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William Shakespeare, perhaps the world's greatest playwright¹, was born 450 years ago Wednesday. The Bard² is thought to have invented over a thousand words, and Shakespeare's plays, such as Hamlet and King Lear, continue to be staged across the globe to sell-out crowds.

Actors perform a scene from William Shakespeare's Hamlet for members
of the media during a photo call to present Hamlet at Shakespeare’s
Globe theatre, London, Wednesday, April 23, 2014.

A modern-day production of Shakespeare’s play ’ Much Ado About Nothing’ performed at the Globe theatre in London. More than four hundred years after it was written, the play still finds favour with this young audience.

Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, 90 miles northwest of London in 1564, Shakespeare became an actor and writer for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men - later to be renamed the King’s Men.

It was through his prolific³ writing that the Bard truly made his name. His early works were mainly histories and comedies such as "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" and "The Merchant of Venice" , which first appeared during the 1590s.

By 1598 he had earned a name for himself as a poet and playwright, even performing several of his works at royal court for Queen Elizabeth the first.

This building, opened in 1997, is named Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and is a representation of the venue⁴ the playwright used to stage some of his greatest ever productions.

"Every year, every decade, your understanding of Shakespeare is completely new. We now know that Shakespeare was a huge international playwright that’s transforming our understanding moment by moment. We now know that there’s enormous hunger for him and response to him in China, in India, in Russia, in America, all over the place. And that’s sort of re-calibrating our understanding of him." Dominic Dromgoole, Artistic⁵ Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre,said.

If the playwright’s colleagues had not collected his works into the ’First Folio’ of 1623, plays such as ’Macbeth’, ’The Tempest’ and ’Twelfth Night’ would have been lost forever.

Now, at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, they’re exhibiting a copy of the famed ’First Folio’ alongside numerous other objects, which demonstrate how Shakespeare has been celebrated⁶ over the generations.

"If you think how difficult it was publishing in those days and printing and the fact that all of those plays were not even published as complete volumes, they were published as individual parts, so his friends when they put it together they actually had to get back all the parts from all the individuals and put them together to create that work." Victoria Broackes, curator of Victoria & Albert Museum, said.

Throughout the exhibition, there are props⁷, costumes, set models and design sketches⁸, all illustrating⁹ past productions of Shakespeare’s work.

Here, a theatre company in Nigeria is performing an African reboot of "The Winter’s Tale," one of the lesser¹⁰ known tragicomedies written by the Bard. It’s about a child princess who is thrown away out of jealous rage, and later reunited with her royal family.

In the comedy ’As You Like It’, Shakespeare wrote: "All the world’s a stage" - and on his birthday it seems these words still ring true.

Actors perform a scene from William Shakespeare's Hamlet for members
of the media during a photo call to present Hamlet at Shakespeare’s
Globe theatre, London, Wednesday, April 23, 2014.