Friends, Chicagoans, city-men, lend me your ears.

If music be the food of love, play on! For on Thursday, we celebrate Shakespeare's 445th birthday. And in honor of the occasion, Mayor Daley has declared that April 23 shall be "Talk Like Shakespeare Day."

So brush up your literature skills and ham(let) it up. If ‘tis been some time since your last English class, the Sun-Times suggests visiting TalkLikeShakespeare.org, which includes quotes from the Bard's plays as well as over 1700 words that Shakespeare invented and are still in use today.

The website also offers such useful tips as "Instead of you, say thou." Be sure to refer to men as "Sirrah" and women as "Mistress." And rhyming couplets are always appreciated.

Finally, to celebrate, as the butcher declared in Henry VI, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

NBCChicago.com welcomes your videos of efforts to tell a short tale in Shakespeare-ese. Send them to isee@nbcchicago.com.

Matt Bartosik, editor of Off the Rocks' next issue and "between blogs" blogger, knows that there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.