English and American Literature presented the world with a lot of outstanding poets, playwrights and writers such as: George Byron, Charlotte Bronte, Oscar Wild, Bernard Shaw, Arthur Conan Doyle, Theodor Driser, Jack London and many others.
William Shakespeare is considered to be the greatest and the most famous of all the writers. He is a vivid representative of the Renaissance. The last half of the XVI-th and the beginning of the XVII-th centuries are known as the golden age of English Literature or the age of Shakespeare.
In spite of his fame we know very little about his life and there are a lot of vague points about it. The exact date of his birth is unknown. We are aware that he was baptised on the 26-th of April in 1564. So the 23-d of April is an approximate date of his birth.
His father was a respectable shopkeeper, and dealt in wool, skins, leathers and gloves. His mother, Mary Arden, was a farmer's daughter. William was the eldest of eight children.
He was fond of producing and setting plays with his boy-friends in his childhood. After Grammar School he worked as a teacher at it for some time. We know that when Shakespeare was 18, he married Anne Hathaway, a woman eight years older than himself, that in 1583 Susanna, their first child, was born, and that twins Hamnet and Judith followed in 1585. At the age of 22 Shakespeare left Stratford alone, for London. In 1593 and 1594 he wrote two early poems, "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece".
Later, he became a member of the company known as "Chamberlain's Men" which played at the "Theatre"; and he wrote for the company. He was already reaching the height of his fame when the Globe Theatre was built in 1593. He often acted at court, and retired, about 1611, to Stratford.
The day of William's death was the 23-d of April, 1616, 52 years exactly after the supposed day of his birth. That is all we know about William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare created a new epoch in world literature, in a human society which are interesting for the people of all the generations at all times.
Shakspeare believed in man, his great abilities to make the mankind happy. That's why William Shakespeare's works do not grow old with the time.
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