Happy 444th birthday!

It's Shakespeare's birthday today! Time to throw back a glass of sack and chase it with some ale!

Actually, it only might be Shakespeare's birthday. It certainly is the 388th anniversary of his death which came about- according to legend- from a drinking bout with Ben Jonson. But it has long been held as inappropriate to remember the date of the death of the immortal bard, so birthday it is.

So crawl up with your favourite play or sonnet, remember to recite it our loud. Celebrate it here with your favourite quotation in the combox. I'll start, from memory:

I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercise, and indeed it goes so heavily against my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth seems to be but a sterile promontory, and this brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, the air, look you, why it seemeth to me nothing but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man, how infinite in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable? In action, how like an angel? In apprehension, how like a God: the beauty of the world, the paragon of the animals, and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? No, man delights not me, no, nor women neither...

I also love Mowbray's farewell to the English language, (Richard II, Iiii) and just about any line by Falstaff.

I almost miss teaching this stuff.

Edit: oh, and it's also St George's day. These guys cover it better than I.