23 April: Shakespeare’s 450th birthday

1. Read the text and put the words in brackets into the correct form.

According to tradition, the great English dramatist and poet William

Shakespeare is born in Stratford-on-Avon on 23 April 1564. It is 1)
_____________ (possible) to be certain the exact day on which he was
born, but church records show that he was baptised on 26 April, and three
days was a customary amount of time to wait before baptising a newborn.
Shakespeare's date of 2) _______ (die) is conclusively known, however: it
was 23 April 1616. He was 52 years old and had retired to Stratford three
years before.

Although few plays have been performed or analysed as extensively as the

38 plays ascribed to William Shakespeare, there are few 3) ____________
(survive) details about the playwright's life. The events of William Shakespeare's early life can only be
gleaned from official records, such as baptism and 4) __________ (marry) records.

The first reference to Shakespeare as a London playwright came in 1592, when a fellow dramatist,
Robert Greene, wrote derogatorily of him on his deathbed. It is believed that Shakespeare had written
the three parts of ‘Henry VI’ by that point. In 1593, ‘Venus and Adonis’ was Shakespeare's first 5)
_________ (publish) poem, and he dedicated it to the young Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd earl of
Southampton. In 1594, having probably composed, among other plays, ‘Richard III’, ‘The Comedy
of Errors’, and ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, he became an actor and playwright for the Lord
Chamberlain's Men, which became the King's Men after James I's ascension in 1603. The company
grew into England's finest, in no small part because of Shakespeare, who was its principal dramatist. It
also had the finest actor of the day, Richard Burbage, and the best theatre, the Globe, which was
located on the Thames' south bank. Shakespeare stayed with the King's Men until his 6) _______
(retire) and often acted in small parts.

By 1596, the company had performed the classic Shakespeare plays ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘Richard
II’, and ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’. In 1597, William Shakespeare bought a large house in
Stratford. In 1599, after producing his great 7) ________ (history) series, the first and second part of
‘Henry IV’ and ‘Henry V’, he became a partner in the ownership of the Globe Theatre.

The beginning of the 17th century saw the 8) __________ (perform) of the first of his great tragedies,
‘Hamlet’. The next play, ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’, was written at the request of Queen
Elizabeth I, who wanted to see another play that included the popular character Falstaff. During the
next decade, Shakespeare produced such masterpieces as ‘Othello’, ‘King Lear’, ‘Macbeth’, and
‘The Tempest’. In 1609, his sonnets, probably written during the 1590s, were published. The 154
sonnets are marked by the recurring themes of the mutability of beauty and the transcendent power of
love and art.

Shakespeare died in Stratford-on-Avon on 23 April 1616. Today, nearly 400 years later, his plays are
performed and read more often and in more nations than ever before. In a million words written over
20 years, he captured the full range of human emotions and conflicts with a precision that remains
sharp today. As his great contemporary the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson said, "He was not of an
age, but for all time."

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Solutions: 1) impossible 2) death 3) surviving 4) marriage 5) published 6) retirement 7) historical 8) performance
2. Read about some interesting facts and answer the questions
below the text.

1
Shakespeare lived to 52. It is known that he was born in April 1564 and that he died on 23rd April
1616. We know that he was baptised on 26th April 1564 and scholars now believe that he was born on
April 23rd. He therefore died on his fifty-second birthday, coinciding with St George’s Day. How
fitting that the great English writer is so closely identified with the patron saint of England!
2
Shakespeare married his wife Anne Hathaway when he was 18. She was 26 and she was pregnant
when they married. Their first child was born six months after the wedding.
3
Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway had three children together – a son, Hamnet, who died in 1596, and
two daughters, Susanna and Judith. His only granddaughter Elizabeth – daughter of Susanna – died
childless in 1670. Shakespeare therefore has no descendants.
4
Shakespeare died a rich man. He made several gifts to various people but left his property to his
daughter, Susanna. The only mention of his wife in Shakespeare’s own will is: “I gyve unto my wief
my second best bed with the furniture”. The “furniture” was the bedclothes for the bed.
5
Shakespeare was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. He put a curse on anyone
daring to move his body from that final resting place. His epitaph was:

