The Birthday Bard

So yesterday was the celebration of Shakespeare's birthday but I was too busy being vexed to celebrate. Why celebrate? Because whether or not William was an actual person or a pseudonym or had a ghost writer behind him/was a front, the stuff is amazing. I am a fan. I am fluent in the language. Besides that, most of his stuff is pretty Pagan and he makes references to deities in nearly every work. Also, much of it takes place in Italy and Greece.

The Tempest? Prospero was allegedly based on John Dee. Troilus and Cressida is about the Trojan war and follows along with The Iliad. Antony and Cleopatra... obvious! A Midsummer Night's Dream takes place in a forest outside of Athens on Midsummer Eve!


The Rape of Lucrece was a poem about the fall of the last of the kings of Rome and the start of the Roman Republic. It was based on Ovid's and Livy's account of a Prince of Rome raping a Roman noblewoman, Lucretia. She kills herself after the attack and it sparks a revolt. Kings are out, elected officials are in.

Here are just a few quotes from The Bard <3

“Let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon.”  -King Henry IV. Part I.

You seem to me as Dian in her orb,
As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown;
But you are more intemperate in your blood
Than Venus, or those pampered animals
That rage in savage sensuality.

"She'll not be hit with Cupid's arrow; she hath Dian's wit...." Romeo and Juliet

“The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo." Love's labours lost

“Now, by two-headed Janus, Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time." -The Merchant of Venice.

“And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms, In good set terms." -As You Like It.

“This is very midsummer madness." -Twelfth Night.

“More matter for a May morning." -Twelfth Night.

“O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse! how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness?" -King Henry IV. Part II.

“We have heard the chimes at midnight." -King Henry IV. Part II.

"The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter" -King Henry V.

“Orpheus with his lute made trees, And the mountain-tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing."  -King Henry VIII

"Did ever Dian so become a grove
As Kate this chamber with her princely gait?
O, be thou Dian, and let her be Kate;
And then let Kate be chaste and Dian sportful!" - Taming of the Shrew

"If this be magic, let it be an art lawful as eating" - Winter's Tale

Here's a cute article on the Bawdy Bard and some of the raunchy double entenres veiled only by archaic language!

Like all great writers, Shakespeare did drugs! Traces of Cannabis and Cocaine in Pipes at Shakespeare's Homes! :-o

"Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?" - Sonnet 76