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Shakespeare's BirthThe baptismal register of the Holy Trinity parish church, in Stratford, shows the following entry for April 26, 1564: Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakespeare. The actual date of Shakespeare's birth is not known, but, traditionally, April 23, St George's Day, has been Shakespeare's accepted birthday, and a house on Henley Street in Stratford, owned by William's father, John, is accepted as Shakespeare's birth place. However, the reality is that no one really knows when the great dramatist was born. According to The Book of Common Prayer, it was required that a child be baptized on the nearest Sunday or holy day following the birth, unless the parents had a legitimate excuse. As Dennis Kay proposes in his book Shakespeare: If Shakespeare was indeed born on Sunday, April 23, the next feast day would have been St. Mark's Day on Tuesday the twenty-fifth. There might well have been some cause, both reasonable and great -- or perhaps, as has been suggested, St. Mark's Day was still held to be unlucky, as it had been before the Reformation, when altars and crucifixes used to be draped in black cloth, and when some claimed to see in the churchyard the spirits of those doomed to die in that year. . . .but that does not help to explain the christening on the twenty-sixth (54).No doubt Shakespeare's true birthday will remain a mystery forever. But the assumption that the Bard was born on the same day of the month that he died lends an exciting esoteric highlight to the otherwise mundane details of Shakespeare's life. How to cite this article: References Brooke, Tucker. Shakespeare of Stratford. New Haven: Yale UP, 1926. Kay, Dennis. Shakespeare. New York: Quill, 1992. ______________ More Resources  Queen Elizabeth: Shakespeare's Patron King James I of England: Shakespeare's Patron The Earl of Southampton: Shakespeare's Patron Going to a Play in Elizabethan London The Shakespeare Sisterhood - A Gallery Worst Diseases in Shakespeare's London Preface to The First Folio Shakespeare's Pathos - General Introduction Shakespeare's Portrayal of Childhood Shakespeare's Portrayal of Old Age Shakespeare's Attention to Details Shakespeare's Portrayals of Sleep Publishing in Elizabethan England What did Shakespeare drink? Ben Jonson and the Decline of the Drama Publishing in Elizabethan England Alchemy and Astrology in Shakespeare's Day Entertainment in Elizabethan England London's First Public Playhouse Shakespeare Hits the Big Time
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More to Explore Shakespeare's Ancestry Shakespeare's Parents Shakespeare's Siblings Shakespeare's Education Shakespeare as Actor Shakespeare's Lost Years Shakespeare's Marriage Shakespeare's Children Shakespeare's Death Shakespeare's Burial
Was Shakespeare Italian? How Many Plays Did Shakespeare Write? What Did Shakespeare Look Like? Shakespeare's Religion Shakespeare's Contemporaries: Top Five Greatest Shakespeare's Audience: The Groundlings Four Periods of Shakespeare's Life Shakespeare's Language Words Shakespeare Invented Shakespeare's Reputation in Elizabethan England Shakespeare at the Globe Shakespeare's Impact on Other Writers Quotations About William Shakespeare Shakespeare's Boss: The Master of Revels Daily Life in Shakespeare's London Life in Stratford (structures and guilds) Life in Stratford (trades, laws, furniture, hygiene) Stratford School Days: What Did Shakespeare Read? Games in Shakespeare's England [A-L] Games in Shakespeare's England [M-Z] An Elizabethan Christmas Clothing in Elizabethan England |
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