rarely has the collective life of a whole era been given so distinctively personal a stamp. ?William Shakespeare's house, Stratford-upon-Avon, Eng. Corbis-Bettmann William Shakespeare 1564-1616, English playwright and poet whose body of works is considered the greatest in English literature. His plays, many of which were performed at the Globe Theatre in London, include historical works, such as Richard II, comedies, including Much Ado about Nothing and As You Like It, and tragedies, such as Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. He also composed 154 sonnets. The earliest collected edition of his plays, the First Folio, contained 36 plays and was published posthumously (1623). English poet, dramatist, and actor, often called the English national poet and considered by many to be the greatest dramatist of all time. He occupies a position unique in world literature. Other poets, such as Homer and Dante, and novelists, such as Leo Tolstoy and Charles Dickens, have transcended national barriers; but no writer's living reputation can compare with that of Shakespeare, whose plays, written in the late 16th and early 17th centuries for a small repertory theatre, are now performed and read more often and in more countries than ever before. The prophecy of his great contemporary, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson, that Shakespeare "was not of an age, but for all time," has been fulfilled. John Calvin 1509-1564 French-born Swiss Protestant theologian who broke with the Roman Catholic Church (1533) and set forth the tenets of his theology, known today as Presbyterianism, in Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). He was a French theologian and ecclesiastical statesman. He was the leading French Protestant Reformer and the most important figure in the second generation of the Protestant Reformation. His interpretation of Christianity, advanced above all in his Institutio Christianae religionis, and the institutional and social patterns he worked ou...
