William Shakespeare

Famous works

• Sonnet 18 — Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
• Sonnet 116 — Let me not to the marriage of true minds
• Hamlet
• Macbeth
• Romeo and Juliet

From Stratford to London

Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon to John Shakespeare, a glove-maker and alderman, and Mary Arden. He married Anne Hathaway in 1582 and had three children. By the early 1590s he was in London working as an actor and playwright, and by 1594 he was a founding member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later the King's Men.

His first published works were poems, not plays: the narrative poems 'Venus and Adonis' (1593) and 'The Rape of Lucrece' (1594), both dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. Poetry was the respectable literary form of the day, and these volumes were bestsellers in his lifetime.

The sonnets

Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, published in 1609, trace a tangled emotional landscape: love for a 'fair youth,' a tortured relationship with a 'dark lady,' and meditations on beauty, time, and verse's power to preserve both. They perfected the English (or Shakespearean) sonnet form — three quatrains and a closing couplet in iambic pentameter.

Sonnets 18 and 116 are among the most quoted love poems ever written. Yet the sequence as a whole is stranger and more ambivalent than any single famous line suggests, full of jealousy, betrayal, and uneasy reckonings with age.

The plays as poetry

Though best known as a dramatist, Shakespeare wrote his plays largely in blank verse — unrhymed iambic pentameter — and passages from Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear are studied as poetry in their own right. His soliloquies remain the benchmark for dramatic interiority.

He died in Stratford in 1616, a prosperous and celebrated man. The First Folio of 1623, assembled by his fellow actors, preserved half of his plays that might otherwise have been lost.

Style

Shakespeare's verse combines iambic pentameter with rhetorical inventiveness: metaphor piled on metaphor, wordplay, sudden plainness after ornament. His language is so embedded in English that hundreds of everyday phrases trace back to his lines.

Legacy

Shakespeare is the benchmark against which all later English literature is measured. His works have been translated into every major language, are performed more than those of any other playwright, and his sonnets remain the standard introduction to the form for new readers of poetry.

FAQ

How many sonnets did Shakespeare write?

He wrote 154 sonnets, published together in 1609, plus two long narrative poems early in his career.

What is Shakespeare's most famous poem?

Sonnet 18, 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?', is the most quoted, followed closely by Sonnet 116 on the nature of true love.

What is a Shakespearean sonnet?

A 14-line poem in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG — three quatrains and a final couplet.

Did Shakespeare write his own works?

The overwhelming scholarly consensus is yes. Fringe 'authorship question' theories have no credible documentary support.