William Shakespeare Timeline

William Shakespeare 52

1564 Birth of William Shakespeare William Shakespeare is baptised on 26 April 1564 at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. His birth date is traditionally given as 23 April — St George's Day — though only the baptism record survives. His father, John Shakespeare, is a glover and alderman; his mother, Mary Arden, comes from a family of minor gentry. Stratford is a prosperous market town of some 1,500 inhabitants.
1568 John Shakespeare becomes High Bailiff William's father John Shakespeare is elected High Bailiff of Stratford-upon-Avon — the equivalent of mayor — at the height of his civic career. The position would have entitled young William to free education at the King's New School, Stratford, where boys were drilled in Latin grammar, rhetoric and classical authors including Ovid, Virgil and Plautus. These authors will leave deep marks on Shakespeare's later work.
1569 First theatrical performances in Stratford The Queen's Men and the Earl of Worcester's Men perform in Stratford, with John Shakespeare authorising payment from civic funds. These are among the first professional theatrical performances the young Shakespeare would have witnessed. Travelling companies brought London theatre to the provinces, and Stratford — on a major coaching route — received regular visits throughout his childhood.
1576 The Theatre opens in London James Burbage builds The Theatre in Shoreditch — the first purpose-built playhouse in England. Before this, plays were performed in inn yards, great halls and temporary spaces. The Theatre establishes the commercial model that will define Elizabethan drama: a paying public audience, a repertory company, and a permanent stage. Shakespeare will eventually become a sharer in Burbage's successor company.
1577 John Shakespeare's financial decline Shakespeare's father John begins to withdraw from public life, likely due to financial difficulties and possible recusancy — failure to attend Church of England services. He mortgages his wife's property and faces legal actions for debt. The family's reduced circumstances may explain why William does not proceed to university, unlike contemporaries Christopher Marlowe (Corpus Christi, Cambridge) and Ben Jonson. The contrast will follow Shakespeare throughout his career.
1582 Marriage to Anne Hathaway At eighteen, Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway of Shottery, who is twenty-six and already pregnant. A special licence is obtained to allow the marriage with only one reading of the banns rather than the usual three, indicating some urgency. The couple marry in late November 1582. Their first child, Susanna, is baptised in May 1583. The marriage raises questions scholars have debated for centuries: did Shakespeare choose it freely, or was he compelled?
1583 Birth of Susanna Shakespeare William and Anne's first child, Susanna, is baptised at Holy Trinity Church on 26 May 1583. She will later marry the physician John Hall and outlive her father. Shakespeare's relationship with his eldest daughter appears to have been close; he leaves her New Place and most of his estate in his will.
1585 Birth of twins Hamnet and Judith Anne Shakespeare gives birth to twins, baptised Hamnet and Judith on 2 February 1585 — named after Shakespeare's friends and neighbours Hamnet Sadler and his wife Judith. Hamnet will die at the age of eleven in 1596, a loss that casts a long shadow over Shakespeare's middle period. Judith will marry Thomas Quiney and outlive her father.
1587 The "Lost Years" — Shakespeare arrives in London The period between 1585 and 1592 is known as Shakespeare's "Lost Years" — no documentary record places him anywhere. By 1592 he is established enough in London to be attacked in print. Tradition offers colourful explanations: that he fled Stratford after poaching deer, that he worked as a schoolmaster in the country, that he joined a travelling theatre company. The likeliest account is a gradual move to London sometime around 1587, when several major companies were active.
1589 Early plays — Henry VI and Titus Andronicus Shakespeare's earliest plays are likely written in the late 1580s and early 1590s. The three parts of Henry VI — sprawling, ambitious history plays — show a writer learning his craft at scale. Titus Andronicus, his earliest tragedy, is lurid and operatic, drawing on Ovid's Metamorphoses. These apprentice works already show the qualities that will define his mature art: psychological intensity, command of verse, and the ability to hold a vast dramatic canvas together.
1592 – 1594 Plague closes the London theatres A severe outbreak of bubonic plague forces the closure of London's theatres from 1592 to 1594 — one of the longest closures in Elizabethan theatrical history. Unable to stage plays, Shakespeare turns to narrative poetry: Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594) are both dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and are the only works Shakespeare himself sees through the press. Both are immediate bestsimes — Venus and Adonis goes through ten editions in his lifetime.
