1. Wrote 154 sonnets
2. Born on April 23, 1564
3. Died on April 23, 1616
4. Stratford-upon-Avon was his birthplace
5. Parents were John and Mary Shakespeare
6. Had seven brothers and sisters
7. Sister Joan was born in 1558
8. Margaret was born in 1562
9. Gilbert was born in1566
10. Joan II was born in 1569
11. Anne was born in 1571
12. Richard was born in 1574
13. Edmund was born in 1580
14. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway
15. He was 18 when married and Anne was 26
16. Had eight children
17. Susannah born in 1583
18. Twins, Hamnet and Judith, born in 1585
19. His first published play was Henry VI, Part II
20. Wrote 37 plays
21. He was good friends with Elizabeth I, queen during his life
22. Lived in England during the Renaissance
23. Was affiliated with a theatre group known as the Lord Chamberlains Men
24. Wrote plays for the Globe Theatre
25. Was buried in Stratford
26. After Queen Elizabeth I died, Shakespeare lived during the reign of King James I
27. His house was called New Palace
28. Daughter Susannah married Dr. John Hall
29. Lord Chamberlains Men bought the Blackfriars Theatre
30. His Collective Sonnets were first published in 1609
31. His daughter Judith married Thomas Quiney 1616
32. Grandfathers name was Richard
33. Grandfather owned a farm in Snitterfield
34. Baptized at Holy Trinity Parish Church in Stratford
35. Child Hamnet died at age eleven
36. Refers to poet Christopher Marlowe’s death in As You Like It
37. Father John Shakespeare was granted Coat of Arms in1596
38. The Globe Theatre burned down in 1613, but was rebuilt in 1614
39. The Globe Theatre was demolished in 1644
40. The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s shortest play
41. Shortest play is 1770 lines long
42. Othello was one of the most popular of his plays throughout the 18th and 19th centuries
43. Troilus and Cressida was originally written as a Tragedy
44. Contain over 600 references to birds
45. May have translated Psalm 46
46. Was known as the Bard of Stratford
47. Famous poet John Keats kept a bust of Shakespeare near his desk in hopes that the play write would spark his creativity
48. The Comedy of Errors was said to inspirer Rodgers and Hart's popular musical, The Boys from Syracuse
49. Used the word dog or dogs over 200 times in his works
50. King Lear was banished from the English stage for making fun of the monarchy and King George III
51. Love's Labour's Lost has the highest percentage of rhyming lines of all of his plays
52. There is no record of Alls Well that Ends Well ever being performed in Shakespeare’s lifetime
53. Invented the word assassination
54. Never attended a University
55. Lived through the Black Death
56. Sonnets were published in 1609 without his permission
57. Wrote roughly one and a half plays between 1589 and 1616
58. Never published any of his own plays, they were all published by his fellow actors
59. Did not die in poverty, unlike many of his fellow authors of the time
60. Performed plays by play write Ben Jonson, in addition to his own.
61. Performed many time before Queen Elizabeth I and King James I
62. Had many quarrels with play critic Robert Greene
63. Has instances of suicide an unlucky thirteen times in his works.
64. None of his plays were acted out by women
65. Had an earring in his left ear
66. Village he grew up in had a population of over 1500 people and only about 200 houses
67. Interest in theatre started at an early age, his father took him and his siblings to see traveling shows
68. Marriage certificate was issued on November 27, 1582
69. Buried in the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon
70. Is believed to have died on his birthday
71. Was rumored to have created over 1,700 words for the English language.
72. Has no actual known birth, but based on birth records historians believe it was April 23, 1564.
73. Only two authentic portraits of William Shakespeare
74. Was a popular last name, their were two non-related Shakespeare families.
75. Wrote his first play when he was 25 years old
76. Was not credited with all his work, the play Cardenio has never been recorded.
77. Performed in many of his own plays
78. One of the most identified icons of England
79. Wrote before Websters first published Dictionary
80. First child, Susannah, was born six months after Shakespeare and his wife were married.
81. Many didnt like Macbeth, because they were afraid of witches
82. No one knows how Shakespeare died
83. Was a Roman Catholic
84. When Shakespeare was alive, the town was called Stratford, not Stratford-upon- Avon
85. The motto of the Globe Theatre was totus mundus agit histrionem (all the world's a stage)
86. Was a Baptist when he was born, but was a Roman Catholic when he died.
87. First job was holding horses outside the theatres
88. Wrote King John the same year his son died
89. Coined the phrase the beast with two backs
90. Died 52
91. Last play he wrote was Two Noble Kinsmen
92. Only left his wife a bed when he died
93. Was married at Temple Graston
94. His tomb was inscribed with a curse
95. Some believe Queen Elizabeth wrote some of his plays
96. Lived on Henley Street
97. wrote Romeo and Juliet when he was around 30 years old
98. 15 of his plays had been performed by 1597
99. Racisms pops up frequently in work.
100. Rumored to copy many of his famous plays from other writers
101. There is documentary proof that Shakespeare was baptised on 26th April 1564, and scholars believe that, in keeping with the traditions of the time, he would have been baptised when he was three days old, meaning Shakespeare was probably born on April 23rd. However, as Shakespeare was born under the old Julian calendar, what was April 23rd during Shakespeare’s life would actually be May 3rd according to today’s Gregorian calendar.
