Sweet love remembered ...
Summer, a time for summer reading, discovering a new book, a new writer ... but also a time to visit old friends. Speaking of old friends, my William Shakespeare bobblehead has migrated recently from the writing room to the piano in the living room.
This particular bobblehead is also called a "nodder," and Shakespeare does nod if you touch his head. Is he approving the music? He stands at attention, quill in his left hand, a stack of books at his feet. He's not writing. Is he simply observing? Is he waiting for inspiration?
I found my famous bobblehead friend a couple of years ago at the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia. He always reminds me of good times at the Blackfriars Playhouse there.
The bobblehead also reminds me not only of Shakespeare's plays but also his sonnets. Year to year, at irregular intervals, I pull down the sonnets from the shelf (or more often these days find them with the Google machine). The first sonnet I always look at is Sonnet 29. I won't analyze it, except to say that it sings of the power of love to raise us from disgrace and despair and enrich our lives. Here's William Shakespeare with the last word:
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
