Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare

"Shakespeare’s 450^th birthday happened this week.

Shakespeare was born on the same day that he died; April 23^rd. This happens to be St George’s Day, which is quite appropriate, considering that St George is England’s patron saint, and Shakespeare arguably England’s greatest writer.

He had three brothers and four sisters. When he married, he was 18 and his wife Anne was 26. They had 3 children, two daughters and a son called Hamnet, who died young. Their one granddaughter died childless, thus Shakespeare had no descendants. He left most of his property to his daughter, Susanna, and famously, his ‘second best bed’ to his wife. When he was buried, in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, it was discovered that he had put a curse on anyone who moved his body. It read as follows:-

Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.

No-one ever did!

Appropriately, there are thirteen incidents of suicide in his plays.

Shakespeare acted in many of his plays, and also collaborated with other writers from time to time.

His works are the second most widely quoted, second only to the Bible.

Though he is thought of as an Elizabethan playwright, most of his work was produced in the later, Jacobean era."

Penny across the pond