The Sonnets (The Pelican Shakespeare)

by William Shakespeare

it seems likely that the dramatist’s grandfather, Richard, moved to Snitterfield, a town not far from Stratford-upon-Avon, sometime before 1529. In Snitterfield, Richard Shakespeare leased farmland from the very wealthy Robert Arden. By 1552, Richard’s son John had moved to a large house on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, the house that stands today as “The Birthplace.”

Mary and John had four sons – William was the oldest – and four daughters, of whom only Joan outlived her most celebrated sibling.

William was baptized (an event entered in the Stratford parish church records) on April 26, 1564, and it has become customary, without any good factual support, to suppose he was born on April 23, which happens to be the feast day of Saint George, patron saint of England, and is also the date on which Shakespeare died, in 1616.

William Shakespeare’s last surviving direct descendant was his granddaughter Elizabeth Hall, who died in 1670.