I find it a bit odd that no one bothered to mention the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare yesterday. Or is every here like myself–the last time I read him was in school?
I noticed it when the Google doodle mentioned it yesterday.
I would like to have done a thread on it, but I could not think of anything profound to say.
I thought people didn’t even know for sure who really wrote that stuff so how could you know when the guy who did died?
Records, chumley. 
Even the proponents of Bacon, the Earl of Oxford, Marlowe, etc, don’t aver that the ‘Stratford man’ did not exist. Rather that someone else deserves the credit.
The anniversary is reasonably big here at the moment.
I briefly ran a Shakespeare theatre company, and I didn’t even know. I guess I have other things on my mind these days.
Saying Shakespeare was awesome is a little bit like saying water is wet. Not everyone will like it but no one will really disagree. If you haven’t read his work since you were in school, don’t bother picking it up. He would prefer you go see it staged, it wasn’t meant to be read. Now that I am no longer a young punk I’ll even say that a good movie version will do, but nothing beats live.
I would suggest finding a performance of Macbeth, or King Lear if you like tragedies. Much Ado About Nothing or Twelfth Night if you like Comedy. The Tempest if you are having trouble deciding.
Unless you are talking about his sonnets. Those you should go ahead and read.
The only people who don’t know for sure who wrote Shakespeare’s works are those who have very diligently and carefully expended a lot of effort on preventing themselves from accidentally finding out.