7.26.2023 - Idea of Shakespeare

7.26.2023
Idea of Shakespeare

Sing me a soliloquy,
Sing it to yourself,
Under your breath and over the fourth wall.
Chant with some witches,
Waving bloody spectral palms,
Kissing chastely out of windows,
Ranting madly with spittle spraying.
What is in a play?
Shakespearean tragedies or comedies,
Loved, loathed, adapted, or butchered,
The despair of high school Engish essayists,
Love of actors and classicists.
Yet, beyond the lines and poetry,
Past the iambic pentameter,
It is not the man,
That mystery of lone portraiture,
That we hold paragon high.
We follow the idea of Shakespeare,
His biting wit and silliness,
Flawed protagonists and sympathetic villains,
Displaying the sinews and hollows of human hearts,
That is the echoing man.
Not the William of his forgotten mother,
Not the child nor man that lived.
The most celebrated playwright in history,
Less real than his fictions,
Insubstantial as mythology.
All the world may be a stage,
But the gloaming in the wings,
Will swallow us all in turn.
We shall fade forgotten,
Just look what happened to The Bard.