a student in a university or college who has not received a first, especially a bachelor's, degree. having the standing of an undergraduate. of, for, pertaining to, or characteristic of undergraduates.
I guess this depends some on what you mean by era.. In terms of simple dates, Shakespeare wrote most of his plays between 1589 and 1613. If you are talking about what literary era he was writing in, people tend to say that he was part of the English Renaissance. If you are asking about historical eras, most people associate Shakespeare with Elizabethan England.
Ward, a self-proclaimed Shakespeare fan, wrote his diary fifty years after Shakespeare died and most historians agree it appears to be a baseless anecdote. It should be noted though that a serious outbreak of typhus, known as the new fever, in 1616 (the year Shakespeare died), lends credibility to Ward's story.