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William Shakespeare

Shakespeare spelled his own name several ways, left his wife his 'second-best bed', and still gave English some of its most quoted phrases.

Published 02 October 2026

Quick Facts

Who he was: Playwright, poet and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in English
Born: Stratford-upon-Avon, baptised 26 April 1564
Died: 23 April 1616, Stratford-upon-Avon
Output: About 37 plays, 154 sonnets and several long poems
Theatre company: The Lord Chamberlain's Men, later the King's Men
Home theatre: The Globe on Bankside, opened in 1599
Family: Married Anne Hathaway in 1582; children Susanna, Hamnet and Judith
Famous book: The First Folio, published in 1623, seven years after his death

The man who saved half his plays from vanishing

Around 18 of Shakespeare's plays had never been printed when he died in 1616. Macbeth, Twelfth Night, The Tempest and Julius Caesar might have been lost for good, because plays were usually treated as working scripts, not literature. Two colleagues from his company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, gathered the texts and published them in 1623 as Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, now called the First Folio. Without that big, expensive book, the Shakespeare we know would be a much slimmer figure. Surviving copies are among the most treasured books in the English-speaking world.

From Stratford glovemaker's son to London's stage

Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, the son of John Shakespeare, a glove maker and local official, and Mary Arden. He almost certainly went to the town's grammar school, where boys learned Latin and classical authors. At 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who was 26. Their daughter Susanna arrived in 1583, followed by twins, Hamnet and Judith, in 1585. Hamnet died aged 11 in 1596. Then comes a stretch with few records, sometimes called the lost years. By the early 1590s he was in London, acting and writing, and was mocked in print by a rival as an 'upstart crow'.

A company man, not a lonely genius

Shakespeare wasn't just a writer. He was an actor and a shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, formed in 1594, with the great tragic actor Richard Burbage as its star. When James I took the company under his patronage in 1603, they became the King's Men. He wrote with particular performers in mind, and the business side mattered. The company built the Globe on Bankside in 1599, using timber from an earlier playhouse, and later used the indoor Blackfriars theatre for winter shows. That practical, collaborative world explains why the plays are so stageable: they were built to hold an audience's attention for hours.

Words and phrases he gave us

Shakespeare is often credited with coining or popularising phrases still in daily use. 'Break the ice', 'heart of gold', 'wild goose chase' and 'in a pickle' all turn up in his plays. Words such as 'lonely', 'bedroom' and 'swagger' are also linked to his pages. His real change was in what theatre could do. Hamlet talks to himself on stage and doubts everything. Villains such as Iago and Richard III confide in the audience. Comedy and tragedy rub shoulders, with a porter's jokes arriving moments after a murder in Macbeth. He also used and reshaped forms such as blank verse and the sonnet, and his 154 sonnets, published in 1609, remain a landmark of English poetry.

The second-best bed

His will, signed in 1616, is famous for one line: he left Anne 'my second-best bed with the furniture'. It has fuelled gossip for centuries, though the bed may have been the marital one, while the best was kept for guests. Most of his estate went to Susanna. He died on 23 April 1616, traditionally said to be his birthday too, though only his baptism date is recorded. He was buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford, where a monument shows him with a quill. A curse on the gravestone warns against moving his bones.

Where you can still find him

In Stratford-upon-Avon you can see the half-timbered house where he was born on Henley Street, Anne Hathaway's Cottage in nearby Shottery, and his grave at Holy Trinity. The Royal Shakespeare Company performs at its riverside theatres in the town. In London, Shakespeare's Globe, a modern reconstruction opened in 1997 close to the original site, stages his plays under an open sky, with standing tickets in the yard just as in his day. His plays are performed in more languages than almost any other author's, and they remain a fixture of the school curriculum across Britain.