Nick De Somogyi

A lightly-explained heavily-lifted compilation of extracts from for the most part the plays of Shakespeare, in six clumps:

1. Words. Showing the power, and the frailty, of language--"a scribbled form", "words are but wind".

2. The Great Globe. WS transports us -- most literally-- to Illyria, Denmark, Venice, Verona, the garden, the battlefield, and to the "brave new world" of the Tempest, or to the "globe" of his theatre world, the Stage from "As You Like It".

3. Marriage/Love. WS fed our fascination with the comedy and tragedy of love, perhaps because the lover and the poet give "to airy nothing/ a local habitation and a name", and the marriage of true minds, but for Romeo and Cleopatra, "the course of love never did run smooth".

4. Salad Days and Snow Broth. Author illustrates WS' intimacy with nature and the cycles of seasons. WS seems devoted to gardens, trees, and creatures of night and day and imagination.

5. Goats and Monkeys. In WS' plays, animals steal the show. The lion, the ass-head, the bear chase. The humans only more "poor, bare, forked animals" in "a wilderness of tigers" and chickens caught in "one fell swoop".

6. Exeunt Omnes. Latin stage directions. In their exits and entrances, there hangs the tale. Ripeness is all. Nothing became him in his life like leaving it. Et tu? Damned spot! Parting is such sweet sorrow. Draw the curtains so. Put out the light. I shall fall like a great exaltation in the evening. To be or not.

"Thou'rt by no means valiant, for thou dost fear the soft and tender fork of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep And that thou oft provok'st, yet grossly fear'st Thy death, which is no more."… (meer)