William Shakespeare is, according to almost everybody, the greatest writer England has produced. Some people (especially if they are English) will even argue that Shakespeare is the greatest writer that the world has produced. But no matter how one may rank Shakespeare in the pantheon (or group) of the world's best authors, a person cannot help but marvel at the creativity, the insight, and the genius of William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare was born in 1564. This is the same year when Christopher Marlowe was born (and when the astronomer Galileo was born). Shakespeare is also the younger contemporary of Spenser (born in 1552) and Sidney (born in 1554).
William Shakespeare was both a great playwright and a great poet. His plays generally fall into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. Occasionally, critics add a fourth category, romances, to define or categorize a few of the plays (like The Tempest). In some cases these categories overlap. For example, both Richard III and Julius Caesar could be labeled as either tragedies or histories. However, the former is labeled a history