All Thinkers

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English writer. He is often called the greatest writer in the English language. He was born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, a small town in England. He died there in 1616. We do not know everything about his life. He came from a fairly ordinary family. His father was a glove-maker and a local official. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway when he was eighteen. They had three children. At some point Shakespeare moved to London. There he worked in the theatre. He was an actor, a writer, and part-owner of a theatre company. The company built a famous theatre called the Globe. Shakespeare wrote plays for it, and the plays were performed for large, mixed crowds. In about twenty years, Shakespeare wrote around 38 plays and over 150 short poems called sonnets. His plays include tragedies, comedies, and histories. Some of the most famous are 'Hamlet', 'Romeo and Juliet', 'Macbeth', and 'King Lear'. Shakespeare was successful in his own time. He made enough money to buy a large house back in Stratford. After he died, two friends collected his plays into one book, called the First Folio, in 1623. Without that book, many of his plays might have been lost forever.

Origin
England
Lifespan
1564-1616
Era
Renaissance / Early Modern England
Subjects
English Literature Drama And Theatre Poetry Renaissance The English Language
Skills
Creative Expression Emotional Intelligence Critical Thinking Cultural Heritage And Identity Ethical Thinking
Why They Matter

Shakespeare matters because he changed what writing in English could do. His plays explore the human mind with a depth that was new. His characters are not simple. They doubt themselves, change their minds, and feel many things at once. Readers still recognise themselves in them after four hundred years.

He also matters because of his language. Shakespeare used English in fresh, surprising ways. He invented or first recorded many words and phrases that people still use every day. He showed that English could be rich, flexible, and powerful.

His stories are another reason. Plots like 'Romeo and Juliet' have been retold countless times, in many languages. His themes, such as love, power, and ambition, are not tied to one time or place. They belong to everyone.

Shakespeare's work is performed and studied all over the world. Whole fields of study are devoted to him.

It is important to be honest, though. Shakespeare worked in a particular time. Some of his plays contain ideas about race, gender, and nation that many people today find troubling. His greatness and these problems are both real.

Key Ideas
1
Who Was Shakespeare?
2
Three Kinds of Play
3
Words We Still Use
Key Quotations
"To be, or not to be, that is the question."
— William Shakespeare, 'Hamlet', Act 3, Scene 1 (c. 1600)
This is probably the most famous line in English literature. Hamlet is alone, thinking aloud. He is asking a heavy question: is it better to go on living, with all its pain, or not? The line shows what Shakespeare does so well. He puts a deep human struggle into simple, direct words. For students, it is a clear example of how Shakespeare can be both easy to say and serious to think about. The words are plain. The thought behind them is enormous.
"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."
— William Shakespeare, 'As You Like It', Act 2, Scene 7 (c. 1599)
Here a character compares the whole of life to a play. Every person is an actor, and life moves through stages, like the parts of a drama. The image is memorable because it is so easy to picture. For students, this line shows another Shakespeare skill: turning a big idea into a single clear comparison. The thought, that our lives have roles and stages, could fill a long essay. Shakespeare gives it to us in one bright image instead.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Creative Expression When teaching students that old stories can be made new
How to introduce
Tell students that Shakespeare almost never invented his plots. He borrowed old stories and reworked them, and this was normal in his time. Ask students to take a well-known story and retell it in their own way, changing the setting or the characters. This teaches a freeing lesson about creativity. Originality is not only inventing from nothing. It can also be taking something familiar and making it truly your own, which is exactly what Shakespeare did.
Emotional Intelligence When teaching students to read complicated feelings
How to introduce
Explain that Shakespeare's characters often feel several things at once. Hamlet is sad, angry, and unsure all together. Take a short, simple scene and ask students to name every feeling the character might be having. This builds emotional intelligence. Shakespeare shows that real people are rarely just 'happy' or 'sad'. They hold mixed feelings, and learning to notice this in characters helps students notice it in themselves and others too.
Cultural Heritage and Identity When discussing how language carries history
How to introduce
Tell students that many common English phrases first appear, or appear in an early form, in Shakespeare's work, and that people use them today without knowing it. Ask students to think about phrases in their own languages that come from old books, songs, or sayings. This connects language to heritage. It shows students that the way we speak carries pieces of the past inside it, and that a writer from four hundred years ago can still be in our daily sentences.
Further Reading

For a first introduction, it is best to start with a single play rather than a long biography. 'Romeo and Juliet' or 'Macbeth' are good first choices, especially in editions made for students, with notes in the margin. Watching a film or stage version alongside the text helps a great deal, because the plays were written to be seen and heard, not only read. Short, clear guides to Shakespeare's life and theatre are widely available online.

