When young Will Shakespeare arrived in Stratford-on-Avon, bawling out his first cries in blank verse, he made his birthplace into a hot tourist destination. The proprietors of Stratford's endless Olde English Tea Shoppes have been out on the cobblestones on bended knees ever since, giving praise for their broth of a boy.
Certainly, to his kinsmen, William Shakespeare is right up there on a par with God.
Guests on Radio 4's long-running programme Desert Island Discs are allowed to bring two books with them to their would-be island: the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. Will was the third child in his family. To keep the three little Shakespeares in ruffs, Daddy Shakespeare either made gloves for a living or traded as a butcher. Nobody can be certain.
In fact, despite being the world's best-known playwright, there aren't a lot of hard and fast facts available on the finer details of the artist's life.
He went AWOL from history for years at a time, popping up here and there - like reported sightings of Elvis - something which has irritated scholars ever since. Some have been so annoyed they have suggested Shakespeare never actually wrote any plays at all.
In the absence of hard facts about the life and times of the man himself, scholars have come up with all sorts of statistics about the work some of them think he never wrote. Thus we know that the 37 plays some credit to Shakespeare's quill contain 106,007 lines and 814,780 words. Hamlet is the longest of the plays, and the part of Hamlet itself is the longest speaking part, with a whopping 11,610 words to learn off by heart.
A Comedy of Errors is the one to choose for a quick night out, being the shortest of all the plays, checking in at a mere 1,777 lines.
Whether Shakespeare had a low opinion of women or was bound by the tradition of the period of having male actors playing female roles, the fact is that of 1,277 speaking characters in his work, only 157 are female.
Our hero married Anne Hathaway in 1582. They had three children: Susanna, and twins Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet died when only 11. Both daughters married and had children, but the line of descendants stopped there, as none of Shakespeare's grandchildren themselves had children.
Scholars get annoyed by that too. Schoolchildren around the world aren't quite so fussed about the fact that the playwriting genes ran out with Elizabeth in 1670. They take the view that there's enough on the syllabus by Elizabeth's grandda already to keep them going into infinity.
They give thanks that typewriters and computers were not knocking around in Will's day to speed up his creative process.
Shakespeare created some of the most famous fictional lovers ever to grace a stage: Desdemona and Othello, Hamlet and Ophelia, Romeo and Juliet. He made Sarah Bernhardt famous. And Laurence Olivier.
And Kenneth Branagh would like to think Shakespeare has made him famous too. Shakespeare made the name Romeo double as a verb for passion. At Verona in Italy, there is a bronze statue of a Juliet figure in a secluded courtyard standing under a balcony. The courtyard walls are scrawled with declarations of love by the many tourist couples who visit every year. It's the custom to touch the statue of Juliet for good luck in love. Hence the orb of Juliet's polished left breast shines with a bright gold colour.
So did Will love the woman whom he took as his wife? Aye, there's the rub. Maybe playwright Tom Stoppard wanted to work with Marc Norman on the screenplay of Shakespeare in Love because he was inspired by the details of Shakespeare's will.
Old Will left his second-best bed to wifey Anne Hathaway. History does not record who the recipient of the best bed was. Perhaps there was nothing left of it by the time Anne had taken the axe to it in a spot of therapeutic woodchopping.
This is where the scholars get very excited. They speculate wildly about Shakespeare's possible other lovers, all those potential Dark Ladies that inspired his series of sonnets. They wonder about the best bed and who he might or might not have had his wicked way with in it. They're on the playwright gene hunt again, trying to find out if there is any trace of little Shakespeares born on the wrong side of the blanket.
Shakespeare in Love is a bit of a scholar's revenge scenario. They reckon they know so little about the man that they might as well have fun with the bits they don't know.
The man himself is played by Joseph Fiennes (31), the younger brother of moody sibling Ralph. Young Joe, a leaner, meaner-looking version of his brother, is used to getting into tights and doublets, having made his name in one of last year's costume dramas, Elizabeth. Critics think he's going to give Ralph a good run for his money. Females swoon at every sighting.
Shakespeare in Love plays with the idea that Will had writer's block while penning Romeo and Juliet, working title Romeo and Ethel: The Pirate's Daughter. He just couldn't do the love thing. He gets stuck looking at the era's equivalent of the blinking cursor, the folio of parchment.
The whole play is supposed to be about love, but hey, now that you mention it, what is that thing called love?
Deadlines loom for the completion of Romeo and Ethel. He tears up a lot of parchment. he looks sad. Then, enter stage left, Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow). She is engaged to another, but fie! What matter! Love conquers all. Before you can say, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?" our Will is smitten. He cops the love thing. He writes Romeo and Juliet.
The cinemas are playing to packed houses. It's only January, yet Shakespeare in Love is being touted as the film of the year. Schoolchildren the length and breadth of Britain have even been given free tickets by the government to attend. And among them, hope the scholars, is a little Shakespeare gene-carrier.
