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Playwright
and poet. Born in 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire,
England (historians believe Shakespeare was born on April
23, the same day he died in 1616). The son of John Shakespeare,
a glover, and Mary Arden, of farming stock. Much uncertainty
surrounds Shakespeare's early life. He was the eldest of
three sons, and there were four daughters. He was educated
at the local grammar school, and married Anne Hathaway,
from a local farming family, in 1582. She bore him a daughter,
Susanna, in 1583, and twins, Hamnet and Judith, in 1585.
Shakespeare moved to London, possibly in 1591, and became
an actor. From 1592 to 1594, when the theatres were closed
for the plague, he wrote his poems "Venus and Adonis"
and "The Rape of Lucrece." His sonnets, known
by 1598, though not published until 1609, fall into two
groups: 1 to 126 are addressed to a fair young man, and
127 to 154 to a "dark lady" who holds both the
young man and the poet in thrall. Who these people are has
provided an exercise in detection for numerous critics.
The first evidence of his association with the stage is
in 1594, when he was acting with the Lord Chamberlain's
company of players, later "the King's Men'. When the
company built the Globe Theatre south of the Thames in 1597,
he became a partner, living modestly at a house in Silver
Street until c.1606, then moving near the Globe. He returned
to Stratford c.1610, living as a country gentleman at his
house, New Place. His will was made in March 1616, a few
months before he died, and he was buried at Stratford.
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