Key Ideas
1
Characters Who Feel Real
2
Theatre for Everyone
3
Old Stories Made New
Key Quotations
"The course of true love never did run smooth."
— William Shakespeare, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', Act 1, Scene 1 (c. 1595)
This line means that real love always meets trouble and obstacles. It never moves in a smooth, easy line. The thought is gentle and almost comforting, and it sits inside a comedy about confused lovers. For students, the line is a good example of Shakespeare's lasting wisdom. It is the kind of observation that still feels true today, and people still quote it. Shakespeare often pauses inside a funny scene to drop in a small, serious truth like this one.
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet."
— William Shakespeare, 'Romeo and Juliet', Act 2, Scene 2 (c. 1595)
Juliet is saying that a name is just a label. A rose would smell just as lovely under a different name. Her real point is painful: Romeo's family name is the only thing keeping them apart, and a name should not have such power. For students, this shows how Shakespeare links a simple image, a rose, to a deep and serious problem. The lovers are trapped by names and family hatred, not by anything real between them.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Creative Expression When teaching students to write for a mixed audience
How to introduce
Explain that Shakespeare's theatre held a wide crowd, from rich seated viewers to poorer people standing at the front, and that he had to hold all of them at once. This is why his plays mix deep speeches with jokes. Ask students to write something that would interest two very different readers. This teaches a real skill of expression: thinking about who is listening, and finding ways to reach more than one kind of person at the same time.
Critical Thinking When teaching students that a famous line can have two meanings
How to introduce
Take a line like Caesar's words about cowards and the brave. Ask students first what it seems to mean. Then ask what it might reveal about the speaker, such as pride or overconfidence. This teaches careful critical reading. Shakespeare's lines often work on two levels at once. A statement can be wise and also show a flaw in the person saying it, and good readers learn to hold both readings together.
Further Reading

For deeper reading, editions from series such as the Arden Shakespeare or the Oxford School Shakespeare give helpful notes and introductions. Reading across the three kinds of play, a tragedy, a comedy, and a history, gives a fuller sense of his range. Books about the Globe theatre and about daily life in Shakespeare's England help explain why the plays take the shape they do.

Key Ideas
1
The Texts Are Not Simple
2
Did Shakespeare Really Write the Plays?
3
Greatness and Its Troubling Sides
Key Quotations
"Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once."
— William Shakespeare, 'Julius Caesar', Act 2, Scene 2 (c. 1599)
Caesar is talking about fear. He says a coward, by being afraid again and again, suffers a kind of death many times over. A brave person faces death only once, when it truly comes. The line is bold and a little proud, and Shakespeare lets us hear both the courage and the dangerous overconfidence in it. For advanced students, this is a good example of how a Shakespeare line can carry more than one meaning. It is wise, but it also reveals a flaw in the man who says it.
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on."
— William Shakespeare, 'The Tempest', Act 4, Scene 1 (c. 1611)
This line comes from one of Shakespeare's last plays. The character Prospero is reflecting that human life is brief and unreal, almost like a dream that ends. The tone is calm and a little sad. For advanced students, the quotation is worth thinking about because of where it sits in Shakespeare's career. Near the end of his writing life, he gives a character these quiet, dreamlike words about how short and fragile a life is. Many readers feel Shakespeare's own voice close to the surface here.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Critical Thinking When teaching students to judge a theory against evidence
How to introduce
Introduce the 'authorship question': the claim that someone else wrote Shakespeare's plays. Explain that almost all serious scholars reject it, and that the doubt often rests on a snobbish idea that an ordinary man could not write great work. Ask students to weigh the theory against the actual evidence. This teaches a key critical thinking habit. A theory can feel exciting and dramatic and still be poorly supported when you look closely at the facts.
Ethical Thinking When teaching students to engage honestly with great work from the past
How to introduce
Explain that Shakespeare's work is extraordinary, and that some of it also contains attitudes about women, race, or nation that trouble modern readers. Ask students how we should read a great work that has troubling parts. This opens an honest ethical discussion. It teaches students that admiration and criticism are not enemies. The mature response to a great but flawed work from the past is to read closely and ask hard questions, not to ignore the difficult parts.
Common Misconceptions
Common misconception

Shakespeare wrote in 'Old English' that is almost impossible to understand.

