William Shakespeare

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William Shakespeare by John Quincy Adams Ward, 1870
South end of the Literary Walk, Central Park
New York, September 2007

“Since the late 1990s this sculpture has been a place for occasional public readings of Julius Caesar during the Ides of March. Central Park has other Shakespearean associations as well. In 1890, Eugene Schieffelin released 80 starlings into the park, because they were mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays (there are now over 200 million of them in America). In 1915, the Shakespeare Society assumed maintenance of a rock garden, built in 1912, in the park near West 79th Street. In 1934, the Shakespeare Garden, which features particular plants named in his writings, was relocated to the hillside between Belvedere Castle and the Swedish Cottage, and in 1989, a new landscape design by Bruce Kelly and David Varnell was implemented. In 1958, after two seasons at the East River Amphitheater, Joseph Papp’s Shakespeare Festival moved to Central Park. The Delacorte Theater became its permanent home, opening in 1962.” (William Shakespeare, Central Park Conservancy)