Here’s to Willie

May 02 : April 24th as you all know is a national holiday also known as “Sachin Divas” or by its original name “Friday”. However, what they don’t teach you at Wharton or Harvard (though I still have to get a confirmation from Yale) is the significance of April 23rd, also known by its Latin original, Thursday.

Every April 23rd fans of William Shakespeare from countries as varied as Pakistan and Poland (though this doesn’t include the Waziristan province) celebrate the birth of the famous bard.
Sadly, today’s Internet-savvy youth, denied the pleasure of reading, has been deprived of the bard’s influence, although this has been suitably compensated by PlayStation IV.
Thus, as the only employee of this newspaper who graduated in English, it is my beholder duty, nay in sooth, it is my birthright to introduce today’s youngsters to the man the world called William Shakespeare. Although in all fairness, when alone at night, which was very often, he called himself “Michael”.
On the night of April 23, at Stratford-Upon-Avon, a child was born to Mr & Mrs Shakespeare. The child stood out from all other children even then, due to a receding hairline. Further proof of his genius was soon available. While other children mewling and puking in their nurses arms would make up monosyllabic sounds like “oooh” and “aaaah!”, William’s first sounds was the clear concise sentence “I stand dismayed”. Two things shocked the Stratford community at the time. One, that he could essay a full sentence, and two that he clearly had a Welsh accent in spite of the fact that neither parent was Welsh, or had even been to Wales.
As a young boy William loved sports. Cricket and football were his favourites. At cricket he always supported the touring South Africans. In fact, it was after bunking work and watching one of the most boring Test innings by Trevor Godard that he wrote the immortal lines, “If all the days were paid holidays, then sport would be as tedious as to work”.
This, of course, led to the then Tory government abolishing four holidays and Willie being almost lynched by a group of miners.
William grew up into a fine writer. Initially, he wrote only pamphlets, but when they kept getting lost he moved on to plays. In all he wrote 38 plays, 154 sonnets, three TV screenplays and a roadmap to Essex.
He became so celebrated in his lifetime that in the year 1601 he was felicitated on every single day of the year. This tired him so much that he had to take the whole year of 1602 off, just in order to enforce some recovery.
It was this ordeal that inspired him to pen the immortal line “sleep, balm of nature”. The line of course was then hijacked successfully by a leading blanket brand. William also won respect as an actor. When asked by People magazine as to who did he enjoy playing, his candid reply was “other people”.
Unfortunately, whilst his greatest works like Macbeth and King Lear are easily available, some of his other great plays such as Saawariya and Omkara are lost forever.
His contribution to the English language include words such as saddened, damned, assassination, interlocutor and foreign exchange. His visibility today may be less but his stature unquestioned. Happy Birthday William.
By the by, his play Timon of Athens, loosely based on Lalit Modi and the Board of Control for Cricket in India tangle without the Greek accents, is to be performed at the Experimental Theatre today.

By Cyrus Broacha