In honor of Shakespeare’s birthday (traditionally celebrated on 23 April, which is also the anniversary of his death in 1616), I propose we take another look at Milton’s poem “On Shakespeare.” The 1645 Poems, always self-consciously tracing the younger Milton’s process by dating each work, tells us he wrote “On Shakespeare” in 1630, but it was published anonymously in the 1632 Second Folio. If we take the 1645 Poems date, Milton was 22 when he wrote this, a year younger than when we find him lamenting his tardy maturation in Sonnet 7: