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William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon,Warwickshire, into the family of rich merchant. He was educated in the local school where he studied Latin grammar and rhetoric. He did not attend university but worked briefly as a schoolmaster before leaving for London around 1585. In London, he worked in the theatre and established himself as a dramatist. He wrote comedies,tragedies, and historical plays. Some of the best-known plays are Hamlet, King Lear, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and The Tempest. After years of rich literary life, he returned to Stratford and lived the last years of his life in peace and contentment. Apart from his plays, Shakespeare wrote a sonnet sequence of 154 somets. He changed the structure of the sonnet and it came to be known as the Shakespearian sonnet. The theme of time and its effects on people and relationships in the central theme of these sonnets. A majority of sonnets, including the sonnet, "That Time of Year," are addressed to a friend and patron, Earl of Southampton. The rest are addressed to a "dark" lady. The philosophical worldview, the play of wit, the range of tone and the compact language carry the stamp of individuality that sets Shakespeare apart from Spenser, Sidney, or Drayton. "That Time of Year", placed at number seventy-three in the sonnet sequence, is addressed to the poet's friend and parton. The poem grows out the speaker's reflective and pensive mood. His consciousness of age, decay and death colours everything that he says to his friend. He expresses his state of mind through images taken from nature and life. The first image is of yellow leaves hanging upon bare boughs shaking in the cold. It suggests the season of autumn when few leaves remain on the trees and the birds have flown south to escape the cold. The birds have taken away with them the music which resounded all through spring. Like the season, the speaker appears sad, solitary, and listless. Autumn corresponds to that point in his life when old age is creeping upon him by the minute. Autumn is a period of decline and loss both in nature and in human life. It heralds the end of spring and the coming of winter. In human life, autumn suggests a grey zone when youth is over and the march towards old age is already underway. The atmosphere of desolation and silence adds to the theme of the poem.