"Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece."
-Vladimir Nabokov


Today is believed to be the birthday of William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England (1564). He used one of the largest vocabularies of any English writer, almost 30,000 words, and he gave us many of our most common turns of phrase, including "foul play," "as luck would have it," "your own flesh and blood," "too much of a good thing," "good riddance," "in one fell swoop," "cruel to be kind," "play fast and loose," "vanish into thin air," "the game is up," "truth will out," and "in the twinkling of an eye."