Born in 1564, the English dramatist and poet was established in London by 1589 as an actor and playwright. He was England's unrivaled dramatist until his death, and is considered the greatest English playwright. His plays, written in blank verse, can be broadly divided into lyric plays, in including Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream; comedies, including The Comedy of Errors, As you Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and Measure For Measure; historical plays, such as Henry VI (in 3 parts), Richard III, and Henry IV (in 2 parts), which often show cynical political wisdom; and tragedies, such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear. He also wrote numerous sonnets.

Born in Stratford-on-Avon, the son of a wool merchant, he was educated at the grammar school. In 1582, he married Anne Hathaway and they had a daughter, Susanna in 1883, and twins Hamnet (died 1596) and Judith in 1595. Early plays, written around 1589-93, were the tragedy, Titus Andronicus; the comedies. The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona; the three parts of Henry VI; and Richard III. About 1593 he came under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, to whom he dedicated the two long poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece in 1593 and 1594. He also wrote for him the comedy Love's Labour's Lost, satirizing Raleigh's circle, and seems to have dedicated to him his sonnets written around 1593-96, in which the mysterious "Dark Lady" appears.

From 1594 Shakespeare was a member of the Chamberlain's (later the King's) company of players, and had no rival as a dramatist, writing, for example the lyric plays Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Richard II in 1594-95, followed by King John and The Merchant of Venice in 1596. The Falstaff plays of 1597-99 --- Henry IV (parts I and II), Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor (said to have been written at the request of Elizabeth I) --- brought his fame to its height. He wrote Julius Caesar in 1599. The period ended with the lyrically witty Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night written in about 1598-1601.

With Hamlet begins the period of the great tragedies from 1601 to 1608: Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Timon of Athens, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. This "darker" period is also the time when he wrote the comedies Triolus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, and Measure for Measure around 1601 to 1604.

It is thought that Shakespeare was only part author of Pericles, which is grouped with the other plays of around 1608 to 1611 --- Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest --- as the mature romance or "reconciliation" plays of the end of his career. During 1613 it is thought that Shakespeare collaborated with John Fletcher on Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen. He had already retired to Stratford in about 1610, where he died on April 23, 1616.

There are a several schools of thought, as well, that attribute Shakespeare's works to one or numerous other authors, among them Sir Francis Bacon and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. This is attributed to the secrecy inherent in the Elizabethan Age, and perhaps a necessity to keep authorship from a jealous and influencial Queen. In fact authorship has even been attributed to Queen Elizabeth I herself, whose might have been embarrassed to be persuing a man's, and a "commoner's" profession. For further reading on these different schools of thought and doubts about authorship by the one man, Shakespeare himself, check out:

http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/histdoub.htm

from A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

     Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
     War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
     Making it momentany as a sound,
     Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
     Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
     That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
     And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'
     The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
     So quick bright things come to confusion.

from Macbeth

     To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
     Creeps in this petty pace from day to day 
     To the last syllable of recorded time, 
     And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
     The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! 
     Life 's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
     That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
     And then is heard no more: it is a tale 
     Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
     Signifying nothing. 

Sonnet VI

     Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
     In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd:
     Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
     With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-kill'd.
     That use is not forbidden usury,
     Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
     That's for thyself to breed another thee,
     Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;
     Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
     If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
     Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart,
     Leaving thee living in posterity?
     Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair
     To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

from The Rape of Lucrece

     The aim of all is but to nurse the life
     With honour, wealth, and ease, in waning age;
     And in this aim there is such thwarting strife,
     That one for all, or all for one we gage;
     As life for honour in fell battle's rage;
     Honour for wealth; and oft that wealth doth cost
     The death of all, and all together lost.

For THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE:

http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/works.html