St George's Day- Shakespeare- a literary lion who died today.

St George's Day- Shakespeare - a literary lion today.

He may have died in 1616 but the legacy he left behind may never fade into the neat stitches of the English fabric of our lives. There is something about this day that will always resonate with everything the English hold so dear; of course there is the rightful patriotism which most Brits should always feel but never seem to truly acknowledge as a given. Then there is the school of thought which would have us believe that we shouldn't really need one day in the year to wave the Union Jack or the St. George Cross flag.

The fact is that perhaps only a small corner of England will get all excited and animated about St George's Day and we'll all forget about today as if it was a passing thought. Truly, there can be no rational explanation as to why we so persistently overlook April 23rd. It should be the catalyst for street parties up and down the land, early Maypole dancing, just a complete day of celebration and finally a huge concert in Hyde Park as the evening shadows begin to lengthen.

Sadly, though there are no wild drinking binges in the pubs, no stunning bacchanalia, none of the knees up parties in those watering holes where everybody gathered around the piano, guzzled down huge quantities of the seemingly irresistible alcohol and the pub landlord simply joined in. Then for those who had lost track of time, it was time to be chucked out quite emphatically and banned from the said public house for at least a week or two.

Still, we could always remember that old Shakespeare anniversary. Of course William Shakespeare! He's the bloke who wrote all those very literary plays all those hundreds of years ago when there was no TV, no radio, nor that Internet technology where we all participate in one massive global chat about everything and anything. Shakespeare was of course one of the greatest revolutionaries of any time because he was the man who largely shaped and influenced the future development of the English language in a way that almost feels miraculous now.

But how do we show our heartfelt gratitude to the Bard? Of course the Royal Shakespeare Company has been around for as long as anybody can remember and we'll always have our Stratford Upon Avon but you can probably count on the fingers of your hand the number of times the name of William Shakespeare will crop up at dinner parties across the length and breadth of Britain. They may well quote both the plays, comedies and tragedies but then the conversation will probably turn to Donald Trump, Brexit or those eccentric eco warriors who seem to have taken up permanent residence on the streets of London. And that's the point when we'll quite possibly mention St George's Day.

There is a nagging feeling though that nobody really cares about Shakespeare. He was the man who gave us Othello, Macbeth, Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry the Fifth, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice and innumerable compositions that most of us can only dream of emulating. So what if he was the most articulate wordsmith until Dickens tried to muscle in on the Bard's sacred territory? Anybody can jot down poetic thoughts but it couldn't have been that easy surely.

Think of those endless evenings by the dimmest candlelight, quill pen in one hand and a glass of something reasonably potent in the other. How Dickens must have hunched over his davenport desk, agonising over every word, phrase and sentence, pining all the while for fame and celebrity. Think of those elaborately constructed plays on words, those newly invented phrases, the mind blowing creativity raging through his mind, the thought patterns and the vastly engaging turns of phrase.

So here we are well over 400 years after his death and still we think of Shakespeare as some distant, historical figure who the English will always revere but never understand. Some of us have always struggled with the knotty intricacies of his language and will never know why the Bard had to be quite so melodramatic about the kind of issues that most of us would shrug off. Besides, things do happen from time to time and you have to put everything into some kind of perspective.

It's hard to imagine what exactly Shakespeare would have made of the 21st century. Maybe he would have taken a strange kind of  pleasure in the current activities at the House of Comedy or perhaps that should be the House of Commons. You feel sure that some of the characters in this daftest of all plots would have been rich pickings for an outright satire written by the Bard's lily white hands. Then again Shakespeare never crossed paths with Nigel Farage. Now that's a comedy ready and waiting to be produced.