The life expectancy in London at the time was thirty-five years; this seemingly short life expectancy would be lengthened if one survived childhood – many children did not make it to their fifth birthday.

London was a crowded and dirty place – it is not surprising that disease was rampant.  The houses were built close together and the streets were very narrow – in many cases only wide enough for a single cart to navigate.  There was no indoor plumbing and it would be another three hundred years before a sanitary way of disposing of sewage was built for the city of London.

Shakespeare was born into a time of religious upheaval.  The Catholic Church came under pressure from the second Tudor ruler, Henry VIII, to annual his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon.  Upon the death of his brother Arthur and Henry’s ascendancy to the heir to the English throne, he had married his brother’s widow in 1509.  Over the years Catherine had given birth to only one surviving heir – a daughter Mary.  Twenty-four years later, Henry asked for a divorce so he could marry the young Anne Boleyn.  The Pope refused and in 1534 Henry broke from the Church, establishing the Church of England.  The throne went to Henry’s son Edward VI in 1547 but upon the boy’s death in 1553, his half-sister Mary, daughter of Henry and Catherine, became Queen.  She was a devout Catholic, and plunged the country back into a period of dissension and conflict, which included persecution and death for Protestants and the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic Church. 

Queen Mary’s death changed the religious status quo in England once again when Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558.  The Catholic Church was once again banned, and the Church of England resurrected in its stead. 

England also faced a turning point in its very political existence during Shakespeare’s “lost years”, those years before his arrival in London when his little is known about his life.  In 1588, after Elizabeth I had condemned her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, to death for conspiracy Spain decided to attack Britain in retaliation for the Roman Catholic Mary’s death.  The Catholic powers were increasingly fearful of the Protestant movement and with England’s break from the Church of Rome now seemingly the final stroke in their relationship, it looked as though Catholicism itself was under threat.  Spain rose of fleet of ships to sail upon England and it was thought to be unbeatable.  However several factors led to English victory – strategic mistakes on the Spanish side and poor weather were among them.  England emerged triumphant, its confidence strong, and the Church of England firmly entrenched.  Queen Elizabeth I, known as “Gloriana” always serves as a backdrop to any story of Shakespeare’s life.  An interesting development during her reign was the acceleration of literacy in Elizabethan England – by the end of her reign, it stood at 33% (probably for males only) and was one of the highest rates in the world.

Queen Elizabeth’s reign ended in 1603, when she died in her sleep at the age of sixty-nine.  Her cousin’s son, James I of Scotland became England’s king.  He was devoutly Protestant so there was no change in the official Church, and indeed by the beginning of the 17th century, few English citizens had ever attended  a Catholic mass.   

​James enthusiastically supported drama and in particular, Shakespeare’s company.  Over the next thirteen years, before William’s death, the playwright’s company would perform for the King one hundred and eighty seven times.  It was the time of Shakepeare’s greatest dramatic output.
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Much information on the London theatres of the day has been gleaned from the journal and business papers of Philip Henslowe, who owned the Rose and Fortune theatres.  For his papers we can extrapolate what life for actors and playwrights would have been like during Shakespeare’s time.  We also know something of the Fortune Theatre’s building – the contract to build it has survived.  These records were used to build the copy of the Globe Theatre that stands on the banks of the Thames River today.  Other information has come from existing diaries and letters that survived the time – mostly from visitors to the city who found the whole experience interesting enough to record.

SHAKEPEARE’S FAMILY 

William Shakespeare, the son of John Shakespeare and Mary, née Arden, was born in the village of Stratford-upon-Avon in the English county of Warwickshire. Stratford is northwest of London, situated somewhat south of England’s center.  Shakespeare was born quite possibly on 23 Apr in 1564 – his baptism in the family’s parish church on April 26 suggests this.  Children in that day and age were often baptized on the third day after their birth.  

​William was John and Mary’s third known child – and the first to survive infancy.  His two older sisters, Joan and Margaret, both died before he was born.  Of the five younger children (Gilbert, a second Joan, Anne, Richard, and Edmund) Anne died at the age of eight but William’s other siblings lived into adulthood.  Only the second Joan was to reach what we would consider a good old age – she died in 1646 at the age of seventy-seven.   

William’s background on his paternal side was, like most of the English of his day, humble.  Earlier relatives were not gentry in the least but simple tenant farmers who worked in the parish of nearby Arden.  The meaning of the name Shakespeare has long been shrouded in mystery – the rarity of the surname indicates that it probably originated with one man several hundred years before William’s birth.  Evidence shows that the first Shakespeare was born somewhere north ofWarwickshire.  By 1389 an Adam Shakespeare was a tenant farmer at Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire – unfortunately early parish records were not compelled to be kept until not long before William’s time so it is not known for sure if he was a direct ancestor.  In 1596 William’s father John applied for a family coat of arms, citing that his grandfather had been granted land in northern Warwickshire for service under Henry VII in the War of the Roses.  Historians believe this was probably a valid claim, but no records have come to light that prove it.

William was the grandson of Richard Shakespeare, a tenant farmer at Snitterfield in Arden who was not a wealthy man but did leave a will in which he named John Shakespeare as administrator, which would indicate he was the eldest surviving son.  By the time of Richard’s death in 1560, John had been living at nearby Stratford-upon-Avon since 1550.  Records show that John had his first house in Henley Street in Stratford by 1552 and had acquired the house next door and one in Greenhill Street by 1556.  John’s trade was that of a glove-maker and he also worked as a wool dealer and an animal skin-cutter.  He may have also worked as a butcher  - it would seem that he was a man who was not afraid of work and had some ambition to better himself.  

Around 1557 John Shakespeare married Mary Arden, the daughter of the owner of the Snitterfield estate where his father Richard Shakespeare farmed.  Mary was the youngest of the eight daughters of Robert Arden – apparently Robert had a hand in marrying his daughters off and John must have seemed a likely prospect at the time – certainly on the social scale the Ardens would have been higher than the Shakespeares.  

On his mother’s side at least, William’s roots in the area were deep.  Just to the north of the River Avon is the village of Arden, from which Mary’s family undoubtedly took their name.  Surnames were beginning to be “set” about four hundred years before William’s birth; it is probable that that branch of the family had been in the area for at least that long.

William’s grandfather Robert Arden was a man of some means, at least locally.  He owned several estates, including the one where Richard Shakespeare was a tenant farmer.  The Ardens were Roman Catholic – England at the time was seesawing between the old Catholic Church and Protestantism.   Although the marriage is not found in a surviving record, it is likely that it took place at Aston Cantlow where Mary’s father had been buried in 1556 and the ceremony would have been a Catholic one, as Mary Tudor, who had brought Catholicism back to England as the official church, was on the throne.  Not long before William’s birth in 1564 Elizabeth I became Queen of England and the country made the final break with Roman Catholicism, and the local parish church became part of the new Church of England.

SHAKESPEARE’S CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION

William Shakespeare’s accepted birth date of April 23, 1564 has long been open to dispute, but the month and year are probably correct.  There are two reasons April 23rd is the sentimental favorite: it is St. George’s Day in England (George is the country’s patron saint) and Shakespeare died on the same date fifty-two years later.  Baby William was baptized on the 26th of April in the parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon and as infants in Tudor times were traditionally baptized on the third day following their birth, historians have happily settled on the 23rd as his date of birth.
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William was the third of eight known children born to John Shakespeare and Mary (Arden) Shakespeare, and the first to survive infancy.  In fact young William’s first year was overshadowed by the spectre of the Black Death, now known more prosaically as the bubonic plague.  About 10% of the residents of Stratford died that year and the Shakespeares’ must have felt relief their young family’s survival.  The plague was to continue to be a problem for England’s citizens during the Elizabethan era.  William was to lose his younger sister, eight-year-old Anne, to the disease.  Quite possibly his older sister Margaret, a one-year-old baby, died of the Black Death as well, as it swept through the area in 1563.  The survival of William, as the first born son, and after the deaths of older sisters Joan and Margaret, no doubt gave him a special place in the Shakespeare family.

William’s childhood home, in Henley Street, Stratford, is still standing and is a typical Tudor structure with decorative half timber and small windows.  In Shakespeare’s time the house would have had a thatched roof.  Henley Street led out of town and William apparently spent much time as a boy wandering and playing the countryside near at hand.  He undoubtedly spoke the local dialect and though his own speech was probably more refined due to his education - and undoubtedly influenced by his mother, who came from a higher social stratum than the Shakespeares – William retained a good “ear” for dialectic speech which is evident in his plays and apparently retained his Warwickshire accent until his death.

William’s life as a youngster was rural.  His father was a craftsman and a tradesman – a glover and maker of leather goods – and records show that neighbors included a tailor and a haberdasher.  But also nearby was a blacksmith – who’s trade in those times would have been mostly horses – and shepherds lived nearby.  As William rambled around the countryside he would have come into contact with the rural inhabitants of various occupations and he would have been well versed in the area’s flora and fauna.  It is very likely that he knew all the local fairy stories and tales of ghosts, witches, and hobgoblins, which England’s rural denizens of the era were particularly fond of these stories.  William’s later writings show that he was well acquainted with the terms and practices of the rural pursuits of hunting and fishing – like most of his male contemporaries of the time, the young William probably spent many a happy hour engaged in these activities.

