William Shakespeare (English: William Shakespeare) is a prominent English poet, playwright and actor in English literature in particular and world literature in general. He has been called the "Patriotic Poet" and the "Epic Poet of Avon." Poetics (two long narrative poems) and some poems His plays and works have been translated into all living languages and performed far more than any other playwright. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. He married Anne Hathaway at the age of 18, and had three children: Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Between 1585 and 1592, he began his successful career in London as an actor, writer, and partner in a theater company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. At the age of 49 (about 1613), he retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few and limited records of Shakespeare's private life have been found; This led to much speculation about his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether or not the works attributed to him were written by others. Such views and speculations are often criticized because they did not refer to the fact that few records of his life survived at that time. Shakespeare produced most of his best known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays focused on comedy and history, and were considered to be some of the best works of this genre ever produced. Then, until about 1608, he turned to writing tragedians, as among his works in that period were Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all of which are considered among the best works in English literature at all. In the latter phase of his life, he turned to writing tragicomedies (also known as romances) in collaboration with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623 two of his fellow actors, John Hemings and Henry Condell, published a definite text known as the First Folio, a version of a posthumously collected collection of Shakespeare's dramatic works that included most of the plays we know about him now. This volume has been published along with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which the poet sternly pays tribute to the playwright in his now-famous quote, "Not for this age, but for all ages." Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Shakespeare's works have been continually modified and rediscovered through new movements in study and performance. His plays and culture are still very popular and are studied, constantly performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts around the world.