It’s the day most commonly celebrated as the birthday of William Shakespeare (b. 1564), best known as, oh, I don’t know, just THE GREATEST DRAMATIST OF ALL TIME. While Shakespeare’s plays and poetry have unparalleled influence and popularity worldwide 400 years after he lived, he does have his detractors. Among the haters are Voltaire, Tolstoy, Samuel Johnson, J.R.R. Tolkien, and George Bernard Shaw, who wrote, “With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his.” (So…also not a fan of Sir Walter Scott. Burn.)

Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, baptized April 26, and died on this same date, April 23, 1616, at the age of 52. There’s remarkably little detail about what he was doing in between, other than writing 38 plays, 154 sonnets, and other poems. We do know he was one of eight children born to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, and that his two older siblings died young. (“John” Shakespeare: doesn’t that sound wrong?) He probably went to the local grammar school, given the importance of his father in the town; his father served as both an alderman and a bailiff, which was like a mayor. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, eight years his elder, at 18, and they had three children, Susanna, Hamnet and Judith (twins).

Then, the Lost Years… Nobody knows what he was up to before he surfaced again in London in 1592. If you want to imagine him as engaged in various time-traveling adventures, go right ahead. No one can prove you wrong.

In London, Shakespeare co-founded the company Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later The King’s Men, and dashed off brilliant play after brilliant play. Not a single original manuscript exists today, and we only have many of his plays because they were collected and published after his death by actors from his company. Shakespeare’s influence on our language today is incalculable; he contributed zillions of phrases, from “in a pickle” (The Tempest) to “the green-eyed monster” (Othello). He invented over 1700 words, including “bedazzled” (The Taming of the Shrew), “new-fangled” (Love’s Labour’s Lost), “addiction” (Othello), and “scuffle” (Antony and Cleopatra—in this case, he nouned an existing verb).

Many have argued about which of Shakespeare’s plays were his greatest. I nominate Othello for greatest tragedy (it won’t win; it never wins) and Much Ado about Nothing for greatest comedy. Discuss. (I may be biased: my husband gave me a jewelry box when we got married engraved with Benedick’s line to Beatrice, “I do love nothing in the world so well as you.”)

And the greatest sonnet? Sonnet 116, which begins: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments. Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove: / O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark, / That looks on tempests and is never shaken…” (Read the rest here.)

Go do your best and most brilliant work this fine Monday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.