Statement from Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown on the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Death of William Shakespeare

The following is a statement from Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown on the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare:

“It is often said of Shakespeare that: ‘He was not of an age but for all time.’  Indeed, Shakespeare’s fame, already great in his lifetime, has grown in the four centuries since his death to make him one of the best known and most admired writers since antiquity.

In our age, Shakespeare’s works are read, staged, and produced in virtually every country, language, and medium imaginable. And in our province, the Stratford Festival is justly renowned for its dynamic stagings of his plays, which draw tens of thousands of visitors each year to that charming city named for Shakespeare’s birthplace.

He also enriched and enlarged the English language. Our everyday conversation is peppered with the language of Shakespeare, so that even people who have never heard his plays or who tuned out his poetry in high school quote him unawares. From ‘zany,’ ‘rant,’ to ‘fashionable,’  and  ‘what’s done is done,’ our language is his.

This is even true in politics, one of Shakespeare’s favourite topics. At a time when the government’s ‘Comedy of Errors’ and its ‘wasteful and ridiculous excess’ have voters crying that ‘something is rotten’ in the province of Ontario, we would like to assure those of you who feel ‘hood-winked’ that the ‘truth will out’ and that the Opposition will ‘fight to the last gasp’ to deliver government ‘As You Like It.’ ‘The time approaches’ when you will be able to say ‘good riddance’ and ‘send them packing’ in ‘one fell swoop.’ Because, as the Bard knew, ‘All’s Well That Ends Well.’

But all these words and phrases are simply the parts of Shakespeare; the whole is so much greater.  The art that remains is humanity depicted with greater clarity than photography, with more substance than sculpture, and more insight than philosophy.

Here in Ontario, where his works have made the reputations of Canadian actors for more than a century — from Margaret Anglin to Christopher Plummer and William Shatner — we are particularly proud to join the world in commemorating ‘our’ Shakespeare’s death in ‘the other’ Stratford, four hundred years ago today.”