William Shakespeare

Born

Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, The United Kingdom

Died

April 23, 1616

Website

http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/

Genre

Theatre, Classics, Poetry

Influences

Ovid, Homer, Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Lucius Annaeus Seneca ...more

edit data

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. Scholars believe that he died on his fifty-second birthday, coinciding with St George’s Day.

At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamn William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. Scholars believe that he died on his fifty-second birthday, coinciding with St George’s Day.

At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.

Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

According to historians, Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets throughout the span of his life. Shakespeare's writing average was 1.5 plays a year since he first started writing in 1589. There have been plays and sonnets attributed to Shakespeare that were not authentically written by the great master of language and literature.
...more

Combine Editions
William Shakespeare’s books

Average rating: 3.87 · 6,424,932 ratings · 120,531 reviews · 8,606 distinct works • Similar authors

	Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Paul Werstine (Editor), Barbara A. Mowat (Editor), Paavo Emil Cajander (Translator) 3.75 avg rating — 2,100,018 ratings — published 1595 — 5989 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hamlet 4.03 avg rating — 748,319 ratings — published 1603 — 5427 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Macbeth 3.91 avg rating — 690,699 ratings — published 1606 — 4552 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, Paul Werstine (Editor), Barbara A. Mowat (Editor), Catherine Belsey (Contributor) 3.95 avg rating — 450,527 ratings — published 1595 — 3952 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Othello 3.90 avg rating — 321,952 ratings — published 1603 — 2539 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat (Editor), Paul Werstine (Editor) 4.06 avg rating — 218,191 ratings — published 1598 — 2211 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	King Lear 3.91 avg rating — 184,738 ratings — published 1605 — 2220 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Tempest 3.81 avg rating — 176,079 ratings — published 1611 — 1529 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Twelfth Night 3.98 avg rating — 157,523 ratings — published 1601 — 2298 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Julius Caesar 3.69 avg rating — 172,664 ratings — published 1599 — 2854 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by William Shakespeare…

Series by William Shakespeare

Wars of the Roses (8 books)
by

William Shakespeare,

John D. Cox (Editor),

Eric Rasmussen (Goodreads Author) (Editor)

3.85 avg rating — 159,171 ratings

Shakespeare's Major Tetralogy (4 books)
by

William Shakespeare,

Barbara A. Mowat (Editor),

Paul Werstine (Editor),

Michael Neill (Essay)

3.84 avg rating — 100,647 ratings

Shakespeare's Minor Tetralogy (4 books)
by

William Shakespeare,

John Jowett (Editor)

3.86 avg rating — 58,524 ratings

Henry IV (2 books)
by

William Shakespeare

3.82 avg rating — 39,961 ratings

Henry VI (3 books)
by

William Shakespeare,

John D. Cox (Editor),

Eric Rasmussen (Goodreads Author) (Editor)

3.65 avg rating — 14,645 ratings

More series by William Shakespeare…

Related News

6 Great Books Hitting Shelves This Week

Need another excuse to treat yourself to new book this week? We've got you covered with the buzziest new releases of the day. To create our...

Quotes by William Shakespeare

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

tags: wisdom

43369 likes

“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
― William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well

tags: do-wrong, love, trust, wrong

35709 likes

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

tags: love

23300 likes

See all William Shakespeare's quotes »

Polls

Who is your favorite poet?

Edgar Allan Poe

37 votes, 9.8%

Emily Dickinson

31 votes, 8.2%

T. S. Eliot (write-in)

21 votes, 5.6%

William Shakespeare

19 votes, 5.0%

William Butler Yeats

18 votes, 4.8%

Robert Frost

18 votes, 4.8%

Sylvia Plath

16 votes, 4.2%

Percy Bysshe Shelley

12 votes, 3.2%

William Blake (write-in)

12 votes, 3.2%

Edna St. Vincent Millay

11 votes, 2.9%

Walt Whitman (write-in)

10 votes, 2.7%

Alfred Tennyson

9 votes, 2.4%

Robert frost (write-in)

9 votes, 2.4%

Jon Keats (write-in)

8 votes, 2.1%

Robert Burns

7 votes, 1.9%

Bob Dylan

7 votes, 1.9%

Franz Kafka (write-in)

7 votes, 1.9%

Christina Rossetti

7 votes, 1.9%

Edgar Allan Poe, Shelley, Shakespeare and Jim Morrison, also Alfred Noyes

7 votes, 1.9%

Seamus Heaney (write-in)

6 votes, 1.6%

Not sure yet (write-in)

6 votes, 1.6%

Charles Baudelaire (write-in)

5 votes, 1.3%

W. H. Auden (write-in)

5 votes, 1.3%

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

5 votes, 1.3%

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (write-in)

4 votes, 1.1%

I'm not a fan of poetry

4 votes, 1.1%

Jim Morrison (write-in)

4 votes, 1.1%

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (write-in)

3 votes, 0.8%

Tomas Tranströmer or Kahlil Gibran (write-in)

3 votes, 0.8%

Lord Byron (write-in)

3 votes, 0.8%

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (write-in)

3 votes, 0.8%

Carl Sandburg

3 votes, 0.8%

Paul Celan (write-in)

3 votes, 0.8%

George Sterling (write-in)

3 votes, 0.8%

Ivan Vazov (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

Matsuo Basho (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

Lang Leav (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

Wilfred Owen (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

Herman Hesse (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

Edward Lear (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

Mary Oliver (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

Anne Sexton

2 votes, 0.5%

Georg Trakl (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

Rachel Rooney (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

Andrew Hozier-Byrne (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

Clement Clarke Moore

2 votes, 0.5%

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

Sara Teasdale (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

juana de ibarbourou (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

A. S. Pushkin (write-in)

2 votes, 0.5%

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

John Keats and Giacomo Leopardi (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

San Juan de la Cruz (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

Arthur Rimbaud (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

Theodor Geisel (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

Philip Larkin (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

Big L (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

James Whitcomb Riley

1 vote, 0.3%

Robert Service (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

Robert Louis Stevenson

1 vote, 0.3%

Victor Hugo (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

Marin Sorescu (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

Idea Vilariño (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

Rabindera Nath Tagore (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

Hugo Claus (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

Dante Alighieri (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

Frank O'Hara (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

Sonya Sones (write-in)

1 vote, 0.3%

Stephen Vincent Benét

1 vote, 0.3%

Alfred Noyes

0 votes, 0.0%

W.B. Yeats (write-in)

0 votes, 0.0%

377 total votes

18 comments

More...

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
European Royalty: Dec. 1 - Jan. 1 - Nomination	12	87	Nov 15, 2008 07:32PM
YA Book Council: The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry	49	240	Nov 19, 2008 01:09AM
European Royalty: Dec. 1 - Jan. 1 - Voting	10	88	Nov 21, 2008 07:09AM
Romance and Paran...: Victoria Alexander	1	51	Nov 25, 2008 08:21AM
Romance and Paran...: Julia London	1	17	Dec 07, 2008 05:39PM
The Book Challenge: Samantha's 2008 Book Challenge	35	300	Dec 30, 2008 11:29PM