He's everywhere....

He's everywhere....

If your father was an English professor (as mine was) it makes sense that Shakespeare and his many plays were just part of the furniture.In the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that lined my father's study just off the dining room, were separate books of all the plays in addition to the well worn Complete Works of Shakespeare with its tattered paper jacket that travelled with us to the cottage every summer. While the rest of us were carrying in stacks of beach towels and groceries, my father would be busy taking down the framed print of small sailboats that my uncles had hung above the fireplace, putting that in the corner and standing up the Complete Works where the print had hung. It never stayed there long. We would find him re-reading the text of whatever plays were being performed at the nearby Stratford Festival that year, plays he had read and taught for many years but nevertheless wanted to read again before loading us all into the station wagon for the long drive to the theatre. Shakespeare was a much a part of the cottage as corn on the cob and playing in the dunes.

In the decades since, I have thought little about Shakespeare or his plays.

This winter I decided to Get Back to the Bard — as they say — only to discover he is everywhere: in documentary and regular films, art museums, all over literature and journalism, psychology and ordinary conversation. Those are some of the places I have found traces of William Shakespeare. I suspect his influence may be encountered in science, medicine, and professional politics, areas I know little about.
What I know so far is that the more Shakespeare I read, the greater his reach seems to stretch.