My words fly up, my thoughts remain below
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
-- From Hamlet, Act III, Scene 3
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is simply the greatest English writer of all times. His plays survive to the current day and exist as standards by which comedy and tragedy both are often judged. He is unquestionably the most famous Elizabethan writer and quite possibly the most well known writer of all time.
Biography
Parish records verify that William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564, and counting backwards the customary three days from this date (according to Anglican tradition, babies are baptized on their third day of life), Shakespeare was likely born on April 23, 1564.
Shakespeare grew up in the market town of Stratford-on-Avon, which served as a local government seat. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, was a daughter of the local gentry who held a great deal of property in and around the town. His father, John Shakespeare, was a glovemaker and farmer, so when Mary chose to marry John, she took a few steps down the social ladder in the area.
Shakespeare attended Stratford Grammar School, which was his right as the child of a burgess. The classic Elizabethan education was taught there at the time, so Shakespeare became versed in the classics at an early age, reading the literature and rhetoric of ancient Greek and Latin and receiving a thorough grounding in the bible. Shakespeare also cultivated a knowledge of history, and his surviving adolescent writings are mostly those of historical accounts, describing events throughout the history of England and the world.
In 1582, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, a woman eight years his senior, and the pair had three children, Susanna, Hamnet, and Judith. Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, would die at the age of eleven. However, Shakespeare was very unhappy in this married life, and by 1590 he was spending much of his time traveling to London to participate in the burgeoning theater scene there. He kept his family fed, however, by picking up a wide variety of odd jobs, many of which were later reflected in his plays.
Starting in 1591 and through 1616, Shakespeare began accumulating perhaps the most impressive body of writing ever produced by an English author. His first work, The Comedy of Errors, was sharply criticized upon its release by playwright-critic Robert Greene, who condemned Shakespeare as an impudent "upstart," pronouncing the young writer not worthy of attention. However, Greene's diatribe was soon retracted by his editor because a number of leading literary figures at the time began to speak out in favor of the Bard, who wrote several top comedies in 1591 and 1592.
When the plague struck london from late 1592 to 1594, Shakespeare retreated to Stratford-on-Avon and focused mostly on writing poetry; in this period he wrote most of his poetry, including Venus and Adonis and virtually all of his Sonnets. But when London's air became clean again in 1594, the stage beckoned to Shakespeare and he returned to London.
As the century came to a close, Shakespeare began to write more works based on historical events, plays based on various English monarchs. He was considered a top playwright in London at the turn of the century and began to accumulate some money, investing in real estate outside of London and | 
