"Who Was Shakespeare"

William Shakespeare was born in 1564, and baptized April 26th 1564. It is believed that he was born the 23rd three days before his baptism.He was the third child of John and Mary Shakespeare out of seven. From all seven, five survived to adulthood. William's father was said to be a town official of Stratford and a local businessman who dabbled in tanning, leatherwork and whittawering which is working with white leather to make items like purses and gloves. John also dealt in grain and sometimes was described as a glover by trade.The evidence proves William existed but not that he was a playwright nor an actor nor a poet. In fact recently some academics who call themselves the Oxfords argue that Stratford's celebrated playwright did not write any of the plays attributed to him. They suggest that he was merely a businessman and propose several contenders for authorship, namely an Edward de Vere.


We don't really know much that is concrete proof of who William Shakespeare was because of the lack of records that had anything worth knowing. We believe that we know, he was and author, playwright, and poet, but we can't say we know for sure. I personally believe that he was all of those because of the context within his plays. He seems like he was at some point betrayed, love struck, and thinking of life or lack of it after death. Those are all mutual feelings between the works that have been written by him, assuming that what we have been taught is correct.

I think that as soon as students hear the name "Shakespeare" they either whine, get upset, or are frightened by the thought. His works have been written in such a foreign diction to us that we dread having to interpret it ourselves and getting it wrong. The worst part of this situation is that we will never really know what the true meaning behind his words was. When reading it as a class and stopping to discuss and interpret the scenes, the play Hamlet isn't difficult to comprehend. But once we are set loose to figure out the meaning on our own, the diction presents itself as a problem. I did learn to understand his famous soliloquy and I wouldn't have been able to do that before.

http://absoluteshakespeare.com/trivia/biography/shakespeare_biography.htm