Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway near the end of 1582, when he was 18 years old. The exact date of Anne's birth is unknown, but she is thought to have been around 26 when they married.

Scholars have painted various pictures of her over the years, some as an abandoned wilting flower, others as Shakespeare's beloved muse.

She outlived her husband, dying in August 1623, and on Shakespeare's will, was bequeathed his "second best bed" - the one they shared together.

Though technically a subplot, the war of wits between Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing is one of the most progressive love stories in Shakespeare's canon.

Beatrice, a cynical, witty and sharp counterpart to her quiet cousin Hero, refuses to marry because she has not found an equal partner - but eventually demonstrates vulnerability when she hears of Benedick's affections.

On the complexity of Beatrice, The Guardian's Robert McCrum writes: "Her call in Act IV's wrecked wedding for him to 'Kill Claudio' defines the breadth and depth of her character - mercurial, fiercely devoted, willing to risk everything - and also the dramatic genius of Shakespeare.

"Is this moment funny? Serious? Shocking? All three, simultaneously."

Playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe was born just two months apart from Shakespeare, all his writing overshadowed by the Bard.

But the Shakespeare name only came to prominence after Marlowe's apparent demise, and he writes like a continuation of Marlowe.

The two bodies of work blend so seamlessly that some people wonder whether Marlowe wrote Shakespeare's works too - a theory that hinges on Marlowe's apparent fake death.

Scots actor and Royal Shakespeare Company ambassador David Tenant has forged his career on the back of the bard - most recently appearing as Richard II in the eponymous play.

Tenant will also host a live TV celebration marking the 400th anniversary alongside Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen.

Earrings were a common look for creatives and the bohemian in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras - and even Shakespeare was thought to enjoy a bit of bling.

Depicted with a receding hairline and a gold hoop in a Chandos portrait, Shakespeare is said to have worn the jewellery for the same reason men wear them today - "to show that they have an unconventional, adventurous disposition." (Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage)

Shakespeare took a slightly different career path from his father John, who was at one point employed to drink beer professionally.

John Shakespeare arrived in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1551 and began dabbling in various trades, selling leather goods, wool, malt and corn. In 1556 he was appointed the borough's official "ale taster," meaning he was responsible for inspecting bread and malt liquors.

While there are no records of birth or death, the bard's baptism and burial both took place at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, where his funerary monument stands.

A recent study revealed his skull was "probably" stolen by graverobbers - ironic given the curse he had inscribed on his grave stone. It reads:

"Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare,

"To digg the dust encloased heare:

"Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones,

"And curst be he yt moves my bones"

This the longest word used in any of Shakespeare's plays by the character Costard in Love's Labour's Lost. It is derived from the Latin word honorificabilitudinitas, which can be translated as "the state of being able to achieve honours".

After a ridiculously pedantic conversation between Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel, Costard says:

"O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon."

If actors love performing villains, Iago has to be the most sought-after role in the entire Shakespearean back catalogue.

The quintessence of evil, Iago has the most lines in the tragedy Othello (31% to the protagonist's 25%) and in his final speech, gives one of the most powerful exit lines heard on stage: "Demand me nothing. What I know I know."

Although Shakespeare is almost universally considered as one of the finest writers in the English language, his contemporaries were not always as impressed.

The first recorded reference to Shakespeare, written by theatre critic Robert Greene in 1592, was as an "upstart crow, beautified with our feathers".

Ever the showman, Shakespeare knew there was nothing his audience would enjoy more than a bloody revenge narrative.

There are a total of 74 death scenes in his 52 plays, ranging from beheadings and poisonings to a killer bear - who incidentally is responsible for one of Shakespeare's most famous stage directions, "[Exit pursued by a bear]", in The Winter's Tale.

Lady Macbeth is arguably Shakespeare's most diabolical female character to appear on stage.

While Macbeth takes reign of some of the best speeches ("Is this a dagger I see before me"), Lady Macbeth's demonic sexual thrall over her husband is one of the play's most captivating elements.

In order to persuade Macbeth to commit acts of horrific violence, she infamously calls on the spirits to "unsex me here" and "fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty".

Shakespeare's works contain more than 600 references to various types of birds, from swans and doves to sparrows and turkeys.

But the starling-a lustrous songbird with a gift for mimicry, native to Europe and western Asia-makes just one appearance, in Henry IV.

Then in 1890 an American fan named Eugene Schiffelin decided to import every kind of bird mentioned in Shakespeare's plays that were absent from the United States. As part of this project, he released two flocks of 60 starlings in New York's Central Park.

