Shakespeare's Plays © Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Globe Theatre Interior Audience members at the reconstructed Globe Theatre in London can sit on benches in one of the three covered galleries or stand in the open yard, just as audiences did in the original Globe Theatre of Shakespeare’s time. The projecting stage has a thatched roof and an elaborately decorated back wall. Large oak pillars, painted to look like marble, support a canopy, which has been painted to represent the heavens.Andrea Pistolesi/The Image Bank

William Shakespeare Quick Facts © Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

There is no simple explanation for Shakespeare’s unrivaled popularity, but he remains our greatest

Love’s Labour’s Lost was first published in 1598 and was the first published play to have “By W. Shakespeare” on its title page. The play’s slight action serves as a peg on which to hang a glittering robe of wit and poetry. It satirizes the loves of its main male characters as well as their fashionable devotion to studious pursuits. The noblemen in the play have sought to avoid romantic and worldly entanglements by devoting themselves in their studies, and they voice their pretensions in an artificially ornate style, until love forces them to recognize their own self-deceptions. The play’s title anticipates its unconventional ending: The women refuse to marry at the end, demanding a waiting period of 12 months for the men to demonstrate their reformation. “Our wooing does not end like an old play,” says Berowne; “Jack hath not Jill.”

In 1613 fire destroyed the Globe Theatre during a performance of Henry VIII. Although the Globe was quickly rebuilt, Shakespeare’s association with it—and probably with the company—had ended. Around the time of the fire, Shakespeare retired to Stratford, where he had established his family and become a prominent citizen. Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna had married John Hall, a doctor with a thriving practice in Stratford, in 1607. His younger daughter, Judith, married a Stratford winemaker, Thomas Quiney, in 1616.

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