Birth(Death)day Bard

(23 April in the UK and elsewhere)

 

If we sang his birthday, someone

Would be owed money for

Copyright

There seems to be an economy to

The celebration

Since his birth day and his death day

Go as one

Without certitude

(certified baptism- and death-date)

 

Happy birthday, Queen’s man and King’s man

Patronized by both, though she

Would have Falstaff again,

Whom she was given in The Merry Wives of Windsor

 

All the world’s not a stage, and we

Are more than seven stages (ages), though

You wrote these in jest

From a character whose

Attitude we should not replicate

Like the speaker who opined

“To thine own self be true”

How many of your jokes do we take

For relevant advice?

 

Well, four hundred fifty-five

Your candled cake—your

Company would need to help take up the

Flame

While your dark lady rises

From the smoke of mystery that follows

(end of medieval, start of

Renaissance)

 

You cannot say good or bad day

Birth or death day

Even though we wish you well (I think,

after the school-essay’s done)

 

And if my words offend

(however parenthetically)

Here’s how I mend:

 

From Robin, Good day, Will

And I am done, until

 

C L Couch

 

 

Connormah, William Shakespeare – self-made, vectorized from existing PNG/JPG files, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7324293