William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English playwright and poet widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and one of humanity's supreme literary artists. Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare wrote approximately 37 plays and 154 sonnets during his career with the Lord Chamberlain's Company (later the King's Men) and the Globe Theatre in London. His dramatic works—including tragedies (Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear), comedies (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It), and histories (Henry IV, Henry V)—explored the full range of human experience: ambition, love, jealousy, betrayal, power, and mortality. Shakespeare's unparalleled psychological insight into character, his poetic mastery, his inventiveness in language, and his capacity to distill universal human truths into dramatic form made him not merely a literary giant but a defining figure whose works have been continuously read, performed, and reinterpreted for over four centuries.
