A Very Special Episode of Everyday Shakespeare

Today, in honor of Shakespeare's birthday, we add our voices to those of our fellow bloggers on the Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust Happy Birthday Shakespeare! website. We've been asked to say a little something about how Shakespeare's influenced our lives.

How do we begin to answer that? He's a lot of things to us, including the source of our income, which is how we're able to go out to Starbucks and buy cool clothes off the sales rack at Anthropologie once in a while.

Sometimes he is Meaning and Truth and Beauty in an otherwise cruel and senseless world.

Sometimes Shakespeare just makes us laugh, especially when we imagine how he and his characters would strut and fret their way around the 21st-century stage. We like to imagine what his characters would post on craigslist, or what they'd write to Santa (many thanks to McSweeney's Internet Tendency for indulging us with those).

Since we're also moms, we love to imagine which Shakespearean parent we most resemble. (Go ahead, take one of our quizzes... if you dare: What Kind of Shakespearean Mom Are YOU? and What Kind of Shakespearean Dad Are YOU? .)

We get hysterical (like ha-ha-funny, not Lady Macbeth) imagining the parenting advice that King Lear, Prospero, Gertrude, and the rest of Shakespeare's fabulously flawed moms and dads would dole out to us in our darkest hours. What kind of back-to-school letters would they get each September? What would their kids' report cards look like? How would they dress them up on Halloween? (Thank you, Errant Parent for the chance to blast our thoughts about these pressing topics out to your readers this past year.)

Most of all, we love Shakespeare because—even though he never would have won a Father of the Year award—he understands the way we think and love and obsess and gripe. He gets us. And he doesn't charge us 150$/hr. for it.

Happy birthday, Shakespeare. We <3 you.