Life of William Shakespeare Life of William Shakespeare William Shakespeare was an actor, playwright, poet, and theatre entrepreneur in London during the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. He was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, in the Holy Trinity Church. At age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway with whom he had three children. He died in his home town of Stratford on 23 April 1616 at the age of 52. Though more is known about Shakespeare's life than those of most other Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, few personal biographical facts survive, which is unsurprising in the light of
Religious views of William Shakespeare experimentation with heretical Gnostic theology. However, Eamon Duffy points out that although the majority of Tudor people were muddled and uncertain, accepting of compromise and accommodation, "Religious diversity was not a notion to conjure with in Tudor England… Ritual and doctrinal diversity were evils, aspects of social and religious disunity." Other scholars who have searched for Protestant rhetoric in Shakespeare's writings include Maurice Hunt (Baylor University), E. Beatrice Batson (Wheaton College), and Joseph William Sterrett (Aarhus University), the last of which insists that Shakespeare promoted religious tolerance in his writings. Shakespeare scholars such as Eric Sams and Robert Miola disagree