William Shakespeare :: Essays Papers

William Shakespeare Shakespeare was born in a small English town called Stratford, Avon in 1564. During his lifetime, he composed 37 plays, which are still being performed all around the world. At the age of 18, he married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. Anne delivered their first child, Susanna, a few short months later. In early 1585, Anne gave birth to twins, a girl Judith and a boy Hamnet. Tragically, Hamnet died at the age of 11 in 1596. Little is known about Shakespeare's life in the late 1580s. In the 1590s, he had began writing plays. Shakespeare became a member of a theater groupe called Lord Chamberlain's Men, and they performed together in front of nobles anand royalty. His early plays include: Henry VI, Richard III, The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labor's Lost, and Romeo and Juliet. His later plays include: Richard II, A MidsummerNight's Dream, King John, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, Julius Caesar, As YouLike It, and Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. During the 1590s, Shakespeare became famous and gained a great deal of wealth. He bought two very expensive houses in Stratford. From 1592 to 1594, Shakespeare wrote many poems, as the theaters were shut down to stop the spread of the plague that killed thousands of people at the time. In 1599 "The Globe" theater was built. One half of the interest in this famous public playhouse went to the theater patron family, the Burbages. But the other half was divided among five actor-sharers, and Shakespeare was one of them. The Globe was rebuilt in 1614 after a fire and the theater was used till 1644. Historians have gathered enough evidence for an authentic re-creation of Shakespeare's theatre. The new, rebuilt, Globe Theater of the 1990s is only yards away from where the original Globe stood. In 1603, King James VI came to England's throne. He loved the theater and issued a license to the Chamberlain's Men, giving them the title "The Kings Men.