The English poet and playwright William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in the mid-1500s.

“William Shakespeare” renames or identifies “the English poet and playwright,” so it functions as an appositive. The identifying words form a noun phrase, not a clause, because they have no subject and verb. Since the appositive is not set off by commas and specifies which poet and playwright the sentence means, it is restrictive rather than nonrestrictive.

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