WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
(1564-1616)
Part one
created by Savino Carrella

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William Shakspere, by universal consent the greatest author of , if not of the world, occupies chronologically a central in the Elizabethan drama. He was born in 1564 the good-sized village of Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, near the of England, where the level but beautiful country furnished external stimulus for a poet's eye and heart. His , John Shakspere, who was a general dealer in agricultural and other commodities, was one of the chief of the village, and during his son's childhood was chosen an alderman and after mayor, as we should call it. But by 1577 his declined, apparently through his shiftlessness, and for many years he was harassed with difficulties. In the village 'grammar' school William Shakspere had the rudiments of book-knowledge, consisting largely of Latin, but his chief was from Nature and experience. As his father's thickened he was very likely removed from school, but at the of eighteen, under circumstances not altogether creditable to , he married Anne Hathaway, a woman eight years his , who lived in the neighboring village of Shottery.
The that the marriage proved positively unhappy is by no real evidence, but what little is known of Shakspere's life
implies that it was not congenial. Two girls and a boy were born it.
(adapted from "A History of English Literature" by Robert Huntington Fletcher)