No birth certificate survives for William Shakespeare, only a parish register entry recording his baptism on April 26, 1564. Tradition, and a certain poetic tidiness, fixed his birthday at April 23 — the same date on which he would die 52 years later in 1616. Scholars treat the date as probable rather than proven.
The English language's most celebrated writer left almost no paper trail of his early life. What survives is a baptismal entry in the register of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, dated April 26, 1564, and the Elizabethan custom of baptizing infants within a few days of birth. Working backward, biographers settled on April 23 as a plausible birthdate, and the coincidence that it is also St. George's Day — England's patron saint — made it irresistible to a nation eager to canonize its national poet.
Shakespeare would go on to write 39 plays and 154 sonnets, coining or popularizing phrases still used daily: "break the ice," "heart of gold," "wild goose chase." He died, according to the same tradition, on April 23, 1616, giving his life a symmetry too neat to verify but too good to abandon. Every April 23, UNESCO marks World Book Day partly in his honor, alongside Cervantes, who died the same week in Spain.