Shakespeare’s Life and the Background to Hamlet

Abstract

Though we do not know a lot about William Shakespeare’s Life, we know more than we know of any other Elizabethan dramatist’s except Ben Jonson. He was baptised at Stratford-upon-Avon 26 April 1564, son of a well-to-do glover who became Town Bailiff (Mayor) but subsequently got into money difficulties. William, no doubt at Stratford Grammar School, learned enough Latin to read, and use in his writings, Ovid, Seneca, Plautus and Terence. He married a neighbour, Anne Hathaway (1582): they had a daughter Susannah (baptised 26 May 1583), and twins, Judith and Hamnet (baptised 2 February 1585). From then, though he may have been a schoolmaster in the country, and must have joined a company of actors, nothing is certainly known of him until 1592. By then his three Henry VI plays had earned him reputation as a playwright, and by 1593 he had the Earl of Southampton as a patron.