This Vaccine Patient Is Making Headlines, and Spurring Puns

Maggie Keenan may have been the first person to get inoculated in the UK as the nation rolled out its mass vaccination initiative on Tuesday, but it's the second person in line who's now making more headlines than the 90-year-old grandmother. Reuters reports that William Shakespeare, an 81-year-old from Warwickshire, also got his shot at University Hospital in Coventry, which is just 20 miles or so from Stratford-Upon-Avon, where the more famous Shakespeare was born.

The modern-day Shakespeare's inoculation has spurred what the Washington Post calls "an inevitable flurry of puns." The Metro newspaper, for example, captioned a social media post about Shakespeare's vaccination "the taming of the flu," while someone deemed Keenan "Patient 1A," then asked if Shakespeare was "Patient 2B or not 2B?" WhatsOnStage has gathered some more, including a riff on one of the most famous Shakespearean lines of all: "In fair corona, where we lay our scene."