My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red, than her lips red: If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound: I grant I never saw a goddess go, My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare, As any she belied with false compare.

According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro in Julius Caesar "the various strands of politics character inwardness contemporary events even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing began to infuse each other". In 1598 the cleric and author Francis Meres singled him out from a group of English writers as "the most excellent" in both comedy and tragedy. Many of his plays were publiWilliam Shakespeared in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime.

In the 20th century his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway with whom he had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith.