Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon, April 23, 1564. His
father, John Shakespeare, was a respectable citizen, a wool-dealer and a
glover, who at one time possessed considerable means, and was an
alderman and a bailiff in the little town, but who later on lost most of
his property and ceased to be prominent in the affairs of the village.
William's mother was Mary Arden, a gentle, tender woman of Norman
descent, who exerted a powerful influence over the lives of her
children.

Until William was about fourteen years old he attended the free school
in Stratford, and though there are many legends concerning his boyhood
pranks and his gift for learning, we know practically nothing for a
certainty. In one of the desks at the school, they still show the
initials he is supposed to have cut during some idle moment. Of his
youth we know still less, except that at about eighteen he married Ann
Hathaway, a farmer's daughter who lived in the village of Shottery, a
mile or two from Stratford. Ann was eight years older than William, but
they seem to have lived happily and to have loved the children that were
born to them.

The next thing we can be really certain of is, that about the time
William was twenty-three he went to London and soon became connected
with a company of actors. Here the genius of the poet began to make
itself felt. He wrote some plays, he recast others, and by the time he
had been five years in the city, he was prominent among the bright men
of his time, and was recognized as a rising man. Unlike most actors and
writers of that period, Shakespeare was not a dissipated man, but
attended carefully to his duties, saved his money, and ten years after
he left Stratford was able to return to his native town and buy a fine
estate, to which he added from time to time. His money had not all come
from his writings and his acting, however, for he owned a large part of
the stock in the two leading theaters in London.

About 1604 he ceased to be an actor, although he continued to write for
the stage, and in fact produced his greatest plays after that date.
Seven years later he returned finally to Stratford, and there lived a
quiet and delightful home life until 1616, when on the anniversary of
his birth he died suddenly of a fever. He was buried in the little
parish church at Stratford, where his remains rest beside those of his
wife. On the flat stone that covers his body is inscribed this epitaph:

"Good frend f