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-The plays he wrote left his legacy and are why people remember him

-he was born in the United Kingdom on April 23 and also died that same day in 1616

-His partner was Anne Hathaway

-Together him and his wife had 3 kids Susanna, Judith, Hamnet

-He lived with his mom and dad till he was 18 years old

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William Shakespeare was a renowned English poet, playwright, and actor born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. His birthday is most commonly celebrated on 23 April (see When was Shakespeare born), which is also believed to be the date he died in 1616.

Shakespeare was a prolific writer during the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages of British theatre (sometimes called the English Renaissance or the Early Modern Period). Shakespeare's plays are perhaps his most enduring legacy, but they are not all he wrote. Shakespeare's poems also remain popular to this day.

Shakespeare's Family Life

Records survive relating to William Shakespeare's family that offer an understanding of the context of Shakespeare's early life and the lives of his family members. John Shakespeare married Mary Arden, and together they had eight children. John and Mary lost two daughters as infants, so William became their eldest child. John Shakespeare worked as a glove-maker, but he also became an important figure in the town of Stratford by fulfilling civic positions. His elevated status meant that he was even more likely to have sent his children, including William, to the local grammar school.

William Shakespeare would have lived with his family in their house on Henley Street until he turned eighteen. When he was eighteen, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who was twenty-six. It was a rushed marriage because Anne was already pregnant at the time of the ceremony. Together they had three children. Their first daughter, Susanna, was born six months after the wedding and was later followed by twins Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet died when he was just 11 years old.

Shakespeare in London

Shakespeare's career jump-started in London, but when did he go there? We know Shakespeare's twins were baptised in 1585, and that by 1592 his reputation was established in London, but the intervening years are considered a mystery. Scholars generally refer to these years as ' The Lost Years '.

During his time in London, Shakespeare's first printed works were published. They were two long poems, 'Venus and Adonis' (1593) and 'The Rape of Lucrece' (1594). He also became a founding member of The Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company of actors. Shakespeare was the company's regular dramatist, producing on average two plays a year, for almost twenty years.

He remained with the company for the rest of his career, during which time it evolved into The King's Men under the patronage of King James I (from 1603). During his time in the company Shakespeare wrote many of his most famous tragedies, such as King Lear and Macbeth, as well as great romances, like The Winter's Tale and The Tempest.

Shakespeare's Works

Altogether Shakespeare's works include 38 plays, 2 narrative poems, 154 sonnets, and a variety of other poems. No original manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays are known to exist today. It is actually thanks to a group of actors from Shakespeare's company that we have about half of the plays at all. They collected them for publication after Shakespeare died, preserving the plays. These writings were brought together in what is known as the First Folio ('Folio' refers to the size of the paper used). It contained 36 of his plays, but none of his poetry.

Shakespeare's legacy is as rich and diverse as his work; his plays have spawned countless adaptations across multiple genres and cultures. His plays have had an enduring presence on stage and film. His writings have been compiled in various iterations of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which include all of his plays, sonnets, and other poems. William Shakespeare continues to be one of the most important literary figures of the English language.

New Place; a home in Stratford-upon-Avon

Shakespeare's success in the London theatres made him considerably wealthy, and by 1597 he was able to purchase New Place,the largest house in the borough of Stratford-upon-Avon. Although his professional career was spent in London, he maintained close links with his native town.

Recent archaeological evidence discovered on the site of Shakespeare's New Place shows that Shakespeare was only ever an intermittent lodger in London. This suggests he divided his time between Stratford and London (a two or three-day commute). In his later years, he may have spent more time in Stratford-upon-Avon than scholars previously thought.

Watch our video for more about Shakespeare as a literary commuter:

On his father's death in 1601, William Shakespeare inherited the old family home in Henley Street part of which was then leased to tenants. Further property investments in Stratford followed, including the purchase of 107 acres of land in 1602.

Shakespeare died in Stratford-upon-Avon on 23 April 1616 at the age of 52. He is buried in the sanctuary of the parish church, Holy Trinity.

