William Shakespeare (April 23, 1564--April 23, 1616) was an outstanding British thinker, writer, dramatist, and poet during the Renaissance. Born in a wealthy merchant family in 1564, he once studied in a "grammar school" but dropped out of school because his father went bankrupt. At the age of 21, he went to work in a London theater and soon acted on stage and began to write scripts and poems. Most of the works he created are poetic dramas, and his main works include "King Lear", "Hamlet", "Othello", "Romeo and Juliet", "The Merchant of Venice", etc. His works are outstanding representatives of humanistic literature and occupy a very important position in the history of world literature. His works remain popular today, performed and interpreted in different cultural and political forms around the world.