Well, happy birthday, Shakespeare, you impossibly English old codger.
I mean, to be born, and to 'shuffle off the mortal coil' both on St George's Day! 'Twere a wonder thine origins were not constructed in a flight of fancy.
Anyway, he's 454 today - a ripe old age by anyone's measure.
I always think he looks a bit like a pirate. He's got a sort of a swarthy glimmer about him, peering out from the canvas (or the woodcut) with his pointy beard, his gold earring, and his steely eyes. He has those mustachios too, neatly clipped above a knowing half-smile, contrasting with the bright dome of his middle-aged forehead. Does he look like the kind of character who would sneak ideas from his contemporaries and then slap his own name on them? Yes. Did he do that? I don't know, and I don't think it matters.
In an ironic kind of snobbery, Robert Greene, a playwright himself, once attacked the young Shakespeare in a pamphlet, accusing him of being an 'upstart crow' and a conceited 'Johannes Factotum' (jack of all trades) for reaching above his station and trying to mix with the educated circles of 'university wits'. It's interesting that that paragraph of attack is now Greene's most famous work, isn't it? Or maybe not, but then, do you know any plays by Robert Greene?
You should always be kind.
By the way, I just looked it up and it looks like 454 candles would generate about the same output as ten small electric heaters. Shakespeare's cake would melt before you got it out of the kitchen. Presumably someone would then make a joke about whether that's a tragedy or a comedy, and the old wit would remind them that the same is true of asking someone that ancient to blow them out.
Only more eloquently.
Happy birthday, old Bard.
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