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William Shakespeare was a renowned English poet, playwright, and actor born in 1564. Read about his life and works.

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-The clothes she wore were extravagant and elegant

- The time she was alive 1558-1603 was called the GOLDEN AGE, a time of peace and prosperity

- She was never married to anyone

- Her goal was to create a stable peaceful way by putting an end to direct religious persecution

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Elizabethan Age, in British history, the time period (1558-1603) during which Queen Elizabeth I ruled England. Popularly referred to as a "golden age," it was a span of time characterized by relative peace and prosperity and by a flowering of artistic, literary, and intellectual culture to such a degree that it (along with the succeeding reign of James I) is sometimes designated as the "English Renaissance."

Religious conflict and social relations

The Elizabethan Age began with Elizabeth Tudor's accession to the throne, in 1558, and her institution of the Elizabethan religious Settlement (effected with the Act of Supremacy and Act of Uniformity) in 1559. In the decades since her father, Henry VIII, had broken with the Roman Catholic Church, conflicts between Protestants and Catholics created chaos in England. The attempt by Elizabeth's predecessor, Mary I, to return England to Catholicism intensified this conflict. Elizabeth's goal was to create a stable peaceful situation by ending direct religious persecution. She would be the "supreme head" of a state church, the Church of England, but (partly because England wished to maintain good relations with powerful Catholic countries, particularly Spain) Catholics would not be targets of state violence. Moreover, they would have some amount of religious freedom. Nonetheless, failure to attend Sunday service in an Anglican church was to be fined by the government under the Act of Uniformity, which would stoke resentment and dissent.

This relatively tolerant attitude toward Catholicism eroded significantly in the ensuing years. At that time, there was no division in Europe between spiritual and governmental authority, and merely being Protestant or Catholic was often taken to be a form of political action. There were several organized attempts by Catholics to undermine, overthrow, or assassinate Elizabeth, explicitly in order to return England to the Catholic church. Pope St. Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570, declaring that her subjects owed her no loyalty and fueling plots against her. Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth's Catholic cousin, was eventually executed for conspiring to unseat Elizabeth. In the mid-1580s, war broke out between Protestant England and Catholic Spain, during which the Spanish Armada suffered destruction (1588). Even after the war ended in 1604, Spain supported attempts by Irish Catholic groups to undermine English power in Ireland.

Throughout this period, Catholics in England were increasingly persecuted. Persuading someone to convert to Catholicism was declared an act of treason (and was therefore an executable offense), as was questioning the legitimacy of Elizabeth's position as queen. About the time that war broke out with Spain, Catholic priests were expelled from England, and any who remained or returned there were subject to execution. Nonetheless, compared with the upheaval of England under Henry VIII and Mary I, and the tumultuous decades following Elizabeth's reign, the Elizabethan Age was a time of calm. The population rose from about three million to more than four million, and urbanization accelerated significantly. Educational levels improved rapidly, in part because of the Protestant emphasis on being able to read and interpret the Bible for oneself.

There was increasing ethnic diversity in London, including the emergence of small Jewish and Black populations. The middle class also expanded during Elizabeth's reign, driven by mercantilism and trade. This presented something of a challenge to the traditional medieval view of the world as a strict hierarchy put in place by God. In this worldview, called the Great Chain of Being, a ruler was put on earth to rule the people by divine right, and each social class and profession was arranged below the monarch in a linear order. One manifestation of this worldview was the preponderance of sumptuary laws, which dictated the food, drink, and dress allowed to people of various classes and professions.

Artistic achievements

The main reason that Elizabeth's rule is sometimes called the English Renaissance was the innovative, creative, and enduring artistic achievements of the age. Elizabeth herself had a reputation as a lover of the arts, especially music and theatre, and patronage from her and members of her court was the foundation of many English writers' careers. The most famous of these writers is of course playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Other writers who rose to prominence under Elizabeth included Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, Roger Ascham, Richard Hooker, John Lyly, and Edmund Spenser. During Elizabeth's time there were also significant developments in music, including compositions for the Anglican church by Thomas Tallis and William Byrd (both of whom were Catholic), and in architecture, notably the rise of "prodigy houses" (large ostentatious homes built by the newly "landed" nobility) in rural regions of England, the most influential of which were designed by Robert Smythson.

