William Shakespeare
At least, one point in your life you had to study or are about to study a William Shakespeare play. The iconic Tudor era playwright from Stratford-upon-Avon in England.
As a boy he liked playing outdoors, had a good upbringing and attended a good school. He was married to a woman who coincidentally shares her name with actress Anne Hathaway and they had three children together. After moving to London in 1592, William Shakespeare was part of a theatre company called Lord Chamberlain's Men who dismantled their usual performance hall only to rebuild it across the river.
This theatre was called the Globe and it would be where his pays were seen the most. While the poor stood or sat on the cold, damp ground, the rich could sit in higher level and sheltered parts of the open air theatre and watched plays that at the time consisted of all male actors though they would had men with high pitch voices for the ladies in case you were thinking of a deep masculine voiced Juliet talking to Romeo.
Each of Shakespeare's plays had the royal seal of approval by both Queen Elizabeth the 1st (you can call her Elizabeth Tudor if you want to avoid the confusion with the current English queen*) and King James the 1st of England.
Not long after a fire burnt down the Globe Theatre in 1613 did William retire. Legend has it that he died on his 52nd birthday on 23rd April 1616 and he is buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
His iconic plays include Anthony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, the Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Hamlet and a Midsummer Night's Dream.
Today, Shakespeare's home of Stratford-upon-Avon is home to Ragdoll Productions who created shows you might have heard of like Rosie and Jim, Teletubbies, Boobah, Brum and TotsTV. Some of the live actions sets for these shows still stand even though the farmer who own the land that the original Teletubbies house prefers that you only visit the sight via street view of the sight as she'll chase you off the site.
*This fact card was first written in 2021.