William Shakespeare

Who the William Shakespeare type is

People who match the Shakespeare type tend to turn experience into narrative. A bad day becomes a comedy, a misunderstanding becomes a plot twist and a friendship becomes an epic. They are observant about human nature and fascinated by why people say and do what they do.

This type is expressive and emotionally rich. Shakespeare-style personalities love language: puns, metaphors, a well-built sentence or a line that lands perfectly. Friends often come to them to make sense of their own feelings, because this type can name emotions that others struggle to describe.

Signature traits

Romantic

The Shakespeare type is drawn to big feelings, grand gestures and the poetry of everyday life.

Born storyteller

People of this type naturally shape events into stories with characters, tension and a punchline.

Wordsmith

This type enjoys language for its own sake and has a knack for memorable phrasing.

What William Shakespeare is known for

Elizabethan England, 1564–1616

• Writing around 39 plays, including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream
• 154 sonnets, among the most famous poems in English
• His connection to the Globe Theatre in London
• Shaping the English language with many lasting words and phrases

Fun facts about William Shakespeare

• He is credited with the earliest recorded use of many English words and expressions.
• Most of the moons of Uranus are named after his characters, such as Titania, Oberon and Miranda.
• Two of his fellow actors gathered his plays into the First Folio in 1623, preserving many that might otherwise have been lost.
• Surviving documents spell his surname in several different ways.