102. Shakespeare’s parents were John and Mary Shakespeare (nee Arden). John came to Stratford from Snitterfield before 1532 as an apprentice glover and tanner of leathers. He prospered and began to deal in farm products and wool before being elected to a multitude of civic positions.
103. Shakespeare had seven siblings: Joan (b 1558); Margaret (b 1562); Gilbert (b 1566); another Joan (b 1569); Anne (b 1571); Richard (b 1574) and Edmund (b 1580). .
104. One of Shakespeare’s relatives on his mother’s side, William Arden, was arrested for plotting against Queen Elizabeth I, imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed.
105. Shakespeare married his wife Anne Hathaway when he was 18. She was 26 and three months pregnant with Shakespeare’s child when they married. Their first child Susanna was born six months after the wedding.
106. 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.
107. There are more than 80 variations recorded for the spelling of Shakespeare’s name. In the few original signatures that have survived, Shakespeare spelt his name “Willm Shaksp,” “William Shakespe,” “Wm Shakspe,” “William Shakspere,” ”Willm Shakspere,” and “William Shakspeare”. There are no records of him ever having spelt it “William Shakespeare”, as we know him today.
108. 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. There is evidence that he played the ghost in Hamlet and Adam in As You Like It.
109. During his life Shakespeare performed before Queen Elizabeth I and, later, before James I who was an enthusiastic patron of his work.
110. Shakespeare lived a double life. By the seventeenth century he had become a famous playwright in London but in hishometown 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.
111. It’s likely that Shakespeare wore a gold hoop earring in his left ear – a creative, bohemian look in the Elizabethan & Jacobean eras. This style is evidenced in the Chandos portrait, one of the most famous depictions of Shakespeare.
112. During his lifetime Shakespeare became a very wealthy man with a large property portfolio. He was a brilliant businessman – forming a joint-stock company with his actors meaning he took a share in the company’s profits, as well as earning a fee for each play he wrote.
113. Shakespeare’s family home in Stratford was called New Place. The house stood on the corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane, and was apparently the second largest house in the town
114. Sometime after his unsuccessful application to become a gentleman, Shakespeare took his father to the College of Arms to secure their own Shakespeare family crest. The crest was a yellow spear on a yellow shield, with the Latin inscription “Non Sans Droict”, or “Not without Right”.
115. On his death Shakespeare made several gifts to various people but left his property to his daughter, Susanna. The only mention of his wife in Shakespeare’s own will is: “I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture”. The “furniture” was the bedclothes for the bed.
116. Shakespeare’s burial at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford Upon Avon is documented as happening on 25th April 1616. In keeping with traditions of the time it’s likley he would have been buried two days after his death, meaning Shakespeare likely died 23rd April 1616 – his 52nd birthday.
117. Shakespeare penned a curse for his grave, daring anyone to move his body from that final resting place. His epitaph was:
118. Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear,
119. To dig the dust enclosed here:
120. Blest be the man that spares these stones,
121. And curst be he that moves my bones.
122. Though it was customary to dig up the bones from previous graves to make room for others, the remains inShakespeare’s grave are still undisturbed.
123. Shakespeare’s original grave marker showed him holding a bag of grain. Citizens of Stratford replaced the bag with a quill in 1747.
124. Although it was illegal to be a Catholic in Shakespeare’s lifetime, the Anglican Archdeacon, Richard Davies of Lichfield, who had known him wrote some time after Shakespeare’s death that he had been a Catholic.
125. 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.
126. Shakespeare is most often referred to as an Elizabethan playwright, but as most of his most popular plays were written after Elizabeth’s death he was actually more of a Jacobean writer. His later plays also show the distinct characteristics of Jacobean drama.
127. Shakespeare has been credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with introducing almost 3,000 words to the English language. Estimations of his vocabulary range from 17,000 to a dizzying 29,000 words – at least double the number of words used by the average conversationalist.
128. According to Shakespeare professor Louis Marder, “Shakespeare was so facile in employing words that he was able to use over 7,000 of them – more than occur in the whole King James Version of the Bible – only once and never again.”
129. 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 Thomas Middleton; Pericles with George Wilkins; and The Two Noble Kinsmen with John Fletcher.
130. Shakespeare’s last play – The Two Noble Kinsmen – is reckoned to have been written in 1613 when he was 49 years old.
131. The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s shortest play at just 1,770 lines long.
132. Some scholars have maintained that Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him, with at least fifty writers having been suggested as the “real” author. However, the evidence for Shakespeare’s having written the plays is very strong.
