Life of William Shakespeare of sheep, hide tanning and wool trading, as well as for malting to supply brewers of ale and beer. His parents were John Shakespeare, a successful glover originally from Snitterfield in Warwickshire, and Mary Arden, the youngest daughter of John's father's landlord, a member of the local gentry. The couple married around 1557 and lived on Henley Street when Shakespeare was born, purportedly in a house now known as Shakespeare's Birthplace. They had eight children: Joan (baptised 15 September 1558, died in infancy), Margaret (bap. 2 December 1562buried 30 April 1563), William, Gilbert (bap. 13 October 1566bur. 2 February 1612),
History of the Shakespeare authorship question Shakespeare's authorship, which has garnered more than 3,000 signatures, including more than 500 academics. In late 2007, Brunel University of London began offering a one-year MA program on the Shakespeare authorship question (since suspended), and in 2010, Concordia University (Portland, Oregon) opened the Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre. Some suggestions do not necessarily imply a secret author, but an alternative life-history for Shakespeare himself. These overlap with or merge into alternative-author models. An example is the claim that he was an Arab whose real name was "Sheikh Zubayr". This was first proposed in the 19th century as a joke by Ahmad