Shakespeare Facts

William Shakespeare Facts: 1 Shakespeare lived to 52. It is known that he was born in April 1564 and that he died on 23rd April 1616. We know that he was baptised on 26th April 1564 and scholars now believe that he was born on April 23rd. He therefore died on his fifty-second birthday, coinciding with St Georges Day. How fitting that the great English writer is so closely identified with the patron saint of England! William Shakespeare Facts: 2 Shakespeare had seven siblings. They were: Joan (1558); Margaret (1562); Gilbert (1566); Joan II (1569); Anne (1571); Richard (1574) and Edmund (1580). Read more about Shakespeares family. William Shakespeare Facts: 3 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway when he was 18. She was 26 and she was pregnant when they married. Their first child was born six months after the wedding. William Shakespeare Facts: 4 Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway had three children together a son, Hamnet, who died in 1596, and two daughters, Susanna and Judith. His only granddaughter Elizabeth daughter of Susanna died childless in 1670. Shakespeare therefore has no descendants. Read more about Shakespeares family. William Shakespeare Facts: 5 Shakespeare died a rich man. He made several gifts to various people but left his property to his daughter, Susanna. The only mention of his wife in Shakespeares own will is: I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture. The furniture was the bedclothes for the bed. William Shakespeare Facts: 6 Shakespeare was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. He put a curse on anyone daring to move his body from that final resting place. His epitaph was: Good friend for Jesus sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here: Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones. Though it was customary to dig up the bones from previous graves to make room for others, Shakespeares remains are still undisturbed. William Shakespeare Facts: 7 One of Shakespeares relatives on his mothers side, William Arden, was arrested for plotting against Queen Elizabeth I, imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed.

William Shakespeare Facts: 8 During his life, Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets! This means an average 1.5 plays a year since he first started writing in 1589. His last play The Two Noble Kinsmen is reckoned to have been written in 1613 when he was 49 years old. While he was writing the plays at such a pace he was also conducting a family life, a social life and a full business life, running an acting company and a theatre. William Shakespeare Facts: 9 Few people realise that apart from writing his numerous plays and sonnets, Shakespeare was also an actor who performed many of his own plays as well as those of other playwrights. During his life Shakespeare performed before Queen Elizabeth I and, later, before James I who was an enthusiastic patron of his work. William Shakespeare Facts: 10 Shakespeares profession was acting. He is listed in documents of 1592, 1598 and 1603 as an actor. We know that he acted in a Ben Jonson play and also in his own plays but its thought that, as a very busy man, writing, managing the theatre and commuting between London and his home in Stratford where is family was, he didnt undertake big parts. There is evidence that he played the ghost in Hamlet and Adam in As You Like It. William Shakespeare Facts: 11 In Elizabethan theatre circles it was common for writers to collaborate on writing plays. Towards the end of his career Shakespeare worked with other writers on plays that have been credited to those writers. Other writers also worked on plays that are credited to Shakespeare. We know for certain that Timon of Athens was a collaboration with Thoma Middleton; Pericles with George Wilkins; and The Two Noble Kinsmen with John Fletcher. William Shakespeare Facts: 12 Some scholars have maintained that Shakespeare did not write the Shakespeare plays, with at least fifty writers having been suggested as the real author. However, the evidence for Shakespeares having written the plays is very strong. William Shakespeare Facts: 13 Shakespeare is the second most quoted writer in the English language after the various writers of the Bible. William Shakespeare Facts: 14 Shakespeares Globe Theatre burnt down on 29th June 1613 after a cannon shot set fire to it during a performance of Henry VIII. (See our article on interesting facts on The Globe Theatre.) William Shakespeare Facts: 15 Shakespeare is always referred to as an Elizabethan playwright, but as most of his most popular plays were written after Elizabeths death he was actually more of a Jacobean writer. His later plays also show the distinct characteristics of Jacobean drama.

William Shakespeare Facts: 16 Almost four hundred years after Shakespeares death there are 157 million pages referring to him on Google. There are 132 million for God, 2.7 million for Elvis Presley, and coming up on Shakespeares heels, George W Bush with 14.7 million. William Shakespeare Facts: 17 Suicide occurs an unlucky thirteen times in Shakespeares plays. It occurs in Romeo and Juliet where both Romeo and Juliet commit suicide, in Julius Caesar where both Cassius and Brutus die by consensual stabbing, as well as Brutus wife Portia. William Shakespeare Facts: 18 Some of Shakespeares signatures have survived on original documents. In none of them does he spell his name in what has become the standard way. He spells it Shakespe; Shakspe; Shakspere and Shakespeare. William Shakespeare Facts: 19 Shakespeare lived a double life. By the seventeenth century he had become a famous playwright in London but in his hometown of Stratford, where his wife and children were, and which he visited frequently, he was a well-known and highly respected businessman and property owner. William Shakespeare Facts: 20 The American President Abraham Lincoln was a great lover of Shakespeares plays and frequently recited from them to his friends. His assassin, John Wilkes Booth was a famous Shakespearean actor. William Shakespeare Facts: 21 Although it was illegal to be a Catholic in Shakespeares lifetime, the Anglican Archdeacon, Richard Davies of Lichfield, who had known him wrote some time after Shakespeares death that he had been a Catholic. William Shakespeare Facts: 22 Candles were very expensive in Shakespeares time so they were used only for emergencies, for a short time. Most writers wrote in the daytime and socialised in the evenings. There is no reason to think that Shakespeare was any different to his contemporaries. William Shakespeare Facts: 23 It was illegal for women and girls to perform in the theatre in Shakespeares lifetime so all the female parts were written for boys. The text of some plays like Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra refer to that. It was only much later, during the Restoration, that the first woman appeared on the English stage. William Shakespeare Facts: 24 There are only two Shakespeare plays written entirely in verse: they are Richard II and King John. Many of the plays have half of the text in prose.

William Shakespeare Facts: 25 Shakespeare wrote many more plays than the ones we know about. Its certain that he wrote a play titled Cardenio, which has been lost, but scholars think he wrote about twenty that have gone without a trace. William Shakespeare Facts: 26 Shakespeares shortest play, The Comedy of Errors is only a third of the length of his longest, Hamlet, which takes four hours to perform. William Shakespeare Facts: 27 Two of Shakespeares plays, Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing, have been translated into Klingon. The Klingon Language Institute plans to translate more! (If youre into quirky Shakespeare facts check our our list of 23 things you never knew about Shakespeare) William Shakespeare Facts: 28 All Uranus satellites are named after Shakespearean characters. William Shakespeare Facts: 29 William Shakespeare is an anagram of I am a weakish speller. William Shakespeare Facts: 30 Shakespeares original grave marker showed him holding a bag of grain. Citizens of Stratford replaced the bag with a quill in 1747.