WHERE THERE’S A WILL, THERE’S A WAY

by Crispin Clarke

Did you know that when on March 25th 1616, a month before his death, the recently minted English Gentleman, Sir William Shakespeare, having retired back to his hometown of Stratford for no more than a few years after decades toiling on the London stage, first signed his last will and testament "William Shakspeare" with an unsteady hand presumably from his bed while afflicted with an illness, it became only one of six remaining signatures? He updated and signed his will another two times, for each the exact spelling is difficult to discern. Not one of the surviving signatures is clearly written “Shakespeare” as we do today. Spelling was quite fluid back in those days and much of the population was illiterate. Thus the power of the spoken word in live theatrical performances which were allowed to take place publicly for the first time in English history during Shakespeare’s lifetime under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Shakespeare’s father, mother, and children were likely able to read but not write — while astonishingly, he became the most famous if not greatest writer ever. Another renowned playwright of the era, Shakespeare's contemporary and early collaborator, Christopher Marlowe, had his name spelled: Marlowe, Marlow, Marloe, Morley, Marlen, Marlin, Malyn, Marlyn, Marly, Marlye and Marlo; the only known signature is spelled "Marley." Other spellings of Shakespeare's name include Shakspeare, Shakspere, Shackspeare, Shakespear, Shakeshafte, Shakescene, Shagspere, even Shaxberd — over eighty variations recorded in total.

Phenomenally, Shakespeare used over 15,000 different words in total (more than any other known writer) and with over 800 words recorded for the first time ever. Many common expressions in our language that we now take for granted originated with Shakespeare. While there are no known manuscripts nor letters in Shakespeare’s own handwriting, this is not a surprise as no manuscript from any published play from any writer survives from Shakespeare’s period. There are numerous publications in his lifetime of plays and poems as well as theatrical records under his name as “Shakespeare” or “Shake-speare” reflecting a career in London from the 1590’s until circa 1613. Contemporary playwrights like Ben Jonson refer to him as a writer and actor in letters and their private notes. Shakespeare was listed as an actor in publishings of Jonson’s Every Man and His Humour. In the introduction to the 1623 first edition of Shakespeare’s collected works of plays (known as the First Folio), there are multiple sentimental dedications to him by his friends and colleagues (some of the same remembered in his will) while recalling the London theaters (in particular The Globe) and acting community they had in common. His son’s name who died at 13 was Hamnet (as in Hamlet). His mother’s name was Arden (as in The Forest of Arden in As You Like It). As a child Shakespeare was familiar by way of his father with the wool trade, leather production, and glove-making — and there are numerous nuanced references to these obtuse topics in his plays as well as to the countryside of Warwickshire and Gloucestershire where he grew up — something nobody else did in the approx. 600 plays surviving from the same period.

Even though Shakespeare is already probably the most examined person who has ever lived (besides perhaps Jesus Christ), nonetheless there is still more to learn. What needs to be appreciated throughout is that Shakespeare’s lifework was more than writing alone — it took place at the birth of modern theater and included everything about the theater: acting, directing, producing, and in 1599 becoming a responsible partner owner in The Globe Theatre on the banks of the River Thames in London and in 1613, he became a shareholder of the first indoor public theater, The Blackfriars. He was there on the frontlines as a leading force at the beginning of what we know today as entertainment which came as a great popular liberating force in the face of what was in England, a hierarchal intolerant even cruel society which had been at war for almost two centuries. Acting, public theaters, plays depicting such relatable characters were absolutely brand new back then — there had never been anything like it before…performing in front of audiences of 2,000+ people 4-5 times per week with different plays each night. We must acknowledge the generations of actors and theaters across the past four centuries for their vital role transmitting the legacy of Shakespeare’s treasured works. With the brilliance of his writings and their profound impact on culture worldwide taken alongside the obscurity of his personal story, it assures Shakespeare to be one of humanity’s most universally admired yet most mysterious figures.

