[originaltext] William Shakespeare was christened in the market town of Strat

William Shakespeare was christened in the market town of Stratford on Avon, Warwickshire, on April 26, 1564. Traditionally, his actual birthday was three days earlier, on St. George’s day, the same day as his death fifty-two years later. His father, John, was a respected middle-class trader; and his mother, Mary Arden, came from a family of local landowners. It seems probable that young William received a fair education (for his day) at the local Grammar School At the age of eighteen he married a girl eight years older than himself, Anne Hathaway, who gave him a child the following year and twins in 1585. Little else is known of his early life, and so we cannot tell what made him decide to leave Stratford in 1586 for London, where he stayed until 1611. In London, he must soon have attracted attention, because by 1592 he was a popular enough writer and actor to be laughed at by an older dramatist as an uneducated Jack-of-all-trades. He was mentioned as being among the principal actors of the city as early as 1598, and we find that in 1599 he was a member of the company running the Globe Theater, with one-tenth interest in the profits-showing a business sense rarely seen in his fellow writers. His popularity is indicated by the fact that not only were his own plays published under his name, which was a rare procedure in his day, but also plays by others are to be found attributed to him, as if to indicate that his name alone would promise a good sale.