It is impossible to produce an adequate interpretation of William Shakespeare’s texts without the knowledge of his biography and the general context of his epoch. But even those striving for objectivity very often encounter nearly unsurmountable difficulties connected either with lack of biographical information or lack of knowledge of the formerly suppressed, though now generally available, facts of English history. All this brings forth enormous problems which many scholars fail to overcome, thus arriving at the historically and aesthetically wrong interpretations of Shakespeare’s life and works. The present article is devoted to the discussion of this unfortunate situation and suggests ways of overcoming it by turning to the last 500 years of English history.