William Shakespeare

Shakespeare is the most famous British playwright in history. People know his name in every country in the world.

Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon on 23 April, 1564. Families were big in those days. William had seven brothers and sisters. But his parent’s weren’t poor; his father, John Shakespeare, was a businessman. His mother was the daughter of a rich farmer. When Shakespeare left school, he went to work for his father. But soon after, he met and fell in love with Ann Hathaway, the daughter of a farmer who lived in Stratford. They got married in December 1582. William was 18. Ann was 25. He moved to London and became an actor and playwright. In 1592 he wrote his first play. After that, his plays became popular very quickly, and he made a lot of money. Four hundred years ago, Shakespeare built a theatre – The Globe –in the center of London.

In 1610, after about twenty-five years in London, Shakespeare came back here to Stratford. He was rich, but he didn’t stop writing plays. He wrote thirty-nine plays. Some of them are comedies, for example, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Comedy of Errors. They have happy endings. Others are stories from English history, for example, stories about the kings of England. And the others are tragedies, such as Hamlet and MacBeth – these are sad, dark stories of murder (убийство) and death (смерть).

Shakespeare died on his fifty-second birthday in 1616. But the characters in his plays are still with us today.