Give you good day, Gentles all!
Sunday, April 23, is the 401st anniversary of the probable date of the birth of William Shakespeare, the most celebrated writer in the English language, in 1564. It’s also the date of his death in 1616.
And don’t we all remember sitting through those endless lessons filled with language we hardly understood, and struggling to understand what use it all was. Well, for some of us, those lessons have resulted in a life-long love of language and drama. Shakespeare knew that people would always want drama: tragedy, comedy, and a mixture of the two. He knew how to play to the vanity of posh folk, and how to slip in the odd rude joke to amuse the groundlings—the poor, the uneducated, and the street people, who had to stand during the show because they couldn’t afford the penny to pay for a seat. He knew they’d come, and they did.
A major poet, dramatist, producer and actor of his day, he made a large fortune. His will is famous because, to his wife, Ann Hathaway, he left his “second best bed.” “How stingy can a rich man get?” one wonders, but actually, it’s just A Comedy of Errors. The very best bed in a wealthy household was not used by the family, but was kept in the spare room, for guests. Old Will was just making sure his wife got the bed she liked. And as he said elsewhere, “No legacy is as rich as honesty”.
So, Sunday, April 23, is “Talk like Shakespeare Day.”
“Yeah, right,” I hear you cry. “Gadzooks! I am not in the vein!”
Well, just As You Like It, but I bet you’d be surprised to know how many of the expressions we still use quite often were actually coined or made popular by Shakespeare. So, not to cause a Tempest in a teapot, and as you wait “with bated breath,” let’s see what we find. Of course, this isn’t the be-all and end-all, but let’s not be “lily livered or faint hearted,” or get in a pickle. Shakespeare’s “as dead as a door nail,” so he’s not likely to eat us “out of house and home,” but even if you’re a “night owl,” reading all his works will take “for ever and a day.” So here are a few of his many life lessons.
“Love a little, comfort a little, cheer thyself a little.” “Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice” and “To thine own self be true.”
Now, if you think that this time I’ve overdone it a bit, well, it’s no big deal—Much Ado about Nothing—and you can comfort yourself with Hamlet’s observation: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”.
Nonetheless, “give the devil his due.” “All the world’s a stage,” and four hundred years on, Shakespeare’s still the most performed playwright in the world. And he still has a way with words.
And so you see, Gentles all, that All’s Well that Ends Well.
– Got an opinion of something on the lighter side of life? Contact O’Brien at style.etc@gmail.com or email us your story at news@hopestandard.com.