Long Description:William Shakespeare (1564-1616) playwright and poet.
Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, the son of John
Shakespeare, a glover, and Mary Arden, of farming stock.
He was educated at the local grammar school, and married Anne
Hathaway, from a local farming family, in 1582, who bore him a
daughter, Susanna, in 1583, and twins Hamnet and Judith in
1585.
He moved to London, possibly in 1591, and became an actor. During
1592-4, when the theatres were closed because of the plague, he
wrote his poems 'Venus and Adonis' and 'The Rape of Lucrece'.
His sonnets, known by 1598, though not published until 1609,
fall into two groups: 1 to 126 are addressed to a fair young man,
and 127 to 154 to a "dark lady' who holds both the young man and
the poet in thrall. The first evidence of his association with the
stage is in 1594, when he was acting with the Lord Chamberlain's
company of players, later "the King's Men'. When the company built
the Globe Theatre south of the Thames in 1597, he became a partner,
living modestly at a house in Silver St until c.1606, then moving
near the Globe.
He returned to Stratford sometime around 1610, living as a
country gentleman at his house, New Place. His will was made in
March 1616, a few months before he died, and he was buried at
Stratford at Holy Trinity Church.
Gower Memorial in Stratford.
This bronze memorial to Shakespeare is situated in Bancroft Gardens
in Stratford.
This statue, showing Shakespeare seated, is flanked by life-size
statues of Lady Macbeth, Prince Hal, Hamlet, Henry V, and Falstaff,
representing Philosophy, Tragedy, History, and Comedy.
The memorial was sponsored by Lord Ronald Sutherland-Gower, who
presented it to the town of Stratford in 1888.
The Gower Memorial is located near the town side of the Clopton
Bridge. It is interesting to note that Stratford is a literal
translation of "The Street at the Ford on the River". The name
comes from the crossing of the Avon, by the Roman Road from
Alcester (Alauna) to the Fosse Way. Strat is direct from the Latin
for Street, and Avon is the Celtic word for river.