Complete Works of William Shakespeare

The mystery of Shakespeare's rise to literary eminence is demonstrated by the fact that his suspected parents were illiterate. He was born on April 23rd 1564, and of the years that intervened between his christening and his appearance on the London stage, nothing is known. He must have gone at least to dame school, and from the age of six or seven to the King's New Grammar School. In the lower school he would have studied Latin. In the upper school he would have studied rhetoric and logic, Cicero, Quintilian, Ovid, Virgil and Horace and have begun the study of Greek. These studies were all the literary training that any Elizabethan poet received. In the 1590s there was no profession of letters. Poetry was practised as an accomplished pastime by gentlemen and scholars. It is therefore impossible to document with certainty Shakespeare's development from his birth to the publication of his poem Venus and Adonis in 1593. The only documented event in these years is the rather unconventional marriage of William Shakespeare, aged eighteen with Anne Hathaway, an heiress, six or seven years older and pregnant. The only other documentation we have before 1592 relates to the children Anne bore William; Susanna in May 1583, and the twins Hamnet and Judith in 1585. William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest playwright the world has seen, and produced an astonishing amount of work; 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and 5 poems. On April 23rd 1616, aged 52 years to the day, Shakespeare died and was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford.