William Shakespeare was born around April 23rd, 1564 in the village of Stratford-upon-Avon in the English county of Warwickshire. The village is about a hundred miles northwest of the city of London.
William was the son of John Shakespeare and his wife, Mary. He was the third of their eight children; three of the children died when they were young, leaving William the oldest child. His father was from a humble but respectable family. John improved his status by acquiring property while he worked at different trades including glove maker and wool dealer.
William’s mother’s surname, Arden, was the same as a nearby village, so her roots in the area stretched back several hundred years. One of her ancestors would have come from the village and taken the name as his family name. Mary’s father was a prominent local man and owned several estates. The Arden family was higher up the social ladder than the Shakespeares but Mary was the youngest of eight girls and her father must have thought John was a good prospect for his daughter.
England was going through a transitional period in the 1560’s. By the time William was born England was a Protestant country but his parents were probably married as Roman Catholics. “Bloody Mary” Tudor was queen when they married. England had gone through a Protestant reformation during the reigns of her father (Henry VIII) and brother (Edward VI) but Mary reinstated Catholicism when she became queen. Her five-year reign was difficult for Protestants — it was a time of persecution and upheaval. When she died in 1558 Elizabeth I became England’s monarch and the Roman Catholic Church was replaced by the Church of England. William was born in the sixth year of her reign.
In 1564 England was not yet a world power and her great age of exploration and colonization was only beginning. The country was still mostly rural and most people lived off the land or worked as tradesmen and artisans. Shakespeare would become one of the few men of his time to make his living as a writer