When was William Shakespeare born?

TabbyTom

Shakespeare was born in 1564. The exact date of his birth is not known. The register of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, records his baptism on April 26. He is traditionally said to have been born on April 23 (St George's Day), but there is no evidence to prove this. Source: Various works, including "Shakespeare's Lives" by S. Schoenbaum. Apr 25 06, 11:38 AM

zbeckabee

There is no evidence, alas, to support the popular belief that William Shakespeare was born — as fifty-two years later he was to die — on 23 April, the date celebrated in England since 1222 as the feast day of dragon-slaying St. George. As the poet's posthumous fame grew, securing a unique niche for his country in the cultural history of the world, it was a natural enough temptation for posterity to unite the birthday of England's national poet with that of its patron saint. But the tradition is based on a false assumption, that Elizabethan baptisms invariably took place three days after the birth. The instruction given to parents in the 1559 Prayer Book, published five years before Shakespeare's birth, was to have the christening performed before the first Sunday or holy day following the birth 'unless upon a great and reasonable cause declared to the curate and by him approved'. In 1564 the 23rd day of April happened to fall on a Sunday, four days after the feast day of St Alphege and two before that of St Mark — traditionally an unlucky day, so the curate's permission to avoid it may well have been forthcoming. But the contemporary inscription on Shakespeare's tomb in Holy Trinity — that same church where he was christened on 26 April by the vicar of the parish, John Bretchgirdle — reads that he died in his fifty-third year ('obiit anno...aetatis 53'). We know that he died on St George's Day, 23 April, so this would seem to imply that he was born before it, however marginally. There are few more satisfactory resolutions of this problem than that of the poet Thomas de Quincey, who suggested that Shakespeare's granddaughter Elizabeth Hall married on 22 April 1626 'in honour of her famous relation' choosing the sixty-second anniversary of his birth, in other words, rather than the tenth of his death. http://www.englishhistory.info/Shakespeare/shakespeares-birthday.html Apr 25 06, 11:55 AM