133. Although Shakespeare is almost universally considered as one of the finest writers in the English language, his contemporaries were not always as impressed. The first recorded reference to Shakespeare, written by theatre critic Robert Greene in 1592, was as an “upstart crow, beautified with our feathers”.
134. Suicide occurs an unlucky thirteen times in Shakespeare’s 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.
135. 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.
136. It is likely that Shakespeare wrote many plays that have been lost. It’s 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.
137. Shakespeare’s shortest play, The Comedy of Errors is only a third of the length of his longest, Hamlet, which takes four hours to perform.
138. Two of Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing, have been translated into Klingon. The Klingon Language Institute plans to translate more!
139. The National Portrait Gallery in London’s first acquisition in 1856 was the ‘Chandos’ portrait of Shakespeare, attributed to the artist John Taylor. It’s now considered the only representation of the writer that has any real claim to having been painted from life.
140. In the King James Bible the 46th word of Psalm 46 is ‘shake’ and the 46th word from the end of the same Psalm is ‘spear’. Some think this was a hidden birthday message to the Bard, as the King James Bible was published in 1611 – the year of Shakespeare’s 46th birthday.
141. The moons of Uranus were originally named in 1852 after magical spirits from English literature. The International Astronomy Union subsequently developed the convention to name all further moons of Uranus (of which there are 27) after characters in Shakespeare’s plays or Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.
142. Shakespeare had close connections with King James I. The King made the actors of Shakespeare’s company ‘Grooms of Chamber’, in response to which Shakespeare changed the company’s name from the ‘Lord Chamberlain’s Men’ to the ‘King’s Men’. The new title made Shakespeare a favourite with the King and in much demand for Court performances.
143. The Royal Shakespeare Company sells more than half a million tickets a year for Shakespeare productions at their theatres in Stratford-on-Avon, London and Newcastle – introducing an estimated 50,000 people to a live Shakespeare performance for the first time each year.
144. Shakespeare never actually published any of his plays. They are known today only because two of his fellow actors – John Hemminges and Henry Condell – recorded and published 36 of them posthumously under the name ‘The First Folio’, which is the source of all Shakespeare books published.
145. The United States has Shakespeare to thank for its estimated 200 million starlings. In 1890 an American bardolator, Eugene Schiffelin, embarked on a project to import each species of bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s works that was absent from the US. Part of this project involved releasing two flocks of 60 starlings in New York’s Central Park.
146. The American President Abraham Lincoln was a great lover of Shakespeare’s plays and frequently recited from them to his friends. His assassin, John Wilkes Booth was a famous Shakespearean actor.
147. Candles were very expensive in Shakespeare’s 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.
148. Rumour has it that poet John Keats was so influenced by Shakespeare that he kept a bust of the Bard beside him while he wrote, hoping that Shakespeare would spark his creativity.
149. It was illegal for women and girls to perform in the theatre in Shakespeare’s 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.
150. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre burnt down on 29th June 1613 after a cannon shot set fire to it during a performance of Henry VIII.
151. The original Globe Theatre came to a premature end in 1613 during a performance of Henry VIII, when a cannon set light to the thatched roof. Within two hours the theatre was burnt to the ground, to be rebuilt the following year.
152. An outbreak of the plague in Europe resulted in all London theatres being closed between 1592 and 1594. As there was no demand for plays during this time, Shakespeare began to write poetry, completing his first batch of sonnets in 1593, aged
153. ‘William Shakespeare’ is an anagram of ‘I am a weakish speller’.
154. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Shakespeare wrote close to a tenth of the most quoted lines ever written or spoken in English. What’s more, according to the Literature Encyclopaedia, Shakespeare is the second most quoted English writer after the writers of the Bible.
155. Copyright didn’t exist in Shakespeare’s time, as a result of which there was a thriving trade in copied plays. To help counter this, actors got their lines only once the play was in progress – often in the form of cue acting where someone backstage whispered them to the person shortly before he was supposed to deliver them.
156. Shakespeare’s father held a lot of different jobs, and at one point got paid to drink beer.
The son of a tenant farmer, John Shakespeare was nothing if not upwardly mobile. He arrived in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1551 and began dabbling in various trades, selling leather goods, wool, malt and corn. In 1556 he was appointed the borough’s official “ale taster,” meaning he was responsible for inspecting bread and malt liquors. The next year he took another big step up the social ladder by marrying Mary Arden, the daughter of an aristocratic farmer who happened to be his father’s former boss. John later became a moneylender and held a series of municipal positions, serving for some time as the mayor of Stratford. In the 1570s he fell into debt and ran into legal problems for reasons that remain unclear.
157. Shakespeare married an older woman who was three months pregnant at the time.
In November 1582, 18-year-old William wed Anne Hathaway, a farmer’s daughter eight years his senior. Instead of the customary three times, the couple’s intention to marry was only announced at church once—evidence that the union was hastily arranged because of Anne’s eyebrow-raising condition. Six months after the wedding, the Shakespeares welcomed a daughter, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith followed in February 1585. Little is known about the relationship between William and Anne, besides that they often lived apart and he only bequeathed her his “second-best bed” in his will.
