Definition of "Bard"

We have previously traced Shakespeare from his Birth-place to the Grammar School, and we shall now glance at his career as a lover, and in so doing propose a pleasant walk of a short mile to Shottery, a rural hamlet in the parish of Stratford, where Anne Hathaway resided, to whom the Bard became affianced at a very early period in his life.

1854, Edwin Lees, Stratford as connected with Shakespeare; and the bard's rural haunts, page 46

It evidently needs no effort on the part of Mr. Booth to put himself en rapport with the ideal of the great Bard.

1866, The Albion, quoted in, Arthur W. Bloom, Edwin Booth: A Biography and Performance History, McFarland page 207

Nearly a dozen such enterprises now struggle each summer against the vagaries of rough weather and mosquito swarms to bring the Bard to the nation.

2002, Diana Brydon, Irene Rima Makaryk, Shakespeare in Canada: A World Elsewhere, University of Toronto Press, page 108

I hope that the selection of stories is illuminating for those who have never thought about what happened after the death of the immortal Bard.

2009, Jack Lynch, Becoming Shakespeare: The Unlikely Afterlife That Turned a Provincial Playwright into the Bard, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, page 8

“We are going to undertake an exploration of the Bard's poetic structure and language,” Mom went on.

2010, Erin Dionne, The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet, Penguin