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In examining Shakespeare's life, three broad points should be kept in mind from the start. First, despite the frustration
of Shakespeare biographers with the absence of a primary source of information written during (or even shortly after) his
death on 23 April 1616 (his fifty-second birthday), Shakespeare's life is not obscure. In fact, we know more about Shakespeare's
life, its main events and contours, than we know about most famous Elizabethans outside of the royal court itself.
Shakespeare's
life is unusually well-documented: there are well over 100 references to Shakespeare and his immediate family in local parish,
municipal, and commercial archives and we also have at least fifty observations about Shakespeare's plays (and through them,
his life) from his contemporaries. The structure of Shakespeare's life is remarkably sound; it is the flesh of his personal
experience, his motives, and the like that have no firm basis and it is, of course, this descriptive content in which we are
most interested.
Second, the appeal of seeing an autobiographical basis in Shakespeare's plays and poetry must be
tempered by what the bulk of the evidence has to say about him. Although there are fanciful stories about Shakespeare, many
centering upon his romantic affairs, connections between them and the events or characters of his plays are flimsy, and they
generally disregard our overall impression of the Bard. In his personal life, Shakespeare was, in fact, an exceedingly practical
individual, undoubtedly a jack of many useful trades, and a shrewd businessman in theatrical, commercial and real estate circles.
Third, the notion that plays ascribed to Shakespeare were actually written by others (Sir Francis Bacon, the poet
Phillip Sidney among the candidates) has become even weaker over time. The current strong consensus is that while Shakespeare
may have collaborated with another Elizabethan playwright in at least one instance (probably with John Fletcher on The
Two Noble Kinsman), and that one or two of his plays were completed by someone else (possibly Fletcher on an original
or revised version of Henry VIII), the works ascribed to Shakespeare are his.
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