Honoring the Bard: Shakespeare’s Birthday

The month of April brings about many literary events to celebrate! We have National Library Week, National Poetry Month, and the birthday of renowned playwright and poet himself, William Shakespeare.

To commemorate both Shakespeare’s birthday — which scholars believe is on or around April 23, 1564 — and National Poetry Month, check out a copy of The Sonnets by William Shakespeare at any CSN campus library, or read them online via our ebook (log in with your student ID number and Canvas password to access off campus).

Many of Shakespeare’s sonnets were written about beauty, love, and also the passage of time. Some were addressed to men, while others were addressed to women.

“Sonnet 18” (XVII) is one of his more well-known poems. Have you heard it before?

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:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.