Facts to Know About the Life of William Shakespeare
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Third child of John and Mary Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, England, born on or around
April 23, 1564, he was the first child to survive infancy. Five siblings arrived after him
Mary Shakespeare was from a prosperous family – the Ardens of Warwickshire.
John Shakespeare is ambitious, trading in wool and farm products and making gloves, saddles, and
harnesses; he becomes successful enough to buy a second home and earns a seat on the town’s Board
of Aldermen. He evens submits an application for a Coat of Arms that would put the family in the
heraldic registry and earn his sons the title of “gentlemen:” however, his application was denied.
When John Shakespeare runs into money problems, he falls behind in taxes and eventually is forced
to mortgage his wife’s estate, Asbies. In 1586, he is asked to leave the board of Aldermen, and by
1590, the family’s only possession is their house on Henley Street in Stratford.
William goes to the Latin School in Stratford; at age 13, he witnesses the death of his seven-year-old
sister, Anne, and his parents money troubles.
At age 18, William marries Anne Hathaway, age 26, the daughter of a farmer from the neighboring
village of Shottery. Unlike William, she has not gone to school and cannot read or write. The
wedding, a rushed affair, is an embarrassment to both families, especially up and coming John
Shakespeare, and six months after the wedding their daughter Susanna is born. The couple lives with
John and Mary Shakespeare for the next 15 years.
In 1585, Anne gives birth to twins, Hamnet (only son) and Judith (second daughter).
Some time between 1585 and 1590, William Shakespeare moves to London to pursue a life in the
theatre, though he keeps an interest in the family business and returns often for visits with the
family. He begins his career as an actor but soon begins writing, first to entertain and then to
question life’s mysteries.
He becomes a celebrated playwright though he is known for this verse poems and sonnets as well.
He comes a shareholder in his acting troupe and part-owner of a theatre. Eventually his efforts pay
off and he becomes a wealthy man, able to buy a beautiful home, in 1597, for Anne and the children
in Stratford called “New Place.” Like his father, he puts in an application for a Coat of Arms, but his
petition is accepted.
His life is shattered in 1596 by the death of his son Hamnet at age 11. At the same time, plague is
ravaging England and many thousands of his countrymen are dying.
Shakespeare also witnesses the country’s struggle with religious identity as a Protestant nation with
a Roman Catholic past. Under the reign of Elizabeth I, as with her predecessors, religious freedom
does not exist. All English citizens are forced to attend Anglican Church services, despite their
personal beliefs, and threatened with death if they remain openly Roman Catholic. Shakespeare’s
own family may have secretly clung to their Roman Catholic beliefs.
Shakespeare and his troupe, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, appeared several times before the queen
herself and enjoyed her patronage. When James VI of Scotland becomes James I of England at
Elizabeth’s death in 1603, the troupe renames itself the King’s Men. Eventually Shakespeare retires
to Stratford, a prosperous gentleman owning large tracts of land in his mother’s ancestral
Warwickshire.
He dies of unknown causes on his 52nd birthday (April 23, 1616).