Shakespeare’s 451st Birthday

Shakespeare’s 451st Birthday. So how will you be celebrating?

There are hundreds of thousands of us Shakespeare enthousiasts out there in the wide world web. Several thousand refuse to accept that there’s a reason for celebration. We can ignore them until they arrive with real proof and not arguments all based around debasing our candidate.

He, him, that writer, the actor, the one we call Shake-speare was once, 441 years ago in a Stratford on Avon recorded with his name as:

this on his birth (April 26th 1564: Gulielimus, filius Johannes Shakspeare)

Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspeare

and on his burial 52 years later (25th April 1616: Will Shakspeare, Gent).

Burial record April 25th, 1616

Shakespeare records of birth and burial

That was his first taste of latin and being son of Chief Alderman John was entitled like all young boys to the free school at Stratford and a further latin education under the tutelage of Thomas Jenkins.

Shakespeare’s teachers can be seen in the 1570’s

But this post is about celebration not history.

We will be doing the world’s quickest Sonnet Marathon on April 24th.
Check out this podcast advertising what we’ll be doing. I’ll be back with more details. And we’ll be doing it here:

Location for the Sonnet Marathon in a Minute

This morning I took part in the English Breakfast show on local dutch radio. The link provides you with streaming capability to see and hear the last hour of the program.

A sneak preview of how the sonnet marathon in a minute looked from the inside. Dutch actor Joris Lehr performs sonnets 23 and 76. He had never seen sonnet 76 until minutes before the performance:

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