Shakespeare would be 450 years old this year, April 2014. To celebrate this milestone the Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust has a number of activities scheduled including performances and parades in Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-Upon-Avon the weekend of April 26/27:
The birthday weekend brings together performers, artists, the local community and ambassadors from around the world in a vibrant celebration of the life and works of William Shakespeare. During the two day event, the town’s streets overflow with music, pageantry and drama and you are invited to enjoy a packed programme of special activities and great days out at the five Shakespeare houses.
Whatever activities they plan, I am sure Shakespeare would be honored to be the cause of merry-making and revelry. He would love to the be the cause of festivity; he would enjoy a celebratory bash. But the committee planning the events has been careful not to use the word “party.” That word would confuse Shakespeare because for all of his prowess as a dramatist and poet, Shakespeare does not know the word “party.”
In penning 37 plays and 154 sonnets Shakespeare is credited with contributing an estimated 1,700 words to the English language. In his verse, he used six different meanings to the word party. Using the Shakespeare Navigator, owned by Philip Weller, I researched how the word “party” was used in Shakespeare’s works:
party (n.) 1 side, faction, camp
party (n.) 2 litigant, disputant, side
party (n.) 3 side, part, function
party (n.) 4 participant, accessory, supporter
party (n.) 5 person, fellow
party (n.) 6 side, position, viewpoint
Note: none of these means “celebration.”
Perhaps this is not so much of a surprise since the word “party” as a noun was not used as an occasion for celebration until 1716, a century after Shakespeare’s death. The Online Etymology Dictionary records the first use of “party” as:
Sense of “gathering for social pleasure” is first found 1716, from general sense of persons gathered together (originally for some specific purpose, such as dinner party, hunting party).
“To Party,” the verb derived from the noun was not added until the Roaring 20’s”
“have a good time,” 1922, from party (n.)
Shakespeare was acquainted with the word “birthday” since it had been in use for at least two hundred years before he was writing:
birthday (n.) late 14c., from Old English byrddæg, “anniversary celebration of someone’s birth” (at first usually a king or saint); see birth (n.) + day. Meaning “day on which one is born” is from 1570s.
He does note “birthdays” in plays:
Antony and Cleopatra: AC III.xiii.184.2 It is my birthday.
Julius Caesar: JC V.i.71 This is my birthday;
Pericles: Per II.i.109 is It is her birthday, and there are princes and knights come
The Two Noble Kinsmen: TNK II.iv.36 You have honoured her fair birthday with your virtues,
Still Shakespeare chose other ways of expressing birth, as evidence by a particularly sad admission from Beatrice in Much Ado abut Nothing about the death of her mother in childbirth:
BEATRICE
334 No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there
335 was a star danced, and under that was I born. (2.1)
So, members of the Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust, have a wonderful gala. Have a fabulous social gathering. Celebrate Shakespeare’s 450th birthday, but please, do not party.
Shakespeare does not know “party” that way.
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