The Swan of Avon

In April 1564 a son was born to John and Mary Shakespeare at Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon. His mother was the daughter of Robert Arden, an important farmer in Warwickshire. His father was a rich citizen whose business was making and selling leather gloves.

The parents did not guess that their son, William, was going to be such an important figure in English poetry and drama, and that his plays would still be acted four hundred years later - not only in England, but all over the world!

While still a teenager of nineteen, William married Anne Hathaway, a farmer's daughter some years older than himself. We don't know how he earned his living during these early years. He may have helped his father in the family business or he may have been a country schoolmaster for a time. During these years his three children were born: Susannah, the eldest, then twins - a son, Hamnet (not Hamlet!), and another girl, Judith. In 1587 Shakespeare went to work in London, leaving Anne and the children at home. One story says this is because he killed some deer which belonged to a rich landowner nearby, and that he had to run away from the law.

Shakespeare soon began to act and to write plays. By 1592 he was an important member of a well-known acting company, and in 1599 the famous Globe Theatre was built on the south bank of the river Thames. It was in this theatre that most of his plays were performed and, like all Elizabethan theatres, it was a round building with the stage in the centre open to the sky. If it rained, the actors got wet! If the weather was too bad, there was no performance.

By 1603, the year when Queen Elizabeth I died, Shakespeare was already the leading poet and dramatist of his time. He continued to write for the next ten years, but in 1613 he finally stopped writing and went to live in Stratford where he died in 1616. He is buried in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Ben Johnson, who lived from 1572 to 1637, and who was also a famous writer of plays, called Shakespeare 'Sweet swan of Avon'. Shakespeare has been known as the 'Swan of Avon' ever since.

Susan Sheerin, Jonathan Seath, Gillian White: Spotlight on Britain; Oxford University Press, 1985, page 51