The Bard as Mentor

I get up, brew some coffee and surf the blogosphere. All these voices crying out in the wilderness. I add my own two cents.

I am immersed in the world of 'the Bard.' Young Will Shakespeare lived in a time of great religious turmoil. Protestants and Catholics torturing and oppressing each other, with one or the other gaining the upper hand, depending upon who sat on the throne (Henry VIII, his son, or his daughters - Mary, Elizabeth). Unfortunate victims (Protestant or Catholic) drawn, quartered, guts removed, heads chopped off, eyes poked out, burned at the stake, dragged through the streets, heads impaled on poles. At the same time, the Plague roamed the land, snatching the old, the young, the unlucky.

The poor, unfortunate, the vagabonds were jeered at, punished for being weak, unattached, adrift. England was grim if you weren't a 'gentle' man. Choosing to be an actor, a playwright was a 'risk,' it was not considered a 'noble profession.'

Seems all this turmoil and uncertainty was useful to the young playwright. As per Dickens, 'it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.' I think it has always been so. The same madness is alive in the land today. The writer, the artist transforms the madness to his own devices. Heaven and Hell exist side by side in the eternal now. Here you find the dream, here you find the nightmare. Shakespeare could live with both the dark and the light (the comedy and the tragedy). This is extraordinary. An example to live by.