As the son of an alderman, William was entitled to a free education.  His father John had become an alderman when William was just a baby – John was appointed to replace another alderman who got himself into trouble with the town council.   By 1568 he was elected as an alderman and three years later was chief alderman and deputy to the local bailiff (the town’s top magistrate).  John was involved in local politics for many years, and although his fortunes and position faltered in later years, his son William was guaranteed the best education Stratford could offer.

William’s learning took place at King’s New School – which is still operating as a boy’s school today.  The school was originally granted a charter in 1553 by the learned young King Edward VI – a number of schools were erected in his name.  It is thought the school was the last of the King Edward Schools as the adolescent Edward died only nine days after its charter was granted.  It was familiarly known as the King’s New School, and sometimes shortened even more to New School.  Today it is known as King Edward VI School (or K.E.S.) and while no records exist from Shakespeare’s time, it is generally accepted that William was a pupil and would have begun his education there around 1570 about the time he turned six years old.  

The average school day for the middle class boys of Stratford was not an easy one.  Students arrived early in the morning, not long after dawn, and remained in school until 5 PM.  Breaks were given for meals.  The boys also attended school on Saturdays.  Church attendance was part of the school day, and much time was given over to the learning of the classical languages and translating classical texts.  The Roman poet Ovid made a strong impression on young William.  Classical mythology is evident in William’s later works and no doubt their influence can be traced back to those formative days in Stratford’s New School.

William probably left school around the age of fifteen.  What he did then has not been documented but in the normal course of things, he would have worked for his father, at least for a time.  He may have also been a school master – his facility with words and his sharp intellect would have made him a good candidate – but perhaps it was simply not his avocation and as time would prove, writing was.  Within a few years, though, William was married.  Marriage at eighteen in those days was relatively rare – physical maturation coming later to the young of that era compared to today.  William, however, had been courting an older woman, and as nature took its course, Anne Hathaway became pregnant.  Pregnant brides were common among the rural population – in fact many believed that fertility should be proven before heading for the altar!  William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway were married by license and as William was under twenty-one, he had to obtain his father’s consent to marry.  The actual parish where their wedding ceremony took place is not known, though it may have been in Shottery, Anne’s home parish.

SHAKEPEARE’S ADULTHOOD 

By the time William Shakespeare was twenty-one years old, he had become the father of three children.  His wife Anne gave birth to daughter Susanna in May 1583 and to twins Judith and Hamnet early in 1785. William does appear in an existing legal record for Stratford concerning property owned by his parents in 1786.  Unfortunately very little else is on record for the years before he appears in London.
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William most likely remained in Stratford for the first few years of his marriage and his knowledge of leather indicates that he probably worked with his glove-making father after he left school.  The story that he had been a school master or tutor has long been conjectured.  A story of William teaching in a more the Catholic-friendly county of Lancashire has been bandied about.  None of the stories have any real evidence to back them up, however.
William and Anne lived in the house on Henley Street with his parents.  It is hard to conceive that he would have deserted his wife and children when the latter were so young – William came from a comfortable solidly middle class family and he would have likely been taught to fulfill his responsibilities.  Shakespeare may have spent his working career in London, and hints of philandering came forth, but he always remained faithful to Stratford and returned often and in middle age, he returned for good.  How happy or unhappy he and Anne were together is simply not known.  The fact that no children were born to Anne after the twins arrived may speak volumes – but it may also simply be that the birth of twins rendered her unable to have more children.   That William did send home much of his acquired wealth in London does at least indicate that he had not entirely deserted his family responsibilities – but whether it was done out of love or duty, we do not have any way of knowing.  The years between 1585 and 1592 are considered Shakespeare’s “lost years”.  Simply put, there is no hard evidence of what William was doing during those years.  

We also know little about William’s wife Anne – she was one of seven children of Richard Hathaway, a yeoman farmer.  She was left a small sum of money in his will when he died the year before her marriage and she was to come into this inheritance upon her marriage.  The house she grew up in, known as Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, is now open to the public, but is more than a mere cottage, having twelve rooms.  It is about a mile from the center of Stratford.   Anne’s gravestone is still in existence as well, and from it her approximate date of birth is calculated – it records that she died in 1623, aged sixty-seven.  No verified portraits of her exist and there is no known written description of what she looked like.  Some Shakespearean experts believe that Sonnet 145 was written for Anne – the sonnet only really makes sense when the reader understands the wordplay with “hate” and “away” – close enough to mimic her surname, Hathaway.