1592 Robert Greene's attack — first documented mention The pamphleteer Robert Greene, dying, attacks Shakespeare in his posthumously published Groatsworth of Wit (1592) as "an upstart crow beautified with our feathers" who "supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you." This is the first known reference to Shakespeare as a playwright in London — and it implies he is already successful enough to threaten established writers. Greene's contempt (a university man sneering at a grammar-school boy) captures the class anxiety that will follow Shakespeare his whole career.
1593 Venus and Adonis published Shakespeare's first published work, Venus and Adonis, is registered at the Stationers' Company on 18 April 1593 and printed by Richard Field, a Stratford man. The long narrative poem — 1,194 lines of rhyme royal — retells the Ovidian story of the goddess of love pursuing the reluctant Adonis. It becomes the bestselling work published in Shakespeare's lifetime, reprinted at least sixteen times before his death. He calls it "the first heir of my invention" in the dedication to Southampton.
1594 The Comedy of Errors One of Shakespeare's earliest comedies, probably written around 1594, The Comedy of Errors is his most tightly plotted farce — based on Plautus's Menaechmi, it doubles the twin confusion of its source by adding a second pair of twins. The play is short, fast and brilliantly constructed. It was performed at Gray's Inn during the Christmas revels of 1594, suggesting the company was already performing for elite legal audiences.
1594 The Lord Chamberlain's Men founded Shakespeare becomes a founding member and sharer in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, formed in 1594 under the patronage of Henry Carey, Lord Chamberlain. The company includes Richard Burbage (the greatest tragic actor of the age) and the comedian Will Kemp. As a sharer, Shakespeare owns a percentage of the company's profits — a business arrangement that will make him wealthy. The company becomes the dominant theatrical force in London for the next two decades.
1595 A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet Two of Shakespeare's most enduring plays are written around 1595. A Midsummer Night's Dream — perhaps written for a noble wedding — interweaves Athenian lovers, mechanicals rehearsing a play, and the fairy kingdom of Oberon and Titania in a meditation on love, imagination and the nature of theatre itself. Romeo and Juliet transforms an Italian novella into the defining story of doomed young love, with some of the most celebrated poetry in the English language.
1596 Grant of coat of arms to John Shakespeare The College of Heralds grants a coat of arms to John Shakespeare — almost certainly at William's instigation and expense. The grant makes the Shakespeares "gentlemen." The motto chosen — Non Sanz Droict ("Not Without Right") — is sometimes read as a pointed response to Greene's "upstart crow" jibe four years earlier. Ben Jonson later mocked the arms as "Not Without Mustard." Shakespeare thereafter signs himself "William Shakespeare, gentleman."
1596 Death of Hamnet Shakespeare Shakespeare's only son Hamnet dies in August 1596, aged eleven. The cause is unknown. The loss occurs at the moment of Shakespeare's greatest professional ascent — he is already the most successful playwright in London — and its effect on his art is much debated. King John (c.1596), with its devastating scene of Constance mourning her son, and later Hamlet (1600–01), with its resonant name and grieving father, are often read in the shadow of Hamnet's death.
1597 Purchase of New Place, Stratford Shakespeare purchases New Place — the second-largest house in Stratford-upon-Avon — for £60. The transaction marks his arrival as a man of property and substance in his home town, even as he continues to live and work primarily in London. He also buys a cottage across the street. New Place becomes the family home; Anne and the children live there while William commutes to London. He will retire there in around 1613.
1597 The Merchant of Venice and Henry IV Shakespeare's most commercially daring comedy pits Shylock — a Jewish moneylender demanding a pound of flesh — against the Christians of Venice and Belmont in a play that has troubled audiences ever since. In the same period, the two parts of Henry IV introduce Falstaff — the greatest comic character in English literature, arguably in world literature. Prince Hal's relationship with Falstaff and his eventual rejection of him is one of Shakespeare's most searching explorations of power and identity.
1598 Francis Meres praises Shakespeare in Palladis Tamia The critic Francis Meres publishes Palladis Tamia: Wit's Treasury (1598), listing twelve of Shakespeare's plays by name — comedies and tragedies — and comparing him favourably to Ovid, Plautus and Seneca. "The Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase," Meres writes. The list is invaluable to scholars as documentary evidence of which plays existed by 1598. It confirms Shakespeare's pre-eminence among his contemporaries.
