*well aware, of course, that we don’t know Shakespeare’s exact date of birth. Today’s as good as any other, I guess.
Subject to the above, Shakespeare would have hit 455 today. Rather more reliably, WordPress tells me that The Boar’s Head is three today, my first post coinciding with the Shakespeare400 celebrations. They seem half a lifetime away – remember them?
A few facts and figures from the blog:
USERS: have come from 92 different places across the globe (see above). I think that goes some way to demonstrating the universal appeal of Shakespeare – this is rather a niche site, after all.
POSTS: this is my 331st post. This time last year I was on 218, so it seems I’m holding steady at about 110 posts per year, or just over two every week.
WORDS: I’m averaging out at a little over 650 words per post. Total words written is approaching the quarter of a million mark. That’s probably the most staggering statistic of all for me: if you’d told me, when I started, that I would write 250,000 words in my blog, I wouldn’t have believed that I had the sticking power, or the time, to do so.
What has the last year taught me?
APRIL: that Andrew Scott can make me cry. In front of students. His Hamlet is the one to beat, as far as I’m concerned
MAY: that there are STILL plonkers out there who believe English isn’t a proper subject
JUNE: that parting truly is such sweet sorrow, when I said goodbye to Richard II in my PTS readthrough
JULY: that no-one seems to want our children to read the history plays
AUGUST: that students don’t like it when I talk about dogs dying
SEPTEMBER: that a well-arranged bookshelf is a thing of great beauty, and that it’s a very mindful exercise to sort your shelves out once in a while
OCTOBER: that I get grumpy when I don’t make time to blog
NOVEMBER: that Shakespeare had something to say about wars yet to be fought
DECEMBER: that ‘Humans cannot live without stories‘
JANUARY: that King John is uncannily prophetic of Brexit
FEBRUARY: that I should set aside any snobbery about historical fiction
MARCH: that I’d invite Antony Sher to my fictitious dinner party along with Michael Bogdanov, and get him to sketch it
What have you learned?
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 