WHO WAS SHAKESPEARE?

 "To be or not to be. That is the question." Hello. My name is William Shakespeare. My parents were John Shakespeare, who was a successful glover and alderman originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, who was the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer. I was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and was baptized on April 26^th, 1564. I was educated at the King's New School in Stratford, which was a free school that was chartered in 1553 and about a quarter mile away from my home. The school was expected to provide an intensive education in Latin grammar and the classics. At the age of 18, I married a 26 year old woman named Anne Hathaway and had three children: Susanna and the twins Hamnet and Judith.

 


Shakespeare and his Family

 Unfortunately, Hamnet died at the age of 11 of an unknown cause and was buried on August 11, 1596. Some of my plays were performed on the London stage by 1592. I was well enough known that I was attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene, who accused me of reaching above my rank in trying to match university-educated writers, such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Greene himself. My plays were performed only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which soon became the leading play company in London. After Queen Elizabeth's death however, King James awarded the Lord Chamberlain's Men with a royal patent and the Lord Chamberlain's Men's name was changed to the Kings Men. In 1599, a partnership of company members built their own theatre on the south bank of Thames, which they called the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. The investment and purchases of the property made me a very rich man. In 1597, the New Place, which was the second-largest house in Stratford came into my possession. 
    I also invested in a share of the parish tithes in Stratford in 1605. By 1598, my name became a selling point and began to appear on the title pages. I continued to act in the plays that I wrote and other plays as well after my success as a playwright. In the 1616 edition of Ben Johnson's Works I was casted  in Every Man in His Humor (1598) and Sajanus, His Fall (16o3). However, later, I decided that I did not want to continue in these works. I went back and forth between London and Stratford throughout my life. Before I bought the New Place as my family home in Stratford, I used to live in the parish of St. Helen's which was located at Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames. However I moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, which was the year my company and I constructed the Globe Theatre there.    But by 1604 I moved north of the river again, into a place north of St. Paul's Cathedral that had many fine houses. When I got there, I rented a room from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear. I continued to visit London and in 1612, I was called as a witness in a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. I was asked to resolve a dispute regarding the amount of dowry that I offered when I acted as a "go-between" to negotiate a marriage in 1604. The case could only resolved by myself and I became the spotlight of the stage. However, I honestly did not remember because it had been such a long time and plus, why should I have had to remember such a thing? Technically, I did not have a personal stake in the matter. Anyhow, after this event, I bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory in the year of 1613. My last three plays were collaborations with John Fletcher, who was to succeed me as the house playwright for the King's Men. In my will, I left most of my large estate to my oldest daughter, Susanna. It was instructed that she pass it down in full to the first son that she was to bear. In the will,  I did not mention anything of my wife, Anne, however I did pass down my second best bed to her.

Globe Theatre, 1600's