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• 
  

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  Globe Theatre
  This article is about the Globe Theatre of Shakespeare. For the modern reconstruction in London, see Shakespeare's Globe. For other uses, see Globe Theatre (disambiguation).
  The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613. A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by June 1614 and closed in 1642.
  A modern reconstruction of the Globe, named "Shakespeare's Globe", opened in 1997 approximately 750 feet (230 m) from the site of the original theatre.
  Examination of old property records has identified the plot of land occupied by the Globe as extending from the west side of modern-day Southwark Bridge Road eastwards as far as Porter Street and from Park Street southwards as far as the back of Gatehouse Square. However, the precise location of the building remained unknown until a small part of the foundations, including one original pier base, was discovered in 1989 beneath the car park at the rear of Anchor Terrace on Park Street. The shape of the foundations is now replicated on the surface. As the majority of the foundations lies beneath 67—70 Anchor Terrace, a listed building, no further excavations have been permitted.
  
  wn.com/Globe_Theatre

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  Anne Boleyn
  Anne Boleyn ( /ˈbʊlɪn/, /bəˈlɪn/ or /bʊˈlɪn/); c.1501 – 19 May 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of Henry VIII of England and Marquess of Pembroke in her own right. Henry's marriage to Anne, and her subsequent execution, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that was the start of the English Reformation. Anne was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard, and was educated in the Netherlands and France, largely as a maid of honour to Claude of France. She returned to England in early 1522, in order to marry her Irish cousin James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond; however, the marriage plans ended in failure and she secured a post at court as maid of honour to Henry VIII's queen consort, Catherine of Aragon.
  Early in 1523 there was a secret betrothal between Anne and Henry Percy, son of the 5th Earl of Northumberland. However, in January of 1524 Cardinal Thomas Wolsey broke the betrothal, Anne was sent back home to Hever Castle, and Percy was married to Lady Mary Talbot, to whom he had been betrothed since adolescence. In February/March 1526 Henry VIII began his pursuit of Anne. She resisted his attempts to seduce her, refusing to become his mistress as her sister Mary had. It soon became the one absorbing object of Henry's desires to annul his marriage to Queen Catherine so he would be free to marry Anne. When it became clear that Pope Clement VII would not annul the marriage, the breaking of the power of the Catholic Church in England began. In 1532, Henry granted her the Marquesate of Pembroke.
  
  wn.com/Anne_Boleyn
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  Anthony Denny
  Sir Anthony Denny (16 January 1501 – 10 September 1549) was a confidant of Henry VIII of England. Denny was the most prominent member of the Privy chamber in Henry's last years having, together with his brother-in-law John Gates, charge of the "dry stamp" of Henry's signature, and attended Henry on his deathbed. He also served as Groom of the Stool. He was a member of the reformist circle that offset the conservative religious influence of Gardiner. He was a wealthy man, having acquired manors and former religious sites through the Court of augmentations. By 1548 he was keeper of Westminster Palace.
  Anthony Denny was the son of Sir Edmund Denny, chief Baron of the Exchequer. He was educated at St Paul's School and St John's College, Cambridge. In 1547 he was elected knight of the shire (MP) for Hertfordshire.
  Along with the Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, John Dudley, Viscount Lisle and Sir William Paget, Denny helped to finalise Henry VIII's will upon his deathbed in 1547. Denny specifically argued to Henry on several occasions against the removal of Stephen Gardiner from the will. Denny was himself the man to tell Henry of his coming death, advising the old King "to prepare for his final agony". Denny's position gave him both the power to control who saw Henry in his last years (in which he spent excessive time in the Privy Chambers), and influence through his personal relationship with the ageing King. Along with Sir William Paget, the Principal Secretary, Denny is suspected of having fixed the choosing of the "Progressive" appeals, headed by Edward Seymour.
  
  wn.com/Anthony_Denny
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  Antony and Cleopatra
  Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The play was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony from the time of the Parthian War to Cleopatra's suicide. The major antagonist is Octavius Caesar, one of Antony's fellow triumviri and the future first emperor of Rome. The tragedy is a Roman play characterised by swift, panoramic shifts in geographical locations and in registers, alternating between sensual, imaginative Alexandria and the more pragmatic, austere Rome.
  Many consider the role of Cleopatra in this play one of the most complex female roles in Shakespeare's work. She is frequently vain and histrionic, provoking an audience almost to scorn; at the same time, Shakespeare's efforts invest both her and Antony with tragic grandeur. These contradictory features have led to famously divided critical responses.
  Mark Antony – one of the Triumvirs of Rome along with Octavian and Lepidus – has neglected his soldierly duties after being beguiled by Egypt's Queen, Cleopatra. He ignores Rome's domestic problems, including the fact that his third wife Fulvia rebelled against Octavian and then died.
  
  wn.com/Antony_and_Cleopatra
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  Catherine of Aragon
  Catharine of Aragon (Castilian: Catalina de Aragón; Aragonese: Catarina d'Aragón) (16 December 1485 – 7 January 1536) was Queen consort of England as the first wife of King Henry VIII of England and Princess of Wales as the wife to Arthur, Prince of Wales. In 1507, she also held the position of Ambassador for the Spanish Court in England when her father found himself without one, becoming the first female ambassador in European history. For six months, she served as regent of England while Henry VIII was in France. During that time the English won the Battle of Flodden, an event in which Catherine played an important part.
  At the age of three, Catherine was betrothed to Prince Arthur, heir to the English throne, and they married in 1501, but Arthur died five months later. Catherine subsequently married Arthur's younger brother, the recently-succeeded Henry VIII, in 1509. By 1525 Henry was infatuated with his mistress Anne Boleyn and dissatisfied that his marriage to Catherine had produced no surviving sons, leaving their daughter, the future Mary I of England, as heiress presumptive at a time when there was no established precedent for a woman on the throne. He sought to have their marriage annulled, setting in motion a chain of events that led to England's break with the Roman Catholic Church. When Pope Clement VII refused to annul the marriage, Henry defied him by assuming supremacy over religious matters. In 1533 their marriage was declared invalid and Henry married Anne on the judgement of clergy in England, without reference to the Pope. Catherine refused to accept Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England and considered herself the King's rightful wife and Queen until her death. Now acknowledged by Henry only as Dowager Princess of Wales, she lived out the remainder of her life at Kimbolton Castle, and died there on 7 January 1536.
  
