Miguel CervantesMiguel Cervantes and William Shakespeare, two authors at the height of Europe's cultural renaissance during the 1500s, ironically died on the same date (this fact is somewhat confused by the distinction between Julian and the Gregorian calendar. In fact they both died on the date of April 23, 1616, but England had not converted to the Gregorian calendar, so they did not die on the same day, but died on the same date, as correlated by Spain's Julian calendar death of Cervantes to that of Shakespeare). Shakespeare even read Cervantes' masterpiece The Delightful History of the Ingenious Knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, but it is likely that Cervantes had never even heard of Shakespeare, much less read any of his plays or poems. This distinction between two men of equal literary merit can be seen as an allegory of Miguel Cervantes' entire life: he lived in obscurity, despite receiving much posthumous praise. It took historians until the mid-1800s to discover where Don Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra was born. The setting is in the small Spanish town of Alcalá de Henares, near the capital Madrid. Miguel was born as the fourth child of seven children, but second son of Don Rodrigo de Cervantes y Saavedra in 1547. Miguel's date of birth remains as nebulous as the conditions of his death. It was common practice in Spain at the time of Miguel's birth to name a child after the Saint who enjoys the homonym of the date the child was born. The feast of St. Michael is September 29th, although it has been confirmed that Miguel was baptized on October 7th (in the same document that confirmed the place of his birth), so he could realistically have been born on any day in early October or on end of September. After Migue was born......middle of paper......the darkness that Cervantes embodied in his Works CitedBusoni, Raphael. The man who was Don Quixote. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Cervantes De Saavedra, Miguel. The first part of the delightful story of the ingenious knight Don Quixote of La Mancha. New York: P. F. Collier & Son Corp., 1969. Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the world. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004. Nelson, Lowry, ed. Cervantes. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969. Palmer, R.R., and Joel Colton. A history of the modern world. 8th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, Inc., 1995.Sandy, Clare. "Flame." Decameron Web. Brown University. October 3, 2006. Ticknor, George. History of Spanish literature. 6th ed. vol. 2. New York: Gordian P, Inc., 1965. Tyers, Francis. "Miguel De Cervantes." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. November 15, 2001. September 27. 2006 .