The Bard of Avon - and I Ain't Talking Cosmetics

"Ah, there's the rub..." and I still ain't talking cosmetics.

There can be little doubt a man named William Shakespeare is the greatest writer of all time. Even people who may claim they never heard of him, or couldn't name one of his plays, recognize and often use his words in everyday conversation without even knowing it.

We do not know the exact date of Shakespeare's birth in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, but church records indicate the month of April, 1564. We do know the date of his death - today's date 1616. Shakespeare was fifty-two years old when he died. He would have been 400!

It has also been perniciously suggested that Shakespeare was not a real person, or some other or others wrote the plays. Hokum and bunk. Documents clearly show Shakespeare had a wife, and children, although the bloodline has long been lost. Further, the body of work attributed to Shakespeare is stylistically that of one mind - the phrasing, word choice, sentence structure, etc. are the work of a single individual.

The words sound funny to us today, and Shakespeare is every high school and college student's bane. But that was the way they talked back then. His writing was as easy to understand as these words are to you. (I hope.) Yet, the plays are performed and enjoyed on a daily basis around the world in the original language.

Four hundred years later, who cannot conjure up a Halloween vision of three witches stirring a large, black cauldron, chanting, "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble." You can almost smell the eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog, simmering in the pot.

Just Shakespeare's most famous quotations could fill a book on their own. Take for example: "To be, or not to be: that is the question," "Neither a borrower nor a lender be," "To thine own self be true," "And it must follow, as the night the day," are all from one play - Hamlet.

Hamlet is widely considered to be Shakespeare's greatest work. I'd be hard pressed to dispute that contention. The part of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is one of acting's most coveted roles. Over the years in films and on the stage, Prince Hamlet has been played by such disparate actors as John Wilkes Booth (murderer of Abraham Lincoln), the great John Barrymore, Sir Laurence Olivier, Maurice Evans (who played Samantha Stephens' father in Bewitched), Sir Richard Burton, and just off his fame as Mad Max, Mel Gibson.

Some of my personal favorite Shakespeare quotes come from this play. Who can disagree with Hamlet's caustic and cynical assessment:

"What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!"

Or the helpful observation, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

And of course, my working hypothesis of the world, "Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't."

We must take into account, however, Shakespeare was a writer working for a living in a medium that today would be akin to television. People came to be entertained and distracted for a few hours from the reality of their existence. The crowds were loud, bawdy, and often drunk.

He had to write them good, and he had to write them fast. I consider myself, rightly or wrongly, to be a pretty fair writer, and I am not easily impressed, but this guy blows me away. To even think my writing will be read, discussed, and popularly quoted four centuries from now is beyond comprehension and all expectation. That my words would form the archetypes of English literature, and influence popular culture in ways that cannot be measured, is the stuff of dreams. Even in my wheelchair I stand in awe of his achievement.

I will not keep you much longer. There are easily accessible sites online that list Shakespeare's quotes by play, act, and scene, and indeed, all his formidable work is available on the internet. But I cannot help quoting a few more.

"All the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." - from As You Like It

"A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!" - from King Richard III

"What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun." - from Romeo and Juliet

“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once." - from Julius Caesar

This is my dad's (an attorney of sixty years standing) favorite quote: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." - from King Henry the Sixth, Part II

And lastly, what I feel is Shakespeare's most profound insight - from The Tempest:

"We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep."

His was the stuff of history and fantasy. Shakespeare possessed the skill to elicit laughter and tears from an audience with his writing. He was endowed with the ability to touch mankind's deepest hopes and fears in words that ring true today as much to the soul as the ear.