  wn.com/Catherine_of_Aragon
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  Charles Kean
  Charles John Kean (18 January 1811 - 22 January 1868), was born at Waterford, Ireland, the son of the actor Edmund Kean.
  After preparatory education at Worplesdon and at Greenford, near Harrow, he was sent to Eton College, where he remained three years. In 1827, he was offered a cadetship in the East India Company's service, which he was prepared to accept if his father would settle an income of £400 on his mother. The elder Kean refused to do this, and his son determined to become an actor. He made his first appearance at Drury Lane on 1 October 1827 as Norval in Home's Douglas, but his continued failure to achieve popularity led him to leave London in the spring of 1828 for the provinces. At Glasgow, on 1 October in that year, father and son acted together in Arnold Payne's Brutus, the elder Kean in the title-part and his son as Titus.
  After a visit to the United States in 1830, where he was received with much favour, he appeared in 1833 at Covent Garden as "Sir Edmund Mortimer" in Colman's The Iron Chest, but his success was not pronounced enough to encourage him to remain in London, especially as he had already won a high position in the provinces. In January 1838, however, he returned to Drury Lane, and played Hamlet with a success which gave him a place among the principal tragedians of his time. He was married to the actress Ellen Tree (1805-1880) on 25 January 1842, and paid a second visit to America with her from 1845 to 1847.
  
  wn.com/Charles_Kean
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  Charles Laughton
  Charles Laughton (1 July 1899 – 15 December 1962) was an English-born American stage and film actor, screenwriter, producer and director.
  Laughton was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the son of Robert Laughton and his wife Elizabeth (née Conlon), Yorkshire hotel keepers. His mother was a devout Roman Catholic of Irish descent. He attended Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit school, in Lancashire. He served during World War I (in which he was gassed) first with the 2/1st Battalion of the Huntingdonshire Cyclist Regiment and later with the 7th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment.
  
  wn.com/Charles_Laughton
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  Colley Cibber
  Colley Cibber (/ˈkɒli ˈkɪbər/; 6 November 1671 – 11 December 1757) was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740) describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style. He wrote 25 plays for his own company at Drury Lane, half of which were adapted from various sources, which led Robert Lowe and Alexander Pope, among others, to criticise his "miserable mutilation" of "crucified Molière [and] hapless Shakespeare". He regarded himself as first and foremost an actor and had great popular success in comical fop parts, while as a tragic actor he was persistent but much ridiculed. Cibber's brash, extroverted personality did not sit well with his contemporaries, and he was frequently accused of tasteless theatrical productions, shady business methods, and a social and political opportunism that was thought to have gained him the laureateship over far better poets. He rose to ignominious fame when he became the chief target, the head Dunce, of Alexander Pope's satirical poem Dunciad.
  
  wn.com/Colley_Cibber
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  David Garrick
  David Garrick (19 February 1717 – 20 January 1779) was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson. He appeared in a number of amateur theatricals, and with his appearance in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III audiences and managers began to take notice. Impressed by his portrayals of Richard III and a number of other roles, Charles Fleetwood engaged Garrick for a season at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. He remained with the Drury Lane company for the next five years and purchased a share of the theatre with James Lacy. This purchase inaugurated twenty-nine years of Garrick's management of the Drury Lane, during which time it rose to prominence as one of the leading theatres in Europe. At his death, three years after his retirement from Drury Lane and the stage, he was given a lavish public funeral at Westminster Abbey where he was laid in Poets' Corner.
  
  wn.com/David_Garrick
• Dominic Rowan
  Dominic Rowan (born 17 June 1971^{[citation needed]}) is an English actor.
  Rowan trained at Central School of Speech and Drama.
  Rowan's work in theatre includes: A Dream Play,Iphigeneia at Aulis,Mourning Becomes Electra,Three Sisters,The Talking Cure and Private Lives at the National Theatre, London; The Two Gentlemen of Verona,The Merchant of Venice and Talk of the City for the RSC; A Voyage Round My Father and Lobby Hero at the Donmar Warehouse, London; Playhouse Creatures at the Old Vic, London; Way to Heaven and Forty Winks at the Royal Court Theatre, London; The Importance of Being Earnest at The Oxford Playhouse; Sexual Perversity in Chicago at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield; The Rivals,Charley's Aunt and Look Back in Anger at the Royal Exchange, Manchester; A Collier's Friday Night at Hampstead Theatre, London; Wit's End at the New End Theatre, London, and Happy Now?, a new play by Lucinda Coxon at the National Theatre, London. He was seen in David Eldridge's Under The Blue Sky, which ran from July to September 2008 at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, then from December 2009 in Martin Crimp's version of Molière's comedy The Misanthrope at the Comedy Theatre, London. In summer 2009, he appeared as Touchstone in Shakespeare's As You Like It at the Globe Theatre, where he also appeared in the title role of Henry VIII in 2010. In July 2011 he appeared at the Royal Court alongside Romola Garai in The Village Bike.
  
