William Shakespeare

A Boy from Stratford

My name is William Shakespeare, and though you may know my name from the plays I wrote, my story began not on a grand stage, but in the small market town of Stratford-upon-Avon. I was born there in April of 1564, a time when Queen Elizabeth I ruled England. My father, John Shakespeare, was a respected man in our town—a glove-maker and a dealer in wool, who eventually became the town’s mayor. My mother, Mary Arden, came from a proud farming family. We lived a comfortable life, and I was one of eight children, though several of my siblings did not survive childhood, a common sadness in those days. My world was filled with the sounds of the market, the gentle flow of the River Avon, and the rhythm of town life.

From a young age, I was sent to the King’s New School, our local grammar school. It was there that my love for language truly took root. We spent long hours studying Latin, reading the great Roman poets like Ovid, whose tales of transformation and mythology filled my imagination. I learned how words could be used to build worlds, to express deep feelings, and to tell powerful stories. But my education wasn't confined to the classroom. The most thrilling days were when travelling troupes of actors would visit Stratford. They would set up a temporary stage in an inn yard and perform for the whole town. Watching them, I felt a spark ignite within me. The way they could make an audience laugh, cry, or gasp in suspense was a kind of magic I knew I wanted to be a part of.

Life moved quickly. In 1582, at the age of eighteen, I married a woman from a nearby village named Anne Hathaway. Soon after, we had our first child, a daughter named Susanna, followed by twins, Hamnet and Judith. I had a family to support, but the dream of the theatre still called to me. The stories I had read and the plays I had seen swirled in my head, and I felt a pull toward the great city of London, the heart of England's growing theatre world.

The Great Stage of London

Sometime in the late 1580s, I made the difficult decision to leave my family in Stratford and travel to London to seek my fortune. London was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was a sprawling, chaotic city of over 200,000 people, where grand palaces stood near crowded, narrow streets. The air was thick with the smell of the River Thames, the sounds of horse-drawn carts, and the shouts of merchants. It was overwhelming, but it was also electric with possibility. I knew that if I was going to make a name for myself, this was the place to do it. The world of theatre was flourishing, with new playhouses being built and audiences hungry for entertainment.

My beginnings were humble. I started as an actor, taking on small roles and learning the craft from the inside out. I watched how other playwrights structured their stories and listened to the way audiences reacted to certain lines or scenes. Soon, I began to try my own hand at writing, at first perhaps by mending old plays, and then by creating my own. It was a competitive world, with other talented writers vying for attention, but I was determined to find my voice. I wrote comedies, histories, and tragedies, pouring everything I knew about love, jealousy, ambition, and loss onto the page.

By 1594, I had found not just success, but a true theatrical family. I became a founding member of an acting company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men. We were a brotherhood of actors, including the great Richard Burbage, who would bring so many of my leading characters to life. We worked together, shared our profits, and supported one another through good times and bad. And there were certainly bad times. On several occasions, a terrible disease called the bubonic plague swept through London, forcing the authorities to close all public gathering places, including our theatres, for months on end. During these quiet periods, I turned to writing poetry. But when the theatres reopened, the joy of seeing my plays like Richard III and A Midsummer Night's Dream performed for cheering crowds was a feeling like no other. We even had the honor of performing at court for Queen Elizabeth I herself.

Our Wooden 'O'

By the end of the 1590s, our company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, was one of the most successful in London. But we faced a crisis when the lease on our rented theatre ran out. We needed a home of our own. So, in 1599, we undertook a daring plan. We carefully dismantled the timbers of our old theatre, ferried them across the River Thames, and used them to build a magnificent new playhouse on the South Bank. We called it the Globe. It was a large, round building, open to the sky in the middle, which I affectionately called our “wooden O.” It was a space built by us, for us, and it became the stage for my greatest works.

Writing for the Globe was a unique challenge. With no roof, performances were held in the afternoon light. With very little scenery, I had to use my words to paint the picture for the audience—to make them see the misty battlements of a Danish castle or the eerie heath of Scotland. It was during this time that I wrote many of the plays for which I am best remembered: As You Like It, Julius Caesar, and, around the year 1600, my great tragedy, Hamlet. That play, about a prince mourning his father, was written from a place of deep personal sorrow. In August of 1596, my own dear son, Hamnet, had died at the age of eleven. The grief of losing a child is a shadow that never truly leaves, and I poured that feeling of loss into my work.

The world around me continued to change. In 1603, Queen Elizabeth I died, and King James I ascended to the throne. He became a great patron of the theatre, and our company was honored with a new name: The King’s Men. Inspired by the new political mood and my own reflections on power and human nature, I wrote some of my darkest and most complex tragedies, including Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. My life was in London, on the stage, but my heart and my family remained in Stratford, and I invested the money I earned to secure our family's future there.

An Epilogue in Stratford

After more than twenty years in the heart of London's theatre scene, I felt it was time to go home. Around 1613, I retired from the stage and returned to Stratford-upon-Avon, not as the hopeful young man who had left, but as a successful gentleman. I had purchased New Place, one of the finest houses in town, and I spent my final years there with my wife and daughters, enjoying the life I had built for them. I looked back on my incredible journey—the boy from a small town who fell in love with words and went on to create entire worlds on a London stage. I had written nearly forty plays and countless sonnets, and I felt a quiet sense of accomplishment.

On April 23, 1616, my life came to its end. I was buried in the church in Stratford where I had been christened. At the time, I could not have known what would become of my work. I wrote my plays for my actors and my audience, for the here and now. I never imagined that centuries later, students would study my words and actors would still speak my lines on stages all over the world. But my friends and fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, ensured my legacy. In 1623, they gathered my plays and published them in a single volume known as the First Folio, preserving them for all time. My hope is that my stories continue to show what it means to be human—to love, to grieve, to dream, and to struggle. For the stage, and the stories we tell on it, are mirrors of our own lives, connecting us all across the ages.