158. Shakespeare’s parents were probably illiterate, and his children almost certainly were.
Nobody knows for sure, but it’s quite likely that John and Mary Shakespeare never learned to read or write, as was often the case for people of their standing during the Elizabethan era. Some have argued that John’s civic duties would have required basic literacy, but in any event he always signed his name with a mark. William, on the other hand, attended Stratford’s local grammar school, where he mastered reading, writing and Latin. His wife and their two children who lived to adulthood, Susanna and Judith, are thought to have been illiterate, though Susanna could scrawl her signature.
159. Nobody knows what Shakespeare did between 1585 and 1592.
To the dismay of his biographers, Shakespeare disappears from the historical record between 1585, when his twins’ baptism was recorded, and 1592, when the playwright Robert Greene denounced him in a pamphlet as an “upstart crow.” The insult suggests he’d already made a name for himself on the London stage by then. What did the newly married father and future literary icon do during those seven “lost” years? Historians have speculated that he worked as a schoolteacher, studied law, traveled across continental Europe or joined an acting troupe that was passing through Stratford. According to one 17th-century account, he fled his hometown after poaching deer from a local politician’s estate.
160. Shakespeare’s plays feature the first written instances of hundreds of familiar terms.
William Shakespeare is believed to have influenced the English language more than any other writer in history, coining—or, at the very least, popularizing—terms and phrases that still regularly crop up in everyday conversation. Examples include the words “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As You Like It”); and the expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle” (“The Tempest”), “wild goose chase” (“Romeo and Juliet”) and “one fell swoop” (“Macbeth”). He is also credited with inventing the given names Olivia, Miranda, Jessica and Cordelia, which have become common over the years (as well as others, such as Nerissa and Titania, which have not).
161. We probably don’t spell Shakespeare’s name correctly—but, then again, neither did he.
Sources from William Shakespeare’s lifetime spell his last name in more than 80 different ways, ranging from “Shappere” to “Shaxberd.” In the handful of signatures that have survived, the Bard never spelled his own name “William Shakespeare,” using variations or abbreviations such as “Willm Shakp,” “Willm Shakspere” and “William Shakspeare” instead. However it’s spelled, Shakespeare is thought to derive from the Old English words “schakken” (“to brandish”) and “speer” (“spear”), and probably referred to a confrontational or argumentative person.
162. Shakespeare’s epitaph wards off would-be grave robbers with a curse.
William Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, at the age of 52—not bad for an era when the average life expectancy ranged between 30 and 40 years. We may never know what killed him, although an acquaintance wrote that the Bard fell ill after a night of heavy drinking with fellow playwright Ben Jonson. Despite his swift demise, Shakespeare supposedly had the wherewithal to pen the epitaph over his tomb, which is located inside a Stratford church. Intended to thwart the numerous grave robbers who plundered England’s cemeteries at the time, the verse reads: “Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbeare, / To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, / And cursed be he that moves my bones.” It must have done the trick, since Shakespeare’s remains have yet to be disturbed.
163. Shakespeare wore a gold hoop earring—or so we think.
Our notion of William Shakespeare’s appearance comes from several 17th-century portraits that may or may not have been painted while the Bard himself sat behind the canvas. In one of the most famous depictions, known as the Chandos portrait after its onetime owner, the subject has a full beard, a receding hairline, loosened shirt-ties and a shiny gold hoop dangling from his left ear. Even back in Shakespeare’s time, earrings on men were trendy hallmarks of a bohemian lifestyle, as evidenced by images of other Elizabethan artists. The fashion may have been inspired by sailors, who sported a single gold earring to cover funeral costs in case they died at sea.
164. North America’s 200 million starlings have Shakespeare to thank for their existence.
William Shakespeare’s works contain more than 600 references to various types of birds, from swans and doves to sparrows and turkeys. The starling—a lustrous songbird with a gift for mimicry, native to Europe and western Asia—makes just one appearance, in “Henry IV, Part 1.” In 1890 an American “bardolator” named Eugene Schiffelin decided to import every kind of bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s oeuvre but absent from the United States. As part of this project, he released two flocks of 60 starlings in New York’s Central Park. One hundred twenty years later, the highly adaptable species has taken over the skies, becoming invasive and driving some native birds to the brink of extinction.
165. Some people think Shakespeare was a fraud.
How did a provincial commoner who had never gone to college or ventured outside Stratford become one of the most prolific, worldly and eloquent writers in history? Even early in his career, Shakespeare was spinning tales that displayed in-depth knowledge of international affairs, European capitals and history, as well as familiarity with the royal court and high society. For this reason, some theorists have suggested that one or several authors wishing to conceal their true identity used the person of William Shakespeare as a front. Proposed candidates include Edward De Vere, Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Mary Sidney Herbert. Most scholars and literary historians remain skeptical about this hypothesis, although many suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with other playwrights.
