Who knew that Shakespeare Day was November 8th? Definitely not me. If asked I would have gone for 23rd April, his birthday and possibly also the date of his death.
Anyway, this has been an enjoyable education for me and I now know lots about the First Folio that I certainly didn’t know before.
Yesterday’s celebration was for the 400th birthday of the publication of the First Folio, thus in 1623, giving us the entirety of Shakespeare’s work including 36 plays.
There are endless discussions about the veracity of the plays. Who wrote what? Was there a great deal of collaboration? Etc etc. This provides a vast amount of material for theses, dissertations and scholarly books but I have to say this doesn’t interest me greatly. I am though fascinated by the enormous effect Shakespeare has had on the English language and the fact that people who have little knowledge or interest in the Bard nevertheless include words and phrases from his plays and poems in their everyday speech, without even knowing they are doing so.
I also am happy that the BBC took this anniversary on board in a serious way: very many films and programmes mostly on BBC 4, (all now available on iPlayer) and Radio 3 with their entire Shakespeare Day.
I finished the day by watching Ben Elton’s irreverent, satirical and hilarious programme: Upstart Crow. Love it.