William Shakespeare was born on April 23rd, 1564, and died on the same day of the year in 1616, in Stratford-upon-Avon, in the heart of England. He was the son of an artificer of leather goods, a one-time Mayor of Stratford, who married well, but was subject to financial stress. His son was eventually to be a successful businessman, property owner and family figure, and made a precocious beginning by fathering a child barely in wedlock when he was eighteen. His wife, Anne, nee Hathaway, was 26. Perhaps it was this circumstance, followed by the arrival of twins, which led Shakespeare to seek his fortune in London, where he provided for his family by joining a theatre company, perhaps at first as an actor, then a writer, and then a shareholder. The theatre is not usually recommended as an initial path to solvency, but Shakespeare’s colossal talent, show business acumen, and industry, allowed him to buy a large house in Stratford by 1597. In 1610 he retired to live in Stratford. We know little else about Shakespeare’s private life, beyond some land dealings and related lawsuits, and his will, in which he left his wife his second-best bed.

Shakespeare does not seem to have authorized publication of his plays, for good commercial reasons. In the absence of copyright laws, anyone could pirate a play text, and print it or perform it with impunity. Plagiarism thrived, and there were many unauthorized versions of some of Shakespeare’s plays. Seven years after his death, two actors, Heminges and Condell, published a collection of his plays in the First Folio edition in 1623. Previous editions of separate plays had been published in Quarto or Octavo formats, both terms indicative of the size of the page, folio being the largest format. Thanks to the First Folio, in the introduction we have Ben Jonson’s famous phrase about Shakespeare: “He was not of an age, but for all time.”