William Shakes Me

It’s wild how reading something so foreign to one’s normal mode of thinking and talking and talking and thinking, can yet feel like coming home.
That’s the wonder of reading this guy named William Shakespeare.
Often, when I am asked, “Who is your favorite author?” I hesitate…. as though I have never pondered such a profound question.
As though the best answer may have changed, since the last time I was asked.
What’s to think about?
The guy’s name is Willy!
My greatest shame involves not having read even half of him yet.
But every time I open Shakespeare up, I feel that there is so little time, so little time left, and none, none to waste.
Just tonight, I began reading Antony & Cleopatra.

Right off the bat, in Act 1, Scene ii, a messenger [today it would be a brown-suited UPS guy…. no, an email… no, something on your Blackberry] comes up to Antony, announcing that Antony’s wife Fulvia has died.
“The nature of bad news infects the teller,” says the messenger.
In other words, “It saddens me to have to tell you this, sir…..”

Antony immediately responds:
“When it concerns the fool or coward. On.
Things that are past are done, with me. ‘Tis thus:
Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death,
I hear him as he flattered.”

I am not even going to paraphrase what Antony is saying there.
Because nothing could be more already clear.
Sometimes I wonder if it would not be worth returning to the Age of the Bubonic Plague, just to return to the Age when peasant folks, who earned three pennies in the past year, would not scratch their heads as to what Antony is saying there.
Beautiful stuff.
William.
Ye shake me!

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