to dream again

“Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked

I cried to dream again.”

Caliban–The Tempest

What do I know about Shakespeare?

I know everything. I know nothing. I know that his words bloom at the edge where all and nothing meet.  I know that when I read Shakespeare, something wells up, from deep and deep.   A longing for beauty rises, an ache for a world where words have the power to heal.

Another thing I find.  I cannot read Shakespeare without my lips forming the words and speaking out loud, at least in a whisper.   My mind cannot take in the meaning unless I hear the rhythm and cadence of the words. Funny thing, but true. I tried to read it silently. Could not do it.  So you will see me in the library, Pelican on my knee, lips moving, absorbing the meter and meaning of sound. And that is the common place, the spoken word that ties all beings.

Unlike Caesar, the good Shakespeare did  was not interred with his bones.  It lives long after him. So let it be.

In The Tempest, Ariel proclaims–

“Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made.
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange…”

The cadence and alliteration, the imagery, the hint at something far deeper than the words on the page, rich and strange indeed–and this is Shakespeare.

We shall all “suffer a sea change,” by spring.