The final plays of the Bard, who died 400 years ago, reveal a fascination with death, judgement, heaven and hell – though forgiveness and reconciliation are evident too One of MY most vivid memories of school is an English teacher declaring that “William Shakespeare is one of the few people to have been born and to have died on the same day”. This prompted a student to ask: “So how did he manage to write all those plays then?” Such confusion is less likely to happen now because the playwright’s traditional birth date of April 23 – which happened, so neatly for England’s greatest writer, to be St George’s Day – is accepted as a clerical error, although it remains possible that he may have died, 52 years later, on that date in 161