The first and most famous book of plays in history entitled Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories & Tragedies published in 1623 — seven years after Shakespeare’s death — is referred to as the “First Folio" and contains (in 950 pages) the collective works of thirty-six superb plays (eighteen of which had never been published previously but there are performance records).  There are three portraits of the poet playwright actor (although some say five or only two or just one) broadly agreed to be authentic; two of those were made soon after he died and thus presumably corroborated by those who knew him. Supposedly, one way to start an argument between Shakespeare scholars is to claim that there are any definitive facts at all known about him! In all, a staggering amount of effort over hundreds of years has gone into perusing everything about Shakespeare and his associates. His plays are still as popular as ever. We are very fortunate that so many of the written works were preserved as most other plays from that time are lost.

William Shakespeare, born the humble son of a country tradesman and despite never earning a university degree, became a gentlemen and able to retire wealthy while establishing himself as a leading force on the English stage as a writer, actor, producer, director, and partner owner associated with many of the theatrical companies and theaters that existed at the time. Shakespeare’s plays were staged when public performances had only first been permitted under law and took place in the first purpose-built permanent theaters in London: The Theatre, The Curtain, The Rose, and Blackfriars.  The actors known as “the players” were members of professional companies, those associated with Shakespeare and his plays are primarily the Lord Chamberlain's Men which became the King's Men, but also included: the Earl of Leicester's Men, Lord Strange's Men, Admiral's Men, and Lord Pembroke's Men.  

In the will from 1581 of the wealthy Catholic Lancashire gentleman, Alexander Houghton, there’s a fascinating reference: “It is my mind & will that the said Thomas Hoghton of Brynescoules, my brother, shall have all my instruments belonging to musics, & all manner of play clothes, if he be minded to keep & do keep players. And if he will not keep & maintain players, then it is my mind & will that Sir Thomas Hesketh, knight, shall have the same instruments & play clothes. And I most heartily require the said Sir Thomas to be friendly unto Fulke Gillom & William Shakshafte now dwelling with me & either to take them unto his service or else to help them to some good master, as my trust is he will.”

This appears to reference our William Shakespeare and play acting and could thus explain how he got into the London theater community. The above mentioned Sir Thomas Hesketh’s neighbor was Lord Strange (the 4th Earl of Darby, Henry Stanley) who sponsored the acting troupe Lord Strange’s Men. Actors before the 1580’s were required to be under the commission of a noble house or a member of the Royal Family, otherwise they risked arrest and jail. The first performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream possibly occurred at the home of the Lord Chamberlain, Baron Hunsdson, cousin to Queen Elizabeth I, in honor of his daughter’s wedding in 1596. In the Royal Court’s Master of the Revels' accounts for 1604-1605, Shakespeare is named seven times as the author of plays procured to perform as the King's Men before King James I, a noted thespian.  The King's Men performed close to thirty plays (likely over twenty of them by Shakespeare as estimated by modern critics) before the Court of James I at the beginning of his reign from 1603-1606.

"The Theatre", coining the word when they opened in 1576, was the first performing arts theater in London and run by the pioneering actor and empresario James Burbage, founding director of the Queen's Men (which preceded the Lord Chamberlain's Men).  Shakespeare was closely associated with James Burbage until his death in 1597 and throughout his entire career with James’ famous actor son Richard Burbage who consistently played the male lead roles. There’s an official court record of Shakespeare having received a payment in 1595 along with Richard Burbage and Will Kemp for plays performed by The Lord Chamberlain’s Men before Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich House in 1594. John Heminge and Henry Condell, editors of The First Folio, were also members of Lord Strange’s Men, Lord Chamberlain's Men and the King's Men, thus may have known Shakespeare for 25-30 years. Their story about compiling and publishing the First Folio was turned into a fictionalized comedic play in 2017 called The Book of Will by Lauren Gunderson. The Rose Playhouse was a principal rival to Shakespeare and his Lord Chamberlain's Men located at The Theatre and then The Globe, although Shakespeare appears to have shrewdly sold his plays to perform there too.  The Rose was owned by Philip Henslow, who's memorably portrayed in the 1998 movie, Shakespeare In Love.  Henslow left a detailed diary which has been very useful to shed light onto the intricacies of theatre operations during this period, including to provide the only known box-receipts for Shakespeare's plays.  The diary refers to Henry VI Part 1, Titus Andronicus, and The Taming of the Shrew.

