Othello, ─ The Moor of Venice

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, in 1564. The date of his birth is traditionally April 23, which happens to be St. George's Day, and the day in 1616 on which the playwright died. At age eighteen he married a Stratford farmer's daughter, Anne Hathaway. They had three children. Around 1585 William joined an acting troupe on tour in Stratford from London, and thereafter spent much of his life in the capital. He produced Othello in 1602-03, amid the series of great tragedies, including Hamlet and King Lear, he wrote in the first years of the new century. Shakespeare wrote thirty-six plays and much poetry, and earned enormous fame in his own lifetime in prelude to his immortality.