A birthday party for the Bard
April 23 is the traditional birthday of William Shakespeare, and by long custom also the day he died in 1616. Records from that era are thin, so the exact birth date is a well-loved estimate rather than a certainty, but the date has stuck. Talk Like Shakespeare Day grew out of that anniversary; the celebration is often traced to a 2009 proclamation by the city of Chicago, home to a major Shakespeare theater, and it has since spread as a cheerful excuse to ham it up in iambic style.
The premise is delightfully simple. For one day, you speak, text, and post as though you had wandered out of the Globe Theatre around 1600. It is silly on purpose, and it is also a low-stakes way to spend real time with the most influential writer in the English language.
How to talk the talk
You can sound Elizabethan faster than you think. Swap you for thou and thee, turn your into thy, and sprinkle in a hath here and a doth there. Begin sentences with forsooth or verily and end your grievances with a flourish. Order your coffee as though requesting an audience with a duke.
The real fun, though, is in the insults. Shakespeare was a master of the ornate takedown, and calling a rude driver a poisonous bunch-backed toad is far more satisfying than anything modern. Keep a few elaborate put-downs in your back pocket and deploy them with a straight face.
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.
Why it still lands
Underneath the novelty is a genuine reason to celebrate. Shakespeare shaped English more than any other single writer, popularizing hundreds of words and turns of phrase we still use without thinking. When you break the ice, wait with bated breath, or refuse to budge an inch, you are quoting him. Spending a day inside his vocabulary is a painless way to feel how deep that influence runs.
If the accent games wear thin, go to the source. Read a sonnet aloud and notice how it was built for the speaking voice rather than the silent page. Or watch a production, live or filmed; a bright comedy like Twelfth Night is a gentle place to start if the history plays feel heavy. Modern-dress stagings in particular show how easily four-hundred-year-old lines still travel.
However foolish you feel, that is rather the idea. Talk Like Shakespeare Day is permission to play with language, to celebrate a writer whose work has outlasted empires, and to discover that his English, strange as it sounds at first, is closer to your own than you assumed. So gather thy courage and give it a go.
How to celebrate
- 1Swap in the old pronouns
Trade you for thou and thee, and your for thy, and half the work is done. Add a hath or a doth and even a coffee order sounds like a soliloquy. Commit fully and let no one shame thee.
- 2Master the Shakespearean insult
Shakespeare was a genius of the elaborate put-down. Calling someone a poisonous bunch-backed toad is far more satisfying than a modern curse. Keep a list handy for the day.
- 3Read a sonnet aloud
The plays get the glory, but the sonnets are compact and gorgeous. Read one out loud and feel how the rhythm was built for the tongue, not the eye. Fourteen lines is a very manageable celebration.
- 4Watch a play
Few things fit the day better than an actual Shakespeare production, live or filmed. Comedies like Twelfth Night are a friendly entry point if the histories feel daunting. Modern-dress stagings prove how well the words still travel.
- 5Learn the words he coined
Shakespeare is credited with popularizing hundreds of everyday words and phrases. Learning a handful, and dropping them into conversation, is a fun and honest way to mark his influence.