William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is the most-influential figure in the history of the English language — the Elizabethan-era poet and playwright whose 39 plays and 154 sonnets are the foundational corpus of English literature. He was born on April 23, 1564 (the date is a celebrated tradition rather than a documented fact) in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, the son of a glove-maker and an heiress from a minor gentry family. He was educated at the Stratford grammar school and married Anne Hathaway at 18, fathering three children before leaving for London around 1587.

By the early 1590s he was working as an actor and playwright in the London theater world. His early comedies (The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream) and history plays (the Henry IV Part 1 and 2, Henry V, Richard III) established his reputation through the 1590s. The early 1600s marked his tragedy period — Hamlet (c. 1600), Othello (c. 1603), King Lear (c. 1605), Macbeth (c. 1606), Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1607). His later "romance" plays (The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest, c. 1610–1611) returned to comedic-redemptive themes before his retirement to Stratford.

Shakespeare's plays were performed at the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames, of which he was a part-owner alongside the Lord Chamberlain's Men acting company (later the King's Men under James I). His 1623 First Folio, published seven years after his death by his theater colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell, preserved 36 of his 39 plays — the foundational document of the entire Shakespearean canon. He died on April 23, 1616 (the same date as his traditional birthday), aged 52, in Stratford-upon-Avon.

His name William is from the Old Germanic Wilhelm meaning "resolute protector" — combining wil (will, desire) with helm (helmet, protection). William has been continuously among the most-popular boys' names in the English-speaking world for over a millennium, anchored partly by William the Conqueror, the various King Williams of England, and Shakespeare himself.