I ain't Shakespeare, I speak about what I know

Today is a day that has always held a special place in my heart, ever since I was a kid in high school. Oh sure, people in high school never think that they are kids, they're grown-ups...that's crap, and you learn that once you actually grow up and stop being a kid.

I'm talking, of course, about the birthday of that glorious wordsmith, Mr. William Shakespeare.

I guess I should say, his alleged birthday. See, back in Will's day (when you know him as well as I do, you can call him Will), they didn't have the Internet or the paparazzi around to record every single second of every single day. If Will ever strutted into a salon in his hometown of Stratford-Upon-Avon and grabbed a straight-edge to shave his own head in a wild rant, we never heard anything about that.

Hmmm...maybe life really was better before the information age.

Anyway, historical recording abilities kind of sucked in the 1500s. However, the date of poor Will's death was actually recorded, and it was, in fact....April 23. So, to make life easier on everyone (because we all have so much information we need to process now), "they" decided to give Will the same date for his birthday (just 52 years earlier).

Will was an incredibly talented playwright. I know he wrote poems and sonnets too, but I am not a poetry person in the least. The only kind of poetry I actually appreciate is either featured in a rap song or references Nantucket. So I tend to gravitate toward Will's plays.

I have to tell you, it's hard to pick my favourite play. Histories, comedies, tragedies...where does a hopeless (yet eternally pessimistic) romantic like myself even begin?

Will wrote more comedic plays than anything else, and some of them were bloody funny! A Midsummer Night's Dream is a great story that always reminds me of Stephen Stills...if you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with. This play was part of the plot of one of my guilty pleasure movies, a little Kirsten Dunst/Ben Foster number called Get Over It...well worth a viewing, believe me!

The comedy I absolutely hated was The Taming of the Shrew. I know, it was a different era when it was written, but I have issues when a woman who has a strong, independent nature is demeaned and demoralized into a sweet, quiet little thing who nods and smiles when people speak to her...umm, what? Not cool, Will...not cool at all. And so not funny either. However, the movie 10 Things I Hate About You is a hilarious and much more realistic update of this concept. And, it starred the late great Heath Ledger. 'Nuff said.

In the end, it always seems to be the tragedies that keep me coming back for more. As a perpetual problem-solver, I want to get in there and fix everything so that the suffering stops, even though I know that I can't.

But...

What if I were able to offer some possible solutions?

• If Juliet had woken up, like, two minutes earlier, she and Romeo would have lived happily ever after (blame the damn fairy tales I devoured as a child for this Mary-Sunshine attitude).
  
• If Julius Caesar had just lived by the DTA mantra that the 21st century has adopted, he never would have had to utter that infamous line, "Et tu, Brute?".
  
• If King Lear had relied a little less on a nanny and actually spent some time raising good kids instead of the spoiled brat daughters he reared (save one), he wouldn't have died alone and miserable.
  
• If Macbeth had strapped on a set and stood up to the delusional alpha female he married, he wouldn't have had to look over his shoulder every five minutes, waiting for the end to come and put him out of his misery.
  
• If Hamlet had let go of the vengeance bug and just paid a little more attention to poor Ophelia, instead of trying to ship her off to a nunnery, she probably wouldn't have snapped and taken a fatal swan dive into the river.

Seriously, we wouldn't have soap operas if it weren't for these kinds of ingenious themes and storylines! Betrayal, lust, honour, vengeance, pride, murder...you see this stuff every day on TV and on the Internet.

Will Shakespeare understood people. He understood what made them tick, and what the driving forces were behind their actions. He also knew what they wanted, even if they didn't know it themselves. Sadly, he wasn't as appreciated in his own time as he is now.

And if Will was still around today, on the 444th anniversary of his birth, I think he'd be pretty amused at how our society has "evolved". He'd still be writing (though they would probably be screenplays now, and he'd be on a laptop in Starbucks drinking a venti Cinnamon Dolce Latte), and shaking his head at the fact that nothing has really changed in more than 400 years.

Same themes, different pile.

Happy birthday, big guy.