William Shakespeare was a British playwright and poet born in Stratford-Upon-Avon in 1564. He is thought to have written 38 plays and 154 sonnets, although there is some disagreement over whether all Shakespeare’s plays are correctly attributed and whether he was in fact more than one person. Some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays include
Romeo and Juliet,
Macbeth,
Hamlet,
King Lear, and
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He had a singular impact on the development of English language and literature, and is considered by many to be the greatest writer who ever lived. Indeed, Foster suggests that Shakespeare has had the biggest impact on Western literature of any single author, a claim that is widely agreed upon within the academic community. In Chapter 5, Foster argues that Shakespeare’s work is so deeply embedded within our culture that readers may well have already encountered a Shakespearean reference today.