Perhaps inspired after he was insulted in his first review, Shakespeare went on to write some of the most genius barbs ever-penned.

Favourites include:

In a stroke of pure genius, Scots songwriter Adam McNaughtan condensed the longest of Shakespeare's plays into a three-minute folk song, which appears on the 2000 album Words That I Used To Know.

Oor Hamlet rewrites some of the play's crucial moments in pithy Scots - Hamlet's decision to feign madness to investigate his father's death is scripted "I'll kid on that I'm a dafty" while Ophelia's suicide is described as "hari-kari".

McNaughtan concludes the number with the lines "If you thought that was boring you should read the bloody play."

Many of the words and phrases we use on a daily basis can be credited to Shakespeare and his body of plays.

Common phrases such as "in a pickle" (The Tempest), "fair play" (The Tempest), "wear your heart on your sleeve" (Othello) and "break the ice" (The Taming of the Shrew) were first spoken on stage 400 years ago.

Shakespeare is also credited for many words including auspicious, clangor, dwindle, sanctimonious and watchdog.

Shakespeare's original grave marker showed him holding a bag of grain but citizens of Stratford replaced the bag with a quill in 1747.

It was perhaps a more fitting testament to his life and career - in addition to his written works, Shakespeare was also an actor and successful businessman and property owner.

He formed a joint-stock company with his actors which meant he took a share in the company's profits, as well as earning a fee for each play he wrote.

A court document from 1601 revealed that Shakespeare took part in an robbery, armed with daggers and swords, to steal an entire theatre.

The bard was never prosecuted and proceeded to rebuild the venue as the iconic Globe Theatre.

After a £1.8m renovation largely funded by Heritage Lottery Fund, Shakespeare's school in Stratford-upon-Avon will welcome tourists through the doors, as part of anniversary celebrations.

Visitors will be the chance to sit though a Tudor grammar school lesson, though after 11am on school days. Pupils and teachers who currently use the building are well used to tourists oggling through the windows and taking photographs during lessons.

The Globe Theatre that stands today in London is a reconstruction of the Elizabethan playhouse first built by Shakespeare's playing company, which was destroyed in a fire.

In 1997, Sam Wanamaker opened the new venue to the public where comedies and tragedies are performed on an open air stage just 200 metres from the original building.

London Underground has released a special edition tube map to celebrate the 400th anniversary, changing station names to various characters with new features including the 'Villains' and 'Heroines' lines.

Changes see Westminster rebranded as Shakespeare's brutal tragedy King Lear and St Paul's dubbed the lovestruck Lysander from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The map also shows three of the capital's theatres where Shakespeare's plays were performed - the Globe Theatre, Blackfriars Theatre and the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch.

The Italian port is the setting of one of Shakespeare's most controversial plays The Merchant of Venice, which centres around a spate between spat-upon Jewish moneylender Shylock and Christian bachelor Antonio.

Often thought to be anti-Semitic, the play is equally critical of Christian bigotry and contains the well-remembered speech from Shylock where he appeals "if you prick us, do we not bleed?"

These are the words you'll see appearing on your Google home page, as the US tech company pay tribute to the bard.

Today's Google doodle features Shakespeare with some of his most famous works including Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet.

The quote is from The Tempest, spoken by Prospero - the duke of Milan and a powerful magician.

There are no characters in any Shakespeare play beginning with X - and according to Alexander Shmidt (author of Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary) the playwright only ever used one word beginning with the letter - Xanthippe.

Petruchio utters the name in The Taming of the Shrew in reference to Socrates' scolding wife - he says that he is in search of a rich woman to woo, regardless of her appearance or whether she is "curst and shrewd as Socrates' Xanthippe".

He is one of the most well-remembered characters from Hamlet in the lines "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."

Prince Hamlet stumbles upon the skull of Yorick, the King's jester, while strolling through a graveyard with Horatio, as two clowns dig a grave for Ophelia.

In contrast to the clowns' sickeningly morbid jokes, Hamlet in his usual associative fashion contemplates the shared mortality between the royal elite and peasantry.

Jasper Fforde is one of many authors who have contributed to a collection of "deleted" scenes from Shakespeare, where he reinterprets the famous line from Hamlet "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" as an indication of a zombie apocalypse.

In "The Comedy of Hamlet, Prince of Zombies", Fforde writes: "Details of the action are mostly obscure, but the soliloquy survives where Hamlet muses on whether it is better to be dead or undead: 'To not to be, or to not to not to be.'"