Facts About Shakespeare
Facts About William Shakespeare
Born: Stratford-upon-Avon, about 23 April 1564
Baptized: 26 April 1564
Died: Stratford-upon-Avon, about 23 April 1616
Parents: John and Mary Shakespeare
Brothers and sisters:
Joan, born 1558, died before 1569
Margaret, born 1562, died 1563 (aged 5 months)
William, born 1564, died 1616
Gilbert, born 1566, haberdasher, died 16121
Joan, born 1569, married William Hart, died 1646
Anne, born 1571, died 1579
Richard, born 1574, occupation unknown, died 1613
Edmund, born 1580,
player,died 1607, buried in Southwark Cathedral
Religion: Church of England, although his parents may have retained their Catholic beliefs
Schooling: Unknown. Records for the local grammar school at Stratford are lost, but as the son
of an alderman, William would likely have gone to the parish grammar school, King
Edward’s School
Marriage: To Anne Hathaway (age 26) when he was age 18, in 1582
Children: Susannah, born in 1583; Hamnet and Judith (twins), born in 1585. Hamnet died at age
11. Susannah and Judith survived their father.
First mention as playwright: Robert Greene published a complaint about Shakespeare in 1592
First official document connecting Shakespeare with the theatre: an entry in the Declared Accounts of the Treasurer of the Royal Chamber, dated 15
March 1595
First published play: Henry the Sixth, Part Two, in 1594
Total plays published in his lifetime: Eighteen, all in small books called quartos
Total number of plays by Shakespeare: 39, some in collaboration with other authors
Largest set of plays published: 36 of Shakespeare’s collected plays were published in 1623, seven years after his
death by his colleagues from The King’s Men in a volume now known as
The First Folio
Surviving copies of the First Folio: About 235 (out of about 750 printed)
Published poems: Venus and Adonis (1596), The Rape of Lucrece (1597), Sonnets (1609)
Direct Descendants: None. His granddaughter died without issue in 1670. Descendants of his nieces and
nephews do exist.
Shakespeare’s Biography?
Para1Beyond the tributes to Shakespeare in the First Folio, little contemporary biography
exists. Most of what scholars now accept as fact about Shakespeare is not based on
accounts recorded during his lifetime, but rather on a careful examination of surviving
literary, family, property, and legal records. Plays were not respected as literature
during Shakespeare’s time and so biographical details of playwrights were seldom recorded.
Para2Over the past 350 years, lovers of Shakespeare’s plays and scholars have extensively
researched his personal and family life and his theatrical career. The most current
and comprehensive site that reports all the factual information is Shakespeare Documented, created by Heather Wolfe and a team at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2016, in
partnership with the many libraries and archives that hold materials documenting Shakespeare’s
life and work.
Para3With the exception of Ben Jonson, scholars know more about Shakespeare than about
any other dramatist of the period. Jonson wrote a tribute poem about Shakespeare,
and Shakespeare is known to have acted in some of his plays. Other authors of the
period acknowledge William Shakespeare as a skilled playwright.
Para4Scholarly consensus agrees that the William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon born
in 1564 is the author of the plays attributed to him, although some people theorize
on scant evidence that other individuals wrote the works published under Shakespeare’s
name.
Key Print Sources
Ackroyd, Peter. Shakespeare: The Biography. Anchor Books, 2005.
Duncan-Jones, Katherine. Shakespeare: An Ungentle Life. Arden Shakespeare, 2010.
Orlin, Lena Cowen. The Private Life of William Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2021.
Potter, Lois. William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Key Online Sources
Best, Michael.
Facts and Legends.Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, 4 Jan. 2011. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/childhood/lifefacts.html. Accessed 10 Feb. 2026.
Dickson, Andrew.
Shakespeare’s Life.The British Library. 15 Mar. 2016. Captured by the Internet Archive 31 Mar. 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190331204845/https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeares-life.
Family, Legal, and Property Records.Shakespeare Documented. Folger Shakespeare Library, https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/family-legal-property-records. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.
The Shakespeare First Folio.Folger Shakespeare Library. https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeare-in-print/first-folio/. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.
Mowat, Barbara, and Paul Werstine.
Shakespeare’s Life: From the Folger Shakespeare Editions.Folger Shakespeare Library. https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-life-from-the-folger-shakespeare-editions/. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.
Shakespeare Documented. Convened by Folger Shakespeare Library, in partnership with the Bodleian Libraries,
the British Library, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the National Archives, and
others. https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
William Shakespeare.Discovering Literature: Shakespeare and Renaissance. The British Library, 15 Mar. 2016. Captured by the Internet Archive 15 Apr. 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230415183012/https://www.bl.uk/people/william-shakespeare.
Image Source
Droeshout, Martin. The Droeshout portrait of William Shakespeare. 1623. Copper engraving print. Wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare_Droeshout_1623.jpg.
Notes
1.A haberdasher sells hats, clothes, thread, ribbons, etc.↑
Prosopography
Janelle Jenstad
Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director
of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.
Kate McPherson
Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley
University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity
in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities
Institute,
Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom,at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.
Leah Hamby
Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed
several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from
Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her
other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.
Michael Best
Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the
Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the
ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery,
a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on
Electronic Shakespeares,and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.
Navarra Houldin
Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual
remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major
in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary
research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They
are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice
Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | Facts About Shakespeare |
| Type of text | Critical |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | Early Modern England Encyclopedia |
| Source |
By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
|
| Editorial declaration | This document uses Canadian English spelling |
| Edition | Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a |
| Sponsor(s) |
Early Modern England EncyclopediaAnthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
|
| Encoding description | Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines |
| Document status | published |
| Funder(s) |
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University |
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