Shakespeare's birthday and St Georges Day.

 Shakespeare's birthday and St Georges Day.

Deep in the heart of Stratford Upon Avon, the candles will be ablaze on the birthday cake and that venerable playwright and poet will be patriotically praised, lionised, quoted and trumpeted across every literary landscape where his name is now as familiar as the National Anthem. He was the one who composed all of  those pioneering, theatrical productions that were so fabulously performed by every actor and actress since time immemorial, that the Oxford English Dictionary may find it hard to adequately express its eternal gratitude. 

William Shakespeare was born on this day in 1564 many centuries removed before anybody had ever thought of electricity, TV, the Internet, radio or even Corn Flakes. Shakespeare was one of Britain's most renowned and foremost of all writers. It is impossible to place him in any potential Top 100 bestsellers list but there will always be room on one of the Times Literary Supplement features. You can imagine wandering around all of those well read literary festivals in Britain and feeling inspired to write your story. But Shakespeare seemed to get there before everybody else and the ripples can still be seen in Shakespearean school classrooms where the Bard is still a prominent force for good on those groaning library shelves. 

For the last year or so none of us have been anywhere as such and even the Globe Theatre, the London home of Shakespeare's most dramatic sonnets and acting excellence, is still waiting patiently for the end of Covid19. Who could ever forget  those unforgettable lines that have been precisely articulated with utterly correct pronunciation wherever the Bard is flavour of the month? At the moment though the spirit of Shakespeare may still be flourishing but some of us believe that somewhere out there dear William must be in floods of tears. What on earth would he have made of a 21st century virus that just seems to go on and on?

Ever since his death in 1616 the world and his family have known, heard about or discussed the name of Shakespeare in hallowed school and university corridors, the most exhaustively remarked upon and historical name of all time. The adaptations of the Bard's work have travelled the length and breadth of every corner of the world and everyday we unwittingly utter a sentence that has its direct origins in one of Shakespeare's plays or comedies. 

But here we are on the birthday of Shakespeare and any celebration of St Georges Day still seems muted and almost hardly visible. Of course the English have forgotten their very own patron saint because they always have done and feel no shame whatsoever. While the Irish down several keg loads of Guinness and the Welsh sing sonorously on St David's Day in full choir mode, in England they still believe that the only one historic event we should ever feel proud of is the 1966 World Cup Final or beating the Aussies at cricket while not forgetting the boating regattas at Henley. We do rather well at Wimbledon tennis every 70 years or so and we're not bad at hockey from time to time. 

The truth is that St Georges Day is, and has been for as long as any of us can remember, one of those non events where nobody does anything to mark the occasion. There are no lavish street carnivals, no festivals, no flags apart from the odd tattered England flag or banner from 1966 and none of those street parties for the kids and families that invariably stretched deep into the evening after the Second World War. 

So what is it with England and St Georges Day. Are we afraid to express our innermost feelings or are we quite content to cherish our privacy. Is it that repression, that modest, stiff upper lip, a natural reserve in case we bump into each other and show too much pleasure. Maybe it is that close proximity to each other, the sense that if we do break out into wild paroxysms of enjoyment that nasty old virus will just send us sliding back to where we were at this point last year. 

Ladies and Gentlemen. Let us, for perhaps a while, think about England in all her beauty and diversity, the countryside with its lush layers of green fields and that agricultural majesty. The cynics may tell us that it's all too easy to fall into  dangerous nationalism rather than patriotic chest beating. We'll always have our England and we'll always have St Georges Day and Shakespeare. So sit back and enjoy that day because things will get easier  and besides Shakespeare might have afforded himself just a hint of a chuckle at today of all days.