  wn.com/Dominic_Rowan
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  Edith Evans
  Dame Edith Mary Evans, DBE (8 February 1888 – 14 October 1976) was a British actress. She was known for her work on the British stage. She also appeared in a number of films, for which she received three Academy Award nominations, plus a BAFTA and a Golden Globe award.
  Evans was particularly well known at portraying haughty aristocratic ladies, as in two of her most famous roles: Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (both on stage and in the 1952 film), and Miss Western in the 1963 film of Tom Jones. By contrast, she played a poverty-stricken old woman in one of her most acclaimed film roles, in The Whisperers (1967).
  Edith Evans was born in London, the daughter of Edward Evans, a civil servant, and his wife, Caroline Ellen Foster. She was educated at St Michael's Church of England School, Pimlico, before being apprenticed at the age of 15 in 1903 as a milliner.
  Her first stage appearance was with Miss Massey's Shakespeare Players in the role of Viola in Twelfth Night in October 1910. In 1912 she was discovered by the noted producer William Poel and made her first professional appearance for Poel in August of that year, playing the role of Gautami in a 6th century Hindu classic, Sakuntala. She received much attention with her performance as Cressida in Troilus and Cressida in London and subsequently at Stratford-upon-Avon.
  
  wn.com/Edith_Evans
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  Ellen Terry
  Dame Ellen Terry, GBE (27 February 1847 – 21 July 1928) was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain.
  Born into a family of actors, Terry began acting as a child in Shakespeare plays and continued as a teen, in London and on tour. At sixteen she married the much older artist George Frederick Watts, but they separated within a year. She briefly returned to acting but then began a relationship with the architect Edward William Godwin and retired from the stage for six years. She returned to acting in 1874 and was immediately acclaimed for her portrayal of roles in Shakespeare and other classics.
  In 1878 she joined Henry Irving's company as his leading lady, and for more than the next two decades she was considered the leading Shakespearean and comic actress in Britain. Two of her most famous roles were Portia in The Merchant of Venice and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. She and Irving also toured with great success in America and Britain.
  In 1903 Terry took over management of London's Imperial Theatre, focusing on the plays of George Bernard Shaw and Henrik Ibsen. The venture was a financial failure, however, and Terry then toured and later also lectured. She continued to find acting success until 1920, while also appearing in films until 1922. Her career lasted nearly seven decades.
  
  wn.com/Ellen_Terry
• Eustace Chapuys
  Eustace Chapuys (1494–1556) was a Savoyard diplomat who served as the Imperial ambassador to England from 1529 until 1545 and is best known for his extensive and detailed correspondence.
  He was born in Annecy in Savoy. He attended the University of Turin from 1507, staying there for at least 8 years. In 1517 he became an official of the diocese of Geneva and subsequently served the Duke of Savoy and Charles de Bourbon. In 1527 he entered the service of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.
  After going to Savoy as ambassador, he went to England in September 1529 to take over the post of resident ambassador there from Don Íñigo de Mendoza, a post that had been rather unstably occupied since the forced withdrawal of Louis of Praet in 1525. Chapuys's legal background made him an ideal candidate to defend Henry VIII's wife Catherine of Aragon (who was also an aunt of Emperor Charles V) against the legal proceedings that historians call the "Divorce Crisis", which led, eventually, to the English rejection of Papal authority and break from the Roman Catholic Church. Chapuys's attempts to defeat English machinations against Catherine eventually failed and Henry married Anne Boleyn. Catherine died in January 1536. Chapuys despised Boleyn, describing her as a "whore" and "concubine".
  
  wn.com/Eustace_Chapuys
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  Eva Le Gallienne
  Eva Le Gallienne (January 11, 1899 – June 3, 1991) was a theatrical actress, producer, and director during the first half of the 20th century.
  Le Gallienne was born in London to an English poet of French descent, Richard Le Gallienne, and a Danish journalist, Julie Norregard. After Eva's parents separated when she was three years old, she spent her childhood shuttling back and forth between Paris and England. She made her stage debut at the age of 15 in a 1914 production of Maurice Maeterlinck's Monna Vanna.
  The next year Le Gallienne sailed for New York, and then on to Arizona and California where she performed in several theatre productions. After travelling in Europe for a period of time, she returned to New York and became a Broadway star in several plays including Arthur Richman's Not So Long Ago (1920) and Ferenc Molnár's Liliom (1921).
  Disillusioned by the state of commercial theatre in the 1920s, Le Gallienne founded the Civic Repertory Theatre in the former Fourteenth Street Theatre in Manhattan, New York. She was backed by the financial support of one of her lovers, Alice DeLamar, a wealthy Colorado gold mine heiress, whose support was instrumental in the success of the repertory theatre movement in the U.S. In 1928 she earned a great success with her performance in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. As head of the Civic Repertory Theatre, she is known to have rejected the admission of Bette Davis, whose attitude she described as "insincere" and "frivolous". The Civic Rep disbanded at the height of the Depression in 1934.
  
  wn.com/Eva_Le_Gallienne
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  Francis Bacon
  Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban(s),KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution.
  Bacon has been called the creator of empiricism. His works established and popularised inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method, or simply the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today.
  Bacon was knighted in 1603, and created both the Baron Verulam in 1618, and the Viscount St Alban in 1621; as he died without heirs both peerages became extinct upon his death. He famously died by contracting pneumonia while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat.
  
