William Shakespeare's Birthday
The birth of William Shakespeare is celebrated today, and although no one knows for certain that he was born today, I think it fitting that one of the Greatest Englishmen to live shares his birthday with St. George. William Shakespeare was believed to have been born on the 23rd April 1564 at a house on Henley Street in Stratford on Avon. There is no recorded evidence of his birth, but his baptism is recorded. on the 26th April 1564, since it was a common practice to baptise children two to four days after their birth and there are three little crosses on the certificate it is assumed that he was born on the 23rd.
William Shakespeare's parents were John, who was a glove maker, and an important civic dignitary in Stratford on Avon. He had risen to become the Mayor by the time Shakespeare had reached the age of four. Unfortunately John was also involved in illegal activities and eventually lost his civic position. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, was the youngest of eight daughters of Robert Arden, a landowner and John Shakespeare's landlord.
William attended King EdwardVI school, which was the local Grammar school. He left at fourteen due to the change in the family's circumstances. He married Anne Hathaway when he was eighteen and she was twenty six. Anne was pregnant so the marriage was necessary. According to the Baptism Records Shakespeare and Anne had a family of three children, though their son Hamlet died aged eleven. The couple spent the first five years of their married life at William's father's house in Henley Street.
Shakespeare's Houses
William Shakespeare left Stratford on Avon for London between 1585 and 1592 where he worked as an actor, playwright and was a share holder in the Globe Theatre. He eventually purchased a property (The New Place) in Stratford on Avon and died there on on his birthday and was buried on the 25th April. In his will he left the house in Henley Street that he had inherited from his father to his daughter Susannah and he left Anne Hathaway his second best bed.
Through the years I have studied quite a few of his plays, the only tragedy I studied was Hamlet, and found it heavy going, but I did enjoy studying his historical plays, even if he did take liberties with the facts, I suppose one could call it artistic licence. There was also a matter of timing, Richard 111 was written during the reign of Elizabeth 1, whose grandfather Henry V11 defeated Richard; and Macbeth was written during the reign of James 1 who was alleged to be descended from Banquo. I have been to see many of his comedies without any prior knowledge of them and found them easy to understand, and some of the ideas, though probably shocking in Elizabethan times, to be perfectly relevant in this day.
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