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 1612A haberdasher sells hats, clothes, thread, ribbons, etc. 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: , 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: (1596), (1597), (1609) Direct Descendants: None. His granddaughter died without issue in 1670. Descendants of his nieces and nephews do exist.

Shakespeare’s Biography?

Beyond 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.

Over 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 , 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.

With 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.

Scholarly 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.