Shakespeare may have obtained some of his early play scripts from the Queen's Men which he subsequently reworked and rewrote.  The Queen's Men are recorded to have come through Stratford in 1587 and one of their actors died there the day before the performance; it's speculated that Shakespeare was asked to step in and take his place which might explain how he gained entrance to the London acting scene.  James Burbage’s son Richard was reputedly Shakespeare's best friend and colleague, they may even have grown up together in Stratford as a Burbage family is recorded to have lived there at the same time.  They were so close that all of Richard's children were named after "Will" and his family.  After a dispute with The Theatre's landlord, Giles Alleyn (whose son Ned Alleyn was Richard's main competitor as the most famous actor in England), Richard and his brother, Cuthbert Burbage on December 28th 1599, impressively organized The Theatre's overnight dismantling and transportation of the timbers to the other side of the frozen River Thames to the area known as Bankside.  The salvaged materials were reused and a new theater was erected in early 1600 by master carpenter Peter Street — the three-story open-air circular Globe Theatre — of which Shakespeare was recorded to be between a 1/10th and 1/14th owner for a £1,000 investment.  In 1601 in London, Peter Street also built the Fortune Playhouse, a luxurious theater run by Ned Alleyn and Philip Henslowe, and years later remarkably appears to have built another theater of the same style in Gdnask, Poland.  The first indoor private theater in London, The Blackfriars Theatre (where Shakespeare's plays were often performed) opened in 1596 and was able to charge higher admission rates than the open-air theaters and put on more special effects.  The Globe when it opened in 1600 became the home of Shakespeare's acting troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which three years later became the King's Men after their patron Queen Elizabeth died and was succeeded by her cousin King James of Scotland, a lover of the arts, who not only continued but also expanded royal patronage of the theater.  The Globe Theatre was rebuilt after a fire in 1613 and thrived for decades but was closed by Oliver Cromwell's Puritan Government in 1642 and torn down in 1645 during the English Civil War. Centuries later in 1997, it was rebuilt 750 ft from the original site through the laudable efforts of the American actor Sam Wanamaker. It is now known as Shakespeare's Globe.

Playwriting in Shakespeare's day in Elizabethan England (1558-1603) was at its infancy and barely accepted by the authorities. If not able to present official papers granting permission showing the seal of the sponsoring nobleman or royal, actors risked arrest, imprisonment and even physical punishment.  Acting was considered a disreputable profession even sacrilegious. Actors initially used inns, colleges and private houses for their performances until the public theaters were built. Developing a play script was an iterative and collaborative process gathering feedback from the players, gauging reaction from the audience, reworking plots from other stories, and even co-writing sections with other authors. Writers were often actors themselves too (like Shakespeare) and characters were written with certain actors in mind and then tested out.  For example, the roles of some of Shakespeare's beloved comedic characters: Falstaff, Bottom, and Dogberry were first performed by Will Kemp, a well-known comedian who attracted audiences in his own right. Shakespeare’s long-time associate Richard Burbage likely played almost all of the male leads for the first time: Richard III, Romeo, Henry V, Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Anthony, and many more over the 20-25 years they worked together. 

Tudor theaters ran at a rapid pace and were performing four to five different plays per week, two hundred days per year (when they weren't shut down due to outbreaks of the plague), to meet the popular demand and to cover their high construction and operating costs.  Audiences could be boisterous and were usually between 1,500 up to 3,000 people tightly packed in. Shakespeare had to be a prolific writer in order to keep up with this intense demand as good plays were hard to come by and much sought.  Shakespeare sourced some of his characters and storylines from other publications in all his plays except for A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, which are considered pure originals. Across the works of Shakespeare, there are 34,895 speeches by 1,223 characters according to the George Mason University maintained Shakespeare Text Statistics. A major discovery announced in 2018 by independent scholars, Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter, reveals original source material behind eleven of Shakespeare's plays in an unpublished manuscript written in late 1500's called A Brief Discourse of Rebellion & Rebels by George North.  George's brother Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans is a well-known source for Julius Caesar and Anthony & Cleopatra.  Geoffrey of Monmouth's translation around 1132 of the Historia Regum Britanniae aka The History of the Kings of Britain (which incidentally includes one of the earliest accounts of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table) is what Shakespeare drew upon for his play King Lear, a mythological Celtic ruler of ancient Britain. Shakespeare is widely believed to have used the second edition of Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland published in 1587 as the primary source for most of his history plays.

Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights were reputedly very competitive; in fact the first recorded reference to Shakespeare in the London theatrical scene (a very significant record) was an attack on him by another playwright!  This was when Robert Greene wrote in 1592 "…for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his ‘tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide' supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum [Jack-of-all-trades] is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country."  It is very significant that Greene seeks to taunt Shakespeare as an uppity poet, referring to what had evidently already become a well-known line from Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 3 — when the Duke of York, Richard Plantagenet, before being executed on the battlefield, cries out to Queen Margaret, “O tiger’s heart wrapt in a women’s hide!” (A1S4). This shows a contemporaneous playwright also living in London in the early 1590’s theater scene, identifying a rival poet named “Shake-scene”, referring to him in a colloquial way and connecting him to one of his known published plays at the time, Henry VI Part 2.

The success Shakespeare enjoyed during his lifetime extended to fame not only as a playwright but also a poet — his long narrative erotic poem Venus & Adonis first published in 1593 was re-printed three times just in the 1590’s.

Shakespeare gave his female characters nuance, agency, and perspective seldom seen in literature previously.  Women though were still prohibited from performing in public during Shakespeare's lifetime so teenage boys in makeup played the female characters.  Margaret Hughes is often credited with being the first professional actress on the English stage with her first performance being Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare's Othello in 1660. There have been numerous profound feminist interpretations of Shakespeare in performances and academia. Tension between gender power dynamics and gender stereotypes is something Shakespeare was able to explore in his writing while existing in a much more oppressive society than we have now. The empathetic works of Shakespeare may well have helped significantly over the centuries to reshape the social forces which have held women and minorities down. It is noteworthy that the excruciating complexities of a #MeToo situation was vividly evoked by Shakespeare circa 1604 in the character Isabella who had to defend herself from the clutches of the corrupt judge Angelo while trying to protect her brother Claudio in Measure For Measure.

Shakespearean lore has it that his first mentor and subsequent rival was Christopher "Kit" Marlowe, graduate of Cambridge University, who was born in the same year as Shakespeare and rose to success before him but was killed in a pub fight in 1593 at twenty-nine years old under suspicious circumstances, quite possibly because he was a government spy. In TNT's WillI, a 2017 thrilling "punk rock Shakespeare" 10 part TV mini-series follows Shakespeare's first arrival in London and his friendship with Marlowe who is portrayed as a notorious flamboyant figure alongside Shakespeare's probably wholly fictitious involvement with the Catholic underground resistance to the Protestant government.  Indicative of the dangerous background times in which Shakespeare lived, in 1587 Queen Elizabeth had ordered the beheading in 1587 of her sister Mary Queen of Scots after she conspired with Rome and Spain to plot to assassinate Elizabeth and assume the Crown herself. This would have been when Shakespeare was 23 years old and first establishing his theatrical career in London. Previously, Pope Pius V had excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570 because she continued “the Break with Rome” her father Henry VIII had started and the establishment of the Church of England which he bitterly opposed. Before Elizabeth’s reign, the religious warfare was even worse; her older half-sister Mary Tudor was the Queen, known as Bloody Mary for her pursuit of the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church in England and the burning-at-the-stake of hundreds of Protestants opponents during her five year reign from 1553-58. In a major escalation in 1588, King of Spain Philip II, spurred on by the Pope who was angry his replacement to Elizabeth (her sister Mary Queen of Scots) had been executed, attempted to invade England by sending the vast Spanish Armada Navy but was defeated by the English war boats at sea which changed the balance of power in the region. With this victory and before, Elizabeth’s reign brought peace and prosperity back to England, she permitted the flowering of the arts which Shakespeare benefitted from, but still the religious violence persisted into her successor James I’s reign when some aggrieved Catholics attempted one of the most shocking conspiracies in Western history, known as the "Gunpowder Plot" still remembered today in England as "Guy Fawkes Day" or "Bonfire Night" after the celebrated thwarted attempt to blow up the British Houses of Parliament on November 5th 1605. HBO produced a 2017 TV mini-series about the Gunpowder Plot called Gunpowder starring Kit Harington (of Jon Snow from Game Of Thrones) shining more light onto the backdrop of atrocities and grievances that Protestants and Catholics had heaped against each other.  Other of Shakespeare’s playwright associates and even relatives of his met grisly fates like Marlowe when they crossed these dangerous political currents. Thomas Kyd, a talented young author of The Spanish Tragedie and perhaps an earlier version of Hamlet, was imprisoned by the secret police, tortured and then died shortly after release in 1594. Shakespeare’s first cousin, Edward Arden, a Catholic on his mother’s side was implicated in a plot to kill the Queen and brutally executed at Smithfield by hanging, drawing and quartering in 1583. Shakespeare’s more distant cousin, Robert Southwell, a Jesuit martyr, was imprisoned for three years in the Tower of London for treason before being brutally executed in 1595.

