William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare – 23 April 1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet, and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth23 April 1564
This is the short and the long of it.
Ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves, I mean pirates, and thenthere is the peril of waters, winds, and rocks.
But when I came, alas, to wive, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, By swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain it raineth every day.
Daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty.
I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
I had rather live with cheese and garlic in a windmill.
Love's heralds should be thoughts, Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams Driving back shadows over low'ring hills. Therefore do nimble-pinioned doves draw Love, And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date . . .
Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Alas, the frailty is to blame, not we For such as we are made of, such we be
And all this day an unaccustomed spirit lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.
Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.
He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man. He that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.
And it is very much lamented,... That you have no such mirrors as will turn Your hidden worthiness into your eye That you might see your shadow.