The First Sketch of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor. Edited by James Orchard Halliwell

Most of what is known about William Shakespeare's life derives either from legal records or from spurious anecdotes. (Differing accounts of one eight-year period list his occupation as soldier, stable-boy, schoolmaster, and thief). Regardless of how he began, he ended as a playwright "not of an age, but for all time"; his influence is as strongly felt today as it was four centuries ago.