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What to teach instead

This is not correct. Shakespeare wrote in early modern English, which is the same language we speak today, just an older form of it. It is not 'Old English', which is a much older language that really is unreadable without special study. Shakespeare's English can be challenging because some words have changed or dropped out of use, and because he writes in verse. But with a little help and patience, modern readers can understand him. It is difficult in places, not impossible.

Common misconception

Shakespeare invented all his own stories.

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What to teach instead

He did not. Shakespeare borrowed most of his plots from older histories, poems, and other writers, then reworked them. This was completely normal in his time and was not seen as cheating. His genius was not in inventing new plots. It was in what he did with borrowed ones: adding depth, rich language, and complicated characters to stories that were often thin in their original form.

Common misconception

Someone more educated or richer must have really written Shakespeare's plays.

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What to teach instead

Almost all serious scholars reject this idea. The historical evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the works under his name is strong. The doubt usually rests on a snobbish assumption: that a man from an ordinary family, without a university education, could not have produced such great work. But there is no good reason to believe that, and plenty of evidence against it. The 'authorship question' is far weaker than it is sometimes made to sound.

Common misconception

Shakespeare's plays were high culture, made for educated audiences only.

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What to teach instead

The opposite is closer to the truth. Shakespeare's plays were popular entertainment for a wide, mixed crowd. At the Globe theatre, wealthy people sat in seats while poorer people stood in the open space for a low price. Shakespeare had to entertain all of them at once. This is exactly why his plays mix serious speeches with crude jokes and comedy with tragedy. They were broad, lively, popular theatre, not narrow art for a small elite.

Intellectual Connections
Influenced
James Joyce
Joyce, the Irish novelist, knew Shakespeare's work deeply and built parts of it into his own. In his novel 'Ulysses', characters discuss Shakespeare at length, and Joyce plays with his words and ideas throughout. Both writers also stretched the English language far beyond its normal shape. Reading them together shows how a later writer can absorb an earlier one, not by copying, but by arguing with him and reworking him into something new.
Influenced
T.S. Eliot
Eliot, the poet and critic, wrote about Shakespeare often and thought hard about him. As a poet, Eliot wove echoes of Shakespeare into his own verse. As a critic, he tried to judge Shakespeare carefully rather than simply praise him. Reading them together shows two sides of influence: a later writer using an earlier one as raw material for new poems, and also studying him to understand how great writing works.
Complements
Dante Alighieri
Dante, the Italian poet, and Shakespeare are often named as the two giants of European literature before the modern age. Dante wrote one vast poem about the afterlife; Shakespeare wrote many plays about life on earth. Both pushed their own languages, Italian and English, to new power, and both created characters and scenes that their whole cultures still remember. Reading them together gives students a sense of the highest peaks of literature in two different languages.
Complements
Akira Kurosawa
Kurosawa, the Japanese film director, retold several Shakespeare plays as films set in Japan, including a famous version of 'Macbeth'. He showed that Shakespeare's stories and themes could move across centuries, languages, and cultures and still feel powerful. Reading them together shows how a great story is not locked to its first form. Kurosawa did with film what Shakespeare himself did with old stories: he took them and made them new.
Complements
Virginia Woolf
Woolf, the English novelist, admired Shakespeare and wrote about him. In one famous essay she imagined a gifted sister of Shakespeare, and asked why a woman of his time could never have had his chances. Both writers explored the inner life of the mind with great care. Reading them together shows two English writers, centuries apart, who both looked deeply inward, and it raises honest questions about who, in history, was allowed to become a 'Shakespeare'.
Develops
David Crystal
Crystal, the modern linguist, has studied Shakespeare's language closely. He even helped theatres perform the plays in 'original pronunciation', the way the words sounded around the year 1600. Crystal develops our understanding of Shakespeare by treating his language as a real, living thing to be studied, not just admired. Reading them together connects the great writer of English with a modern scientist of English, and shows how the two kinds of work meet.
Further Reading

For research-level engagement, the question of the texts themselves is important: scholarship on the early printed versions, including the First Folio of 1623 and the differing 'quarto' editions, shows how much editing lies behind any modern Shakespeare. Critical work on race, gender, and politics in the plays offers honest, searching readings. Students should also explore the long history of how each age has reinterpreted Shakespeare to fit its own concerns.