Shakespeare’s family has long been thought to have been secret Catholics and the Stratford schoolmaster of Shakespeare, John Cotton, had a close connection to Lancashire (Catholic stronghold where Alexander Houghton lived, who may have mentioned Shakspeare in his will of 1581). Shakespeare’s own views of organized religion are unknown but maybe something can be derived from noting its absence in his plays. Politically, it appears he was practical and sought to avoid conflict. All plays at that time had to be first approved by the official royal censor for public entertainment known as the Master of Revels. Shakespeare’s English Histories showed the grim warfare experienced in the decades and centuries before Elizabeth I was coronated and then who may have actively endorsed and cultivated this messaging to counter further impulses to fight a civil war during her reign which had brought much needed cessation of warfare. Shakespeare wrote Macbeth in 1606 astutely aware of the political backdrop and the good graces of King James I, providing a cautionary tale to the country about rebellion against one's sovereign after the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

The heyday of Shakespeare's career, 1590-1610, was concurrent with the beginning of the invention of English theater as we know it today as secular and commercial entertainment.  Funny enough, many of the earliest actors back then lived on Holywell Street and now we have Hollywood.  People in the late 1500's in England led by the artists sought something different after over a century of war.  Terrible religious strife between Catholics and Protestants, international war against France and Spain, and brutal civil war over control of the Crown between two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the House of Lancaster (associated with the red rose) against the House of York (associated with the white rose) which Shakespeare chronicled in his earliest plays Henry VI, Parts 1-3 and Richard III and then later filled out the saga with Richard II, Henry IV, Parts 1-2, and Henry V. See all these plays superbly adapted for television in BBC's The Hollow Crown.  James I was deeply interested in unifying England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, a cause for which Shakespeare appears to have provided support.  The scholar James Shapiro points out that the word "England" had appeared 224 times in Shakespeare's Elizabethan plays but in the decade after James became king, it appears only twenty-one more times and the word "Britain" which only appeared twice in the Elizabethan plays appears twenty-nine times in the Jacobean plays.

After achieving considerable financial success and some celebrity from his work in the London theater, Shakespeare retired back to the rustic Warwickshire countryside, invested in real estate and agricultural commodities and bought the largest house in Stratford to live out his days.  It wasn't until about forty to fifty years after Shakespeare's rather premature death at age fifty-two that his fame really started to skyrocket as the theaters in London reopened (after being shut down by the Puritan government from 1642-1660) and so did the curiosity to know more about this extraordinary figure who actually lived a very private life, leaving behind few personal traces besides his last will and testament.  He kept a low profile during the dangerous political times in which he lived and stuck close to the company of his fellow actors, many of whom he knew for most of his life.

