William, the Bardthe Bard of Avon, 1564–1616, English poet and dramatist.
Shakespeare
British
/ ˈʃeɪkspɪə /
noun
William. 1564–1616, English dramatist and poet. He was born and died at Stratford-upon-Avon but spent most of his life as an actor and playwright in London. His plays with approximate dates of composition are: Henry VI, Parts I–III (1590); Richard III (1592); The Comedy of Errors (1592); Titus Andronicus (1593); The Taming of the Shrew (1593); The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594); Love's Labour's Lost (1594); Romeo and Juliet (1594); Richard II (1595); A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595); King John (1596); The Merchant of Venice (1596); Henry IV, Parts I–II (1597); Much Ado about Nothing (1598); Henry V (1598); Julius Caesar (1599); As You Like It (1599); Twelfth Night (1599); Hamlet (1600); The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600); Troilus and Cressida (1601); All's Well that ends Well (1602); Measure for Measure (1604); Othello (1604); King Lear (1605); Macbeth (1605); Antony and Cleopatra (1606); Coriolanus (1607); Timon of Athens (1607); Pericles (1608); Cymbeline (1609); The Winter's Tale (1610); The Tempest (1611); and, possibly in collaboration with John Fletcher, Two Noble Kinsmen (1612) and Henry VIII (1612). His Sonnets, variously addressed to a fair young man and a dark lady, were published in 1609
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He joined the Royal Court Company and spent two years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he performed in productions of “Julius Caesar,” “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and “The Relapse.”
I am thankful to have grown up in a bilingual country and to have attended a high school where we studied Molière in French and Shakespeare in English.
At the bottom were Gray’s Anatomy and a collected Shakespeare, and above them, on slenderer spines, names in faded silver and gold—she saw Housman and Crabbe.