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.
Though it was customary to dig up the bones from previous graves to make room for others, the
remains in Shakespeare’s grave are still undisturbed.
6
During his life, Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets! This means an average 1.5 plays a year
since he first started writing in 1589. His last play The Two Noble Kinsmen is reckoned to have been
written in 1613 when he was 49 years old. While he was writing the plays at such a pace he was also
conducting a family life, a social life and a full business life, running an acting company and a theatre.
7
Few people realise that apart from writing his numerous plays and sonnets, Shakespeare was also an
actor who performed many of his own plays as well as those of other playwrights. During his life
Shakespeare performed before Queen Elizabeth I and, later, before James I who was an enthusiastic
patron of his work.
8
Shakespeare is the second most quoted writer in the English language – after the various writers of the
Bible.
9
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre burnt down on 29th June 1613 after a cannon shot set fire to it during a
performance of Henry VIII.
10
Almost four hundred years after Shakespeare’s death there are 157 million pages referring to him on
Google. There are 132 million for God, 2.7 million for Elvis Presley, and coming up on Shakespeare’s
heels, George W Bush with 14.7 million.
11
Suicide occurs an unlucky thirteen times in Shakespeare’s plays. It occurs in Romeo and Juliet where
both Romeo and Juliet commit suicide, in Julius Caesar where both Cassius and Brutus die by
consensual stabbing, as well as Brutus’ wife Portia.
12
The American President Abraham Lincoln was a great lover of Shakespeare’s plays and frequently
recited from them to his friends. His assassin, John Wilkes Booth was a famous Shakespearean actor.
13
It was illegal for women and girls to perform in the theatre in Shakespeare’s lifetime so all the female
parts were written for boys. The text of some plays like Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra refer to
that. It was only much later, during the Restoration, that the first woman appeared on the English
stage.
14
There are only two Shakespeare plays written entirely in verse: they are Richard II and King John.
Many of the plays have half of the text in prose.
15
Shakespeare’s shortest play, The Comedy of Errors is only a third of the length of his longest, Hamlet,
which takes four hours to perform.
16
All Uranus’ satellites are named after Shakespearean characters.
17
‘William Shakespeare’ is an anagram of ‘I am a weakish speller’.
18
In the King James Bible the 46th word of Psalm 46 is ‘shake’ and the 46th word from the end of the
same Psalm is ‘spear’. Some think this was a hidden birthday message to the Bard, as the King James
Bible was published in 1611 – the year of Shakespeare’s 46th birthday.
19
Nobody knows Shakespeare’s true birthday. It’s celebrated on April 23rd – three days before his
baptism which was recorded on April 26th, 1564. However, as Shakespeare was born under the old
Julian calendar, what was April 23rd during Shakespeare’s life would actually be May 3rd according
to today’s Gregorian calendar.
20
Shakespeare never actually published any of his plays. They are known today only because two of his
fellow actors – John Hemminges and Henry Condell – recorded and published 36 of them
posthumously under the name ‘The First Folio’, which is the source of all Shakespeare books
published.
21
There are more than 80 variations recorded for the spelling of Shakespeare’s name. In the few original
signatures that have survived, Shakespeare spelt his name “Willm Shaksp,” “William Shakespe,”
“Wm Shakspe,” “William Shakspere,” ”Willm Shakspere,” and “William Shakspeare”. There are no
records of him ever having spelt it “William Shakespeare”, as we know him today.
22
An outbreak of the plague in Europe resulted in all London theatres being closed between 1592 and
1594. As there was no demand for plays during this time, Shakespeare began to write poetry,
completing his first batch of sonnets in 1593, aged 29.
Shakespeare in words
23
Shakespeare has been credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with introducing almost 3,000 words
to the English language. Estimations of his vocabulary range from 17,000 to a dizzying 29,000
words – at least double the number of words used by the average conversationalist.

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I. How many descendants does Shakespeare have? _______________________

II. How old was he when he wrote his last play? _______________________
III. How many suicides can be found in his plays? _______________________
IV. When did the first woman appear on the English stage? _______________________
V. What is the longest play of Shakepeare? _______________________
VI. Why did he begin to write poetry between 1592 and ’94?______________________
____________________
 (1. He has no descendants., 2. 49, 3. 13, 4. during the Restoration, 5. Hamlet, 6. Because all London theatres were closed
because of plague.)

3. Here's a collection of well-known quotations that are associated with

Shakespeare (with meanings and origin). Read them and then match
them with their English meanings.

1. All that glitters is not gold:

Meaning: Not everything that is shiny and superficially attractive is valuable.
Origin: The original editions of The Merchant of Venice, 1596, have the line as 'all that glisters
is not gold'.

2. All the world's a stage...

Meaning: Life is like a play - we merely go through the stages of our life acting it out.
Origin: From Shakespeare's As You Like It, 1600:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players

3. All's well that ends well

Meaning: A risky enterprise is justified so long as it turns out well in the end.
Origin: This is, of course, best known from the Shakespeare play, but it was a proverb before it
was a play title. Shakespeare wrote All's Well That Ends Well in 1601. It is not only as the title
of the play, but line appears in the text too.

4. Fair play
Meaning: Properly conducted conditions for a game, giving all participants an equal chance. Also
used more widely to mean fairness and justice in contexts other than games.
Origin: Shakespeare coined this phrase and used it in several of his plays; for example, The
Tempest, 1610.

5. Green-eyed monster
Meaning: Jealousy.
Origin: Green is a colour associated with sickness, possibly because people's skin sometimes
takes on a slightly yellow/green tinge when they are seriously ill. Green is also the colour of
many unripe foods that cause stomach pains.
The phrase was used by, and possibly coined by, Shakespeare to denote jealousy, in The
Merchant of Venice, 1596.
6. I have not slept one wink
Meaning: I have not slept at all.
Origin: The notion of getting not even a single moment's sleep has been in the language since
the 14th century. Robert Manning of Brunne, in his work Handlyng synne, 1303, records the
phrase in Middle English: "Ne mete ete, ne drank drynke, Ne slepte onely a-lepy wynke."
In language that is a little more accessible to most readers in the 21st century we have
Shakespeare's use of the idea in Cymbeline, 1611.

7. Night owl
Meaning: A person who is active late at night.
Origin: The figurative use of the term, that is, as a reference to people rather than owls, also
began in the 16th century. Shakespeare used it in 1594 in the narrative poem The Rape of
Lucrece.

8. To be, or not to be, that is the question

Meaning: Is it better to live or to die?
Origin: To be or not to be is probably the best-known line from all drama or literature. Certainly, if
anyone is asked to quote a line of Shakespeare this is the one that first comes to mind for most
people. It is, of course, from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, 1602 (Shakespeare's actual title is -
The tragedie of Hamlet, prince of Denmarke).

9. Vanish into thin air

Meaning: Disappear without trace.
Origin: Shakespeare came close to this phrase in Othello, 1604.
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1. I have not slept one wink. A) I’m active late at night.

2. Green-eyed monster B) Life is like a play.
3. I’m a night owl. C) Is it better to live or to die?
4. All the world's a stage... D) I haven’t slept at all.
5. To be, or not to be, that is the E) Jealousy.
question.

Solutions: 1. D, 2. E, 3. A, 4. B, 5. C