The Bard Almighty

I. The Nativity of Genius (1564)

On 26 April 1564, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, produced its greatest export since the dawn of recorded time. William Shakespeare entered the world in a thatched-roof market town so unremarkable that historians mostly write about it to justify knowing where it is. He was the third child of John Shakespeare — glover, wool-dealer, local alderman, ambitions: moderate — and Mary Arden, daughter of a gentleman farmer and a woman of demonstrably transcendent taste, given the son she raised. The heavens, presumably, made a small note. The neighbours were not yet aware they were standing in the immediate vicinity of the most consequential baby in the entire history of the English language.

He was baptised at Holy Trinity Church. The church still stands. It has not fully recovered from the responsibility.

II. The Youthful Alliance (1582)

In November 1582, at the precocious age of eighteen — an age at which most young men were struggling to locate their own shoes — William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, a woman of twenty-six and demonstrably superior judgment. A special licence was obtained from the Bishop of Worcester, suggesting the wedding was arranged with some urgency that historians continue to find delightful.

Their first daughter, Susanna, arrived in May 1583. Twins Hamnet and Judith followed in February 1585. Shakespeare, already operating at a level of narrative density that would eventually sustain thirty-seven plays, was apparently unwilling to release a single child at a time. The man understood dramatic economy even in matters of family planning.

III. The Lost Years & the London Conquest (c. 1585–1592)

Between 1585 and 1592, history has the audacity to misplace William Shakespeare entirely. Scholars call this period the “Lost Years,” which is their polite way of admitting that the greatest writer in the English language briefly gave historians the slip. What he did during this time remains conjecture: taught school, worked as a lawyer’s clerk, travelled to Italy, performed with travelling players. The evidence for each theory is roughly equivalent to the evidence for all the others.

What is known: he arrived in London. He joined the theatrical world. He began writing plays of such ferocious quality that his contemporaries described him, with one voice and palpable resentment, as an “upstart crow beautified with our feathers.” That is the Elizabethan equivalent of “this person appeared from nowhere and is dramatically better than all of us.” It was not intended as a compliment. History has, over four subsequent centuries, ruled it one anyway.

By 1594 he was a founding shareholder of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men — the preeminent theatre company of the age. He was twenty-nine years old. He had already written several plays that any other playwright would have retired on. He was just getting started.

IV. The Globe Ascendant (1599)

In 1599, Shakespeare and his colleagues built the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames, because they had already conquered the art form and felt that owning the building was the logical next step. The Globe held approximately three thousand spectators — groundlings standing in the open yard, wealthier patrons seated in the galleries — and Shakespeare filled it, repeatedly, with work that was simultaneously popular entertainment for people who paid a penny and accidental immortality for everyone who came after.

The structure burned to the ground in June 1613 when a theatrical cannon misfired during a performance of Henry VIII and ignited the thatched roof. This is, without question, the most dramatic way any building has ever been destroyed. They rebuilt it within a year. When Shakespeare burns the house down, you rebuild the house.

V. The Canon of Legends (c. 1590–1613)

Over roughly twenty years of productive output that would shame any living writer, Shakespeare produced thirty-seven plays (by the most conservative count), 154 sonnets, and several longer poems. The plays span every conceivable register of human experience, from knock-about romantic farce to the absolute outer limits of existential tragedy:

• Romeo & Juliet (c. 1595) — a love story so structurally efficient at producing catastrophe that it remains the global template for doomed romance, four centuries later, without revision.
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595–1596) — fairy royalty in domestic dispute, amateur actors achieving species transformation, and inter-dimensional romantic confusion resolved with extraordinary convenience.
• Hamlet (c. 1600–1601) — a prince discovers his uncle murdered his father and then contemplates it, at length, for five acts. The skull monologue remains the most famous prop in theatrical history.
• Othello (c. 1603) — the most devastating argument ever written against accepting one colleague’s account over all observable physical evidence.
• King Lear (c. 1605) — an entire estate-planning seminar compressed into five acts, delivered through the medium of personal catastrophe.
• Macbeth (c. 1606) — three certified prophetic professionals, one career-ending promotion, and the most overqualified murderer in the history of Scottish politics.
• The Tempest (c. 1610–1611) — magic, exile, forgiveness, and an island resort operating under the personal management of a deposed duke with twelve years of self-taught weather control.

In these same twenty years, Shakespeare coined approximately 1,700 words that simply did not exist before he needed them. He did not petition any authority. He did not consult a committee. He required these concepts to exist and willed them into the English language: “bedroom,” “lonely,” “generous,” “majestic,” “obscene,” “amazement,” and “swagger,” among hundreds of others. The dictionary, consulted, agreed with all of them.

VI. The Final Bow (1613–1616)

Around 1613, Shakespeare retired to Stratford-upon-Avon — presumably having exhausted the available supply of ideas, coined all the words he required, and decided that the rest of humanity deserved a turn. He spent his remaining years as a prosperous gentleman of property and considerable local standing, which is a perfectly undramatic ending for a man who made a career out of dramatic endings.

On 23 April 1616, at the age of fifty-two, William Shakespeare died. The date is, with magnificent symbolic convenience, also St George’s Day — England’s patron saint’s day — because apparently even the calendar could not resist the opportunity for a final flourish.

He left behind no surviving manuscripts in his own hand. He left approximately zero certainty about what he looked like. He left a body of work that has been performed continuously for four centuries, translated into every major language on earth, and studied by virtually every person who has subsequently formed an opinion about literature. The First Folio — a collected edition assembled by his colleagues seven years after his death — preserved thirty-six of his plays from oblivion. Without it, we would have lost roughly half of what he made.

He did not go quietly. He went everywhere. He went forever.