Mr William Shakespeare Comedies, Histories, Tragedies & More Than a Few Mysteries Comedies, Histories, Tragedies & More Than a Few Mysteries Published According to the Investigation of Peter Ross

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IN April 1616, William Shakespeare lay dying in his native Stratford-upon-Avon, having returned from London, where he had lived, worked and made his name.

Like so much of Shakespeare's life, the exact cause of his leaving it is a mystery. Some say he had syphilis, others that he suffered the agonies of typhoid fever; there is a theory that he fell ill after a night of drinking with Ben Jonson. In any case, he knew he was on his way out, and in March had made up his will with its now famous provision that his wife Anne be given his second- best bed.

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Mr William Shakespeare Comedies, Histories, Tragedies & More Than a Few Mysteries Comedies, Histories, Tragedies & More Than a Few Mysteries Published According to the Investigation of Peter Ross

The precise date of Shakespeare's death is also lost to us, but it is generally believed that he died on April 23, St George's Day, exactly 52 years after his birth. We can imagine the writer in him taking pleasure in this circularity, even amid any pain he may have been experiencing. Shakespeare should also have been happy with what he had achieved in life - he was a man of property and reputation, one of the country's best known and loved writers; he had outlived and outdone his great rival Christopher Marlowe; he had performed in his own plays for both Queen Elizabeth and King James, and in front of roaring crowds at the Globe Theatre.

But Shakespeare surely could not have conceived, even at the furthest reaches of his considerable imagination, that almost 400 years after his death his name would be world famous; that one day in America - that savage land so favoured by his contemporary, Sir Walter Raleigh, and which may have inspired The Tempest - 20 million school children would read his work each year. He would have laughed, or perhaps suspected witchcraft, had you told him that if you entered his name into something called Google there would be 5,240,000 separate entries, almost four times more than Adolf Hitler and half as many as Jesus Christ.

In 2005, Shakespeare is everywhere - online, on the telly, on stage, on our minds.

In t...

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