Shakespeare

Why is Shakespeare such a joy? We feel his huge and generous spirit, which is fearless but understanding fear, good but also encompassing meanness, ambition, ennui, panic, power, lust—he understands all. He delights in all, in the story, in holding us enthralled like Prospero in the palm of his hand, the way a wizard enspells us. But it isn’t just his narrative skills, it is his largeness. He takes the old, clichéd stories and makes them magic. He must have enjoyed life. I can’t tell if he was more out-going or quiet, the life of the party or an observer on the sideline. But he doesn’t lack confidence. He does make mistakes, in his extravagant, over-the-top bid to entertain. In my experience, writers tend to be quiet and actors more extroverted, but Shakespeare was both. Yet he doesn’t seem to be a “personality.” I don’t know that much information about his habits and mannerisms, which leads me to think he was more quiet than not. Usually I think it requires quiet and solitude to write, but maybe not for a shining genius. (2003)

Shakespeare—I forgive you all your dark ladies and small affairs—I forgive you the antifeminism and anti-Semitism of your age—you are beautiful, you restore my faith in human kind, in art, in words, in my own work. To love you is to love Oberon or Prospero, a demi-god who lives on honeydew and moonshine—you of all scribblers justify my art (small tag-along player that I am, constructing stories of cobwebs and blood and little black spiders).Hearth-god, domestic deity, it is good to worship for a clear reason one who demands nothing of us but pleasure and understanding. Maybe the actual God is like you. He made you, didn’t he? Maybe Shakespeare is still writing plays for the royal court above, and sonnets to dark ladies. (2005)