Wouldiwas Shookspeared

Queen Elizabeth I was crowned Queen by Owen Oglethorpe, bishop of Carlisle at Westminster Abbey, a little less than two months after the death of Mary I.

William Shakespeare is born in England, April 23, 1564 CE.

The Theatre was the first London playhouse, built in 1576 by James Burbage, the English actor and entrepreneur, father of the great actor and friend of Shakespeare, Richard Burbage. It was located in a northern suburb of London on the edge of Finsbury Fields, just past Bishopsgate Street, where Shakespeare called home up to 1597.

Sir Francis Drake was the second person to travel the world, and was told to do so by Queen Elizabeth I.

Sir Walter Raleigh established the Roanoke colony in 1585 and was one of the first "colonies" England had established. The colony had failed only one year after due to colonist who had been brought being unable to survive in the "new world".

The Spanish Armada was a Spanish fleet of one-hundred-and-thirty ships that sailed from A Coruña in August 1588, under the authoritative direction of the Duke of Medina Sidonia with the purpose of escorting an army from Flanders to invade England.

Trials of a number of people who were accused of witchcraft in Lothian, Scotland.

Dr. Faustus is a play written by Christopher Marlowe and first premiered in 1592.

On March 24, 1603, Queen Elizabeth I died and James became king of England and Ireland in a remarkably smooth transition of power.

Failed assassination attempt against King James I of England and VI of Scotland by a group of English Catholics.

Shakespeare's Macbeth is thought to have been first written/performed in 1606. It is important to understand the political context in which it was written, as that is the key to the main theme of the play, which is that excessive ambition will have terrible consequences. Macbeth is a tragedy. It dramatizes the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake.

The plague spread to London wiping a quarter of the population. Theaters were closed due to this.

William Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616 CE at 52 years old.

Due to the English Civil War occurring in 1642, the Long Parliament was controlled by Puritans who deemed theaters to immoral and evil, so they began shutting them down to fit their views.

Gareth Hinds publishes a graphic novel adaption of William Shakespeare's Macbeth on February 10th, 2015.