As April 23 is the day that William Shakespeare died -- and is believed by many to be his birthday as well -- today's post looks at songs from the Billboard year-end Top 30 charts (1951-2015) that refer to the works of Shakespeare. A search of the collection in terms of character names, place names, and famous lines from found reference to only a single work attributed to Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet. However, there are several references to this work, considered by many to be Shakespeare's most romantic play, in various songs from the collection, from the late 1970s to 2015. The videos for these songs are featured below (in chronological order).

And a couple of bonus tunes that include references to Romeo and Juliet but do not appear in the Billboard Top 30 collection: