Happy birthday Mr Shakespeare!

Shakepeare's Birthplace and garden in Stratford-Upon-Avon
(photo by Hannah Meiklejohn at Townhill Library)

Yes, today is William Shakespeare’s birthday. Well, the 23^rd April is the date traditionally given as his birth. It’s a bit hard to check the records for the 16^th century! We do know that he was baptised on 26^th April 1564, so he’d be 449 this year. Expect to see some special events across the country to mark his 250^th birthday next year! (Incidentally, the 23^rd April is also the day he died, but we won’t dwell on that!) If you’d like to find out more about Shakespeare’s life, our database Oxford Reference Online, where we found this information, is an excellent place to start.

We have lots of books and other resources if you’re a Shakespeare fan, or think you’d like to be. Take a look at our catalogue to see what’s about! You’ll find the bard’s plays mostly on the ground floor of Townhill Library, though there are a few up on the first floor in the Teaching Practice collection too. We’ve even got a few which have been adapted forchildren, so if you fancy Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Henry V or Romeo and Juliet, but you aren’t quite up to the original, give those a go! If you don’t even feel up to that, you could always take a look at our DVDs. (You’ll see Shakespeare in Love in our collection too!)

There are also lots of resources online for you. Our databases Literature Online and JSTOR are excellent places to find journal articles about Shakespeare and his work. You’ll even find online links to his poetry and plays on Literature Online! On the web, you might like to take a look at the RoyalShakespeare Company’s website. There’s a fab section of Education resources where you’ll find material for early years right through to grown-ups!