Artistic creations at this time were considered to be political. Writers had a duty to honour and glorify the queen, and failing to do so could damage their standing or even provoke a backlash. Thus, Elizabethan artists contributed through their work to the "cult of Gloriana," the cult of personality that Elizabeth constructed around herself. Symbolically invoking the Virgin Mary and old Catholic practices, Elizabeth's image was disseminated among her subjects through miniature portraits, and she herself appeared in full regalia on yearly progresses around the kingdom. Official propaganda presented her as the God-anointed protector of England.

Exploration and the slave trade

Elizabeth's reign is also considered a golden age of English exploration. English sailors traveled around the world (often serving as privateers, or state-funded pirates), searching for treasure and claiming lands new to them. In 1583 Newfoundland was claimed for England by Humphrey Gilbert, and in 1584 Walter Raleigh took the first steps toward founding the ill-fated Roanoke colony. The most famous English explorer and privateer of the age was Francis Drake, who became in 1580 the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe (for which the queen knighted him on the deck of his ship several months after he returned to England).

Another Elizabethan subject, John Hawkins was one of the first Englishmen to transport enslaved people from Africa to the Americas. Hawkins was effectively a forerunner of the so-called triangular trade of the colonial age, as he shipped goods from Europe to western Africa, where he traded them for enslaved people, whom he shipped to the Americas and sold for a variety of goods from Spanish colonies, which he then shipped to Europe. Queen Elizabeth cosponsored some of his voyages.

The Elizabethan Age ended with the burial of the queen on April 28, 1603, roughly a month after her death. She was succeeded by her cousin James I.

Rebecca M. Kulik

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Elizabethan Age | Definition, Facts, In England, & Literature

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Elizabethan Age, in British history, the time period (1558-1603) during which Queen Elizabeth I ruled England. Popularly referred to as a "golden age," it was a span of time characterized by relative peace and prosperity and by a flowering of artistic, literary, and intellectual culture to such a

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William Shakespeare's "rich, juicy" vocabulary

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- One of his famous lines was (We have seen better days)

-He has plays named after his kids

-Even though his work is from 400 years ago we still use it to this day

- Sometimes people quote Shakespeare without knowing it cause his vocab is used so much

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Even though William Shakespeare wrote over 400 years ago, we continue to use words and phrases found in his sonnets and plays today. You could be quoting Shakespeare without knowing it! Read on to learn more phrases that we attribute to Shakespeare's plays.

Shakespeare's Phrases

The clothes make the man
People are judged by the way they dress
Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 3

In my heart of hearts
In my most inner, true thoughts and feelings
Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 2

He hath eaten me out of house and home
He ate so much there was nothing left
Henry IV Part 2, Act 2 Scene 1

A dish fit for the Gods
A high-quality meal
Julius Caesar, Act 2 Scene 1

Sterner stuff
Strong; capable of overcoming trials
Julius Caesar, Act 3 Scene 2

Jealousy is the green-eyed monster
Envy is so strong it makes one sick
Othello, Act 3 Scene 3

Something wicked this way comes
A person so evil, he or she is not human
Macbeth, Act 4 Scene 1

Star-crossed lovers
Lovers doomed by outside forces
Romeo and Juliet, Prologue

Wild-goose chase
A hopeless search for something unattainable
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2 Scene 4

Melted into thin air
To disappear suddenly, leaving no traces
The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1

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Even though William Shakespeare wrote over 400 years ago, we continue to use words and phrases found in his sonnets and plays today. You could be quoting Shakespeare without knowing it! Read on to learn more phrases that we attribute to Shakespeare's plays.