2. Born on April 23, 1564
3. Died on April 23, 1616
4. Stratford-upon-Avon was his birthplace
5. Parents were John and Mary Shakespeare
6. Had seven brothers and sisters
7. Sister Joan was born in 1558
8. Margaret was born in 1562
9. Gilbert was born in1566
10. Joan II was born in 1569
11. Anne was born in 1571
12. Richard was born in 1574
13. Edmund was born in 1580
14. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway
15. He was 18 when married and Anne was 26
16. Had eight children
17. Susannah born in 1583
18. Twins, Hamnet and Judith, born in 1585
19. His first published play was Henry VI, Part II
20. Wrote 37 plays
21. He was good friends with Elizabeth I, queen during his life
22. Lived in England during the Renaissance
23. Was affiliated with a theatre group known as the Lord Chamberlains Men
24. Wrote plays for the Globe Theatre
25. Was buried in Stratford
26. After Queen Elizabeth I died, Shakespeare lived during the reign of King James I
27. His house was called New Palace
28. Daughter Susannah married Dr. John Hall
29. Lord Chamberlains Men bought the Blackfriars Theatre
30. His Collective Sonnets were first published in 1609
31. His daughter Judith married Thomas Quiney 1616
32. Grandfathers name was Richard
33. Grandfather owned a farm in Snitterfield
34. Baptized at Holy Trinity Parish Church in Stratford
35. Child Hamnet died at age eleven
36. Refers to poet Christopher Marlowe’s death in As You Like It
37. Father John Shakespeare was granted Coat of Arms in1596
38. The Globe Theatre burned down in 1613, but was rebuilt in 1614
39. The Globe Theatre was demolished in 1644
40. The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s shortest play
41. Shortest play is 1770 lines long
42. Othello was one of the most popular of his plays throughout the 18th and 19th centuries
43. Troilus and Cressida was originally written as a Tragedy
44. Contain over 600 references to birds
45. May have translated Psalm 46
46. Was known as the Bard of Stratford
47. Famous poet John Keats kept a bust of Shakespeare near his desk in hopes that the play write would spark his creativity
48. The Comedy of Errors was said to inspirer Rodgers and Hart's popular musical, The Boys from Syracuse
49. Used the word dog or dogs over 200 times in his works
50. King Lear was banished from the English stage for making fun of the monarchy and King George III
51. Love's Labour's Lost has the highest percentage of rhyming lines of all of his plays
52. There is no record of Alls Well that Ends Well ever being performed in Shakespeare’s lifetime
53. Invented the word assassination
54. Never attended a University
55. Lived through the Black Death
56. Sonnets were published in 1609 without his permission
57. Wrote roughly one and a half plays between 1589 and 1616
58. Never published any of his own plays, they were all published by his fellow actors
59. Did not die in poverty, unlike many of his fellow authors of the time
60. Performed plays by play write Ben Jonson, in addition to his own.
61. Performed many time before Queen Elizabeth I and King James I
62. Had many quarrels with play critic Robert Greene
63. Has instances of suicide an unlucky thirteen times in his works.
64. None of his plays were acted out by women
65. Had an earring in his left ear
66. Village he grew up in had a population of over 1500 people and only about 200 houses
67. Interest in theatre started at an early age, his father took him and his siblings to see traveling shows
68. Marriage certificate was issued on November 27, 1582
69. Buried in the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon
70. Is believed to have died on his birthday
71. Was rumored to have created over 1,700 words for the English language.
72. Has no actual known birth, but based on birth records historians believe it was April 23, 1564.
73. Only two authentic portraits of William Shakespeare
74. Was a popular last name, their were two non-related Shakespeare families.
75. Wrote his first play when he was 25 years old
76. Was not credited with all his work, the play Cardenio has never been recorded.
77. Performed in many of his own plays
78. One of the most identified icons of England
79. Wrote before Websters first published Dictionary
80. First child, Susannah, was born six months after Shakespeare and his wife were married.
81. Many didnt like Macbeth, because they were afraid of witches
82. No one knows how Shakespeare died
83. Was a Roman Catholic
84. When Shakespeare was alive, the town was called Stratford, not Stratford-upon- Avon
85. The motto of the Globe Theatre was totus mundus agit histrionem (all the world's a stage)
86. Was a Baptist when he was born, but was a Roman Catholic when he died.
87. First job was holding horses outside the theatres
88. Wrote King John the same year his son died
89. Coined the phrase the beast with two backs
90. Died 52
91. Last play he wrote was Two Noble Kinsmen
92. Only left his wife a bed when he died
93. Was married at Temple Graston
94. His tomb was inscribed with a curse
95. Some believe Queen Elizabeth wrote some of his plays
96. Lived on Henley Street
97. wrote Romeo and Juliet when he was around 30 years old
98. 15 of his plays had been performed by 1597
99. Racisms pops up frequently in work.
100. Rumored to copy many of his famous plays from other writers
101. There is documentary proof that Shakespeare was baptised on 26th April 1564, and scholars believe that, in keeping with the traditions of the time, he would have been baptised when he was three days old, meaning Shakespeare was probably born on April 23rd. However, as Shakespeare was born under the old Julian calendar, what was April 23rd during Shakespeare’s life would actually be May 3rd according to today’s Gregorian calendar.
