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William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and also an actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the “Bard of Avon”.

His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. They also continue to be studied and reassessed.

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He was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway and had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith.

At age 49, around 1613, he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later.

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The Lord Chamberlain’s Men and later The King’s Men was the name of the company of actors with which Shakespeare worked for almost all of his theatrical career, as actor, dramatist and theatre manager.

It was founded sometime in the 1560s by the players’ first sponsor, Henry Carey, the 1st Lord Hunsdon. At first he called the company Hunsdon’s Men but he changed it when he became the Lord Chamberlain in 1858.

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The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare.

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It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, on land owned by Thomas Brend and inherited by his son, Nicholas Brend and grandson Sir Matthew Brend, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613.

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Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613.

His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres.

He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language.

In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy in his lifetime.

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However, in 1623, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that included all but two of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".

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Twelfth Night: Act 2, Scene 2 | Shakespeare's Globe 

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Filled with a cast of unforgettable characters, Twelfth Night is a moving comedy of loss and misplaced love and includes some of the most exquisite songs Shakespeare ever wrote.

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She took the ring of me | Twelfth Night (2012) | Act 2 Scene 2 | Shakespeare's Globe

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1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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?

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Hope you enjoy it! Thank you and stay safe always! 