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Elizabeth I (1558 - 1603) - 10 Minute History

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it has no roof over the central yard

the queen actively sponsored artists and playwrights

The theater witnessed the first professional actors

it led to pertinent acting companies

It was build at the time of Elizabeth 1st of Englnad (1558-1603)

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Elizabethan Theatre, sometimes called English Renaissance theatre, refers to that style of performance plays which blossomed during the reign of Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603) and which continued under her Stuart successors. Elizabethan theatre witnessed the first professional actors who belonged to touring troupes and who performed plays of blank verse with entertaining non-religious themes.

The first purpose-built permanent theatre was established in London in 1576 and others quickly followed so that drama simply to entertain became a booming industry. Theatres showing plays daily led to permanent acting companies which did not have to tour and so could invest more time and money into wowing their audience of both sexes and all social classes. The most celebrated playwright of the period was William Shakespeare (1564-1616) whose works were performed at the famous Globe Theatre in London and covered such diverse themes as history, romance, revenge, murder, comedy and tragedy.

Elizabeth I & the Arts

The Elizabethan age saw a boom in the arts in general but it was the performance arts that perhaps made the most lasting contribution to English and even world culture. The queen was herself an admirer of plays, performances, and spectacles which were frequently held at her royal residences. Elizabeth carefully managed her image as the Virgin Queen who had sacrificed her personal life to better concentrate on the good of her people. Theatre was, therefore, just one of the media she used to project her own glory and that of her family, the Tudors. The queen actively sponsored artists and playwrights.

Naturally, the Elizabethans did not invent theatre as plays have been performed ever since their invention by the ancient Greeks of the 6th century BCE. Medieval England had witnessed the performance of morality plays and mystery plays, there were even dramas performed by actors during religious ceremonies and holidays. There were also Masques, a type of mime where masked performers sang, danced, and recited poetry, wearing extravagant costumes, and stood before painted scenery. Finally, towns across England had long funded public shows, which involved musicians, acrobats, and jesters, and these continued even as theatre became popular.

The Elizabethan period saw these public performers become a professional body of entertainers. The first professional troupes of actors were sponsored by the queen, nobles, and anyone else who had the money for such entertainments. Plays were performed which, perhaps thanks to the English Reformation, were now entirely free from religious themes and not connected to public holidays or religious festivals. Secular plays presented a new challenge, though, and the influence of popular art on politics and public minds was recognised by Elizabeth, who banned performances of unlicensed plays in 1559. In the 1570s, religious play cycles were also banned. The royal control of theatre continued in 1572 when only nobles were permitted to sponsor professional acting troupes. From 1574 all troupes had to be licensed, too.

Even the most popular plays were only performed a handful of times each year as theatres strived to entertain regular theatre-goers.

The move away from divisive religious topics had led writers to explore other themes, and their imaginations knew no bounds. Historical topics were especially popular with the new playwrights in a period when a sense of English nationalism was developing as never before. This combined with a Humanist interest in Greek and Roman antiquity. Royal patronage of theatre would continue during the reign of Elizabeth's successor, James I of England (r. 1603-1625) who funded three professional actor companies (aka playing companies).

Professional Actors & Theatres

The first professionally licensed troupe of actors belonged to Elizabeth's court favourite Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (l. c. 1532-1588). Called 'Leicester's Men' they gained their license in 1574 and toured the country's stately homes giving performances. Naturally, actors needed a suitable stage on which to impress and so the first purpose-built theatres soon arrived. In 1576 London received its very first purpose-built and permanent playhouse, founded by James Burbage (c. 1530-1597), himself an actor, and simply known as the Theatre (although there were earlier adapted buildings with temporary scaffolding such as the 1567 Red Lion). Located on Holywell Street in Shoreditch, the Theatre was a wooden enclosed building with no roof in the centre, and it welcomed audiences of both courtiers and commoners. The Theatre was such a success that other theatres were built, starting with the Curtain. Burbage opened a second theatre in London, Blackfriars Theatre, by converting a disused Dominican monastery. There was also the Rose (1587) and the Swan (1595) as the theatre business positively boomed and Elizabeth's encouragement of her nobles to stay at court and have residences at the capital guaranteed a ready audience. Other towns soon followed the fashion and acquired theatres, too; early adopters being Bath, Bristol, Norwich, and York. By the time of the Stuart kings, many theatres were offering a performance of a different play every day, typically in the afternoons, to a knowledgeable audience of men and women expecting to see novel entertainment. Even the most popular plays were only performed a handful of times each year as theatres strived to entertain regular theatre-goers.

