April 23

In literary history

• 1616William Shakespeare died at fifty-two in Stratford, having apparently retired there some years before. His will bequeathed his wife the second-best bed; what she did with it has been the subject of more scholarly anxiety than most of his plays.
• 1849Fyodor Dostoevsky was arrested for reading a subversive letter aloud at a St Petersburg literary circle. He would spend eight months waiting to learn the full cost: a staged execution in snow, a last-second reprieve, and four years in Siberia.
• 1850William Wordsworth died at eighty at Rydal Mount, on the same calendar date as Shakespeare. His widow rushed The Prelude to press within three months; Wordsworth had been quietly revising it for fifty-two years without publishing a word.

Writers born on April 23

• William Shakespeare (1564),
• Halldór Laxness (1902)

The Daily Canon for April 23

Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1601).