William Shakespeare (/ekspr/;[1] 26 April 1564 (baptised) 23 April 1616)[nb 1] was an

English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English
language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. [2] He is often called England's national poet and
the "Bard of Avon".[3][nb 2] His extant works, including somecollaborations, consist of around 38
plays,[nb 3] 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, of which the authorship
of some is uncertain. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are
performed more often than those of any other playwright. [4]
Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he
married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and
twinsHamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as
an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later
known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49,
where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there
has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical
appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by
others.[5]
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. [6][nb 4] His early plays
were mainly comedies and histories and these works remain regarded as some of the best work
produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608,
including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the
English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and
collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his
lifetime. In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two friends and fellow actors of
Shakespeare, published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included
all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. It was prefaced with a poem by Ben
Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as "not of an age, but for all time". [7] In
the 20th and 21st centuries, his work has been repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new
movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are
constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts
throughout the world.

Edmund Spenser (/spnsr/; 1552/1553 13 January 1599) was an English poet best known
for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor
dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English
verse in its infancy, and is often considered one of the greatest poets in the English
language. Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London, around the year 1552,
though there is some ambiguity as to the exact date of his birth. As a young boy, he was
educated in London at the Merchant Taylors' School and matriculated as a sizar at Pembroke
College, Cambridge.[2][3] While at Cambridge he became a friend of Gabriel Harvey and later
consulted him, despite their differing views on poetry. In 1578, he became for a short time
secretary to John Young, Bishop of Rochester. [4] In 1579, he published The Shepheardes
Calender and around the same time married his first wife, Machabyas Childe. [5] They had two
children, Sylvanus (d.1638) and Katherine. [6]

In July 1580, Spenser went to Ireland in service of the newly appointed Lord
Deputy, Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton. Spenser served under Lord Gray
with Walter Raleigh at the Siege of Smerwick massacre.[7] When Lord Grey was

recalled to England, Spenser stayed on in Ireland, having acquired other official posts
and lands in the Munster Plantation. Raleigh acquired other nearby Munster estates
confiscated in the Second Desmond Rebellion. Some time between 1587 and 1589,
Spenser acquired his main estate at Kilcolman, near Doneraile in North Cork.[8] He
later bought a second holding to the south, at Rennie, on a rock overlooking the
river Blackwater in North Cork. Its ruins are still visible today. A short distance away
grew a tree, locally known as "Spenser's Oak" until it was destroyed in a lightning
strike in the 1960s. Local legend has it that he penned some of The Faerie
Queene under this tree.[9]
In 1590, Spenser brought out the first three books of his most famous work, The
Faerie Queene, having travelled to London to publish and promote the work, with the
likely assistance of Raleigh. He was successful enough to obtain a life pension of 50
a year from the Queen. He probably hoped to secure a place at court through his
poetry, but his next significant publication boldly antagonised the queen's principal
secretary,Lord Burghley (William Cecil), through its inclusion of the satirical Mother
Hubberd's Tale.[10] He returned to Ireland.
By 1594, Spenser's first wife had died, and in that year he married Elizabeth Boyle, to
whom he addressed the sonnet sequence Amoretti. The marriage itself was
celebrated in Epithalamion.[11] They had a son named Peregrine.[6]
In 1596, Spenser wrote a prose pamphlet titled A View of the Present State of Ireland.
This piece, in the form of a dialogue, circulated in manuscript, remaining unpublished
until the mid-seventeenth century. It is probable that it was kept out of print during
the author's lifetime because of its inflammatory content. The pamphlet argued that
Ireland would never be totally 'pacified' by the English until its indigenous language
and customs had been destroyed, if necessary by violence. [12]
In 1598, during the Nine Years War, Spenser was driven from his home by the native
Irish forces of Aodh Nill. His castle at Kilcolman was burned, and Ben Jonson, who
may have had private information, asserted that one of his infant children died in the
blaze.[13]
Title page, Fowre Hymnes, by Edmund Spenser, published byWilliam Ponsonby, London, 1596

In the year after being driven from his home, 1599, Spenser travelled to London,
where he died at the age of forty-six "for want of bread", according to Ben Jonson,
which is ironic considering Spenser's approving writing on the scorched-earth policy
that caused famine in Ireland.[14] His coffin was carried to his grave in Westminster
Abbey by other poets, who threw many pens and pieces of poetry into his grave with
many tears. His second wife survived him and remarried twice. His sister Sarah, who
had accompanied him to Ireland, married into the Travers family, and her
descendants were prominent landowners in Cork for centuries.