102. Shakespeare’s parents were John and Mary Shakespeare (nee Arden). John came to Stratford from Snitterfield before 1532 as an apprentice glover and tanner of leathers. He prospered and began to deal in farm products and wool before being elected to a multitude of civic positions.
103. Shakespeare had seven siblings: Joan (b 1558); Margaret (b 1562); Gilbert (b 1566); another Joan (b 1569); Anne (b 1571); Richard (b 1574) and Edmund (b 1580). .
104. One of Shakespeare’s relatives on his mother’s side, William Arden, was arrested for plotting against Queen Elizabeth I, imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed.
105. Shakespeare married his wife Anne Hathaway when he was 18. She was 26 and three months pregnant with Shakespeare’s child when they married. Their first child Susanna was born six months after the wedding.
106. 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.
107. There are more than 80 variations recorded for the spelling of Shakespeare’s name. In the few original signatures that have survived, Shakespeare spelt his name “Willm Shaksp,” “William Shakespe,” “Wm Shakspe,” “William Shakspere,” ”Willm Shakspere,” and “William Shakspeare”. There are no records of him ever having spelt it “William Shakespeare”, as we know him today.
108. 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. There is evidence that he played the ghost in Hamlet and Adam in As You Like It.
109. During his life Shakespeare performed before Queen Elizabeth I and, later, before James I who was an enthusiastic patron of his work.
110. Shakespeare lived a double life. By the seventeenth century he had become a famous playwright in London but in hishometown 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.
111. It’s likely that Shakespeare wore a gold hoop earring in his left ear – a creative, bohemian look in the Elizabethan & Jacobean eras. This style is evidenced in the Chandos portrait, one of the most famous depictions of Shakespeare.
112. During his lifetime Shakespeare became a very wealthy man with a large property portfolio. He was a brilliant businessman – forming a joint-stock company with his actors meaning he took a share in the company’s profits, as well as earning a fee for each play he wrote.
113. Shakespeare’s family home in Stratford was called New Place. The house stood on the corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane, and was apparently the second largest house in the town
114. Sometime after his unsuccessful application to become a gentleman, Shakespeare took his father to the College of Arms to secure their own Shakespeare family crest. The crest was a yellow spear on a yellow shield, with the Latin inscription “Non Sans Droict”, or “Not without Right”.
115. On his death Shakespeare made several gifts to various people but left his property to his daughter, Susanna. The only mention of his wife in Shakespeare’s own will is: “I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture”. The “furniture” was the bedclothes for the bed.
116. Shakespeare’s burial at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford Upon Avon is documented as happening on 25th April 1616. In keeping with traditions of the time it’s likley he would have been buried two days after his death, meaning Shakespeare likely died 23rd April 1616 – his 52nd birthday.
117. Shakespeare penned a curse for his grave, daring anyone to move his body from that final resting place. His epitaph was:
118. Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear,
119. To dig the dust enclosed here:
120. Blest be the man that spares these stones,
121. And curst be he that moves my bones.
122. Though it was customary to dig up the bones from previous graves to make room for others, the remains inShakespeare’s grave are still undisturbed.
123. Shakespeare’s original grave marker showed him holding a bag of grain. Citizens of Stratford replaced the bag with a quill in 1747.
124. Although it was illegal to be a Catholic in Shakespeare’s lifetime, the Anglican Archdeacon, Richard Davies of Lichfield, who had known him wrote some time after Shakespeare’s death that he had been a Catholic.
125. 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.
126. Shakespeare is most often referred to as an Elizabethan playwright, but as most of his most popular plays were written after Elizabeth’s death he was actually more of a Jacobean writer. His later plays also show the distinct characteristics of Jacobean drama.
127. Shakespeare has been credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with introducing almost 3,000 words to the English language. Estimations of his vocabulary range from 17,000 to a dizzying 29,000 words – at least double the number of words used by the average conversationalist.
128. According to Shakespeare professor Louis Marder, “Shakespeare was so facile in employing words that he was able to use over 7,000 of them – more than occur in the whole King James Version of the Bible – only once and never again.”
129. 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 Thomas Middleton; Pericles with George Wilkins; and The Two Noble Kinsmen with John Fletcher.
130. Shakespeare’s last play – The Two Noble Kinsmen – is reckoned to have been written in 1613 when he was 49 years old.
131. The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s shortest play at just 1,770 lines long.
132. Some scholars have maintained that Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him, with at least fifty writers having been suggested as the “real” author. However, the evidence for Shakespeare’s having written the plays is very strong.
