William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England (1564). He left behind no personal papers whatsoever—no letters, no diaries, not even any manuscripts. For that reason, most of the details about his life are a mystery. What we do know is that he was born at a time when England was just beginning to calm down after decades of religious civil war between Catholics and Protestants. Historians can't be sure, but it is likely that Shakespeare himself grew up Catholic, even though it was technically illegal to be a practicing Catholic at the time. We know that his mother came from a Catholic family, and his father secretly signed a Roman Catholic "Spiritual Testament" and hid it in the rafters of his home.
So Shakespeare may have grown up with the idea that his family was secretly attached to an ancient but now forbidden religion. And there's some evidence that when he was about 16, after attending the public school in his town, he may have taken a job as a tutor for two wealthy Catholic families in Lancashire. If he did, then he would have met a famous Catholic dissident named Edmund Campion who was living in secret with those two families at that time, and who was eventually caught and executed.
If Shakespeare was working as a tutor in his late teens, he must have returned to his home town in 1582, because it was that year that he was forced into a marriage with a woman he'd gotten pregnant: Anne Hathaway. It was apparently not a happy marriage. In 1587, Shakespeare left his family in Stratford and went to live in London by himself, where he began his life as an actor and playwright.
As a playwright, Shakespeare first made his name as a writer of comedies. His most successful early plays were The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew, and within a few years, he was among the most popular writers in England. His plays generally attracted an audience of about 3,000 people, at a time when London had a population of about 200,000. So whenever one of Shakespeare's plays was performed, one out of every 65 people in the city was in the audience.
His early popularity made him a lot of enemies. The very first person ever to write about Shakespeare was the poet Robert Greene, who accused Shakespeare of plagiarism, calling him, "An upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers." And in fact most of Shakespeare's plays were not original, but based on historical events or old stories. What made them great was his extraordinary ability with language. He used one of the largest vocabularies of any English writer, almost 30,000 words.
But despite his success, he continued to live in a series of small rented rooms around London, a two-day journey from his family's home in Stratford-upon-Avon. Then, in 1596, Shakespeare learned that his son, Hamnet, died. And even though he hadn't spent much time with the boy, the event apparently had a huge effect on him. It was not long after that news that Shakespeare began writing his first great revenge tragedy, Hamlet, which was first brought to the stage around 1600. Scholars believe that Shakespeare chose to play the role of the ghost.
He went on to produce a series of tragedies in the next several years that are generally considered his greatest work, including Othello (1604), King Lear (1605), and Macbeth (1605). He planned to retire in 1611, after writing his play The Tempest (1611). But he came out of retirement to write at least one more play: Henry VIII (1613).
Sonnet 29
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
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