Shakespeare’s Sonnets

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, and by the 1590s was established in London as an actor, playwright, and shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men), the theatre company for which he wrote nearly all of his plays and whose Globe Theatre he part-owned. His 154 sonnets, addressed variously to a young man and to a "dark lady" whose identities remain unknown, were published in 1609, likely without his direct involvement, though most are thought to have been written more than a decade earlier and circulated privately among friends. Alongside the sonnets and two long narrative poems, he wrote or co-wrote roughly three dozen plays across every major dramatic genre of his day, a body of work whose influence on English literature and language has no real parallel. He retired to Stratford-upon-Avon in his later years and died there at fifty-two.