William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, the third child of John Shakespeare, a glove-maker and local alderman, and Mary Arden, the daughter of a well-off farmer. He likely attended the King's New School in Stratford, where he would have focused on Latin rhetoric and classical literature — the foundational elements he would later reshape into his unique style.
At eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years older and already pregnant with their first child, Susanna. They later welcomed twins, Hamnet and Judith, in 1585. In the late 1580s, Shakespeare moved to London, and by the early 1590s, he was writing plays and gaining enough recognition to draw a jealous comment from rival playwright Robert Greene, who referred to him as an "upstart crow." The insult lingered, but it didn’t hinder his career.
“Shakespeare became a shareholder in the Globe Theatre when it opened in 1599, giving him a financial interest in attracting audiences — likely honing his understanding of what viewers enjoy.”
He wrote in every genre recognized by the Elizabethan stage: histories, comedies, tragedies, and the late romances that don’t easily fit into any category.
In addition to his plays, he published two long narrative poems — *Venus and Adonis* and *The Rape of Lucrece* — in the early 1590s, with his collection of 154 sonnets appearing in 1609, although many of them had probably been shared in manuscript form for years. The sonnets are directed at two figures that scholars have never conclusively identified: a beautiful young man of privilege and a "dark lady" with whom the speaker shares a complex relationship filled with desire, jealousy, and self-reproach.
