William Shakespeare English playwright and poet, William Shakespeare is recognized in much of the world as the greatest of all dramatists. A complete, authoritative account of Shakespeare's life does not exist, but it is commonly accepted that he was born in 1564, and it is known that he was baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. In 1582 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. They had a daughter in 1583 and twins— a boy and a girl— in 1585. The boy did not survive. By 1592 Shakespeare attained success as an actor and a playwright. The publication of his two narrative poems Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594) and of his Sonnets (1609) established his repu