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Watch and take notes over this short video.

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William Shakespeare - Playwright | Mini Bio | BIO

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Short Biography of William Shakespeare timeline.

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Short Biography of William Shakespeare, a timeline made with Timetoast's free interactive timeline making software.

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FifteenEightyFour | Cambridge University Press

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Here's to Shakespeare!

After another season of bardolatry, in this blog post, Ewan Fernie explains why Shakespeare matters today - and it might not be for the reasons you think...

Ewan Fernie is author ofShakespeare for Freedom.

We celebrated him in 2012, when a Shakespeare festival was contrived to coincide with the Olympics. We feted him again in 2014, on the 450 th anniversary of his birth. And then in 2016, on the 400 th anniversary of his death, we made the biggest festive fuss of all. Now from any objective point of view, such massive, repeated investment in a long-dead Warwickshire poet-playwright is to say the least remarkable, and even more remarkable during the epoch of swingeing cuts that has followed the financial crash of 2008.

But it was all premised on the biggest cultural truism there is-that Shakespeare matters. He matters more than any other writer, and as much as any other artist. And if we don't celebrate him, then what is there to celebrate, right?

So, here's to Shakespeare!

Now I don't want to be a party pooper but, sometime after 2012, after another round of raised glasses to a lad unparalleled, I couldn't help myself from wondering. I mean, what did I think I was doing? Why does Shakespeare matter? Surely we need to know in order to justify such extraordinary, continuing jubilation? Hasn't he had his turn? Couldn't we- shouldn't we -be celebrating something or someone else, not to mention fighting more urgently and directly to stave off, ameliorate or even resolve the many social and political issues facing us now?

Of course, much of it was harmless fun, and that's not nothing, even in dark times. And there are readily available reasons for celebrating Shakespeare. Here's one for straitened circumstances: Shakespeare makes money. Another is that Shakespeare's still here, in spite of the grave: that appeals more as you get older. And then, Shakespeare is ours. Unless you work in Stratford, that's perhaps harder to own up to; but let no-one underestimate it after Brexit. And the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, and the rebranding of Shakespeare as a world-playwright ('Global Shakespeare'), suggest we can have it both ways: Shakespeare is our gift to the world.

But these are circumstantial, even circular reasons. Shakespeare matters because he matters, as a commodity or symbol. They also seem cynically self-serving, and as such symptomatic of what's wrong with our present culture. They certainly don't tell us why Shakespeare matters in himself. For that we have to go back to the plays.

A few years ago, I was watching a performance of Antony and Cleopatra in Stratford, and I was gobsmacked by it. I'd seen it before of course-it's part of the job-but what moved me this time was just how singularly and completely alive Antony is. Middle-aged man; besotted adulterer; public failure: he doesn't, perhaps, seem the most auspicious avatar for Shakespearean freedom. But he and Cleopatra dress him up as exactly that, as 'a most sovereign creature', the font and fount of creativity itself, his reared arm cresting the world, his delights-dolphin-like-showing his back above the element in which he lives...

That epiphany of the poetry of freedom in Shakespeare was a crucial inspiration for my new book, Shakespeare for Freedom: Why the Plays Matter. As I worked on it, the plays helped me to see into the deep and complex ways in which freedom enhances and gives value to our lives. But I also became fascinated by the fact that Shakespeare relates his great tragedy of crash-and-burn free love, Romeo and Juliet, to a fleeting glimpse of 'Freetown' as a place of 'common' social resolution. Freedom also matters politically. I was excited to discover that Shakespeare has played a part in progressive freedom movements around the world and across the centuries. 'Workers need poetry more than bread,' writes Simone Weil. 'They need that their life should be a poem.' I suggest, in my book, that Shakespeare's plays are a dramatic poem of freedom, and not just for their heroes, but for all of us.

And that, I conclude, is why they matter.

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Why Shakespeare's Plays Matter | FifteenEightyFour | Cambridge University Press

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We celebrated him in 2012, when a Shakespeare festival was contrived to coincide with the Olympics. We feted him again in 2014, on the 450th anniversary of his birth. And then in 2016, on the 400th anniversary of his death, we made the biggest festive fuss of all.

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Day 2 - The most influential writer in history

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Day 2 - The most influential writer in history

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A short William Shakespeare biography describes William Shakespeare's life, times, and work. Also explains the historical and literary context that influenced Henry IV, Part 1.

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Why Shakespeare loved iambic pentameter - David T. Freeman and Gregory Taylor

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2. "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

-Hamlet in Hamlet

3. "From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:

They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;

They are the books, the arts, the academes,

That show, contain, and nourish all the world."

-Berowne in Love's Labor's Lost

4. "The wheel is come full circle: I am here."

-Edmund in King Lear

5. "All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts."

-Jaques in As You Like It

6. "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall."

-Escalus in Measure for Measure

7. "I burn, I pine, I perish."

-Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew

9. "This above all: to thine ownself be true.

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man."

-Polonius in Hamlet

10. "Come, let's away to prison;

We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:

When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,

And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh

At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of court news."

-Lear in King Lear

11. "They have been at a great feast of languages, and stol'n the scraps."

-Moth in Love's Labor's Lost

12. "I would give all my fame for a pot of ale, and safety."

-Boy in Henry V

13. "For your brother and my sister no sooner

met, but they looked; no sooner looked, but they

loved; no sooner loved, but they sighed; no sooner

sighed, but they asked one another the reason; no

sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy."

-Rosalind in As You Like It

15. "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

-Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream

16. "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever;

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

To one thing constant never."

-Balthazar in Much Ado About Nothing

17. "I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?"

-Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing

18. "Men at some time are masters of their fates:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

-Cassius in Julius Caesar

19. "Action is eloquence."

-Volumnia in Coriolanus

20. "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing."

-Macbeth in Macbeth

22. "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."

-Malvolio in Twelfth Night

23. "Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day."

-Macbeth in Macbeth

24. "Have more than thou showest,

Speak less than thou knowest,

Lend less than thou owest,

Ride more than thou goest,

Learn more than thou trowest,

Set less than thou throwest."

-The Fool in King Lear

25. "Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting."

-Dauphin in Henry V

26. "Our doubts are traitors,

And make us lose the good we oft might win,

By fearing to attempt."

-Lucio in Measure for Measure

28. "The miserable have no other medicine, but only hope."

-Claudio in Measure for Measure

29. "Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides:

Who cover faults, at last shame them derides."

-Cordelia in King Lear

30. "Swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,

That monthly changes in her circled orb,

Lest that thy love prove likewise variable."

-Juliet in Romeo and Juliet

31. "The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly."

-Touchstone in As You Like It

32. "The robb'd that smiles, steals something from the thief."

-Duke of Venice in Othello

33. "But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

-from "Sonnet 8"

34. "Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice."

-Polonius in Hamlet

A historical note: While William Shakespeare's actual date of birth is unclear, we know that he was baptized on April 26, 1564. As baptisms took place a few days after a child's birth, historians believe that Shakespeare was born on April 23rd. Interestingly, April 23 is also the date of his death.

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34 Of The Most Brilliant Shakespeare Quotes

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2. "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." -Hamlet in Hamlet 3. "From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish all the world." -Berowne in Love's Labor's Lost 4.

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Day 2 - exploring Shakespeare's favorite Poem. 

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Day 2 - exploring Shakespeare's favorite Poem. 

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Background information on the Life and Times of William Shakespeare Learn with flashcards, games, and more - for free.