What do we actually know about Shakespeare's life?

Surprisingly little, for someone so famous, but more than the myths suggest. We know the outline of a working life from records made for ordinary reasons: a baptism, a marriage, a property purchase, a will. What we mostly lack is the inside of it: nothing tells us what he thought, or even how he died.

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised on 26 April 1564. His birthday is traditionally 23 April, but that date is a tradition, not a record. At 18 he married Anne Hathaway, and they had three children, Susanna and the twins Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet died aged 11. After the twins' birth, the trail goes almost cold until 1592, when he turns up in London. Scholars call those years the lost years, and the stories that fill them (deer poaching, holding horses outside theatres) rest on little beyond hearsay collected after his death.

In 1592 a rival, Robert Greene, sneered at an upstart Crow who thought he could write as well as the university men. It is the earliest surviving mention of his theatre work. By 1594 he belonged to the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by its players, and it made him wealthy enough to buy New Place, the second-largest house in Stratford. He died on 23 April 1616, aged 52. Seven years later two actor friends gathered 36 of his plays into the First Folio.