ویلیام شکسپیرWilliam Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, actor and theatre shareholder, baptized at Stratford-upon-Avon on 26 April 1564, who died on 23 April 1616. No document records his exact birthday; 23 April is traditional, while the baptismal entry is secure. His father John Shakespeare was a glover and civic officeholder, and his mother Mary Arden came from a landholding family. Attendance at Stratford’s grammar school is a strong historical likelihood, not a surviving enrolment record, so this profile does not present it as documentary certainty.

He married Anne Hathaway in 1582. Their children were Susanna and the twins Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet died aged eleven in 1596; the cause is unknown. The years between the twins’ baptism in 1585 and a clear London reference in 1592 are conventionally called the “lost years” because later stories cannot replace contemporary evidence. By 1594 Shakespeare was associated with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, renamed the King’s Men in 1603. He wrote, acted, held shares in the company and invested in the Globe, linking his livelihood to collaborative performance and the business of theatre.

Venus and Adonis appeared in 1593, The Rape of Lucrece in 1594 and the Sonnets in 1609. Dates for many plays remain approximate, but the career moves from early comedies and histories through Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth to late romances. Hamlet was probably composed around 1599–1601; its first quarto appeared in 1603, a fuller second quarto in 1604–05 and a distinct First Folio text in 1623. Those witnesses preserve meaningful differences rather than one perfectly identical historical text.

Modern scholarship recognizes collaboration in several late plays. John Fletcher is a documented collaborator on works including Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The First Folio was assembled in 1623 by Shakespeare’s fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell; without it, a number of plays might have disappeared. Shakespeare signed his will on 25 March 1616, died on 23 April and was buried at Holy Trinity Church on 25 April. The cause of death is not documented; specific illnesses and drinking stories are later speculation.

For this AlefBa edition, Shakespeare is the author only. Mahmoud Etemadzadeh, known as M. A. Beh-Azin, translated this Persian Daat edition. ISBN 9789649541907 and 153 pages identify the stocked record; the physical impression year and number remain omitted until its colophon is checked.