William Shakespeare
English playwright and poet (1564-1616) · United Kingdom · Writers · Died at 52
William Shakespeare is read about 15,688 times a day, in 236 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?Four centuries gone and his lines are still the ones we quote without knowing it, his plots the skeleton of a thousand stories since. Wrote 39 plays that outlasted empires and a language that was still inventing itself.
A life in dates
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Photos 12
John Shakespeare's house, believed to be Shakespeare's birthplace, in Stratford-upon-Avon![Shakespeare's coat of arms, from the 1602 book The book of coates and creasts. Promptuarium armorum. It features spears as a pun on the family name.[d]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/William-Shakespeare_CoA_1602.jpg/500px-William-Shakespeare_CoA_1602.jpg)
Shakespeare's coat of arms, from the 1602 book The book of coates and creasts. Promptuarium armorum. It features spears as a pun on the family name.[d]
Shakespeare's funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon
Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare was baptised and is buried
Shakespeare's grave, next to those of Anne Shakespeare, his wife, and Thomas Nash, the husband of his granddaughter
Procession of Characters from Shakespeare's Plays by an unknown 19th-century artist
Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing. By William Blake, c. 1786.In their own words 10
, Beauty itself doth of itself persuade / The eyes of men without an orator.
Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York.
A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!
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Born in Stratford-upon-Avon around 1564, married Anne Hathaway at 18, had three children, then slipped away to London sometime before 1592. There he became actor, writer, and part-owner of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later the King's Men. Between 1589 and 1613 he turned out comedies, then histories, then the tragedies - Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth - that became the measure of what English could do, closing with the late romances like The Tempest. Retired to Stratford around 1613 and died in 1616 at 52. In 1623 two actor friends published the First Folio, securing 36 plays that might otherwise have vanished, and Ben Jonson, once a rival, called him not of an age but for all time.
Writers from the United Kingdom 6
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