William Shakespeare, as I’m sure you all know (because if you don’t, you need to climb out from under whatever rock you’ve been living underneath for the past few centuries, and rocket yourself back to planet Earth), is undoubtedly the most well-known playwright in the history of the English language. Here are some interesting statistics you might not have known about his life.
He was born on the 23rd of April. Fifty-two years later, he died on the 23rd of April.
Shakespeare created almost 3,000 English words. How many times have you created a word that stuck? He once used over 7,000 different words in a single play. Which, by the way, the average English speaker only uses 500 to 1,000 different words in an entire day.
He’s also popular enough to have 80 known variations of the spelling of his name.
In Shakespeare’s lifetime, he wrote 37 plays and 154 other works that we are aware of – which is an insane amount of writing.
He wrote one-tenth of the most quoted lines in the English language. Some of them you might use every day and have no idea that ol’ Bill himself was the person who coined it.
Now, all of you may know who Shakespeare is, but if you’ve never sat down and read one of his works, I implore you to do so. It may take a lot of work, but it’s worth it just to say, “Yep, I read Hamlet, and understood every last word in it.” [via]