Shakespeare is 450 Years Old


 “God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.”  Hamlet

My mother and I managed to fight about almost everything.  She was always trying to raise me.  To top it all off, Mom considered me to be the, “strange” one of our bunch.  [Trust me, I am not.  I know who the strange one is, and that free radical has been darting around the gene pool, luring people toward the drain for some time now!]   While Mom expected us to do well is school, she didn’t expect me to adopt what she considered to be, “exotic” tastes.  Mom was a constant reader, but she liked Edna Ferber and Willa Cather.  Her favorite book was, The Shepherd of the Hills, a soap opera of a book about the settlers of the Ozarks.  Mother thought I had gone way off the rails when I discovered a taste for Shakespeare.

“If you prick us do we not bleed?  If you tickle us do we not laugh?  If you poison us do we not die?  And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?”  The Merchant of Venice

Mom wanted all of her arts to be in a form she could describe as, “…down to earth.”  Shakespeare was definitely not down to earth.  Between being written in verse and all the, “thee’s” and, “thou’s” and other archaic words, Mom considered Shakespeare and those who like him, to be guilty of some nebulous sin generally referred to as, “trying to be ritzy.”

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" Henry VI

I once pointed out to her that the same obscure (yes, I used that term and lived to regret it) words that she hated in Shakespeare were exactly the same ones used in her King James Bible and did that make it, “Ritzy?”  Woops, I had crossed the line between ritzy and blasphemous all in one interrogatory sentence.  I paid for that with lecture delivered on her feet, hovering over her cup of coffee until it cooled.  Then I had to get her a fresh cup of java. 

"Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of war" Julius Caesar

The perfect Lady Macbeth was the woman who turned me on to Shakespeare.  I am referring to one of the best teachers I ever had, Miss Elsie Mae Webb of North High School, Denver, Colorado.  Miss Webb was a dragon lady.  She taught College Prep composition, English Literature and Shakespeare.  She was a no nonsense teacher with a withering stare and a sesquipedalian vocabulary.  She could reduce the biggest football player in the school to tears with a single word, which he would then have to run to the huge dictionary on the pedestal in the library and look up. 

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”  Twelfth Night

Miss Webb took me through several Shakespearean plays and showed me how this man became a timeless author by cutting human strengths, weaknesses, fears and emotions to the bone.  He then described these human universals in poetic and timeless ways.  Shakespeare is quoted, performed and borrowed from still today because he speaks to generations.  The language may have changed, but the message is fresh, new, and waiting to be rediscovered by each generation.  What we learn from Shakespeare are the lesson we need to learn and he is a very good teacher.

“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.  Alls Well That Ends Well

Go rent Henry V and keep the faith. 

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