He wrote 154 sonnets mostly in the 1590s. These short poems, deal with issues such as lost love. His sonnets are successful due to his formidable skill with language and words.

The plays of Shakespeare have been studied more than any other writing in the English language and have been translated into numerous languages. He wrote tragedies, comedies and histories. He combined popular entertainment with an extraordinary poetic capacity for expression 

Shakespeare died in 1616; it is not clear how he died, and there are different possibilities.

In 1616, there was an outbreak of typhus (“The new fever”) which may have been the cause. The average life expectancy of someone born in London, England in the Sixteenth Century was about 35 years old, Shakespeare died age 52.