Further, as theatres developed so actors and playwrights were freed from the obligations and restrictions that sponsorship by nobles brought. It was the Theatre, though, which was to become world-famous, especially after 1599 when it was relocated to the south bank of the River Thames and given a new name: the Globe Theatre.

The Globe Theatre opened for business in 1599 and was owned by Burbage's sons and some members of the professional acting company known as Chamberlains' Men. One of these investors was William Shakespeare, and he and other actors and playwrights shared half of the profits from the theatre while the other half went to pay secondary actors, musicians, costumes, and maintenance costs. Crucially, then, the establishment of theatres meant that previously travelling actors could now form a more solid financial base which allowed them to produce more plays and give them a much higher production value. Theatre companies could boast twelve or more permanent main actors and a number of bit-part players, boys and apprentices. Also on the staff were musicians, writers, artists, and copyists.

In 1592 William Shakespeare joined Chamberlain's Men & became an important member of the Globe Theatre's Permanent staff.

The Globe Theatre was made of wood, more or less circular in form, and open to the skies in the centre. Rising to a height of 12 metres (40 ft.) and measuring 24 metres (80 ft.) across, inside were three tiers of seating providing a capacity of around 2,000. The theatre got its name from the globe on its roof, which carried the legend in Latin of Shakespeare's famous line 'All the world's a stage.' The Globe's own stage was rectangular, measured some 12 metres in length and was protected by a thatch roof. Around 12 actors could perform on the stage at any one time. Behind the stage was a gallery which could seat more viewers or be used as an important part of the play (e.g. Juliet's balcony in Romeo and Juliet). The audience could be surprised by such technical tricks as lowering actors on wires or having them appear or disappear through a trapdoor in the stage floor.

In the second half of the 17th century, some important developments arrived. Women played women parts (previously boys had done this) and large flat painted scenes, often with perspective incorporated into them, were moved on sliding rails on and off stage. Another change was that now plays had extended runs with the same performance being repeated each day, a development that actors with short memories must have greatly welcomed. The pattern of performance plays was set and would remain in place right up to the present day.

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare has become one of the most celebrated authors in any language. Born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, it was not until 1592 that William became known in theatre circles. Two years later he joined Chamberlain's Men and then, as mentioned above, became an important member of the Globe Theatre's permanent staff, a position he held throughout his writing career. William produced on average two plays every year, writing 37 in all. The dating of Shakespeare's works is problematic as none have surviving original manuscripts and so historians have looked to their content and other documentary evidence. The plays are usually divided into four groups and illustrate the broad scope of Elizabethan theatre in general. These categories are: comedies, romances, histories, and tragedies. The works, like many plays of the period, combine wordplay and in-joke references to contemporary politics with tales of love, dark deeds of revenge and murder, historical events, historical fiction, and a big dollop of jingoism.

Shakespeare's first play is usually cited as Henry VI Part I, written around 1589. His most popular plays include A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1596) which revolves around the wedding of the Greek hero Theseus and the Amazon Hippolyte, Henry V (1599) which includes a fictionalised version of that king's rousing speech at the Battle of Agincourt of 1415, Hamlet (c. 1601) which tells the revenge of the Danish prince of that name against his evil uncle, and (1606), titled after the Scottish king who descends into madness after embarking on a rampage of murder.

