Happy 448th birthday William Shakespeare!
Why not celebrate the main man’s birthday than with some little known trivia and facts about (arguably) the best English writer found on No Sweat Shakespeare.
Billy Shakes’ was born on April 23 of 1564 and died on April 23 of 1616. How fitting that the king of irony would die on his birthday?
Shakespeare is responsible for writing 37 plays and 154 sonnets and in addition to being a writer he also acted. Since Shakespeare died at the age of 52, that means he wrote an average of 1.5 plays a year, since he began writing in 1589.
His personal life was intriguing since he married Anne Hathaway when she was pregnant at the age of 26 and he was only 17-years-old. The couple had a total of three children together. Shakespeare does not have any desendants since he son Hamnet died in 1956 before having children and his only grandchild died childless in 1670.
While Shakespeare was alive his profession was acting. However, since he was busy writing, he did not play many large roles. There is evidence that he preformed in a play by Ben Johnson and that he also may have played the ghost in “Hamlet” and Adam in “As You Like It.”
There is a huge controversey among scholars who believe Shakespeare did not write all of his plays. They say there is evidence which supports fifty other writers are resonsible for writing some of his work, while the other side claims there is strong evidence supporting that Billy Shakes’ did in fact write all of his plays.
Here’s a good trivia fact, there are 157 million Google pages that refer to him.
Shakespeare is also notorious for inventing worlds that we commonly use today like: advertising, eyeball, gloomy, frugal, addiction, fashionable and worthless.
Here’s the trailer from Anonymous, a movie that divulges into whether or not Shakespeare was a fraud.
