‘Speak low if you speak love.’

‘Hear my soul speak. Of the very instant that I saw you, Did my heart fly at your service.’

‘Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?’

‘Love is a smoke and is made with the fume of sighs.’

‘I love you more than words can wield the matter, Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty.’

‘The sight of lovers feedeth those in love.’

‘Come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy, That one short minute gives me in her sight.’

‘Doubt that the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move his aides, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.’

‘You have witchcraft in your lips.’

‘I humbly do beseech of your pardon, For too much loving you.’

‘Kiss me, Kate, we shall be married o’Sunday.’

Ah, Shakespeare. Is there any more iconic romantic in the long history of literature? It was Romeo and Juliet, I am sure, that sowed the seeds of the romantic in me. Such ardour!

Did you know that this April marks 400 years since the death of the Bard, William Shakespeare? In commemoration, the British Library in London is putting on an exhibition entitled ‘Shakespeare in Ten Acts’.

The angle for this exhibition is unique: not simply a jumble of Shakespearean memorabilia, but a journey through how his plays have been reinvented across the centuries. From the British Library’s website:

Journey through 400 years of history – from the first productions of Hamlet and The Tempest – to understand how Shakespeare’s plays have been transformed for new generations of theatre-goers.

Imagine how audiences reacted to ground-breaking moments like the first stage appearance by a female actor in 1660 and the first British performance of Othello by a black actor in 1825.

Experience the glamour of Vivien Leigh’s Lady Macbeth costume, the surprising circus prop from Peter Brook’s radical 1970s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the stunning detail of the Globe’s award-winning costumes from Twelfth Night starring Mark Rylance.

Already I can hardly wait! I’m also excited that the exhibit will include the only script to survive in Shakespeare’s handwriting; how precious that is.

What is it that draws me, and so many others, to Shakespeare? Of course it is his plays themselves: the dramatic and emotion-inducing storylines, the beautiful and evocative language, and the iconic characters. But I think it is more than that; I think that I and so many others will visit this exhibition drawn by the mystery of the man behind the words.

William Shakespeare is the world’s pre-eminent dramatist, and yet 400 years after his death so much remains an enigma. Because few records of his life exist, we do not know definitively Shakespeare’s exact date of birth or his place of schooling, and the period 1585 and 1592 is known as ‘the lost years’, during which time he began writing but we have only stories, not factual accounts, of how, why, when and where. We don’t know his religious beliefs; we don’t concretely know his sexuality. We don’t know when exactly he retired to Stratford, or why he died on 23 April 1616, aged 52. A minority of academics even cast doubt on Shakespeare’s authorship of the works, with Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, in the frame as possible playwrights.

The mystery is enticing, but I don’t think for a moment it diminishes the greatness of Shakespeare, whoever he was, in terms of his influence and cultural importance today. As contemporary Ben Jonson said of Shakespeare in the preface to his First Folio, Shakespeare is ‘not of an age, but for all time’.

The ‘Shakespeare in Ten Acts’ exhibition opens on 15 April at the PACCAR Gallery, the British Library, and runs until 6 September. More information is online at http://www.bl.uk/events/shakespeare-in-ten-acts.