  wn.com/Francis_Bacon
• George Steevens
  George Steevens (10 May 1736 – 22 January 1800) was an English Shakespearean commentator.
  He was born at Poplar, the son of a captain and later director of the East India Company. He was educated at Eton College and at King's College, Cambridge, where he remained from 1753 to 1756. Leaving the university without a degree, he settled in chambers in the Inner Temple, moving later to a house on Hampstead Heath, where he collected a valuable library, rich in Elizabethan literature. He also accumulated a large collection of Hogarth prints, and his notes on the subject were incorporated in John Nichols's Genuine Works of Hogarth.
  He walked from Hampstead to London every morning before seven o'clock, discussed Shakespearian questions with his friend, Isaac Reed, and, after making his daily round of the booksellers shops, returned to Hampstead. He began his work as a Shakespearean editor with reprints of the quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays, entitled Twenty of the Plays of Shakespeare ... (1766). Samuel Johnson was impressed by this work, and suggested that Steevens should prepare a complete edition of Shakespeare. The result, known as Johnson's and Steevens's edition, was The Works of Shakespeare with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators (10 vols., 1773), Johnson's contributions to which were very slight.
  
  wn.com/George_Steevens
• Harry Andrews
  Harry Fleetwood Andrews, CBE (10 November 1911 – 6 March 1989) was an English film actor known for his frequent portrayals of tough military officers. His performance as Sergeant Major Wilson in The Hill alongside Sean Connery earned Andrews the 1965 National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor and a nomination for the 1966 BAFTA Award for Best British Actor. He made his film debut in The Red Beret in 1953.
  Prior to his film career, Andrews was an accomplished Shakespearean actor, appearing at such venues as the Queen's Theatre, the Lyceum Theatre, and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in England as well as theatres in New York City, Paris, Antwerp and Brussels. Andrews made his London theatre debut in 1935 at the St James's Theatre and his New York debut in 1936 at the since-demolished Empire Theatre.
  Harry Andrews was born on 10 November 1911, in Tonbridge, Kent. He was the son of Henry Arthur Andrews and Amy Diana Frances (née Horner). Andrews attended Wrekin College in Wellington, Shropshire. From October 1939 to October 1945, Andrews served with the Royal Artillery during the Second World War. Andrews died at the age of 77 on 6 March 1989, at his home in Salehurst, leaving behind his long-term romantic partner Basil Hoskins.
  
  wn.com/Harry_Andrews
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  Henry Irving
  Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility (supervision of sets, lighting, direction, casting, as well as playing the leading roles) for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as representative of English classical theatre. Known as "The Governor" to those under his supervision at the Lyceum, he was the first actor to be awarded a knighthood. Irving is thought to have been the inspiration for the title character in Lyceum manager Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.
  Irving was born to a working-class family in Keinton Mandeville in the county of Somerset.W.H. Davies, the celebrated poet, was a cousin. He attended City Commercial School for two years before going to work in the office of a firm of lawyers at the age of 13. After seeing Samuel Phelps play Hamlet soon after this, Irving sought out lessons, letters of introduction, and, finally, work in a theatre in Sunderland in 1856. He married Florence O'Callaghan on 15 July 1869 at St. Marylebone, London. Irving labored against great odds from 1856 till his 1871 success in The Bells in London set him apart from all the rest.
  
  wn.com/Henry_Irving
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  Ian McNeice
  Ian McNeice (born 2 October 1950) is a prolific English screen, stage and television character actor.
  McNeice was born in Basingstoke in Hampshire. McNeice's acting training started at the Taunton School in Somerset, followed by two years at the Salisbury Playhouse. The next few years were spent in theatre, including a four-year career with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and a production of Nicholas Nickleby on Broadway.
  His television breakthrough was as Harcourt in the award-winning series Edge of Darkness. He played the alcoholic sous chef Gustave LaRoche on the television series Chef!. He went on to appear in the 2000 television miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune as the evil Baron Vladimir Harkonnen – a role he later reprised for the 2003 sequel Children of Dune. His television appearances have included all five series of Doc Martin (in which he plays Bert Large), the third episode of the second series of Lewis and as the recurring minor character of Forum crier ("Newsreader") in the joint HBO/BBC production Rome.
  
  wn.com/Ian_McNeice
• James Spedding
  James Spedding (28 June 1808–9 March 1881) was an English author, chiefly known as the editor of the works of Francis Bacon.
  He was born in Cumberland, the younger son of a country squire, and was educated at Bury St Edmunds and Trinity College, Cambridge; where he took a second class in the classical tripos, and was junior optime in mathematics in 1831. In 1835 he entered the colonial office, but he resigned this post in 1841. In 1842 he was secretary to Lord Ashburton on his American mission, and in 1855 he became secretary to the Civil Service Commission; but from 1841 onwards he was constantly occupied in his researches into Bacon's life and philosophy. On 1 March 1881 he was knocked down by a cab in London, and on the 9th he died of erysipelas.
  Spedding's major edition of Bacon's works was begun in 1847 in collaboration with Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath. In 1853 Ellis had to leave the work to Spedding, with the occasional assistance of Heath, who edited most of the legal writings. The Works were published in 1857-1859 in seven volumes, followed by the Life and Letters (1861-1874). Taken together these works contain practically all the material which exists in connection with the subject, collected and weighed with care and impartiality.
  
  wn.com/James_Spedding
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  John Gielgud
  Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH (/ˈɡiːlɡʊd/; 14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937. He was known for his beautiful speaking of verse and particularly for his warm and expressive voice, which his colleague Sir Alec Guinness likened to "a silver trumpet muffled in silk". Gielgud is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
  John Gielgud was born in South Kensington in London to Kate Terry and Frank Gielgud. He was of theatrical lineage on his mother's side, being the grandson of actress Kate Terry, whose actor-siblings included Ellen Terry, Marion Terry and Fred Terry.
  Gielgud's Catholic father, Franciszek Giełgud, born in 1880, was a descendant of a Polish noble family residing at a manor in a town called Giełgudyszki (now Gelgaudiškis in Marijampolė County, Lithuania). In his autobiography, Gielgud states repeatedly and clearly that his father was Polish Catholic, and mentions Gelgaudiškis as being his ancestral home whence his family and their surname originated.
  
  wn.com/John_Gielgud
• John Longland
  John Longland (died 1547) was the English Dean of Salisbury from 1514 to 1521 and bishop of Lincoln from 1521 to his death in 1547.
  He was King Henry VIII's confessor and was said to have been one of those who first persuaded the King that he should annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon.
  During the English Reformation, he was among the conservative bishops , recognizing the Real Presence of the Eucharist. His conservatism is attested to by his complaint in 1536 to Thomas Cromwell about Protestant preachers in his diocese.
  