William’s father, John Shakespeare, was a glove maker, wool and grain merchant, member of the town council, as well as sheriff and mayor of Stratford.  His mother, Mary Arden, came from a very old family whose name is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086.  He appears to have been business savvy and entrepreneurial throughout his life and died a wealthy man. He married at age eighteen to Anne Hathaway who was age twenty-six and pregnant with their first daughter at their wedding.  For the last few years of his life when it could be said Shakespeare retired and returned to Stratford from his career in London where Anne likely rarely would have gone, he spent time as a father and grandfather with the families of his two daughters, Susanna and Judith, while managing a number of hometown ventures particularly in real estate. In 1596, the Shakespeare's family coat-of-arms was finally granted by the Garter King of Arms after Shakespeare paid off the steep fees from the petition his father started twenty years before.  Shakespeare inherited it when his father died in 1601 and the right to style himself as a gentleman and display the coat-of-arms on his personal effects but never had the son (nor later did his daughters) to continue the inheritance.  Tragically for he and Anne, their son Hamnet died at eleven years old and was buried August 11th 1596 in the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford (the same place Shakespeare himself was christened as a new baby and buried too).  The impact his father's and son's deaths had on Shakespeare may be seen in his writings at the time; there are references throughout Hamlet completed circa 1601 and his play King John, written in circa 1596, contains the heart-wrenching passage: "Grief fills up the room of my absent child, lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words". The relationships between fathers and daughters appear profoundly and profusely in Shakespeare’s plays, presumably drawing to some degree from his personal experience. 

Shakespeare also had a godson, William Davenant from Oxford, whose parents owned an inn where Shakespeare likely stayed during his frequent journeys between London and Stratford.  Davenant became the Poet Laureate of England in 1638 and proudly claimed to be Shakespeare's illegitimate child and worked to make sure Shakespeare's genius would not be forgotten.  Shakespeare had a younger brother, Richard, who died in 1613, is supposed to have been an actor too but no substantive details survive about him. When Shakespeare was eleven years old in 1575, Queen Elizabeth visited the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, a romantic suitor of hers at Kenilworth Castle only fifteen miles from Stratford. There’s a widely circulated rumor that Sir Francis Bacon was the illegitimate child born of a secret affair between Dudley and Elizabeth. Extravagant public festivities, drawing people from all around the area, took place in order to impress the Queen, including a mechanical dolphin with a mermaid on its back moving across the lake at the castle. Shakespeare could have been in the audience, perhaps brought there by his father, as did come many of the neighboring villagers, and recalled the event when the intriguing lines twenty years later were composed for Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A2S1: “My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb'rest. Since once I sat upon a promontory, and heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back.”

There are many unanswered questions about Shakespeare which have and continue to intrigue scholarship and incite speculation.  What were his religious beliefs?  What were his political views?  Was he bisexual?  What was his relationship like with his wife?  How promiscuous was he?  Who were the young man and the dark lady to whom he addressed many of his sonnets?  How did he get from rural Stratford into the elite London theatrical scene?  Where and what was he doing during 1578-82 and 1585-92, the periods known as his Lost Years for which almost no records exist?  What happening during the seven years after he died and the publishing of the First Folio? What about all the apparent cyphers hidden in the texts of his sonnets and the First Folio plus the monuments? Could he have been associated with the Rosicrucians and was he a Secret Society member himself? Were hidden messages of secret authorship revealed left behind in the First Folio? What about the many connections to Francis Bacon in the Shakespeare works? How much did he draw from Thomas North’s works? How did he get a hold of George North’s unpublished manuscript as a source for some of his plays? Will the legendary undiscovered lost letters or diaries or manuscripts or plays turn up someday?  In the 1700's and 1800's, many forgeries of supplemental artifacts were attempted, the most infamous of these being by Samuel Ireland circa 1795 when his documents, which included forged lost plays, were accepted by many respected literary figures and among the general public before being proven false. The books in the bibliography below provide a wealth of details on all these topics if you are interested to dig deeper.  There's even Shakespeare in historical fiction to be enjoyed that conjures up his world, like the absorbing adventure novel Fools and Mortals by Bernard Cornwell, written from the perspective of Shakespeare's younger brother Richard, acting in the plays William wrote.  Shakespeare also lends himself to science fiction, with gripping post-apocalyptic novels such as Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel or alternate histories like Ruled Britania by Harry Turtledove.  We must mention the brilliant William Shakespeare’s Star Wars 10-part series by Ian Doescher (written in iambic pentameter) and the Kill Shakespeare 5-part comic book series by Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col.

