April 23, 1616 is the accepted date for the death of Shakespeare

but no one knows when he died -- only that he was interred before April 25th.

There are many great Shakespeare quotes that would be appropriate for his tombstone. My favorite:

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on
and our little lives are rounded with a sleep."

But there is no Shakespeare quote carved anywhere within the church in Stratford. There is no name on the grave. No dates and the grave is too small for an adult body since it is only about 40-inches in length. LiDAR done in 2016 showed that there is no coffin or human skull beneath the child-sized stone.

Historical research techniques are now evolving rapidly. Until very recently, History was a discipline of art rather than science. History was a type of literature that presented unifying narratives, usually nationalistic. James Loewen in his best-seller "Lies My Teacher Told Me" wrote that 'what is taught in high schools would more appropriately be called patriotism.'

I was researching Champlain and Cartier last night. There are exact dates for their births in the 1500s but similar English explorers have only a proposed range of dates for their births. For example, Jacques Cartier was born December 31, 1491 and died September 1, 1597 but for Henry Hudson we have only a proposed range based on the likely ages of his children of anywhere from 1560 to 1575.

The difference is largely due to the illiteracy of England in the 1500s and the lack of record keeping which flows from illiteracy. England was the last country in western Europe to get the printing press. They likewise had very little paper. The 1623 printing of Shakespeare's First Folio was done on French paper. No paper = no record keeping.

So why are we told with confidence that today is the anniversary of the death of the author Shakespeare?

1. Because his alleged birth date was April 23, 1565, although like his death, we know only when he was baptized and even that record is a copy or recreation made in 1600 of early logs that were lost. So having him die on the same calendar day gives the story a nice feeling of fate and destiny. But more importantly

2. Certainty is an emotion. Strong feelings, including nationalism, demands certainty even when none is warranted.