  
  
  wn.com/John_Longland
• John Lowin
  John Lowin (baptized 9 December 1576 – buried 16th/18 March 1659) was an English actor born in the St Giles-without-Cripplegate, London, the son of a tanner. Like Robert Armin, he was apprenticed to a goldsmith. While he is not recorded as a free citizen of this company, he did perform as a goldsmith, Leofstane, in a 1611 city pageant written by Anthony Munday. This pageant was commissioned by the Goldsmiths' Company in honor of the election of one of their company as mayor; in the document employing him, Lowin is described as a "brother" of the company, suggesting some form of ongoing relationship with that community. He lived in Southwark, where parish registers record two marriages involving a man of his name (in 1607 and 1620); the latter definitely involved the actor.
  Lowin was definitely associated with the theatrical world by 1602. His name frequently occurs in the account books of Philip Henslowe in 1602, when he was playing with Worcester's Men at Rose Theatre in Bankside; a note in Henslowe's book places him in a travelling company in the same year. By late 1603, he had joined the new King's Men, apparently as a hired man rather than a sharer, as his name is not mentioned in the original royal patent. He probably became a sharer in 1604, when the total number of sharers was likely increased to twelve.
  
  wn.com/John_Lowin
• Kate Duchêne
  Kate Duchêne ( /duːˈʃɛn/; born Catherine Anne Purves Duchêne on 5 January 1959), is a British actress. She moved to France 3 weeks after her birth but moved back to England permanently in 1962, to the seaside town of Brighton. Kate started to act at the age of 14. In the 1980s however, Kate briefly went to Spain to teach English to children. She returned in 1986 for the lead in "Lucy's Play". She was also a member of Cambridge footlights in the 1980's. Duchéne is best known for her work as Miss Constance Hardbroom, the strict Deputy Head and Potions Teacher on the popular TV series The Worst Witch. Having stayed with the programme for its three-year run, and appearing in the first episode of its 2001 spinoff Weirdsister College on "The All Seeing Eye", Duchêne disappointed many fans by failing to return for the second spinoff, The New Worst Witch (2005–2006). Her more recent projects include Afterlife, a paranormal drama series, and extensive theatre work.
  Kate has a partner, Robert Friztgerald. She has two children; Anna Charlotte, born 15 April 2005 and a daughter born late May / early June 2009.
  
  wn.com/Kate_Duchêne
• Lewis Theobald
  Lewis Theobald (baptised 2 April 1688 – 18 September 1744), British textual editor and author, was a landmark figure both in the history of Shakespearean editing and in literary satire. He was vital for the establishment of fair texts for Shakespeare, and he was the first avatar of Dulness in Alexander Pope's The Dunciad.
  Before coming to Shakespeare, Theobald's career was not very distinguished. He began as a lawyer, as his father had been an attorney in Sittingbourne, Kent, but he set his sights on a literary life. He was a competent classicist, and his first publications were translations of Greek works. He began with Plato's Phaedo in 1714 and contracted with a book seller for the serial translation of the tragedies of Aeschylus (of which, only Electra and Ajax were done) and Sophocles's Oedipus Rex 1715. These translations are not particularly good, as he performed them very rapidly. Theobald also wrote for the Tory Mist's Journal. He attempted to make a living with drama and began to work with John Rich at Drury Lane, writing pantomimes for him. He also probably plagiarized a man named Henry Meystayer. Meystayer gave Theobald a draft of a play called The Perfidious Brother to review, and Theobald had it produced as his own work. As an author, Theobald's work was rather poor.
  
  wn.com/Lewis_Theobald
• 
  Lorenzo Campeggio
  Lorenzo Campeggio (1471 or 1472 – 1539) was an Italian cardinal and politician. He was the last cardinal protector of England.
  Campeggio was born in Milan, the eldest of five sons. In 1500, he took his doctorate in canon and civil law at Bologna and married Francesca Guastavillani with whom he had five children. When she died in 1509, Campeggio began an ecclesiastical career under Pope Julius II's patronage.
  He was soon appointed to two diplomatic missions, both against the Council of Pisa, first to the emperor Maximilian I, who gave him the bishopric of Feltre in 1512 (held until 1520), and then in 1512–13 to the duke of Milan. In 1513 he returned to Germany seeking a league against the Turks. Pope Leo X made him a Cardinal on 1 July 1517, and Maximilian made him cardinal–protector of the Holy Roman Empire. On 3 March 1518 he was sent to England as part of Leo's peace policy. This gave Thomas Wolsey the chance to become legate himself by using permission for Campeggio to enter England as leverage, and then to outmanoeuvre the new legate when he arrived, taking over the process of peace-making which led to the Treaty of London in 1519. He was also a member of Johann Goritz's humanist sodality.
  