What were William’s influences before he arrived in London to make his way in the world of drama?  Certainly he had enjoyed a classical education as a lad and some historians that theorized that he was somehow exposed to more in his late teens and twenties – even if only as a schoolmaster.  As for the world of the stage, despite Shakespeare living in a somewhat isolated and rural area, it was quite common for bands of actors to be traveling the countryside plying their trade.  These plague haunted years drove many people out of London and into the healthier countryside and actors had to make a living too.  They were not above staging performances wherever they could gather enough people to pay the entrance fee.  Actors were usually required to have a patron and many wore a badge that identified him as such – this kept the local authorities from looking upon actors as a liability to their parishes.  

The companies were often sponsored by men of means and even by the nobility.  The first acting company created in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (who came to the throne in 1558) was Lord Leicester’s Men in 1574 – the Earls of Sussex and Oxford also had companies by 1582.  There was rivalry between the companies and apparently, the Lord Mayor of London disliked the acting groups intensely.   Unfortunately, few records for the acting companies have survived.

At least one acting company, The Queen’s Men, put in more than one appearance at Stratford in 1589 – and if William was still living there, he very well could have attended their performances. Again, precisely why Shakespeare went to London is not known – but he may have simply been seduced by the theatre life and combined with his love of words it would have seemed the perfect home for him.  Again, conjecture comes into deciding Shakespeare’s life (one theory has it that William had clung to the old Catholic ways and went to northern England where there was more toleration) but his reasons for going to London remain a mystery.  Fortunately for the literary world, he was drawn to the theatre and left a stunning literary legacy.  

What did William do once he reached London?  Again, we don’t know for sure, as there are few employment records that have survived from centuries past.  Shakespeare did appear in the London in the late 1580’s and if he was immediately attracted to the theatre, he would have headed to Southwark, on the south side of the Thames, where many of the restrictions of the city of London did not apply.  The entertainment industry of its day was free to do as they wanted there.  

A tradition has survived down through the centuries that William first got a job holding horses outside the theatre and then moved up to be a prompter’s assistant.  It is known that within a few years William was “becoming Shakespeare” and was writing.

With so many blanks to fill in his life and so very little solid evidence of Shakespeare’s very existence at this point, how is it known that he was writing by 1592?  It is thanks to one Robert Greene, another London writer.  Greene published an attack on William, accusing him of plagiarism and calling him an “upstart crow”.  Greene parodied some lines from the history play Henry VI Part III and intimated that Shakespeare was stealing from his competition.  Greene died soon after this, but the publisher of the attack apologized in print – which indicates that William, still a young man at twenty-eight, had enough of a reputation or at least enough gall, to demand a retraction.  

If Henry VI Part III had already been written by 1592, there is a good chance that Parts I and II had already been penned as well.  This accomplishment would have been remarkable for such a young man, and one who had not attended university as well.  His lack of higher education seemed to be an issue with some of his contemporary writers – snobbism not being exclusive to the modern world.  Fellow writers, who looked at Shakespeare critically and no doubt enviously, included Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nashe.

Henry VI Part III was not William’s first play.  The Two Gentlemen of Verona was written sometime between 1588 and 1590.  Although it is difficult to determine exactly when many of his early plays were written, it is thought that A Comedy of Errors might have been his first comedic play and could have been written as early as 1591.  In 1594, Shakespeare created Titus Andronicus, his first attempt at tragedy. 

There is nothing in the scant surviving records to suggest that William worked for a theatrical company during his early years in London.  It is very likely he worked as a freelance writer, as many of contemporaries of the time did.  Looking again at his private life, it is possible that during his early years he was returning home to Stratford at regular intervals.  

It is thought that during his early years, he worked with other writers to produce collaborative works.   Sir Thomas More, a historical play about the martyred Thomas More who was executed by Henry VIII, was co-written with Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, the latter being the very publisher who retracted Robert Greene’s accusation of plagiarism in 1592.  Experts believe this was written during Shakespeare’s early period.  

It is known that it didn’t take long for William’s work to attract the interest of several different theatrical companies.  Titus Andronicus was first performed by Sussex’s Men.  Pembroke’s Men also performed several of William’s plays and at least two known performance venues are on record – The Inns of Court and the Bankside Rose playhouse.  Some Shakespearean historians believe that William had joined the Queen’s Men on tour before he arrived in London – some of his later plays are similar to plays they performed in the mid 1580’s.  

