How Now, Mad Wag!

What with thy quips and thy quiddities? What plague have I to do with this buff jerkin?

That’s about the only line of Shakespeare that I know other than the ones everyone knows. I don’t even know what play it comes from but I’ve remembered it since high school. Anyway, Happy Birthday, fair Will! If you were alive you’d be 392 years old.

It’s sort of amazing that after all these years Shakespeare continues to be the most frequently produced playwrite in the world. But, when you think about it, the basis of his plays are all those universal themes that could be as relevant today as they were then and before then. Love, jealousy, power, passion, lust, greed, envy, desire --- Shakespeare didn’t shy away from anything and, in so doing, he gave the literary world a database of what comprises story. Story in its essence.

I was not particularly fond of Shakespeare when I was younger. In college I took a number of drama classes and for one project I directed a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream but I am quite certain that I contributed nothing original or even interesting to that project. But in recent years, largely thanks to my friendship with Clare Higgins, I’ve begun to appreciate the Bard more. Clare, who lives across the hall from me, is a Shakespearian scholar. She wrote a play called Queer Bent for the Tudor Gent, a send-up of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy but entirely composed in Shakespearian verse (and fully annotated). Her play was produced in New York and in Sydney, Australia and I have seen the video tape of the production. It is just great and so clever. And his words are as timely today as they were back then.

Since then Clare and I have watched a few of the recent movies made from Shakespeare’s plays. Most notable in my mind is The Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino as Shylock. When I read about it I thought it an odd choice to play the infamous moneylender but I have never seen an actor more fully inhabit a role. I guess you can do that with good material.

As I read more of McKee’s Story I am more than ever convinced that story is everything --- in books, in plays, in songs, and in life. Story doesn’t have to be a big thing but it has to be a true thing. Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, boy fights duel over girl, boy kills himself because he thinks girl is dead, girl wakes up and finds him dead and follows suit. That’s quite a story. “Oh happy dagger! This is thy sheath! There rust and let me die!” Whew.

And so, good Will, you are remembered and remembered and remembered. And rightly so:

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked elipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Thanks for reading...