6 Strange Facts About Shakespeare They Skipped in 10th Grade

The classroom version of Shakespeare is a marble statue. The real man was a working entertainer who built theaters, invested in grain, and left behind some genuinely weird footnotes. Here are six of the best.

1. He put a curse on his own grave

Shakespeare’s tomb in Stratford-upon-Avon carries an inscription warning anyone who might disturb his remains. Loosely, it reads: blessed be the man who spares these stones, and cursed be he that moves my bones.

Grave-robbing was a real concern in his era, so it may have been practical. Or it may have been theatrical to the very end. Either way, four centuries later, his bones have famously been left alone.

2. He couldn’t spell his own name consistently

The greatest writer in the English language was wildly inconsistent about his own signature. Surviving documents show him spelling Shakespeare several different ways — sometimes with an extra letter, sometimes without.

It’s less scandalous than it sounds: spelling simply wasn’t standardized yet. There was no “correct” version to get wrong.

3. His theater burned down mid-performance

In 1613, during a staging of Henry VIII, a stage cannon was fired for effect — and a spark caught the Globe Theatre’s thatched roof. The whole building went up in flames. The theater was only about 14 years old at the time.

4. He retired rich

Forget the romantic myth of the starving artist. Shakespeare was popular and respected in his own lifetime — and he retired comfortably wealthy. He went home to Stratford, invested in grain, and lived out his days as something closer to a businessman than a tortured poet.

5. The “second best bed” wasn’t a snub

Here’s one that gets quoted all the time as proof Shakespeare hated his wife. In his will, the only thing he explicitly leaves Anne Hathaway is “the second best bed.”

Sounds brutal — until you add the context. Under English common law, a widow was automatically entitled to a third of the estate (the “dower”), so there was no need to spell it out. And the “best bed” in a household was typically reserved for guests — meaning the second best bed was the one Anne and William actually shared. Read that way, it’s not an insult at all. It’s a quiet, intimate goodbye.

6. His son’s death may have shaped his most famous play

Shakespeare’s son Hamnet died at age 11, likely of plague. (In that era, Hamnet and Hamlet were essentially interchangeable spellings of the same name.) Many scholars believe the grief from that loss fed directly into his writing — most hauntingly in Hamlet.

It’s also the subject of the recent film Hamnet, which isn’t an adaptation of the play at all. It’s the story of a marriage, a loss, and two people grieving in completely different ways — and how that grief eventually found its way onto the stage.

Watch here:

For the full conversation — including why Shakespeare was basically the original screenwriter — listen to “Shakespeare Twist” on Sorta Sophisticated.