  wn.com/Lorenzo_Campeggio
• 
  Lyn Harding
  Lyn Harding (12 October 1867 – 26 December 1952) (real name David Llewellyn Harding) was a Welsh actor who spent 40 years on the stage before entering British made silent films, talkies and radio. He had an imposing and menacing stage presence and came to be cast as the villain in many films, notably Professor Moriarty in dramatisations of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
  He was born in 1867 at St Brides Wentloog, in Monmouthshire, into a strict Congregationalist Welsh-speaking family.
  He started his career as an apprentice draper in Newport, Wales and but he was drawn to an acting career . He began giving readings from Shakespeare at a chapel in Cardiff. In 1890 a chance meeting with a touring group on a train led to him standing in for a sick actor and his first professional engagement. He opened on 28 August 1890 in The Grip Of Iron at the Theatre Royal, Bristol.
  He toured "the provinces" and eventually made his London debut at the Shakespeare Theatre, Clapham on 19 July 1897.
  He later changed his name to "Lyn" to make it more acceptable to English audiences who found "Llewellyn" difficult to pronounce.
  
  wn.com/Lyn_Harding
• 
  Macbeth
  The Tragedy of Macbeth (commonly called Macbeth) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare about a man who commits regicide so as to become king and then commits further murders to maintain his power. The play clearly demonstrates the corrupting effect of ambition, but also deals with the relationship between cruelty and masculinity, tyranny and kingship, treachery, violence, guilt, prophecy, and disruption of the natural order.
  The play is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. The earliest account of a performance of what was probably Shakespeare's play is April 1611, when Simon Forman recorded seeing such a play at the Globe Theatre. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book. The play was most likely written during the reign of James I, who had been James VI of Scotland before he succeeded to the English throne in 1603. James was a patron of Shakespeare’s acting company, and of all the plays Shakespeare wrote under James’s reign, Macbeth most clearly reflects the playwright’s close relationship with the sovereign.
  
  wn.com/Macbeth
• Margaret Webster
  Margaret Webster (March 15, 1905 - November 13, 1972) was an American-born theater actress, producer and director. Through her parents, she held dual US/UK citizenship.
  Margaret Webster was born in New York City, the daughter of two famous actors, Ben Webster and Dame May Whitty. She spent the early part of her career in England, where she became well known in the theatre. She worked for several established theatrical companies, including from 1929-1930 at the Old Vic[1].
  She returned to the US in 1937 and began an impressive run directing the play, Richard II with Maurice Evans in the title role. They formed a partnership that lasted until 1942, with Webster directing Evans in Broadway productions of Hamlet, Twelfth Night and Henry IV, Part I. It was while she was directing Hamlet in 1938 that she began her long romantic relationship with actress Eva Le Gallienne.^{[citation needed]}
  When Evans joined the army, Webster continued to have success directing classical plays on Broadway, notably The Cherry Orchard (1944) starring Le Gallienne, and her greatest triumph, Othello (1943), starring Paul Robeson in the title role and Jose Ferrer as Iago, which ran for 296 performances, by far the longest run of a Shakespearean production on Broadway, a record that has not been remotely approached since. She also played the role of Emilia in the production.
  
  wn.com/Margaret_Webster
• Miranda Raison
  Miranda Caroline Raison (born November 18, 1980) is an English actress.
  Born in Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, her father Nick Raison is a jazz pianist and artist, while her mother Caroline Raison read the news for Anglia Television. She has two brothers and two sisters: Ed (who is a member of the Lost Levels), Rosie, Sam and May. Her parents divorced when she was five years old, and her father remarried and lives in Suffolk. She attended several boarding schools including Gresham's School and Stowe School.
  Raison trained at Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.
  She is best known for her role as Jo Portman in the BBC One television drama series Spooks in which she appeared between 2005 and 2010.
  In April 2007, she appeared in Doctor Who, Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks. Her character Tallulah was a show girl, whose opening scene was on stage dancing and singing to a musical number—her father, Nick Raison, played the piano background as part of the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra. She was a guest on the second series of Totally Doctor Who in episode 4.
  
  wn.com/Miranda_Raison
• Raphael Holinshed
  Raphael Holinshed (1529–1580;  /ˈhɒlɪnzhɛd/ ) was an English chronicler, whose work, commonly known as Holinshed's Chronicles, was one of the major sources used by William Shakespeare for a number of his plays.
  He is thought to have come from Cheshire, but lived in London where he worked as a translator for the printer Reginald Wolfe.^{[citation needed]}Wolfe gave him the project of compiling a world history from the Flood to the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This ambitious project was never finished, but one portion was published in 1577 as The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Holinshed was only one contributor to this work; others involved in its production included William Harrison, Richard Stanyhurst, and John Hooker.
  Shakespeare used the revised second edition of the Chronicles (published in 1587) as the source for most of his history plays, the plot of Macbeth, and for portions of King Lear and Cymbeline.
  Little is known about Holinshed's life. There is no source which states his date of birth, for instance. He became known only by the Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, and all the information we have about him is related to this work. Although Vernon Snow remarks that Holinshed was an experienced Cambridge-educated translator, no other works by Holinshed are available. A few months after the Chronicle had been licensed, Holinshed retired to the countryside near Warwick. He died around 1580 and his will was proven on 24 April 1582. Nothing is known about Holinshed’s civil duties, other scholarly achievements or work for the Church.
  
  wn.com/Raphael_Holinshed
• 
  Samuel Johnson
  Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [O.S. 7 September] – 13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is also the subject of "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature": James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.
  Johnson was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and attended Pembroke College, Oxford for just over a year, before his lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher he moved to London, where he began to write miscellaneous pieces for The Gentleman's Magazine. His early works include the biography The Life of Richard Savage, the poems "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes", and the play Irene.
  After nine years of work, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755; it had a far-reaching effect on Modern English and has been described as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship." This work brought Johnson popularity and success. Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later, Johnson's was viewed as the pre-eminent British dictionary. His later works included essays, an influential annotated edition of William Shakespeare's plays, and the widely read tale Rasselas. In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he later travelled to Scotland; Johnson described their travels in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Towards the end of his life, he produced the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, a collection of biographies and evaluations of 17th- and 18th-century poets.
  