1598 Much Ado About Nothing and The Merry Wives of Windsor Much Ado About Nothing — with its sparring lovers Beatrice and Benedick — is perhaps Shakespeare's most perfectly constructed romantic comedy, balancing wit, malice and near-tragedy with effortless control. The Merry Wives of Windsor, tradition says, was written in a fortnight at Queen Elizabeth's request for a play showing Falstaff in love. Whether or not the story is true, the result is his most purely farcical comedy.
1599 As You Like It and Twelfth Night The late comedies of 1599–1601 represent the peak of Shakespeare's comic writing. As You Like It — set in the Forest of Arden, with Rosalind disguised as Ganymede — is his most lyrical pastoral comedy. Twelfth Night, or What You Will is perhaps his most perfectly balanced: Viola's disguise, Malvolio's humiliation, Feste's songs and the bittersweet resolution are handled with a perfection no comedy before or since has quite matched.
1599 Julius Caesar and Henry V The opening season of the Globe sees two masterpieces. Henry V — completing the Henriad that began with Richard II — follows the newly crowned king to the Battle of Agincourt in the finest of Shakespeare's history plays. Julius Caesar launches the sequence of great tragedies: Brutus's conflict between friendship and civic duty, and Antony's manipulation of the Roman crowd, are studies in political psychology as acute as anything written before or since.
1599 The Globe Theatre opens The Lord Chamberlain's Men dismantle The Theatre in Shoreditch — whose lease has lapsed — and transport the timbers across the Thames to Bankside, where they are used to construct the Globe. Shakespeare is one of the original "housekeepers" — shareholders in the building itself — owning one-tenth of the lease. The Globe seats around 3,000 spectators and becomes the stage for which Shakespeare writes his greatest plays: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth.
1600 – 1601 Hamlet The longest play in the canon and the most discussed work in world literature. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is likely written in 1600–01 and performed at the Globe with Richard Burbage in the title role. Its exploration of grief, inaction, mortality, theatrical performance and the impossibility of certainty has generated more commentary than any other literary work. "To be or not to be" is the most recognisable line in the English language. Three different versions of the text survive.
1601 The Essex Rebellion and Richard II On the eve of the Earl of Essex's coup attempt against Elizabeth I, his supporters pay the Lord Chamberlain's Men 40 shillings to stage a special performance of Richard II — specifically its deposition scene, which had been censored from the printed text. Essex's rebellion fails; he is executed. Shakespeare's company is questioned but cleared. Elizabeth I reportedly says "I am Richard II, know ye not that?" The episode shows how politically charged the stage could be.
1602 Troilus and Cressida and All's Well That Ends Well The "problem plays" or "dark comedies" of the early 1600s resist easy categorisation. Troilus and Cressida — set during the Trojan War — is bitterly satirical about heroism, love and war; All's Well That Ends Well is a comedy whose happy ending feels anything but. Both plays are shot through with a disillusionment absent from the earlier comedies, suggesting a writer working through profound uncertainties about human nature and social order.
1603 Measure for Measure Measure for Measure — probably written in 1603–04 — is the darkest of the problem plays: a corrupt deputy threatens to execute a young man unless his sister yields to him, while the disguised Duke watches. It confronts sexuality, justice, mercy and hypocrisy with an unflinching directness that makes audiences uncomfortable. The play ends in a resolution that satisfies almost no one — possibly intentionally.
1603 The King's Men — royal patronage On the accession of James I, the Lord Chamberlain's Men are taken under direct royal patronage and renamed the King's Men. Shakespeare and his colleagues are issued scarlet livery as Grooms of the Chamber — royal servants. The company now performs at court more than any other. The new royal patron is a man fascinated by witchcraft and political philosophy, and his interests are directly reflected in the plays Shakespeare writes over the next decade.
1604 Othello Othello, the Moor of Venice is a domestic tragedy of jealousy and manipulation set among the Venetian military. Iago — arguably the most evil character in Shakespeare, and the most articulate about it — destroys Othello's trust in Desdemona through insinuation, observation and sheer malevolent intelligence. The play's racial politics have made it one of the most contested works in the canon; its exploration of jealousy as a form of madness remains unmatched.
