You may have heard or read about Mayor Daley (DePaul alumnus, Law '68) proclaiming Thursday, April 23rd Talk Like Shakespeare Day. The Website, compiled by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, honors the Bard's 445th birthday with a variety of entertaining audio and video clips along with tips on how to introduce a little Elizabethan banter into your speech at work, school and home. Here's your chance to bust out all those pent up expressions you wish you could use everyday: thou, thee, Sirrah, Mistress, and [any verb]-eth, e.g. runneth, drinketh, speaketh. However, the Libraries do not condoneth calling anyone a jack-a-napes or a canker-blossom. 

Did you know that these seemingly mundane, work-a-day words were also coined by the Bard? aerial, circumstantial, employment, moonbeam, uneducated (not one we use often around here!) 

[see a list of more everyday words from Shakespeare's plays]

Message any modern phrase to "ShakespeareSays" on Twitter, and discover how it would have sounded four hundred years ago.

And there's more! Check out the Libraries' most recent acquisitions on the topic of Shakespeare or his works, or watch one of 47 performances of Shakespearean plays via streaming video through our resource, Theatre in Video. 

Happy birthday, William Shakespeare!

[image credit: Folger Library]