Why Is Shakespeare Still So Important? The Glover's Son Who Became the World's Playwright

Shakespeare is still important because no other playwright has been performed, read, translated and quoted so widely for so long: his surviving work includes about 39 plays, 154 sonnets and three long narrative poems, and his plays have been translated into more than 80 languages. He is often described as the most performed playwright in the world. But fame alone does not explain why a writer who died in 1616 still shapes the way people talk. The fuller answer lies in his life, his theatre and the language he left behind, and in how much of that life remains a mystery.

A glover's son in Stratford-upon-Avon

William Shakespeare was baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, on 26 April 1564. His birthday is traditionally given as 23 April, a date biographers like partly because he also died on 23 April. His father, John Shakespeare, was a glover and an alderman of the town; his mother, Mary Arden, came from a well-off landowning family. William was the third of eight children and the eldest surviving son.

No school records survive, so we cannot prove where he studied. Most biographers think he probably attended the King's New School in Stratford, a free grammar school chartered in 1553 that stood about a quarter of a mile from his home. A school like that would have drilled boys in Latin grammar and classical authors, which helps explain the Roman poets and orators who echo through his plays.

At 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who was 26; their marriage licence was issued on 27 November 1582. Their daughter Susanna was baptised in May 1583, and the twins Hamnet and Judith in February 1585. Hamnet died at the age of 11 and was buried in August 1596. Readers have long wondered how that loss touched the writer, but the records themselves say nothing about his feelings.

The "lost years"

Between about 1585 and 1592, Shakespeare almost vanishes from the documents. Scholars call this stretch the "lost years". Later stories try to fill the gap: that he fled Stratford after poaching deer, that he minded horses outside London theatres, that he worked as a country schoolmaster. Little evidence supports any of them. It is worth treating them as legends rather than biography.

What we do know is the result. By 1592 several of his plays were already being performed on the London stage. Somewhere in those silent years, a provincial young man with a family to support had learned the craft of the theatre well enough to compete in the capital.

The "upstart crow" arrives in London

His success did not please everyone. In 1592 the writer Robert Greene, in a pamphlet called Groats-Worth of Wit, sneered at an "upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers". Most scholars read this as an attack on Shakespeare for daring to compete with university-educated playwrights like Greene himself. It is the first sure sign that Shakespeare had become noticeable, and noticeably annoying to rivals.

London theatre was a risky business. Playhouses were repeatedly closed during outbreaks of plague. During one such closure Shakespeare turned to poetry and published Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594), both dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. The poems sold well and were reprinted many times during his lifetime, a reminder that in his own day he was famous as a poet as well as a playwright.

Sharer, actor, and the Globe

Shakespeare was not just a hired writer. He was a sharer, meaning part-owner, of the acting company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which became the King's Men after James I came to the throne in 1603. Owning a share meant he profited when the company profited, and it gave him a stable group of actors to write for.

In 1599 a partnership of company members built the Globe on the south bank of the Thames. Julius Caesar was among the first plays staged there, and most of his greatest plays after 1599 were written for it. In 1608 the company also took over the indoor Blackfriars theatre. The Globe's story ended dramatically: on 29 June 1613, during a performance of Henry VIII, a cannon set fire to its thatched roof and the building burned down.

The money was real. In 1597 Shakespeare bought New Place, the second-largest house in Stratford. The upstart crow had become a property owner in his home town.

From history plays to tragedies to romances

Shakespeare's career moved through recognisable phases. In the early 1590s, during a fashion for historical drama, he wrote history plays such as Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI. In the mid-1590s came romantic comedies including A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and Twelfth Night, alongside histories like Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V.

Then came the great tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, together with Roman plays such as Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. His verse also changed. The early plays use a stylised, rhetorical language; by the mid-1590s his poetry had become more natural, and in the later tragedies his blank verse grew more varied and flexible.

After 1610 he wrote fewer plays. His final period produced the romances Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, and he collaborated with the younger dramatist John Fletcher. No plays are attributed to him after 1613.

Death, a will, and a "second best bed"

Shakespeare is thought to have retired to Stratford around 1613. He signed his will on 25 March 1616 and died on 23 April 1616, aged 52. Most of his estate went to his daughter Susanna; to his wife, Anne, he left "my second best bed", a line that scholars still argue about. Some read it as a snub; others point out that the best bed in a house was often kept for guests, so the second-best might have been the marriage bed.

He was buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford two days after his death. His gravestone carries a curse on anyone who moves his bones.

The First Folio: why we can read him at all

Shakespeare did not publish a collected edition of his plays. Some appeared during his lifetime in cheap quarto editions, but there is no evidence he approved them, and several are so garbled that scholars call them "bad quartos".

In 1623, seven years after his death, his fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell published the collection now known as the First Folio. It contained 36 plays, 18 of which had never been printed before. Without that book, plays such as Macbeth or The Tempest might simply have been lost. The Folio also carried Ben Jonson's famous tribute, often quoted as saying Shakespeare was "not of an age, but for all time".

A voice inside the English language

Shakespeare's influence on English goes far beyond the theatre. When Samuel Johnson compiled his Dictionary of the English Language, he quoted Shakespeare more often than any other author. Expressions such as "with bated breath" and "a foregone conclusion" have passed from his plays into everyday English. Many English speakers use them without knowing where they come from.

His fame was not always this solid, and it has sometimes become a kind of worship. George Bernard Shaw mocked the cult around him as "bardolatry". In 2012, the Globe to Globe festival in London staged 37 plays in 37 languages, which shows how far his work has travelled.

What about claims that someone else wrote his plays? Most Shakespeare scholars and literary historians regard those alternative-authorship theories as fringe, though popular interest in them continues.

So, why is he still important? Because his plays work on stage in almost any language, because his characters keep asking questions people still ask about power, love, jealousy and death, and because English itself still carries his fingerprints.

Learn with Shakespeare: five expressions for English learners

Shakespeare's world gives you useful English for talking about theatre, stories and feelings. The first two phrases are linked to his plays; the rest are everyday theatre idioms you will hear constantly.

Phrase	What it means	Example
with bated breath	anxiously, waiting for news	We waited for the results with bated breath.
a foregone conclusion	a result that is certain before it happens	Her promotion was a foregone conclusion.
to steal the show	to get more attention than anyone else	The youngest actor stole the show.
behind the scenes	out of public view	A lot of work happens behind the scenes.
an upstart	someone new who seems too ambitious	Critics called the young writer an upstart.

Try this: Choose one Shakespeare play title you know, such as Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet, and describe its story in three English sentences using at least two phrases from the table. Then read your sentences aloud slowly, the way an actor would on stage. Speaking lines out loud is how Shakespeare's actors learned them, and it still works for language learners today.