The Bard and Me

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, 
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle’s compass come; 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

-116

I had read sonnet 116 before that day last summer many times. I had really gotten into Shakespeare that year and I actually realized how spellbound I was by his work until I was lying on the stage in my camp’s replica Elizabethan theater on a hot July day reading the sonnet. It really struck me there how much impact Shakespeare has had on our language and on our world. How amazing is it that still 400 years after his death we are still in awe at his works? His characters and stories enchant us and make us live differently. His works have really changed me and my perspective on the world and opened my eyes to see the hidden beauties in the world. Shakespeare will forever have a place in my heart.

Happy Birth(and Death)day Will!

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