The theatres of London were not a stable entity in the 1590’s.  Once again, the pall of the plague hung over the city in the summer of 1592.  The Puritans, a Protestant faction that had gained some power in the Elizabethan era, despised what they saw as the licentiousness of theatre life and pressured the city to shut down acting venues in London and Southwark.  They blamed the theatres for spreading the Plague.  The theatres remained closed for two years.

Whether William remained in London for the duration of the Plague years is unknown, but it is known that he turned to writing poetry.  In 1593 the rather racy poem Venus and Adonis appeared and was dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton.   The Earl was a patron of the arts – he supported several poets and often attended the theatre.  Shakespeare may have looked upon him as opportunity knocking; after all, having a patron was easier that freelancing.  It has been conjectured that Shakespeare’s poems were written to Wriothesley as expressions of love and passion; many have conjectured that Shakespeare had homosexual or bisexual leanings.  This could be or it might just be that Shakespeare saw an opportunity and wrote what Wriothesley wanted.  Without solid evidence, it is impossible to know.  

Shakespeare also dedicated the more serious and tragic poem The Rape of Lucrece to Wriothesley in 1594. It was about a Roman married woman who is raped by a Roman prince – she then commits suicide.  The Rape of Lucrece was not quite as successful as Venus and Adonis but by now Shakespeare’s reputation as a writer was established.
William returned to play writing once the Plague had died down again by the fall of 1594.  A new theatrical company was formed by Lord Hunsdon (who was Queen Elizabeth’s Lord Chamberlain), and called the Chamberlain’s Men.  Evidence has survived that indicate that Shakespeare was part of the company.  Richard Burbage was also part of Chamberlain’s Men – he became the company’s star actor and would be the lead in many of the Shakespeare plays that they performed.  Many of the actors who belonged to the company also had a financial stake in it.

The Chamberlain’s Men did well from the start.  They first performed for theatre-owner Philip Henslowe in 1594 and were on the bill at Court later that year over the Christmas season.  The Chamberlain’s Men main rival in London’s theatre world was the Admiral’s Men and between the two of them, they put on all theatrical performances in the city.  

Lord Chamberlain’s Men now had a base at the Shoreditch Theatre on the London side of the Thames River.  This was an important factor for the rest of William’s career – it now settled down to something of permanence.  Shakespeare was an asset to the company – he brought in his body of work that could serve as part of the company’s repertoire for years to come.  William produced about two plays a year until he left London to live out his final days in Stratford.  

The first Shakespeare play that was a success after the Plague years was Richard III, another history play that chronicled the downfall of the Plantagenet royal house and opened the door for the rise of the Tudor dynasty.  No doubt this play was popularly supported by the monarch and her Court of the time.  Three other well-regarded and often performed plays were thought to have been written during William’s first years with the Chamberlain’s Men – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labour Lost, and Richard II.  The variety of comedy, tragedy, and history plays reflect Shakespeare’s talent and versatility.  Around this time Shakespeare garnered high praise from a fellow writer Francis Meres.  Meres made reference to William’s sonnets, which were not actually published for another eleven years. 
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Tragedy struck the Shakespeare family in 1596 when William and Anne’s only son Hamnet.   In 1597 William, obviously enjoying some material success with his writing career, purchased a larger house in Stratford, New Place, the second largest estate in the parish.  Shakespeare still spent much of his time in London but as the years went on, he returned to Stratford more and more.  The playwright was not only a creative type – he had a keen business sense, as well, or possibly good advisors.   He invested in property, and by 1599 he was part owner of the Globe Theatre, forever afterward associated with Shakespeare.

After the Globe Theatre was built in 1599 Shakespeare became a prominent member of the King’s Men – the company was sponsored by the King himself, James I, when he ascended the throne in 1603.  The company was commanded to produce and perform plays “for our (the King’s) solace and pleasure”. Shakespeare produced a great body of work over the next ten years.  The Globe burned down during a performance of Henry VIII (a fired canon caused the thatched roof to catch fire).  No one was killed, and the Globe was rebuilt soon after.  At about this time, after investing in the new theatre, Shakespeare retired to spend most of his time in Stratford.  He died at New Place on his 52nd birthday.  He was survived by his wife, two daughters, two sons-in-law, and a grandchild.  His wife Anne outlived him, dying in 1623.  One of the few official documentation of Shakepeare’s to have survived is his will – in which he left his wife “his second-best bed” (by law, she would have also inherited one-third of his estate).  William and Anne were survived by their two daughters, both married and who would leave descendants.