Shakespeare died on the same day as his birthday, April 23rd, and every year on this day he's especially celebrated around the world.  He left a last touch of poetry on his tombstone, rather ironic considering all the subsequent scrutiny he has received: "Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, to dig the dust enclosed here.  Blessed be the man that spares these stones, and cursed be he that moves my bones."  The cause of his death is unknown.  A serious outbreak of typhus fever occurred in his vicinity the year he died.  He was buried on May 5, 1616 in the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford, the same place he was baptized on April 26, 1564.  The vicar of Holy Trinity Church notes in his diary from circa 1662 (but his may have been based on hearsay about the local celebrity decades years later) that "Shakespear, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and it seems drank too hard for Shakespear died of a feavour there contracted."  Shakespeare's will does appear to have been a hurriedly drawn-up document which would be consistent with the rapid onset of a terminal illness of some sort.  The 1688 inherited papers from a Gloucestershire clergyman included the inflammatory statement that Shakespeare "dyed a papist" as well as the first known reference to Shakespeare being caught poaching deer as a young man on Sir Thomas Lucy's estate.  This mention of loyalty to the Pope and a reported discovery (now lost) of a pledge of faith signed by Shakespeare's father hidden in the rafters of a house where they lived (as well as other contextual information) has stirred curiosity whether his parents and relatives were secret practicing Catholics when it was very dangerous to do so, while Shakespeare himself appeared to remain neutral.  A popular speculation is that Shakespeare might have moved to London in order to avoid prosecution for the poaching incident and then got swept up with the theater after starting out as a stablehand and impressing an influential theater patron while attending to his horse.

Adding to the debate, a thrilling discovery published in 2015 by Mark Griffths may show a flattering depiction of Shakespeare, with his customary mustache, made at the height of his celebrity in 1598 on the cover of an extraordinary 1,484 page botany book by horticulturist John Gerad which had been overlooked for over 400 years.

William Shakespeare is now credited with being the author of thirty-nine canonical plays (ten of which were partial collaborations), two known lost plays (Love's Labour Won and Cardenio), at least five possible plays, 154 sonnets, and five narrative poems (most well known being Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece).  The first edition of Shakespeare's sonnets was published in 1609.  Eighteen of the plays were published in his lifetime (some like Richard III enjoyed many printings) in pamphlet form called "quartos".  Thanks to what must have been utterly epic efforts by Shakespeare's old friends, the actors John Heminges and Henry Condell, the playwright Ben Jonson, and possibly with the support of Sir Francis Bacon and others, the First Folio of thirty-six plays was published in London in 1623, seven years after his death.  An extraordinary achievement and occurrence. The First Folio was divided into three sections: History, Tragedy or Comedy.  This was the first time ever that plays alone were printed as a large book. This was an expensive project.  What exactly was going on in those seven years after Shakespeare died as the plays were edited by his friends and then published as the First Folio? Who erected the burial monument to him in the Holy Trinity Church? Many questions swirl the closer one looks. There are many legitimate unanswered questions which should be considered surrounding his life and the possibility of sole authorship even though this does complicate the received history and current understanding by traditional institutions.

The world's largest collection of Shakespeare materials, and highly worth a visit, is the Folger Shakespeare Library and Theater in Washington, D.C. and contains an astounding eighty-two copies of the First Folio of only 235 known surviving.  The Shakespeare Quarterly, the cutting-edge peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1950 by the Shakespeare Association of America, is produced under the auspices of the Folger and starting in 2019 will be printed by Oxford University Press.  They also host the most authoritative podcast on all things Shakespeare called Shakespeare Unlimited.