  wn.com/Samuel_Johnson
• 
  Samuel Pepys
  Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, ( /ˈpiːps/; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. Although Pepys had no maritime experience, he rose by patronage, hard work and his talent for administration, to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and subsequently King James II.
  His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy.
  The detailed private diary Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century, and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War and the Great Fire of London.
  Pepys was born in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, London on 23 February 1633, to John Pepys (1601–1680), a tailor, and Margaret Pepys (née Kite; d. 1667), daughter of a Whitechapel butcher. His great uncle Talbot Pepys was recorder and briefly MP for Cambridge in 1625. His father's first cousin, Sir Richard Pepys, was elected MP for Sudbury in 1640, and appointed Baron of the Exchequer on 30 May 1654, and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, on 25 September 1655.
  
  wn.com/Samuel_Pepys
• 
  Stephen Gardiner
  Stephen Gardiner (c. 1483 / c. 1497^{[citation needed]} - 12 November 1555) was an English Roman Catholic bishop and politician during the English Reformation period who served as Lord Chancellor during the reign of Queen Mary I of England.
  He was born in Bury St Edmunds, but the date of his birth is suspect. His father is known to have been William Gardner, a substantial cloth merchant of the town where he was born, who took care to give him a good education. His mother, Helen, was an illegitimate daughter of Jasper Tudor, 1st Duke of Bedford.
  In 1511 Gardiner, still a boy, met Erasmus in Paris. He had probably already begun his studies at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he distinguished himself in the classics, especially in Greek. He then devoted himself to canon and civil law, in which subjects he attained so great a proficiency that no one could dispute his pre-eminence. He received the degree of doctor of civil law in 1520, and of canon law in the following year.
  Before long his abilities attracted the notice of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who made him his secretary, and in this capacity he is said to have been with him at More Park in Hertfordshire, when the conclusion of the celebrated Treaty of the More brought King Henry VIII and the French ambassadors there. This was probably the occasion on which he first came to the king's notice, but he does not appear to have been actively engaged in Henry's service till three years later. He undoubtedly acquired a knowledge of foreign politics in the service of Wolsey. In 1527 he and Sir Thomas More were named commissioners on the part of England, in arranging a treaty with the French ambassadors for the support of an army in Italy against Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.
  
