Me, yesterday, on my way to Romeo & Juliet with my students.

On Shakespeare’s Birthdeathday

These two sonnets, even more so than the previous eight that I wrote, where inspired by Shakespeare. In a way they were also inspired by Robert A. Heinlein who, writing the character of Lazarus Long, said, “A human being should be able to… [insert other things] write a sonnet.”

They were written when I was playing in Shakespeare plays for Shakespeare Northwest, now the Skagit River Shakespeare Festival. Today, on his 448th birthday [more or less] and the 400th anniversary of his death, I thought I would share these Sonnets. Yes, scholars, the second is actually Iambic Tetrameter, not Pentameter.

#9
What plays but human truth on the stage?
Or that, our goal, seems to be.
How to capture a moment of lovely rage
As it escapes from this plane of being.
Then to replay, to reveal this gracious gift
Again and again with life enthralled;
To create wet fire out of time’s sifted sands,
To break through the crust ‘neath we’ve stalled.
When success breeds response from the crowds we adore,
Then strong imagination takes hold.
Actors can feel the emotions that haunt the stage
And for that true souls are sold.
So join in our quest for its great reward
Is to share in this moment unmarred.
– 11Aug01

#10
Here I stand no tricks but my tongue
Let the language leave my lips well
If I with feigning voice had sung
Let the truth of the words not tell
Yet give me God’s own irony
And tempt me not with your geld
Let me hear the poet’s symphony
Spilling forth as magic beheld
No dancing or wooing for me
As the groundlings’ howls aren’t my goal
Rather a hint of a smile to see
For that warmth is raised in my soul
So give me your hands hard or softly
If these words have touched you low or lofty
-24Aug02

To words and to the people that place them one after the other to enchant us, whether in poem, song, play or tale…