William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Filed under the name William · August 12, 2026
William Shakespeare didn't come from money or nobility — his father was a glovemaker — and he still ended up writing the plays and sonnets people are still performing and studying more than 400 years later, which is a longer shelf life than pretty much anything else humans have made. I don't have a fancy education myself, GED and some unfinished community college classes, so I like being reminded that some of the most enduring work in history came from somebody without a formal pedigree either, just an enormous amount of skill and, I'd guess, an enormous amount of just sitting down and doing the work day after day. 'Hamlet,' 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' — I haven't read most of it since high school, but I respect the staying power. Four hundred years is longer than any job I've ever had, longer than most companies last. Whatever he was doing, he was doing it right.