thE myStErIoUs LIfE Of
In April 1564, a baby named William Shakespeare was born in an English town called Stratford-upon-Avon. That little boy became one of the most
famous playwrights in the western world, but the story of his life is full of mystery.
Now, not everything about William
Shakespeare is unknown. We know, for example, where he was born, but not exactly when. We know that his parents were a landowner’ s daughter called Mary Arden and a glove maker named John Shakespeare. We can also be sure that William was one of eight
children, but three of his siblings died when they were very young. Today you can visit their house in Stratfordupon-Avon and see the place where little William grew up.
WheRe’ s wIlLy�
William went to the local grammar school and probably left when he was around 14 years old. Then, when he was 18, William married a local woman named Anne Hathaway( not the actor) and they had three children, Susanna, and twins, Hamnet and Judith. Between the years 1585 and 1592, William completely disappears from all historical records.
Maybe those early years of fatherhood took their toll? Ed
These seven years are known as his‘ lost years’, and there are many ideas about what he might have been doing during this time. One story is that he became a soldier, another is that he ran away to London to escape punishment for poaching a deer from a local estate. It’ s also possible that he stayed at home to help run the family business.
WriTe oN
However, in 1592, William was definitely writing plays in London. We know this because his rival playwright, Robert Greene, wrote an attack on Shakespeare’ s desire to work at the same level as more educated writers like himself and Christopher Marlowe. But Greene’ s unkind words didn’ t stop William. He went on to write 37 plays that we know about today, including A Midsummer Night’ s Dream, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet … or did he?
During the 19th century, scholars began to wonder how the son of a glove maker could have written so many extraordinary and popular stories. William had not travelled to faraway countries, or learnt about the histories of the world at university, or experienced the politics of the Tudor court, so how
FUN FACT TRUMPET
We don’ t know for certain what Shakespeare looked like because most of his portraits were painted after he died.
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