Regarded by legions as among the greatest writers of English language to have ever lived – if not objectively the greatest – William Shakespeare was a playwright, poet and actor who lived between 1564 and 1616. The ‘Bard of Avon’ has to his credit, 39 plays, 154 sonnets and several more narrative poems. Across era-defining works like Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Twelfth Night, Shakespeare explored timeless questions about every human complexity under the sun. His unabashed questions asked with artfully restrained writing has left behind a body of work that continues to shape literature, theatre and popular culture around the world, centuries on.
