Happy 453rd Birthday to the Bard, who has given our language so much. A few of my favorites:

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on…” – The Tempest

“Though this be madness, yet there’s method in’t…” – Hamlet

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…” – Henry V

Let us all celebrate the day of William Shakespeare’s birth with my favorite sonnet:

Sonnet 29

“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”

– William Shakespeare