William Shakespeare is the single most influential writer in the English language and his dramatic works, translated into all living languages, are the most performed in the world. MTC previously staged his A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1978. Shakespeare is best known for his plays Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1600-01), Romeo and Juliet (1594-95), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595-96), The Tragedy of Macbeth (1605-06), The Taming of the Shrew (1593-94) and Othello, the Moor of Venice (1604-05). Some of his other works for stage include comedies Twelfth Night; or, What You Will (1599-1600) and Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99); tragedies King Lear (1605-06), Julius Caesar (1599-1600) and Antony and Cleopatra (1606-07); histories The Life of Henry V (1598-99), The Tragedy of Richard III (1592-93) and Henry IV Parts I and II (1597-98); and romances The Merchant of Venice (1596-98), The Tempest (1611-12) and The Winter's Tale (1623). Shakespeare was also a poet, publishing narrative poems and sonnets, an actor and part owner of a London-based playing company that was known, depending on its patron, as the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the Lord Hunsdon's Men and the King's Men. In 1603, the king of England James I honored Shakespeare and the other actors of the King's Men by naming them Grooms of the Chamber, recognizing them as his court's favorite performers. During his lifetime (1564–1616), Shakespeare was respected as one of the top playwrights working in England, but his reputation did not rise to its present pinnacle until the 19th century. Now canonized, his work is subject to constant performance, scholarship, adaptation and reinterpretation.