Other Playwrights & Actors

Under the Stuart kings, it became fashionable and profitable to print the scripts of plays, even if they were always originally written with performance in mind. Some 800 play scripts survive from the 16th and 17th century, although this is only a small proportion of those produced at the time. After Shakespeare, the next most celebrated Elizabethan playwright is Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593). In 1587 his first play was performed, Tamburlaine the Great. The play was a smash hit and told the epic tale of Timur, the founder of the Timurid Empire in central Asia (1370-1507). Other successes followed such as The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage but, like many playwrights and poets of the period, Marlowe was prone to drinking bouts, and it was a brawl in a tavern that ended in his death. As Marlowe also worked as a spy for the government, some have speculated that his death was actually an assassination.

The third great playwright of the period was Ben Jonson (1572-1637). Escaping an early career path as an apprentice bricklayer, Jonson's first play, Isle of Dogs (1597), was successful but got him into trouble with the authorities who regarded it as inciting rebellion. After a short term in prison, Jonson soon found himself back in confinement after he killed an actor in an argument. Out for a second time, Jonson concentrated on what he was good at and wrote a string of hit plays, many of which were performed at the Globe Theatre. Jonson's other works included poetry, masques, and a huge body of literary criticism.

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Accomplished actors, of course, made a name for themselves in the new genre. One famous figure was the comic actor Richard Tarlton (d. 1588) who was also a court jester who made Elizabeth I titter until his jokes went too far and ridiculed some of her noble favourites. Multi-talented, Tarlton co-founded the Queen's Men company and wrote many successful plays, his most popular being Seven Deadly Sins (1585). Tarlton's most famous character was a little Chaplinesque: a small man with baggy trousers and carrying a large stick.

Challenges & Legacy

The new theatre was not without its critics. Puritans, who were ever-more prominent in Elizabethan society from the 1590s, objected to such frivolous entertainments as plays. They considered their subject matter - especially plots with vengeance, murder, and romance - unsuitable for commoners and likely to corrupt their minds, much like some modern critics of violent cinema proclaim. In addition, Puritans thought of theatres as wholly undesirable places where only the idle, immoral, and criminal elements of society gathered.

Local residents were often not happy to have a theatre in their neighbourhood because of the noise and low class-associations with such a venue; this was one of the reasons why the Theatre was moved to become the Globe Theatre. Even some business owners deplored the theatres as their employees went to watch the plays which were usually held during the daytime and so working hours. This concern led to petitions being sent to mayors who then lobbied Members of Parliament to restrict the theatre performances. It also explains why the early theatres were built in city suburbs away from the direct jurisdiction of the mayors. Drama was very cheap (starting at 1 penny a ticket, about $1 today) and very popular, though, and so very difficult to repress even when the Puritans gained prominence in the mid-17th century and temporarily closed all places of public meeting from 1642. In 1660, with the return of the monarchists, theatres opened up again and acting companies were immediately reformed.

Another challenge was public health. When a new wave of the Black Death plague hit London in 1592, all theatres were closed for a year. Many mayors sought to avoid public gatherings and even paid acting companies not to perform if a new outbreak of plague was present. Theatres, being wooden structures, were also susceptible to devastating fires. The Globe Theatre, for example, had to be rebuilt in 1614 when a cannon shot fired during a performance for dramatic effect set fire to the thatch roof.

Despite the threats, Elizabethan theatre seems to have quickly established itself as an important and lasting part of England's popular and literary culture. As early as 1623, for example, 36 of William Shakespeare's plays were collected together in print in the First Folio. More editions would be printed throughout the 17th century and a first properly edited collection was published in 1709. Shakespeare continues to be read across the world, of course, and his works continue to interest modern filmmakers. As fellow author Ben Johnson noted in his preface to First Folio, the star of Elizabethan theatre was "not of an age, but for all time" (Wagner, 275).

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Elizabethan theatre, sometimes called English Renaissance theatre, refers to that style of performance plays which blossomed during the reign of Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603) and which continued...