William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English playwright and poet, born in Stratford-upon-Avon, the son of a glover. By 1592 he was working in the London theatre as an actor and writer, and he became a shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later the King's Men, the company that performed his plays at the Globe. Over about two decades he wrote some thirty-eight plays, among them Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest, along with 154 sonnets and two narrative poems. Half the plays were printed only after his death, in the Folio of 1623. He retired to Stratford and died there at fifty-two.