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William Shakespeare and his works

• William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor, considered the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist.
• His works include approximately 39 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship.
• Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, and began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men.
• He married Anne Hathaway at the age of 18, with whom he had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith.
• Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613, with his early plays primarily comedies and histories and his later works mainly tragedies and tragicomedies (romances).
• His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
• The First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that included all but two of his plays, was published in 1623 by two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, John Heminges and Henry Condell.
• Shakespeare's plays remain popular and are studied, performed, and reinterpreted through various cultural and political contexts around the world.
• Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello are considered to be among the finest works in the English language.
• A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Much Ado About Nothing are among Shakespeare's most played pieces.
• Shakespeare's sonnets deal with themes such as time, love, beauty, and mutability.
• Shakespeare's works have stimulated considerable speculation about his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and authorship, although few records of his private life survive.