1605 King Lear King Lear — performed at court on 26 December 1606 but probably written in 1605 — is the most ambitious and devastating of the tragedies. An aged king divides his kingdom among his daughters and is stripped of everything by the two who flatter him; the one who loves him tells him the truth and is rejected. The storm on the heath, Gloucester's blinding, Cordelia's death: no other work in English literature goes as far into the experience of suffering and loss.
1606 – 1607 Antony and Cleopatra Antony and Cleopatra — probably written in 1606–07 — returns to Roman history on an enormous scale: the entire Mediterranean world is the stage, and the play moves between Rome and Egypt with a freedom that Aristotle's unities would find scandalous. The lovers are both magnificent and self-destructive; Cleopatra is perhaps Shakespeare's most complex female character. "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety."
1606 Macbeth The shortest and most concentrated of the great tragedies, Macbeth is probably written in 1606 as a compliment to the new king James I — its themes of regicide, witchcraft and the legitimacy of the Scottish throne speak directly to James's preoccupations. Lady Macbeth is Shakespeare's most powerful female villain; the Porter's scene is his most fearless deployment of comedy in a tragic context. The play exists in a single text, possibly abridged for court performance.
1607 Coriolanus and Timon of Athens Two Roman plays of extreme political pessimism. Coriolanus — Shakespeare's most overtly political play — portrays a military hero utterly incapable of democratic politics; the crowd is portrayed with a contempt uncommon even in Shakespeare. Timon of Athens (possibly co-written with Thomas Middleton) shows a wealthy Athenian stripped of his fortune and retreating into misanthropic rage. Both plays resist the cathartic resolutions of the earlier tragedies.
1607 Death of Edmund Shakespeare and marriage of Susanna Two family milestones in 1607: Shakespeare's younger brother Edmund, himself an actor in London, dies in December and is buried at Southwark Cathedral — Shakespeare pays for the burial to include a morning knell. In the same year, his daughter Susanna marries the physician John Hall in Stratford. The family's social ascent continues even as the tone of Shakespeare's plays grows darker.
1608 – 1609 Pericles and the late romances begin Pericles, Prince of Tyre — probably written with George Wilkins — marks the beginning of Shakespeare's final phase: the romances or tragicomedies. These plays share a distinctive structure: families sundered by disaster and providentially reunited; young women wrongly accused; journeys through strange lands; music and magic; reconciliations that feel like resurrections. Pericles' recognition scene between the shipwrecked prince and his daughter Marina is one of the most moving in the canon.
1608 The King's Men acquire Blackfriars Theatre The King's Men take over the indoor Blackfriars Theatre as a winter venue — a roofed, candlelit space seating around 700 wealthier spectators, charging higher prices than the open-air Globe. The Blackfriars audience's taste for music, spectacle and sophisticated tragi-comedy directly shapes the late romances Shakespeare now writes. The company's business model — two venues, two audiences — makes it the most commercially successful theatrical enterprise of the era.
1609 Sonnets published Shakespeare's 154 sonnets are published by Thomas Thorpe, probably without Shakespeare's direct involvement, as Shakespeare's Sonnets. The dedication — "To the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets Mr W.H." — remains one of literature's great unsolved mysteries. The sequence is addressed to a beautiful young man, a dark lady, and a rival poet; their relationships, and the poet's shifting positions toward all three, constitute the most searching lyric sequence in the English language.
1610 – 1611 Cymbeline Cymbeline — set in ancient Britain and Rome — is the most complex of the romances: a wrongly accused wife, a wager plot, political allegory and a reconciliation involving at least seven revelations in the final scene. Dr Johnson found the last act impossible; modern directors find it exhilarating. The play resists generic categorisation — Shakespeare's First Folio editors placed it with the tragedies.
1610 – 1611 The Winter's Tale The Winter's Tale is structured in two halves separated by sixteen years. In the first, King Leontes's insane jealousy destroys his family; in the second, set in pastoral Bohemia, his daughter and a shepherd boy find love. The final scene — Hermione's statue coming to life — is the most theatrical reconciliation in Shakespeare, and one of the most affecting in all drama. "Exit, pursued by a bear" is his most famous stage direction.
