who moves his bones will be cursed. Consequently, his grave has gone
untouched since 1747.

8. One of Shakespeare’s plays is never performed by

modern theatre companies
One of Shakespeare’s plays has been completely lost to history. There is evidence that he
wrote a play called Cardenio which was performed in England, but no known copy of the
play exists.

9. Shakespeare never published any of his own plays

Thankfully his friends John Heminges and Henry Condell did it posthumously and saved the
world of theatre.

10. Shakespeare turned to sonnets because of a plague

He only stopped writing plays and turned to sonnets because the plague caused all theatres to
be shut down. Maybe you could say the plague wasn’t so bad after all?
Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564.

Or so we think. This is the day when the Bard’s birthday is usually

celebrated; we only know for sure that he was baptized on April 26, and
babies were traditionally baptized after three days back then. Shakespeare
was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England, where a birthday celebration is
still held every year. The national flag is flown, people lay flowers on
Shakespeare’s grave, and there’s a celebratory lunch in his honor. People
dressed as characters from his plays also march in a huge parade, and even
spectators join in on the costumed fun.
If Shakespeare’s birthday was indeed the 23rd, then coincidentally,
Shakespeare also died on his 52nd birthday in 1616.

Shakespeare wrote 39 plays.

A total of 39 published plays are attributed to Shakespeare, including 16

comedies, 12 tragedies, and 11 histories. Broadly speaking, the tragedies
are plays that end in death (often of the main character and multiple
others), the comedies end in at least one marriage, and the histories are
based on and named after real-life monarchs, such as Henry V and Richard
III.

Shakespeare’s final four plays — three comedies and one tragedy — are
also called the “late romances.” They resemble the late medieval
“romance” genre in that they exhibit tragic and comic elements and take
place over long periods of time.

 Pericles, Prince of Tyre

 Cymbeline
 The Winter’s Tale
 The Tempest

Additionally, six of his works — four comedies and two tragedies — are
called problem plays because they do not fall neatly into the comedy or
tragedy genre. These plays include moments of both dark drama and
straightforward comedy, giving them an overall ambiguous tone. These are
also often called tragicomedies, but unlike the romances, the action in
problem plays takes place within fairly short timeframes, like most of
Shakespeare’s work.

 All’s Well That Ends Well

 Measure for Measure
 Troilus and Cressida
 The Merchant of Venice
 The Winter’s Tale
  Timon of Athens

Aside from Shakespeare’s 39 published plays, there are two plays

attributed to him that have been lost: Cardenio and Love’s Labour’s Won.
(It’s not known for sure whether Love’s Labour’s Won was an entirely new
sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost or simply an alternative title for another of
his plays that we now know by a different name.)

Shakespeare’s first play was The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Shakespeare is believed to have written The Two Gentlemen of

Verona sometime between 1589 and 1591. Put simply, the play is a
comedy about two couples’ journeys to be with each other. Scholars
think The Two Gentlemen of Verona came first because it introduces
themes found in Shakespeare’s later plays — for example, a heroine
dressing like a man. Some scholars also judge Two Gentlemen as less well-
written than Shakespeare’s other works, and they suggest it’s first because
the writing reflects a lack of experience.

That said, like many aspects of Shakespeare’s life, no one

is completely certain about The Two Gentlemen of Verona being first.
Actually, Henry VI, Part 2 is called the first just as often, since it’s the
earliest play with an agreed-upon year of origin. And no, that’s not a typo
— Shakespeare wrote Part 2 of Henry VI in 1591 and followed it up with
Part III immediately afterward. Part 1 didn’t come until a year later, in
1592.

Shakespeare’s last play was The Two Noble Kinsmen.

He started with two gentlemen and ended with two kinsmen. Shakespeare
scholars are much more certain about this one — most agree that
Shakespeare wrote The Two Noble Kinsmen between 1613 and 1614, just
before his retirement and death. Based on a story from Geoffrey
Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the play sees the titular pair of friends
fight over who gets to marry the fair Princess Emilia.

Shakespeare’s most-produced play is A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

According to a 2016 report by Priceonomics, the most recent report on

the topic, A Midsummer Night’s Dream gets the most professional
performances nowadays. The website Shakespearances documented nearly
every professional Shakespeare production around the world from 2011 on,
and A Midsummer Night’s Dream accounted for more than 7% of all
Shakespeare performances. (Together, Parts 1 and 2 of Henry VI were the
least performed.)

Shakespeare wrote 160.5 sonnets.

When the plague closed all theatres from 1592-1594 and plays weren’t in
demand, Shakespeare picked up poetry as what we might call a quarantine
hobby. Even when he was able to continue his extensive playwriting,
Shakespeare found the time to write an equally extensive amount of
sonnets. His 154 standalone sonnets were published as one book in 1609
and deal with love, lust, misogyny, infidelity, and more.

The narrator — not necessarily Shakespeare himself — addresses most of

the poems to an unnamed young boy now called the “Fair Youth.” A few
poems are also addressed to the “Dark Lady,” a female love interest, or the
“Rival Poet.” The remaining six sonnets in Shakespeare’s canon are part of
his plays, such as the prologue in Romeo and Juliet. A partial sonnet
in Edward III rounds out the count.

Shakespeare invented 420 words.

His plays also contain the first recorded usage of about 1,700 words,
according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The extra 1,280 words were
likely already colloquialisms in Shakespeare’s day that he didn’t invent,
but happened to be the first to write down. We still use many of the 420 he
credibly did make up, like “bedroom,” “bump,” “dawn,” “excitement,”
“leapfrog,” “priceless,” and “zany.” LitCharts published a full list.

And how did Shakespeare “invent” words? He used nouns as verbs and
verbs as adjectives, he combined two words into one, and he added
prefixes and suffixes to words that never had them before.