William Shakespeare - A Man of Many Talents

On this day (April 23rd) in 1564, William Shakespeare was born. Fifty-two years later in 1616 he apparently died on the same date.

The Bard

He was the most renowned playwright of all time who incredibly is still studied in schools and universities over 460 years later. The Bard certainly made an impression in his day, and even more so in the decades after his death.

Here is some Bard trivia you may not know about him though.

1. He was a very bad speller.
2. He married young. He was only eighteen when he married Anne Hathaway, the 26-year-old daughter of Richard Hathaway, a well-to-do farmer. Their first child, Susanna was born in May 1583 when Shakespeare was barely nineteen, and twins Hamnet and Judith were born two years later.​
3. He wanted to become an actor before he wrote plays.
4. He was a very productive playwright.
5. He survived a pandemic much like the COVID-19 pandemic of more recent times.
6. He gave us some very well-known phrases that are still used today.
 

Some of those phrases are as follows: “love is blind” (The Merchant of Venice), “break the ice” (The Taming of the Shrew), “the be-all and the end-all” (Macbeth),  “wild-goose chase” (Romeo and Juliet), “to sleep, perchance to dream,” (Hamlet)and “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” (As You like it).

Shakespeare most probably attended the Grammar School in Stratford where education was free, but no lists of the pupils who were at the school in the 16th century have survived. Shakespeare’s father, who was a leather maker and beer taster, would have sent his son there to learn to read, write and speak the language well. William would also have studied Latin and some of the Classical historians, moralists and poets. Despite this, he did not go onto university. He aspired to be an actor and left Stratford to head to London where he wrote plays in the late 16th and 17th century for a small repertory theatre. These works are still read and performed to this day. It was said that he rarely returned to visit his wife in Stratford and by all accounts they mostly lived separate lives.

The Bard occupies a unique position in world literature which has transcended barriers internationally. Despite later rumours about whether or not he really wrote all his plays and sonnets, poet and dramatist, Ben Jonson, a contemporary of Shakespeare, once said of him: “He was not of an age, but for all time.” This prophecy has certainly been fulfilled.

Even the way he died in 1616 was controversial and somewhat of a mystery. It has been speculated that he died of syphilis or was even murdered by ingesting arsenic. This theory comes from a diary written by a Stratford Vicar fifty years after his death.

Perhaps fittingly, William Shakespeare should have the last word. In the voice of Malvolio in Twelfth Night, he wrote: “I’ll be revenged on the whole lot of you.” A departure from the world to be long remembered.  So, let’s celebrate the Bard today on his 461st birthday, if dates are to be believed.