Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Londinium, c. 1572 - detail of St Paul's and the 'city'
Shakespeare's city home.
Shakespeare lodged in Bishopsgate in the 1590s, and later on the corner of Silver Street in Cripplegate. He would have been familiar with the many printers and bookshops in ...
Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Londinium,c. 1572 - detail - the east of the city and St. Paul's cathedral
St Paul's and the city of London: known by Shakespeare.
The city of London, to which Shakespeare travelled in the 1580s, lay within an almost semi-circular wall, bordered to the south by the River ...
Henri Estienne, A mervaylous discourse upon... Katherine de Medici…, 1575 - title page
Shakespeare may have owned this book.
Shakespeare purchased New Place, the largest house in the town of Stratford in 1597. On his death the property and most of its contents were inherited by his ...
Michael Drayton, Poems, 1610 - title page, A1r.
Drayton: the other Warwickshire poet well-known in Shakespeare's time.
Michael Drayton was born in 1563 at Hartshill in Warwickshire and often visited Clifford Chambers, a village close to Stratford. ...
Michael Drayton, Polyolbion, 1613 - 13th Song, p. 213
Warwickshire, and Shakespeare's ‘merrie meeting’.
According to John Ward, writing in the 1660s, Shakespeare had a 'merrie meeting' with Drayton, and the playwright Ben Jonson in 1616, ...
Michael Drayton, Polyolbion, 1613 - title page.
Drayton: the other Warwickshire poet: a friend of Shakespeare.
Drayton's most well-known poem Polyolbion (1613) comprises thirty 'songs' which form a survey of England in verse couplets. Between 1597 ...
Publius Ovidius Naso [Ovid], The XV bookes Metamorphosis, translated... by Arthur Golding..., 1603, title-page.
A School text studied by Shakespeare.
William Shakespeare knew this series of stories about miraculous transformations, written by the Roman poet Ovid well as they formed an important part of regular ...
Raphael Holinshed, The... Chronicles , London for George Bishop, 1577, - Elizabethan men at a meeting, woodcut, page 119, detail.
John Shakespeare, an alderman of Stratford.
When William Shakespeare's father, John, a glove-maker by trade, attended aldermen's meetings in Stratford-upon-Avon in the 1560s and 1570s, the council ...
Richard Day, A Booke of Christian prayers..., 1581 - Baptism woodcut,, p.61v. detail
An Infant Baptism: Shakespeare was baptised 23 April 1564.
William Shakespeare, the first boy, but third child of John and Mary Shakespeare, was baptised in the local parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon ...
Richard Day, A Booke of Christian prayers..., 1581 - infant woodcut detail, p.100v.
Infant mortality: Shakespeare's older sisters died young.
William's two older sisters both died in infancy. For Elizabethans the death of a child was a common occurrence. William's younger brothers, ...
Richard Day, A Booke of Christian prayers..., 1581 - Instruction woodcut, detail, p.66v.
Boys at school: Shakespeare's education.
There is no direct evidence that Shakespeare attended the Grammar School in Stratford, but as the son of a prominent citizen of the town, William and his brothers ...
Richard Day, A Booke of Christian prayers..., 1581 - Prayers for family use, p.61v.
The Shakespeare family in Elizabethan England.
Richard Day's popular book of prayers intended for personal use by Elizabethans, was re-published several times after it was first printed in 1578. Its ...
Richard Day, A Booke of Christian prayers..., 1581 - shepherdess woodcut , p.99v, detail.
A countrywoman: Shakespeare married a local farmer's daughter.
When he was eighteen Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a local landowner and farmer, who was seven years his elder. She ...
Richard Day, A Booke of Christian prayers..., 1581 - Wisdom and prudence, p.66v.
Reading and study is praised in Shakespeare's England.
The marginal illustration in Day's Book of Christian Prayers tells its readers that 'wisdom is better than gold'. The woodcuts are reminders of ...
Robert Allott, compiler, England's Parnassus, 1600 - title page
Popular verses by Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
Early references to the work of William Shakespeare appeared in print from 1592. This book is a collection of many short quotations from contemporary ...
William Shakespeare, Mr William Shakespeares comedies, histories and tragedies..., 1623 , 'First Folio' - portrait, title page detail.
William Shakespeare 1564-1616.
The portrait of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) from the title page of the first collected edition of his plays.
Full title: William Shakespeare, Mr William Shakespeares ...
William Shakespeare, Mr William Shakespeares comedies, histories and tragedies..., 1623 'First Folio' - Poem by Ben Jonson, p. A4 r.
Ben Jonson’s tribute to Shakespeare.
Several years after William Shakespeare's death in April 1616, his fellow actors at the Globe theatre brought the texts of his plays together for publication ...
William Shakespeare, Mr William Shakespeares comedies, histories and tragedies..., 'First Folio', 1623 - Ben Jonson's commendation, p. A4v, detail.
Shakespeare: ‘Sweet Swan of Avon’.
Ben Jonson's poem in the first collected edition of William Shakespeare's plays included the first reference to Shakespeare as the 'swan of Avon' which ...