? However ,it is surprising that we should know comparatively little about the life of the greatest English author. We know that Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford—on—Avon ,and that he died there in 1616.He almost certainly attended the Grammar School in the town ,but of this we cannot be sure .We know he was married there in 1582 to Anne Hathaway and that he had three children .We know that he spent much of his life in London writing his masterpieces .But this is almost all that we do know .
? However, what is important about Shakespeare's life is not its incidental details but its products, the plays and the poems. For many years scholars have been trying to add a few facts about Shakespeare's life to the small number we already possess and for an equally long time critics have been theorizing about the plays. Sometimes, indeed, it seems that the poetry of Shakespeare will disappear under the greatest masses of comment that has been written about it.
? Fortunately this is not likely to happen. Shakespeare's poetry and Shakespeare's people (Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, Falstaff and all the others) have long delighted not just the English but lovers of literature everywhere, and will continue to do so after the scholars and commentators and all their works have been forgotten.