Today, The Works of William Shakespeare remain loved the world over and the plays are constantly being reimagined and re-performed, including in many different languages.  People everywhere say that they relate to these phenomenal characters with their beautiful language and compelling circumstances.  This is known as Shakespeare's universality. Demonstrating his remarkable popularity with the people of the world in 1964 on the 400th anniversary of his birth, more than 105 nations sent their flags to be unfurled in celebration in Stratford.  On the 300th anniversary in 1864, enthusiasm spilled over into petty competition between organizers of the events in London vs. Stratford about which place could lay the strongest claim on him and which celebration should be the biggest, resulting in national embarrassment when Germany's (another country devoted to Shakespeare) well-coordinated celebrations surpassed England that centennial year.  A couple of centuries go by and for the spectacular London 2012 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony, the renown actor Sir Kenneth Branagh recited from Shakespeare at one of the climaxes when over 1 billion people were watching.  In 2014-15, to mark the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, London's Globe Theatre undertook an extraordinary acting tour covering 190,000 miles and brought live performances of Hamlet to 197 countries.  And in 2016, to mark the four hundredth anniversary of his death, worldwide celebrations abounded and the Royal Shakespeare Company in partnership with Intel put on a ground-breaking technological performance of The Tempest, fitting as this was Shakespeare's final play and many scholars read Prospero's speech in the epilogue as the author also saying goodbye.  Next major anniversary is 2023 for the four hundredth year since the publishing of the Shakespeare First Folio and then in 2064 for the five hundredth year since Shakespeare's birth.

Shakespearean theaters and festivals have sprung up all over the world.  In England, there's the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, Shakespeare's Globe in London, and the Shakespeare Rose Theatre in York.  In Stratford, Canada, resides North America’s largest classical repertory theater company, the Stratford Festival, while in Vancouver, there’s Bard on the Beach.  In Poland, which has a possible contemporaneous Shakespeare connection, the Gdansk Shakespeare Theatre.  In Melbourne, Australia, the Pop Up Globe and in New Zealand, the Shakespeare Globe Centre.  The United States has a tremendous number, with some of the most established being the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, California Shakespeare Theater, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare & Company, American Shakespeare Center, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, The Old Globe San Diego, The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, the Folger Theatre and Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.  The Shakespeare Theatre Association was established in 1991 to provide an international forum and advocacy for theaters primarily involved with Shakespearean productions.  

Selected bibliography

• Ackroyd, Peter. Shakespeare: The Biography. London: Chatto & Windus, 2005.

• Arnold, Catherine. Globe: Life in Shakespeare's London. London: Simon & Schuster, 2015.

• Bearman, Robert. Shakespeare's Money: How much did he make and what does this mean? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

• Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998.

• Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Seven Major Tragedies. Yale University: Recorded Books, 2005.

• Bryson, Bill. Shakespeare: The World as Stage. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007.

• Bullough, Geoffrey: Narrative and Dramatic Sources for Shakespeare. London, 1966.

• Carson, Susannah (editor). Living with Shakespeare: Essays by Writers, Actors, and Directors. New York: Vintage Books, 2013.

• Cornwell, Bernard. Fools and Mortals. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2017.

• Conner, Marc. How to Read and Understand Shakespeare. Washington and Lee University: The Great Courses, 2013.

• Dickson, Andrew. Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare's Globe. New York: Vintage Books, 2016.

• Dromgoole, Dominic. Hamlet: Globe to Globe. New York: Grove Press, 2017.

• Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004.

• Henslowe, Philip. The Diary of Philip Henslowe from 1591 to 1609. London: Elibron Classics, first published 1845.

• Karim-Cooper, Farah and Stern, Tiffany (editors). Shakespeare's Theatres and the Effects of Performance. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2013.

• Kinney, Clare. Shakespeare's Tragedies. University of Virginia: The Great Courses, 2007.

• Nicholl, Charles. The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street. London: Viking, 2007.

• Mitchell, Martin, C. The Shakespeare Circle. Whitefish: Kessinger Pub Co, 2003.

• McCarthy, Dennis and Schlueter, June. A Brief Discourse of Rebellion & Rebels by George North. Martlesham, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2018.

• Packer, Tina. Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

• Rosenbaum, Ron. The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascos, Palace Coups. New York: Random House, 2006.

• Saccio, Peter. William Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. Dartmouth College: The Great Courses, 1999.

• Shapiro, James. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599. London: Faber and Faber, 2005.

• Shapiro, James. The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.

• Shapiro, James. Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.

• Smith, Emma. The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

• Smith, Emma. Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

• Wood, Michael. Shakespeare. New York: Basic Books, 2003.