  wn.com/Stephen_Gardiner
• 
  Thomas Betterton
  Thomas Patrick Betterton (ca. 1635 – 28 April 1710), English actor, son of an under-cook to King Charles I, was born in London.
  He was apprenticed to John Holden, Sir William Davenant's publisher, and possibly later to a bookseller named John Rhodes, who had been wardrobe-keeper at the Blackfriars Theatre. In 1659, Rhodes obtained a licence to set up a company of players at the Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane; and on the reopening of this theatre in 1660, Betterton made his first appearance on the stage.
  Betterton's talents at once brought him into prominence, and he was given leading parts. On the opening of the new theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1661, Davenant, the patentee of the Duke's Company, engaged Betterton and all Rhodes's company to play in his Siege of Rhodes. Betterton, besides being a public favourite, was held in high esteem by Charles II, who sent him to Paris to examine stage improvements there.
  In 1662 he had married the actress Mary Saunderson (d. 1712).
  In appearance he was athletic, slightly above middle height, with a tendency to stoutness; his voice was strong rather than melodious, but in recitation it was used with the greatest dexterity. Pepys, Pope, Steele, and Cibber all bestow lavish praise on his acting. His repertory included a large number of Shakespearian roles, many of them presented in the versions adapted by Davenant, Dryden, Shadwell and Nahum Tate. He played Lear opposite Elizabeth Barry's Cordelia in Tate's modified version of Shakespeare's King Lear. Betterton was himself author of several adaptations which were popular in their day.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Betterton
• 
  Thomas Cranmer
  Thomas Cranmer (2 July 1489 – 21 March 1556) was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He helped build a favourable case for Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon which resulted in the separation of the English Church from union with the Holy See. Along with Thomas Cromwell, he supported the principle of Royal Supremacy, in which the king was considered sovereign over the Church within his realm.
  During Cranmer's tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury, he was responsible for establishing the first doctrinal and liturgical structures of the reformed Church of England. Under Henry's rule, Cranmer did not make many radical changes in the Church, due to power struggles between religious conservatives and reformers. However, he succeeded in publishing the first officially authorised vernacular service, the Exhortation and Litany.
  When Edward came to the throne, Cranmer was able to promote major reforms. He wrote and compiled the first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer, a complete liturgy for the English Church. With the assistance of several Continental reformers to whom he gave refuge, he developed new doctrinal standards in areas such as the Eucharist, clerical celibacy, the role of images in places of worship, and the veneration of saints. Cranmer promulgated the new doctrines through the Prayer Book, the Homilies and other publications.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Cranmer
• 
  Thomas Cromwell
  Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (c. 1485 – 28 July 1540) was an English statesman who served as chief minister of King Henry VIII of England from 1532 to 1540.
  Cromwell was one of the strongest advocates of the English Reformation, the English church's break with the papacy in Rome. Cromwell helped engineer an annulment of the King's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, so that Henry could marry his mistress Anne Boleyn. Supremacy over the Church of England was officially declared by Parliament in 1534, and Cromwell supervised the Church from the unique posts of vicegerent for spirituals and vicar general.
  Cromwell's rise to power made him many enemies, especially among the conservative faction at court. He fell from Henry's favour after arranging the King's marriage to a German princess, Anne of Cleves, which turned out to be a disaster. He was subjected to a bill of attainder and executed for treason and heresy on Tower Hill on 28 July 1540. The King later expressed regret at having lost his great minister.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Cromwell
• 
  Thomas Lovell
  Sir Thomas Lovell (died 1524) was an English soldier and administrator, Speaker of the House of Commons, Secretary to the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  He was fifth son of Sir Ralph Lovell of Barton Bendish in Norfolk, by Anne, daughter of Robert Toppe, alderman of Norwich; his family was Lancastrian in politics. Thomas Lovell seems to have been entered at Lincoln's Inn.
  He adhered to Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and was attainted in the first parliament of Richard III. He returned with Henry, fought at the battle of Bosworth Field, and his attainder was reversed in Henry VII's first parliament.
  On 12 October 1485 he was created chancellor of the exchequer for life; on 27 October he became esquire of the king's body, with a pension, and he was advanced to be knight of the king's body before August 1487. He was also treasurer of the king's and queen's chambers.
  In the parliament summoned for 7 November 1485 Lovell was chosen for Northamptonshire, and on 8 November 1485 he was elected speaker. He headed the commons on 10 December 1485, when they requested the king to marry Elizabeth of York, to whom he subsequently lent £500 on the security of her plate. On 3 July 1486 he was one of the commission to treat with the Scots. He probably continued to sit in parliament, though it is only certain that he was elected to that summoned for 16 January 1497. Sir John Mordaunt was chosen speaker in 1488.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Lovell
• 
  Thomas Wolsey
  Thomas Wolsey (c. March 1473 – 29 November 1530; sometimes spelled Woolsey) was an English political figure and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. When Henry VIII became king of England in 1509, Wolsey became the King's almoner. Wolsey's affairs prospered and by 1514 he had become the controlling figure in virtually all matters of state and was extremely powerful within the Church. The highest political position he attained was Lord Chancellor, the King's chief adviser, enjoying great freedom and often depicted as an alter rex (other king). Within the Church he became Archbishop of York, the second most important seat in England, and then was made a cardinal in 1515, giving him precedence over even the Archbishop of Canterbury. His main legacy is from his interest in architecture, in particular his old home of Hampton Court Palace, which stands today.
  Thomas Wolsey was born circa 1473, the son of Robert Wolsey of Ipswich and his wife Joan Daundy. His father was widely thought to have been a butcher and a cattle dealer, but sources indicate that Robert Wolsey died at the Battle of Bosworth Field and was a significant casualty.^{[citation needed]} Robert may have been a respected and wealthy cloth merchant, and the butcher story was perhaps invented to demean Wolsey and show how high he had climbed in terms of status.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Wolsey
• 
  Walter Hampden
  Walter Hampden is the artist name of Walter Hampden Dougherty (June 30, 1879 in Brooklyn – June 11, 1955 in Los Angeles) was a U.S. actor and theatre manager. He was the younger brother of the American painter Paul Dougherty (1877-1947).
  He went to England for apprenticeship for six years. Later, he played Hamlet, Henry V and Cyrano de Bergerac on Broadway. In 1925, he became manager of the Colonial Theatre on Broadway, which was renamed Hampden's Theatre from 1925 to 1931 . He became noted for his Shakespearean roles as well as for Cyrano, which he played in several productions between 1923 and 1936. Hampden's last stage role was as Danforth in the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
  John Garrett Underhill produced the first English-language version of The Bonds of Interest (Los intereses creados) by Jacinto Benavente, with Walter Hampden, in 1929.
  Hampden appeared in a few silent films, but did not really begin his film career in earnest until 1939, when he played the good Archbishop of Paris (Frollo's brother) in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring Charles Laughton as Quasimodo. This was Hampden's first sound film ; he was sixty at the time he made it. Several other roles followed—Jarvis Langdon in the 1944 film The Adventures of Mark Twain among them, but all were supporting character roles, not the lead roles that Hampden played onstage. He had a small, but notable role as the long-winded dinner speaker in the first scene of All About Eve (1950), and played the father of Humphrey Bogart and William Holden in Billy Wilder's 1954 comedy Sabrina. These last two films are arguably the ones that Hampden is most well known to modern audiences for. He also played long-bearded patriarchs in biblical epics like The Silver Chalice (1954) and The Prodigal (1955). (In The Silver Chalice, he was Joseph of Arimathea.)
  
  wn.com/Walter_Hampden
• 
  William Butts
  Sir William Butts (c. 1486 – 22 November 1545) was a member of King Henry VIII of England's court and served as the King's physician.
  He had his portrait painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1543, and was knighted the following year. His daughter Anne was married to the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon.
  The details of Butts's early life are unclear; he may have been born in either the London borough of Fulham or in Norfolk.
  Butts died in 1545, and is buried at All Saints Church, Fulham, London.
  He worked with George Owen and Thomas Wendy.
  Butts was a known Protestant and close associate of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and Catherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII. His family later became significant leaders of the Puritan faction in Norfolk.
  Butts had three children,
  
  
  
  wn.com/William_Butts
• 
  William Davenant
  Sir William Davenant (baptised 3 March 1606 – 7 April 1668), also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras and who was active both before and after the English Civil War and during the Interregnum.
  Davenant is believed to have been born in late February, 1606 in Oxford, the son of Jane Shepherd Davenant and John Davenant, proprietor of the Crown Tavern (or Crown Inn) and mayor of Oxford. He was baptised on 3 March, his godfather sometimes being said to have been William Shakespeare,^{[citation needed]} who had stayed frequently at the Crown during his travels between London and Stratford-upon-Avon. It was even rumoured that he was the Bard's biological son as well. However, it seems that this rumour stemmed from a comment attributed to Davenant by Samuel Butler: "It seemed to him [Davenant] that he writ with the very same spirit that Shakespeare [did], and seemed content enough to be called his son."
  
  wn.com/William_Davenant
• 
  William Shakespeare
  William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
  Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
  
  wn.com/William_Shakespeare

Henry VIII (1911)

Genres

• Drama
• History
• Short

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