"Not of an Age, but For All Time"

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The above prophetic words were penned by Ben Johnson in a preface to the First Folio edition of the works of William Shakespeare. Even four centuries later, very few students of English have not, at least, heard of Shakespeare if not seen or read some of his plays. William Shakespeare died 400 years ago today. It is also supposed that he was born on 23 April in 1564, though we only have a positive record of his baptism on the 26 April. Shakespeare’s father, John, was a successful glove-maker and his mother, Mary Arden, came from a wealthy landowning family, so it can be supposed that the young William grew up in a reasonably wealthy family. Nevertheless, he was probably educated at a local free grammar school from the age of 7 until he was 14 and much of his study there would have been in Latin. When he was 18 he married the 26 year old Anne Hathaway. It seems to have been a rather hurried wedding, since the banns were only published once and, six months later, Anne gave birth to a baby girl. Presumably, Shakespeare worked before he became an actor and a playwright. Perhaps he was apprenticed as a glover in his father’s business but almost nothing is known about him between 1585 and 1592. One story has that he became a schoolmaster in Lancashire and another suggests that he left Stratford to escape being convicted of poaching deer on the estate of a local landowner. One way or another, he seems to have made his way to London and found employment in the theatres there, probably acting and editing other people’s plays before beginning to write his own, which he was certainly doing by 1592.