CELEBRATING THE BARD

“When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,” wrote William Shakespeare in his Sonnet 98, a celebration of the coming spring, in the month of his birth. The date is celebrated annually in Stratford-upon-Avon on the closest weekend to the 26th, with parades, street entertainment, actors in medieval garb, music and the firing of confetti canons. On the final day, a schoolchild carries a new quill from Shakespeare’s birthplace, a beautiful timbered house on Henley Street, to his grave, where it is placed in the hand of the statue over his tomb.