He was an English poet, playwright, and actor considered the greatest writer in English literature. 

 

At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children.
Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, which has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, and religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

His works consist of 38 plays ,154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. 

 

Many of his plays were published during his lifetime.
But, in 1623,John Heminges and Henry Condell, two friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.