I mention in another post that my brother in law shared with me his newly acquired Shakespeare knowledge, that our beloved bard drank “contaminated water” and died 30 days later. Of all the stories I’ve heard, I’ve never heard that one. Unless he was mixing contaminated water with his alcohol.
Since this is the big anniversary of his death, it’s nice that others are doing the work to recap the details are Shakespeare’s death. Basically we know that he was out drinking a few days before, and carried home. Was this a normal occurrence? Plenty of people get carried home drunk and they don’t die. Was Shakespeare already sick and would have been dead anyway, and the drinking thing is just a coincidence where he happens to have been seen by witnesses? We’ll never really know.