Shakespeare died in Stratford in 1616

William Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Warwickshire market town where he had been baptised 52 years earlier. The date comes from the inscription on the wall monument erected to his memory inside Holy Trinity Church — the same church where he was christened.

Following the custom of the time, he was buried two days later. The parish register of Holy Trinity records the entry on 25 April 1616 in plain, unceremonious terms: “Will Shakspere gent.” No contemporary document explains how or why he died, and his curse-bearing gravestone has never been disturbed.

By the time he died, Shakespeare had written some 38 plays and 154 sonnets that would outlast empires.

Though he spent his most productive years in London, Shakespeare retired to Stratford in his final years, dying near the comfortable home he had bought there. Seven years after his death, fellow actors gathered his plays into the First Folio, securing the survival of works that remain the most quoted and staged in the English language.