133. Although Shakespeare is almost universally considered as one of the finest writers in the English language, his contemporaries were not always as impressed. The first recorded reference to Shakespeare, written by theatre critic Robert Greene in 1592, was as an “upstart crow, beautified with our feathers”.
134. Suicide occurs an unlucky thirteen times in Shakespeare’s 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.
135. 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.
136. It is likely that Shakespeare wrote many plays that have been lost. It’s 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.
137. Shakespeare’s shortest play, The Comedy of Errors is only a third of the length of his longest, Hamlet, which takes four hours to perform.
138. Two of Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing, have been translated into Klingon. The Klingon Language Institute plans to translate more!
139. The National Portrait Gallery in London’s first acquisition in 1856 was the ‘Chandos’ portrait of Shakespeare, attributed to the artist John Taylor. It’s now considered the only representation of the writer that has any real claim to having been painted from life.
140. In the King James Bible the 46th word of Psalm 46 is ‘shake’ and the 46th word from the end of the same Psalm is ‘spear’. Some think this was a hidden birthday message to the Bard, as the King James Bible was published in 1611 – the year of Shakespeare’s 46th birthday.
141. The moons of Uranus were originally named in 1852 after magical spirits from English literature. The International Astronomy Union subsequently developed the convention to name all further moons of Uranus (of which there are 27) after characters in Shakespeare’s plays or Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.
142. Shakespeare had close connections with King James I. The King made the actors of Shakespeare’s company ‘Grooms of Chamber’, in response to which Shakespeare changed the company’s name from the ‘Lord Chamberlain’s Men’ to the ‘King’s Men’. The new title made Shakespeare a favourite with the King and in much demand for Court performances.
143. The Royal Shakespeare Company sells more than half a million tickets a year for Shakespeare productions at their theatres in Stratford-on-Avon, London and Newcastle – introducing an estimated 50,000 people to a live Shakespeare performance for the first time each year.
144. Shakespeare never actually published any of his plays. They are known today only because two of his fellow actors – John Hemminges and Henry Condell – recorded and published 36 of them posthumously under the name ‘The First Folio’, which is the source of all Shakespeare books published.
145. The United States has Shakespeare to thank for its estimated 200 million starlings. In 1890 an American bardolator, Eugene Schiffelin, embarked on a project to import each species of bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s works that was absent from the US. Part of this project involved releasing two flocks of 60 starlings in New York’s Central Park.
146. The American President Abraham Lincoln was a great lover of Shakespeare’s plays and frequently recited from them to his friends. His assassin, John Wilkes Booth was a famous Shakespearean actor.
147. Candles were very expensive in Shakespeare’s 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.
148. Rumour has it that poet John Keats was so influenced by Shakespeare that he kept a bust of the Bard beside him while he wrote, hoping that Shakespeare would spark his creativity.
149. It was illegal for women and girls to perform in the theatre in Shakespeare’s 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.
150. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre burnt down on 29th June 1613 after a cannon shot set fire to it during a performance of Henry VIII.
151. The original Globe Theatre came to a premature end in 1613 during a performance of Henry VIII, when a cannon set light to the thatched roof. Within two hours the theatre was burnt to the ground, to be rebuilt the following year.
152. An outbreak of the plague in Europe resulted in all London theatres being closed between 1592 and 1594. As there was no demand for plays during this time, Shakespeare began to write poetry, completing his first batch of sonnets in 1593, aged
153. ‘William Shakespeare’ is an anagram of ‘I am a weakish speller’.
154. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Shakespeare wrote close to a tenth of the most quoted lines ever written or spoken in English. What’s more, according to the Literature Encyclopaedia, Shakespeare is the second most quoted English writer after the writers of the Bible.
155. Copyright didn’t exist in Shakespeare’s time, as a result of which there was a thriving trade in copied plays. To help counter this, actors got their lines only once the play was in progress – often in the form of cue acting where someone backstage whispered them to the person shortly before he was supposed to deliver them.
156. Shakespeare’s father held a lot of different jobs, and at one point got paid to drink beer.
The son of a tenant farmer, John Shakespeare was nothing if not upwardly mobile. He arrived in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1551 and began dabbling in various trades, selling leather goods, wool, malt and corn. In 1556 he was appointed the borough’s official “ale taster,” meaning he was responsible for inspecting bread and malt liquors. The next year he took another big step up the social ladder by marrying Mary Arden, the daughter of an aristocratic farmer who happened to be his father’s former boss. John later became a moneylender and held a series of municipal positions, serving for some time as the mayor of Stratford. In the 1570s he fell into debt and ran into legal problems for reasons that remain unclear.
157. Shakespeare married an older woman who was three months pregnant at the time.
In November 1582, 18-year-old William wed Anne Hathaway, a farmer’s daughter eight years his senior. Instead of the customary three times, the couple’s intention to marry was only announced at church once—evidence that the union was hastily arranged because of Anne’s eyebrow-raising condition. Six months after the wedding, the Shakespeares welcomed a daughter, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith followed in February 1585. Little is known about the relationship between William and Anne, besides that they often lived apart and he only bequeathed her his “second-best bed” in his will.
