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Happy birth/deathday, William Shakespeare: Sonnets 64 and 19 [1]
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Date: 2025-04-23
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras'd
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; . When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store; . When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state itself confounded to decay, Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate That Time will come and take my love away. . This thought is as a death, which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose. .
The birth and death dates of the immortal English poet William Shakespeare are conventionally given as April 23, 1564, and April 23, 1616.
April 23 also happens to be St. George's Day--celebrating the English nation's traditional dragon-slaying patron saint. A marvelous conjuction.
x “The game's afoot: follow your spirit, and upon this charge, cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’”
Wishing all my followers a very happy Saint George’s Day x
[image or embed] — Larry the Cat (@number10cat.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 2:40 AM
Larry, longtime door warden at 10 Downing Street, sends greetings on St. George's Day, with a nod to the Bard (from Henry V)
Facts are is slightly more complicated. The birth and death dates of William Shakespeare, both birthed and buried in the provincial town of Stratford-Upon-Avon, are just slightly murky.
There were no birth certificates in those days. (DHS would have had a fit.)
The parish register shows him christened on April 26, 1564. The entry is in Latin and reads:
Guilielmus filius Johannes Shakspere
Or in English, "William son of John Shakspere." (But someone apparently slipped up: "Johnannes," "John," should have properly been spelled "Johannis," "of John.")
A three-days' interval between birth and christening would have been typical for the time; yet this was not a hard-and-fast rule. So Shakespeare's traditional birth date of April 23 is a reasonable conjecture, but only that.
Shakespeare's gravestone within the parish church. "Curst be he that moves my bones." But the last time someone got a peep inside, it appeared to be empty.
There were also no death certificates at the time. Parish records merely indicate that he was buried on April 25, 1616. This entry reads simply:
Will Shakspere gent.
Not even his full first name! (And how much labor it had cost him, just to gain the right to that terse abbreviation signifying "gentleman"!)
Two days between death and burial would have been a typical interval for the time. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust website asserts from some close reasoning, based upon the age stated on Shakespeare's formal funeral monument (raised some time later), together with a tacit assumption about the birth date, that the actual death date is proven to have been exactly April 23. I'll confess the argument makes my eyes cross.
Given some general sloppiness around parish recordkeeping at the time (the register of births had also been recopied at some point, and the death records inconsistently kept so that no one even bothered to sign that page of the register), it seems that the April 23 conjuction is less than absolutely proven.
But it could be true. And does it matter? For practical purposes, not much.
Mainly to exercise our critical thinking while we are still allowed. ;-)
This the guy? Purportedly. Long story. I like to think so.
First folio edition of his plays, 1623. Not RealID, no voter registration for you!
That sonnet was a downer, you say? Here, accept another one, then:
19
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws
And burn the long-liv'd phoenix in her blood,
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,
And do what e'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets:
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,
O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
Yet do thy worst, old Time, despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.
[END]
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