William Shakespeare Book summary

William Shakespeare is believed to have been born on April 23, 1564, he was the third child of John Shakespeare, a successful politician, and Mary Arden Shakespeare. William did not attend college, but his early plays indicate thorough knowledge of important scholars as well as an exceedingly large pool of general knowledge, which he drew upon to create plays with an incredibly large arsenal of vocabulary. He married Anne Hathaway at the age of 18 in 1582 and had three children, one of whom passed away at the age of 11. William Shakespeare is thought to have written Henry VI part 1 in 1589, this play is believed to be his first.

He wrote many successful plays but his fortune truly changed in 1593, when he secured the Earl of Southampton as a patron.

His plays began to receive wide appreciation and in 1600 he wrote his greatest Tragedies which were Hamlet and Julius Caesar. Hamlet is widely considered to be the first modern play to be written due to the manner in which he explored the human psyche, and created a multi-faceted protagonist. William Shakespeare passed away at the age of 52 in 1616 and was buried in Stratford.