1611 The Tempest The Tempest — probably Shakespeare's last sole-authored play — is set on an island where Prospero, a magician-duke, controls the other characters through his art. It is widely read as Shakespeare's farewell to the theatre: "Our revels now are ended... We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep." Prospero's breaking of his staff and drowning of his book is one of the most resonant acts of renunciation in literature.
1612 – 1613 Final collaborations — Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen Shakespeare's last works are collaborations with John Fletcher, who succeeds him as the King's Men's house playwright. Henry VIII (All Is True) dramatises the early reign of Henry VIII and the fall of Cardinal Wolsey; The Two Noble Kinsmen adapts Chaucer's Knight's Tale. Both are competent rather than inspired, suggesting a writer consciously handing over. The division of hands between Shakespeare and Fletcher is detectable through stylometric analysis.
1613 Purchase of the Blackfriars Gatehouse Shakespeare purchases the Blackfriars Gatehouse in London for £140 — the largest property investment of his life — jointly with three associates who appear to be holding it in trust for him, perhaps to keep it from Anne's dower rights. The purpose is unclear: he never seems to have lived there. It may have been an investment property, or intended for his son-in-law John Hall. He sells it before his death.
1613 The Globe Theatre burns down During a performance of Henry VIII on 29 June 1613, a stage cannon misfires and ignites the thatched roof of the Globe Theatre. The building burns to the ground in under two hours. Remarkably, no one is killed, though one man's breeches catch fire. The Globe is rebuilt on the same site the following year, this time with a tiled roof. Shakespeare does not invest in the rebuilt Globe — he has already effectively retired to Stratford.
1614 Retirement to Stratford By around 1613–14, Shakespeare has effectively retired to Stratford-upon-Avon, living at New Place with his wife Anne and managing his property interests — land, tithes, houses. He remains a sharer in the King's Men but writes no more plays for them. He is now a wealthy gentleman of property: his Stratford landholdings alone generate a substantial annual income. The theatrical career that began in poverty in the late 1580s has made him rich.
1616 The Chandos Portrait The portrait now known as the Chandos Portrait — one of several claimed likenesses of Shakespeare — is painted around this period, possibly by John Taylor. It shows a dark, earringed man with a high forehead and an expression of self-possession. It is the first portrait acquired by the National Portrait Gallery when it opened in 1856. Whether it actually depicts Shakespeare is uncertain; no portrait painted in his lifetime is definitively authenticated.
1616 Marriage of Judith Shakespeare Shakespeare's younger daughter Judith marries Thomas Quiney, a vintner, on 10 February 1616 — during Lent, without the required licence. Quiney is simultaneously revealed to have fathered a child by another woman, who dies in childbirth with the infant. Shakespeare alters his will days later, adjusting Judith's inheritance to protect it from her new husband. The scandal clouds his final weeks.
1616 Shakespeare's will Shakespeare signs his revised will on 25 March 1616. He leaves New Place and the bulk of his estate to his daughter Susanna; Judith receives a cash settlement; his sister Joan gets the Henley Street house for life. To his wife Anne he leaves "my second-best bed with the furniture." Scholars have debated this bequest ever since — insult or intimate gesture? The will names no books, no manuscripts. It is the will of a property owner, not a writer.
1616 Death of William Shakespeare William Shakespeare dies on 23 April 1616 — traditionally his 52nd birthday — and is buried two days later in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. The cause of death is unrecorded. His friend and rival Ben Jonson will later write: "He was not of an age, but for all time." His grave bears a curse against those who move his bones: "Cursed be he that moves my bones." No bones have been moved.
1619 The Pavier Quartos The printer Thomas Pavier attempts to publish a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays in 1619, assembling ten plays in what would have been the first Shakespeare collection. The project is halted — probably at the King's Men's insistence — and the plays are issued with false dates to disguise the enterprise. The episode underlines the commercial value of Shakespeare's name even three years after his death, and the company's determination to control his legacy.
1623 The First Folio published Seven years after Shakespeare's death, his fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell publish Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies — the First Folio. It contains 36 plays, 18 of which had never been printed before and would otherwise have been lost, including Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, Twelfth Night and As You Like It. Around 750 copies are printed; approximately 235 survive. Ben Jonson contributes a poem: "He was not of an age, but for all time."