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William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist.

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He was born around April 23, 1564, into an England ruled by Queen Elizabeth I and after Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church was well established. This was a time of growing wealth and confidence and a period of creativity and novelty in art, literature and social mores.

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He was born and grew up in the small market town of Stratford-upon-Avon in south-central England.

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William went to the local grammar school, where he learnt Latin and read the classic Greek and Roman writers who along with writers of the Italian Renaissance were to provide the story-lines for many of his plays.

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At eighteen his teenage romance with an older woman, the 26 year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant at the time, led to the equivalent of a shotgun wedding: to avoid scandal it was important for the wedding to take place before signs of the pregnancy became too obvious.

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Their first daughter, Susanne, was born just six months after their hasty marriage. Two years later Anne gave birth to twins, Judith and Hamnet, who died when he was just eleven.

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Anne and her family were the tenants of a farmhouse in Shottery. Anne’s father was a  well-respected member of the Shottery community. Upon his death he left Anne, who was also known as Agnes, a small sum of money with which she could marry.

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In 1584 Shakespeare left Stratford, probably because he had been caught deer-hunting, and he moved to London , where he first experienced the playhouse: he entered in an acting company as an actor, but thanks to his intelligence he stood out as a playwright.

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In 1593 the London theatres were closed because of the plague and Shakespeare needed the support of a private patron. He received it from a young nobleman,the Earl of Southampton, to whom he dedicated his poems.

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When theatres re-opened, he and a group of fellow actors began to work as a company under the name of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, so called because their patron was Lord Chamberlain, an important person at Queen Elizabeth's court, which quickly became the leading theatrical company in London.

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In 1603, shortly after the ascension to the throne of James I following the death of Elizabeth, the company received a royal patent and changed their name to the King’s Men. A royal patent was a licence to perform plays, which limited the number of companies and allowed greater control over the content of the performances.

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In 1599 several members of the theatre company, including it would seem Shakespeare, formed a company to build a new theatre on the south bank of the Thames, which was called The Globe. This became the preferred venue for Shakespeare’s plays and its popularity added to Shakespeare’s growing wealth.

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During his career, he put 10 comedies onto stage, varying from farce to romance. The great tragedies were published between 1595 and 1605.

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The last part of his life was spent in Stratford. He died in 1616, when he was 52 years old , and he was buried in the local church. Seven years after his death, his friends published the "First Folio", an edition of 36 of his plays in one volume.

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Shakespeare wrote 37 plays (though some experts think it may have been more). He wrote three different types of plays:

Histories - about the lives of kings and famous figures from history

Comedies - which end with a marriage

Tragedies - which end with the death of the main character

Shakespeare also wrote plenty of poetry and in 1609 published a book of 154 sonnets.

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He had an incredible influence on the English language and invented hundreds of words, such as:

amazement

bedroom

champion

dawn

eyeball

fashionable

gossip

unreal