158. Shakespeare’s parents were probably illiterate, and his children almost certainly were.
Nobody knows for sure, but it’s quite likely that John and Mary Shakespeare never learned to read or write, as was often the case for people of their standing during the Elizabethan era. Some have argued that John’s civic duties would have required basic literacy, but in any event he always signed his name with a mark. William, on the other hand, attended Stratford’s local grammar school, where he mastered reading, writing and Latin. His wife and their two children who lived to adulthood, Susanna and Judith, are thought to have been illiterate, though Susanna could scrawl her signature.
159. Nobody knows what Shakespeare did between 1585 and 1592.
To the dismay of his biographers, Shakespeare disappears from the historical record between 1585, when his twins’ baptism was recorded, and 1592, when the playwright Robert Greene denounced him in a pamphlet as an “upstart crow.” The insult suggests he’d already made a name for himself on the London stage by then. What did the newly married father and future literary icon do during those seven “lost” years? Historians have speculated that he worked as a schoolteacher, studied law, traveled across continental Europe or joined an acting troupe that was passing through Stratford. According to one 17th-century account, he fled his hometown after poaching deer from a local politician’s estate.
160. Shakespeare’s plays feature the first written instances of hundreds of familiar terms.
William Shakespeare is believed to have influenced the English language more than any other writer in history, coining—or, at the very least, popularizing—terms and phrases that still regularly crop up in everyday conversation. Examples include the words “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As You Like It”); and the expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle” (“The Tempest”), “wild goose chase” (“Romeo and Juliet”) and “one fell swoop” (“Macbeth”). He is also credited with inventing the given names Olivia, Miranda, Jessica and Cordelia, which have become common over the years (as well as others, such as Nerissa and Titania, which have not).
161. We probably don’t spell Shakespeare’s name correctly—but, then again, neither did he.
Sources from William Shakespeare’s lifetime spell his last name in more than 80 different ways, ranging from “Shappere” to “Shaxberd.” In the handful of signatures that have survived, the Bard never spelled his own name “William Shakespeare,” using variations or abbreviations such as “Willm Shakp,” “Willm Shakspere” and “William Shakspeare” instead. However it’s spelled, Shakespeare is thought to derive from the Old English words “schakken” (“to brandish”) and “speer” (“spear”), and probably referred to a confrontational or argumentative person.
162. Shakespeare’s epitaph wards off would-be grave robbers with a curse.
William Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, at the age of 52—not bad for an era when the average life expectancy ranged between 30 and 40 years. We may never know what killed him, although an acquaintance wrote that the Bard fell ill after a night of heavy drinking with fellow playwright Ben Jonson. Despite his swift demise, Shakespeare supposedly had the wherewithal to pen the epitaph over his tomb, which is located inside a Stratford church. Intended to thwart the numerous grave robbers who plundered England’s cemeteries at the time, the verse reads: “Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbeare, / To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, / And cursed be he that moves my bones.” It must have done the trick, since Shakespeare’s remains have yet to be disturbed.
163. Shakespeare wore a gold hoop earring—or so we think.
Our notion of William Shakespeare’s appearance comes from several 17th-century portraits that may or may not have been painted while the Bard himself sat behind the canvas. In one of the most famous depictions, known as the Chandos portrait after its onetime owner, the subject has a full beard, a receding hairline, loosened shirt-ties and a shiny gold hoop dangling from his left ear. Even back in Shakespeare’s time, earrings on men were trendy hallmarks of a bohemian lifestyle, as evidenced by images of other Elizabethan artists. The fashion may have been inspired by sailors, who sported a single gold earring to cover funeral costs in case they died at sea.
164. North America’s 200 million starlings have Shakespeare to thank for their existence.
William Shakespeare’s works contain more than 600 references to various types of birds, from swans and doves to sparrows and turkeys. The starling—a lustrous songbird with a gift for mimicry, native to Europe and western Asia—makes just one appearance, in “Henry IV, Part 1.” In 1890 an American “bardolator” named Eugene Schiffelin decided to import every kind of bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s oeuvre but absent from the United States. As part of this project, he released two flocks of 60 starlings in New York’s Central Park. One hundred twenty years later, the highly adaptable species has taken over the skies, becoming invasive and driving some native birds to the brink of extinction.
165. Some people think Shakespeare was a fraud.
How did a provincial commoner who had never gone to college or ventured outside Stratford become one of the most prolific, worldly and eloquent writers in history? Even early in his career, Shakespeare was spinning tales that displayed in-depth knowledge of international affairs, European capitals and history, as well as familiarity with the royal court and high society. For this reason, some theorists have suggested that one or several authors wishing to conceal their true identity used the person of William Shakespeare as a front. Proposed candidates include Edward De Vere, Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Mary Sidney Herbert. Most scholars and literary historians remain skeptical about this hypothesis, although many suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with other playwrights.
